I smoked a cigar this morning that, to put it nicely, was uninspiring.
Technically, there was nothing wrong with it. The profile was fine, if a little sparse. It was refined. Composed. The construction was flawless. It burned straight with a long, firm ash and never needed a touch-up.
All the pieces were there. This wasn’t a failure.
It just never arrived.
The entire time I smoked it, I kept waiting for something to happen. For it to pull me somewhere. Anywhere. But it never found its footing, almost as if it was unsure of where to go next.
My instinct would’ve been to let it burn out and move on. But I was reviewing it, so I stayed with it.
It was agonizing, if I’m being honest.
After I finished it and put my notes together, I went back to my humidor and pulled out something familiar.
I needed redemption.
I didn’t reach for anything special. I pulled something familiar, like comfort food. Something that would help me reset.
After a few minutes with the second cigar, the contrast hit me. Not because it was better. It simply showed up. It knew what it was. It had a point of view.
And that’s when the question surfaced:
What do you do when an experience falls flat?
A flat experience is harder to process than a bad one. A bad cigar at least tells you something. A flat one leaves you in a kind of sensory limbo.
So you reset. You reach for something familiar to reestablish your footing. To remind yourself what engagement feels like.
To recalibrate.
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