☕ Coffee and Quiet with Derek Wolf
Save yourself, from Doom Scrolling
The living room carries a faint blue glow, the kind that makes every corner look colder than it is. A figure sits on the couch with a blanket lifted around her legs, the phone screen brightening her face in small, pulsing intervals. The sound bar beneath the television hums with a low background tone, though she cannot recall what show had been on before the scrolling began.
A headline flashes past about a distant disaster. The next post argues with the one before it. Farther down, a stranger speaks into the camera with fierce urgency. Her thumb keeps moving in a steady rhythm, as if the body learned this motion without asking for permission.
Somewhere under the collarbones, a tightness forms. Not sharp. Just persistent. A sign her system is on alert. The breath comes shallow, barely reaching the diaphragm. The mind, hungry for clarity, receives noise instead. Another swipe. Another spike of tension. Another flood of information that she will not remember by morning.
If today isn’t the day, remember us when your moment opens.
Buy Me a Coffee
A reflection flickers in the window beside the couch. For half a second, she catches the outline of her face lit by the screen. Eyes wide. Jaw set. Shoulders drawn forward. Something in that brief image delivers a quiet hit to the stomach. This is the early fracture she usually notices only when clarity comes too late.
The thumb pauses. The feed freezes mid sentence. The room comes back into focus. Lamp in the corner. Mug on the table, half finished. A stack of books she has meant to open for weeks. A plant leaning toward the last bit of daylight left in the sky. Life here. Still. Waiting.
The phone lowers into her lap, face down. A breath lands deeper, though not fully. The urge to lift the device again flickers in her fingers. A familiar impulse. An evening loop she knows well. Doom scrolling, yes. But not for entertainment. For reassurance. The promise that if she keeps absorbing enough, she will stay ahead of everything that could surprise her.
The promise never delivers on itself.
A quiet ache surfaces inside her chest. Not sadness. More like recognition. A realization that she has been trying to manage the world through a device small enough to fit in her palm. And yet most of what scrolls past her eyes holds no place in the life she actually has to live tomorrow.
Hands rise, pressing softly against her temples. The body reveals the cost before the mind can name it. Tension. Restlessness. A faint buzzing behind the forehead. These sensations are familiar. They shaped an entire season she once lived through, the season when sleep felt like a negotiation and the nervous system carried more stories from strangers than stories from her own day.
She stands and moves to the kitchen, feet bare against the cool floor. The refrigerator door opens. A sip of cold water steadies the breath. The stillness in the kitchen offers a sharper contrast than expected. The noise inside her head feels louder now that the room has gone quiet.
This moment becomes the shift. The break in the pattern. The place where awareness rises enough to ask a single question. What is this taking from me.
No blame. No self correction. Just clarity beginning to form.
She returns to the living room and reaches for the small notebook on the table. The notebook feels solid in her hands. Grounded. Real in a way the feed is not. She opens to a clean page and writes one sentence across the top. What I think this gives me, and what it actually gives me.
Two columns take shape beneath the line. The first fills quickly. Feels informed. Feels prepared. Feels connected. Feels aware. Each word holds a tone of control and competence, familiar comforts during complicated seasons of her life.
Then the pen shifts to the second column. This part moves more slowly. The woman feels the hesitation in her wrist before she writes the first word. Drains me. Another follows. Fragments my focus. Shortens my attention for people I care about. Keeps me awake even when the body needs rest. Convinces me the world is falling apart every ten minutes.
She studies the two lists side by side. A breath tightens in the center of her body. The truth is not loud. It is precise. The habit promises control. What it actually delivers is a steady erosion of clarity.
One line catches her off guard. Shortens my attention for people I care about. That line hits harder than the rest. A memory rises of last week, sitting across from someone who had been telling her something important. She had nodded and made all the right sounds, but the mind had been flooded with a headline she had read earlier. The importance of their moment had faded under the weight of distant noise. A flicker of regret passes through her now.
