Wednesday, April 30, 2008

And I still juts drink decaf...

(Yes, it is very late. A few weeks ago I wrote about losing the plot to my own life. I think I’m now in a whole other section of the library. I’m in that place where the Dewey Decimal System fears to tread.)

I’ve probably spent more time in coffee shops in the past month than I have at any time since I was an undergrad. At least as an undergrad I had a bit of an excuse as I went there to impress Heather, a girl I was sort of dating and every week we’d meet at a coffee shop to talk. It made us seem avant garde and intellectual. Well, it made her seem that way. I just looked like an engineer who was trying like mad to get an art history major to like him.

But now it is pretty common for me to set up shop with my laptop and try to write. I have to use the word try there because some days nothing happens. I don’t have a very constant muse, even for someone who does blog posts every day. At least I can make these up on the fly, my novel needs to have at least a semblance of a plot. Especially given the fact that the verb tense is inconsistent even within the same sentence. Still, for some reason I am now writing in coffee shops.

I think the reason I am doing that is just that it gets me out of the apartment. I have too many distractions here, specifically a couch that is really comfy to lie down upon and sleep through the afternoon. If I am stuck in a coffee house I might as well write because I don’t have anything else to do. I intentionally use a laptop that doesn’t have wireless internet just so I have to work.

Interestingly though no one has ever asked me what I am working on. I just show up, plug in the laptop, put on the headphones and get started. I always figured the entire reason of working in one of these places was to have people ask you why you were working there. Kind of a bummer to be alone there. That and the fact that in my neighborhood I am the only one who looks, uh, professional. I’m pretty sure they all think I’m a narc.

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