I just turned 22, literally. 12 hours ago, I was 21 and now I am 22 (who wants cake?). To kick off my 22nd year of life, I am embarking on a yearlong project, an experiment if you will, in caffeine and conversation. It’s a fairly basic concept:
drink 52 cups of coffee over the next year
but not just any cup of coffee (you knew there had to be a catch), another person has to be present, and it can’t be someone that I typically would have coffee with. So in simpler terms: I want to set up coffee meetings with 52 people I wouldn’t normally have coffee with. That could mean anyone from a complete stranger plucked off the street to a connection I’ve been meaning to get to know better.
I’ll find some people through Twitter or LinkedIn, others through suggestions from friends, and hopefully a few will be the result of people reaching out to me.
Why?
That is a complex story with more pieces than a game of Jenga, so I’ll try to give the condensed version and let the larger story unfold throughout the year. A year and a half ago, out of the blue, I received an email from a kid named Brett. I had recently met up with the Director of my university’s Career Service Center regarding a project I was working on. Brett had done the same around the same time and the Director realized that the two of us had too much in common not to meet.
Fast forward two weeks from that email to Barnes and Noble. I walked in timidly looking for Brett completely unsure what to expect. We made the awkward—
"Hi, are you Brett?"
"Yeah, are you Megan?"
"Yes! It’s nice to meet you"
—exchange, shook hands, and over the course of the next hour became fast friends. The Director was right, we had a lot in common—we both had an entrepreneurial mindset, liked helping people, and wanted to connect with other like-minded students. I left the Barnes and Noble meeting with a feeling exhilarated, I knew that coffee meeting was the start of something big.
But I never could have expected how much it would impact my life. In the last year, Brett has introduced me to a wide variety of people, helped me with various projects, and opened me up to a world of new possibilities (these are the finer details that will unravel throughout the project).
So the moral of the story is that a cup of coffee led to an unexpected friend that—like so many friendships—changed my life.
This is where 52 Cups of Coffee enters the picture. I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if I continually tried to meet new people. Obviously every meeting wouldn’t lead to the same outcome as that fateful day at Barnes and Noble, but when you invite 52 new people into your life, it has to change somehow.
That’s what this blog is for, to track the changes and share the results of the year long experiment.
It’s going to be one wacky, challenging, educational, exhilarating, and—among other yet to be discovered adjectives—caffeinated adventure.
I hope you come along!
-meg