Half-caf, cream, no sugar. That is my usual coffee order, and whenever I say it, I chuckle to myself. Half-caf sounds like a Dr. Seuss word that was too silly even for him.
It has just enough caffeine to wake me up, but not enough to make my heart race. Enough to make me alert, but not too alert. Functional, but not too functional. It’s the beverage equivalent of straddling a doorway, unsure whether you should go in or out.
Neither Here nor There
Half‑caf is having one foot on the gas and the other on the brake. It isn’t I keep meaning to get around to it, it’s you’re already doing something, yet you’re holding back. You are in the water, but staying in the shallow end.
My coffee mirrors my life. I am perpetually neither here nor there.
One foot at the party, one foot already in pajamas.
Excited about the Airbnb I booked and checking the cancellation policy at the same time.
Starting a book, and another, and another…Which is how my library has turned into a collection of half-read books.
For you, it may look like this:
Three years later, the boxes are still not unpacked, because a part of you hasn’t moved from where you came from.
You’re in the relationship, but have a mental exit plan in place just in case.
You’ve been at the job forever, yet you’re always half‑looking. Not seriously looking. Just… looking.
You’ve gone to the same shul for years, you recognize the faces, you wave, but you’ve never crossed over from someone who davens there to someone who belongs there.
Your opinions are half-caf too. Half Democrat – half Republican, depending on who’s in the room. Kinda like half-sour pickles, which can’t fully commit to either side. I mean, you’re either a cucumber or a pickle. Just saying.
For me, half‑caf also shows up in my ideas. All the half‑baked one day ideas I walk around with: the books I started writing (not including the book I miraculously finished and am so proud of myself for!), the courses I’m in the middle of creating, the shidduch initiatives I dream of developing, the chesed projects I imagine getting involved with.
They exist enough to take up space in my brain, but not enough to exist in the world. I’m in, but only in my head. I have a full shelf of half‑lived projects, gathering dust.
Sound familiar? I can’t be the only card‑carrying member of the Half‑Caf Club.
The Permanent Maybe
The problem isn’t that I pick the wrong things to do. The problem is that I either choose it all or I don’t choose at all.
Half‑in, half‑out is an exhausting place to live. It’s ambivalence, holding two conflicting thoughts at the same time. Not I don’t care, but I care about two opposing things at once. I tell myself if I never fully commit to something, I can’t fail. If I keep one foot out the door, the fall won’t hurt as much. But living in permanent maybe is spending energy in two directions simultaneously, and neither direction gets enough of us.
A half-caf job gets half the effort.
A half-caf relationship gets half the heart.
A half-caf dream gets half the attention.
Half-caf everything — no wonder we’re exhausted.
People who go all the way in, even when it’s hard, feel better than people who stay in limbo. A clear no is less draining than the endless in-between.
Sitting on the fence sounds neutral, but it’s one of the most uncomfortable seats in the world. When we’re simultaneously drawn to something and also afraid of it, we hover. We don’t move toward it, and we don’t move away from it. We stay right in the middle, and that middle point is the most psychologically unsettling place. It’s not the decision itself, but the endless hovering that keeps us up at night.
It’s the ache of never quite being there.
The stories I tell myself
I have great reasons for the hedge, and they sound so wise, so grounded. And sometimes they are. But it’s usually just me saying “ummm… maybe?”
I’m being careful.
I’m keeping my options open.
I’m waiting for the right time.
I’m seeing how things develop.
I’m easing in slowly.
The truth is, not every half‑caf situation is a problem. There’s a difference, though, between hiding in the doorway and just needing a minute before you walk through. At some point, you deserve to be fully there. All the way in. A full‑strength yes. It will give you more energy than the half‑caf ever did.
I try to imagine living my life fully in, no exit strategy, and it’s both tempting and scary.
The point isn’t to live on metaphorical espresso. I still have the half-read books and half-started projects, but the next time I was at Dunkin’, I ordered the full-caf.
My heart was racing, but I was all in.
Someone sent me a nine-minute voice note last week. By minute three, I thought, “Okay, here comes the point.” By minute five, I thought, Maybe the point got stuck in traffic. By minute nine, I knew there was no point.
There must be more people like that because there’s a word for such a person.
Inaniloquent (in-an-ih-LOH-kwent): someone full of hollow, meaningless talk. The condition is ineloquence.
Some people just talk to talk. They have an opinion about everything. There’s always something to add, a fact to correct, a conversation to weigh in on. The world is their audience whether it asks to be or not. They always have words coming out of their mouth, or flying off their fingers, but not always something to say. They are full of empty and idle talk.
We’ve all been on the receiving end.
The apology that’s twelve paragraphs long with one line of sorry buried somewhere in the middle.
The quick update that wastes the whole afternoon.
The story that takes twenty minutes to tell and leaves you knowing nothing. You followed every twist, you know what everyone was wearing, and what everyone said, yet you have no idea what the moral of the story is.
Social media hands such people a megaphone. Hiding behind a phone or computer gives people more license to babble. No filter. Just an endless feed of worthless opinions, unsolicited commentary, and noise.
The voice note, the apology, the rant typed at midnight — none of it needs to be shorter or longer or better worded. It doesn’t need a better editor. It needs a delete button.
Which is what our second word of the week is about. (This week you get a twofer.)
Tacenda (tah-CHEN-dah): Things to be passed over in silence; matters not to be mentioned. Basically, the art of knowing what not to say.
The over-explanation. The extra three texts after they haven’t answered. The how many times do I have to tell you speech you know will only make things worse.
All better left unsaid.
Siyag l’chochma shtika. Silence is golden.
Sometimes the most powerful thing you can say is nothing at all.
