Feeling Uncomfortable in a Good Way

Hey everyone, 

I last left off with a post saying I was off to Colombia (which I ended up writing about here) and since then, my life has been pretty nonstop since. 

As you can see, this blog has had to take a back seat to focus on my new position in a green coffee sourcing company.

It feels weird writing about it because within a year my entire world of coffee has changed.  There was such a dramatic jump from café roastery side to green coffee buying and sourcing.  The learning curve has left me a bit paralyzed. 

And I know, I know. This is a good thing.  I've read somewhere (or more accurately heard on a TEDx Talk or podcast) you will have these phases in your life - you go from an expert phase back to a learning stage and the cycle continues on. It's how you grow.  It's the only way to grow. You step into something uncomfortable - sometimes very uncomfortable - and you live in this squirmy phase until you get a rhythm of things. 

I am very much in the squirmy phase. But I digress. I know this is a good thing - this far leap into an industry I've always wanted to learn about.

But most of all - writing about coffee sourcing & buying scares the shit out of me.  It is one of the most intimidating subjects I've explored.  Leave coffee quality aside.  There are other vital roles that play into coffee production; agronomy, international politics, culture, international trade, botany and goodness knows what else.

But I do know one thing to be true; It is impossible to know everything about coffee.

That being said, there are a few things I do want to talk about that connect the person ordering the coffee to the person that walks the land in which they grow the coffee.

I suppose the best way to do this is to start with the basics: how does coffee get to us? How many hands touch it? (And why I think organic and direct trade can be utter *bullshit).

*sometimes
*but sometimes is quite often

We will get to that later. 

Cheers and Mugs up from
x Oslo x

Erica