The pen rests. The lists stay open. Awareness expands. This is the deeper cost she had not let herself see. Doom scrolling does not only pull her away from herself. It pulls her away from the people who sit directly in front of her. The ones who deserve her presence more than strangers with cameras and urgency.
She stands from the couch and walks toward the window. Night has arrived fully. The street remains quiet. A single porch light glows from the house across the way. A soft breeze moves the tree branches near the sidewalk. The world she actually inhabits breathes with a steady rhythm, untouched by the panic of online noise.
One hand presses against the glass. Cool. Still. Real. sensation reminds her that clarity does not come from staying informed about everything. It comes from returning attention to the life that is hers to live.
She steps back to the couch and flips to a new page in the notebook. A fresh sentence appears. Create an evening pattern that supports clarity, not crisis.
Underneath, she writes three lines. Phone away for the last thirty minutes. Light one lamp and let the room settle. Offer attention to something that restores instead of floods.
The structure feels right. Not strict. Not performative. Just real enough to hold her mind in a steady place at the end of the day.
The woman sets the phone across the room on a shelf, a small but decisive distance from her reach. Habit tugs at the fingers for a moment. But the quiet in the room grows stronger than the tug. She picks up a book instead, not because she feels pressure to read, but because the body wants something with a slower current.
The first page moves gently. Words come in order, one at a time. Not racing. Not demanding a reaction. The nervous system begins to unwind, thread by thread. Breath deepens. Shoulders fall. The mind, once spinning in ten directions, settles into one lane.
Later, when she turns off the lamp and steps into the bedroom, sleep feels possible again. Not because she escaped the world, but because she returned to herself.
The Truth Beneath
The mind learns its shape from what you feed it. Doom scrolling convinces your nervous system that crisis lives everywhere, even in the quiet corners of your own home. But clarity waits in the life directly in front of you. When you choose to end the night in the world you can touch, instead of the world that overwhelms you, you reclaim your attention as a living resource. And attention, once reclaimed, becomes the foundation of a calmer, stronger life.
Stories written in the quiet hours.
Derek Wolf.
“The Truth Beneath”
Save yourself, from Doom Scrolling
The living room carries a faint blue glow, the kind that makes every corner look colder than it is. A figure sits on the couch with a blanket lifted around her legs, the phone screen brightening her face in small, pulsing intervals. The sound bar beneath the television hums with a low background tone, though she cannot recall what show had been on before the scrolling began.
A headline flashes past about a distant disaster. The next post argues with the one before it. Farther down, a stranger speaks into the camera with fierce urgency. Her thumb keeps moving in a steady rhythm, as if the body learned this motion without asking for permission.
Somewhere under the collarbones, a tightness forms. Not sharp. Just persistent. A sign her system is on alert. The breath comes shallow, barely reaching the diaphragm. The mind, hungry for clarity, receives noise instead. Another swipe. Another spike of tension. Another flood of information that she will not remember by morning.
If today isn’t the day, remember us when your moment opens.
Buy Me a Coffee
A reflection flickers in the window beside the couch. For half a second, she catches the outline of her face lit by the screen. Eyes wide. Jaw set. Shoulders drawn forward. Something in that brief image delivers a quiet hit to the stomach. This is the early fracture she usually notices only when clarity comes too late.
The thumb pauses. The feed freezes mid sentence. The room comes back into focus. Lamp in the corner. Mug on the table, half finished. A stack of books she has meant to open for weeks. A plant leaning toward the last bit of daylight left in the sky. Life here. Still. Waiting.
The phone lowers into her lap, face down. A breath lands deeper, though not fully. The urge to lift the device again flickers in her fingers. A familiar impulse. An evening loop she knows well. Doom scrolling, yes. But not for entertainment. For reassurance. The promise that if she keeps absorbing enough, she will stay ahead of everything that could surprise her.
The promise never delivers on itself.
A quiet ache surfaces inside her chest. Not sadness. More like recognition. A realization that she has been trying to manage the world through a device small enough to fit in her palm. And yet most of what scrolls past her eyes holds no place in the life she actually has to live tomorrow.
