How Coffee is Helping Me Find My Passion

“I had felt a lot more comfortable and inspired being around all of these coffee people at the event than I had ever felt being in similar situations in the start-up world…. It was less about the money and more about a shared purpose. I liked that.” — Patrick Rolf, in his book From Nerd to Pro

A Trip to Europe

It all started when I decided to join my 2 friends on a trip to Europe. On September 2, 2023, I landed in Stockholm just as it hit 3 PM (or rather, 15:00) and met up with my friends in Stockholm Central Station. The two of them had arrived earlier that week. One of my two friends, Daniel, is a coffee enthusiast — he’s more than an enthusiast, he’s a curious learner and passionate about specialty coffees. Earlier that year, he had decided to shell out a good amount of money to become a Certified Q-Grader with the Coffee Quality Institute. One can say that he’s a professional now. (You can read more about his journey at his blog here).

Anyhow, every morning, we would visit a café on his list of recommendations. One of the highlights of my time in Stockholm was a café called Lykke. We ended up visiting this café multiple times during our stay in Stockholm. It was seriously that good.

Fast forward a few days, and we’re now headed off to Copenhagen, Denmark. I remember sitting on the train from Sweden entering Denmark and watching the language on the alert screen change from Swedish to Danish. Once “Nästa station” became “Næste station” (Swedish and Danish for “next station”), I knew we were getting close.

An Influential Coffee Guy at a Coffee Shop

On one of the mornings in Copenhagen, we decided to visit this café called April. We headed out from our hostel by Rosenborg Slot (Rosenborg Castle) and walked a few blocks before crossing a bridge over Sortedams Sø. While crossing this bridge, I could see a swan in the river as well as the “Bird Island” or Fugløen. After a few more minutes, we arrived at our destination.

April is a modern coffee shop that only has 3 items on their menu. When I arrived, they offered a Milk Espresso as the third item, which was what I ordered. My other two travel companions used vocabulary that was not on the menu. I felt somewhat out of place that morning.

Looking around the store, I could see a few tables for customers to sip their coffee, a shelf with some of their coffee items for sale, and many copies of a book. This book is the first edition of Patrick Rolf’s self-written and published coffee journey called From Nerd to Pro. Walking around the shop, I found a small room where some merch clothing was being sold. There was also a fashion book in which Patrick Rolf was modeling the clothing. The entire shop simply oozed Patrick’s aura.

The day that we showed up to April, Patrick was actually visiting and helping behind the counter. We were lucky that day as he later told us he typically only visits the shop once a month. We were the only ones in the café when we arrived. Daniel immediately started chatting with Patrick. Watching them chat about coffee as I was sipping on my espresso, I realized what passion truly meant — but more on that later.

Daniel ends up buying a copy of Patrick’s book from the shop and gets it autographed on the inside. And due to some travel logistics, I ended up taking the book with me back to the States. I had flipped through this book while at April and was immediately intrigued by Patrick’s story seeing as he had spent some time in San Francisco, where I currently live.

The book itself is fast-paced. It’s aesthetic, well-designed, and organized akin to a how-to guide mixed with an autobiography. As I was reading this book, I came across a poignant paragraph that resonated with me:

“Perhaps there was something more to this crazy idea of mine. Maybe this wasn’t all for the fun of it. I had felt a lot more comfortable and inspired being around all of these coffee people at the event than I had ever felt being in similar situations in the start-up world. If you were to categorize them, I would say that coffee people are more down to earth. There wasn’t any talk of investment capital, growth projections, and the latest apps. They talked about producers, brewing techniques, and the fight against big commercial roasters. It was less about the money and more about a shared purpose. I liked that.”

What even is Passion? What is MY Passion?

When you look up “passion” in the dictionaries, the definitions for this specific context generally use a mix of “an intense feeling”, “a strong liking for an object or thing”, and “deep interest”. I’ve always liked many things. I like sports, music, technology, psychology, philosophy, learning languages, and much more. Of course, with each of these topics, I pursued them to varying degrees of intensity and mastery. Perhaps I wasn’t passionate about any of these on their own.

I used to swim competitively up through the 8th grade, took ice skating lessons for a while, and recently picked up rock climbing, and I do have a competitive streak. When it comes to sports, I currently just use it as a way to exercise. With music, I started with clarinet in 6th grade and haven’t really stopped. I self-taught myself piano for a bit starting in middle school after crying at my first private lesson when I was younger. In college, I joined my school’s marching and pep bands and dabbled in percussion with pep band. Now, I have a goal of collecting random instruments and becoming proficient at each of them. I recently bought a flute and a ukulele and have been practicing both in my free time.

I studied Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science during my undergrad and Masters. Through that time, I realized that the only real interest in tech I had was with Computer Vision and Machine Learning. Or rather, the cool applications of those technologies. I also realized that I enjoyed talking about it and other technologies. So much so that one of my favorite classes in college was a Science Communication class. Through it, I learned how to write blogs and feature articles and explain these highly complex topics to the general public.

A lot of my other interests like language learning and psychology fuel the rest of my free time. I aim to be a polyglot and use psych and philosophy to better understand human behavior, myself, and other people. I also watch a lot of content on YouTube and read blogs about these topics to add to my learning. When I was younger, I even dabbled in creating YouTube videos. In undergrad, I tried Twitch streaming. I seem to have a passion for content, both consuming it and creating it.

I also have a passion for exploring innovative experiences. Since working in tech consulting and being involved in a tech education startup, I’ve realized that a lot of the tech work also involves business and strategy. Those aspects tend to be methodical in nature, while also being highly creative.

There’s a Japanese concept called Ikigai that is the combination of 4 things: what we love, what we are good at, what we can be paid for, and what the world needs. It defines “Passion” as what we love and what we are good at, but not necessarily something that can pay us or what the world needs. However, growing up, I was always told to “go find my passion” to figure out what I wanted to be or what career I wanted to have.

While I was in Europe, I watched Daniel write in his coffee journal that he purchased from Drop Coffee Roasters and take notes on every coffee he tasted during the trip. I saw how he lit up when talking about coffee and chatting with Patrick Rolf. As I read that paragraph I quoted earlier, I realized I needed to ask myself, “What conversations do I enjoy the most? Who are the people I enjoy being around?” Maybe it’s possible to have many passions, or rather, to pursue Ikigai and have a multi-faceted career, inching my way towards including my passions for music, language, and content within my more traditional career.