Hands rise, pressing softly against her temples. The body reveals the cost before the mind can name it. Tension. Restlessness. A faint buzzing behind the forehead. These sensations are familiar. They shaped an entire season she once lived through, the season when sleep felt like a negotiation and the nervous system carried more stories from strangers than stories from her own day.
She stands and moves to the kitchen, feet bare against the cool floor. The refrigerator door opens. A sip of cold water steadies the breath. The stillness in the kitchen offers a sharper contrast than expected. The noise inside her head feels louder now that the room has gone quiet.
This moment becomes the shift. The break in the pattern. The place where awareness rises enough to ask a single question. What is this taking from me.
No blame. No self correction. Just clarity beginning to form.
She returns to the living room and reaches for the small notebook on the table. The notebook feels solid in her hands. Grounded. Real in a way the feed is not. She opens to a clean page and writes one sentence across the top. What I think this gives me, and what it actually gives me.
Two columns take shape beneath the line. The first fills quickly. Feels informed. Feels prepared. Feels connected. Feels aware. Each word holds a tone of control and competence, familiar comforts during complicated seasons of her life.
Then the pen shifts to the second column. This part moves more slowly. The woman feels the hesitation in her wrist before she writes the first word. Drains me. Another follows. Fragments my focus. Shortens my attention for people I care about. Keeps me awake even when the body needs rest. Convinces me the world is falling apart every ten minutes.
She studies the two lists side by side. A breath tightens in the center of her body. The truth is not loud. It is precise. The habit promises control. What it actually delivers is a steady erosion of clarity.
One line catches her off guard. Shortens my attention for people I care about. That line hits harder than the rest. A memory rises of last week, sitting across from someone who had been telling her something important. She had nodded and made all the right sounds, but the mind had been flooded with a headline she had read earlier. The importance of their moment had faded under the weight of distant noise. A flicker of regret passes through her now.
The pen rests. The lists stay open. Awareness expands. This is the deeper cost she had not let herself see. Doom scrolling does not only pull her away from herself. It pulls her away from the people who sit directly in front of her. The ones who deserve her presence more than strangers with cameras and urgency.
She stands from the couch and walks toward the window. Night has arrived fully. The street remains quiet. A single porch light glows from the house across the way. A soft breeze moves the tree branches near the sidewalk. The world she actually inhabits breathes with a steady rhythm, untouched by the panic of online noise.
One hand presses against the glass. Cool. Still. Real. sensation reminds her that clarity does not come from staying informed about everything. It comes from returning attention to the life that is hers to live.
She steps back to the couch and flips to a new page in the notebook. A fresh sentence appears. Create an evening pattern that supports clarity, not crisis.
Underneath, she writes three lines. Phone away for the last thirty minutes. Light one lamp and let the room settle. Offer attention to something that restores instead of floods.
The structure feels right. Not strict. Not performative. Just real enough to hold her mind in a steady place at the end of the day.
The woman sets the phone across the room on a shelf, a small but decisive distance from her reach. Habit tugs at the fingers for a moment. But the quiet in the room grows stronger than the tug. She picks up a book instead, not because she feels pressure to read, but because the body wants something with a slower current.
The first page moves gently. Words come in order, one at a time. Not racing. Not demanding a reaction. The nervous system begins to unwind, thread by thread. Breath deepens. Shoulders fall. The mind, once spinning in ten directions, settles into one lane.
Later, when she turns off the lamp and steps into the bedroom, sleep feels possible again. Not because she escaped the world, but because she returned to herself.
The Truth Beneath
The mind learns its shape from what you feed it. Doom scrolling convinces your nervous system that crisis lives everywhere, even in the quiet corners of your own home. But clarity waits in the life directly in front of you. When you choose to end the night in the world you can touch, instead of the world that overwhelms you, you reclaim your attention as a living resource. And attention, once reclaimed, becomes the foundation of a calmer, stronger life.
Stories written in the quiet hours.
Derek Wolf.
“The Truth Beneath”
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