Chapter, Fashionably Light
Mar 14 2014
When I was in kindergarten, I wanted to be a professional figure skater when I grew up.
(Spoiler alert: that’s the first sentence of my ebook).
Obviously, that didn’t happen. But when I was a little older, I changed my mind and wanted to be an author. Specifically, I wanted to sit in coffeeshops and write for hours. In fact, my AIM screen name was “coffeeshopauthor”. I was like eight years old. I had a bookmark of a “Café Girl” and it embodied my ideal future life.
My coffeeshop dreams have come true, in a way. I spend a lot of time in coffeeshops, sometimes for the pleasure of the atmosphere, but more often for what I call “coffeesquatting” – the act of renting a seat at a café in the form of a cup of tea. I coffeesquat when the library isn’t open, or when I need free wifi.
But when it comes to productivity, my friend Connor puts it best: it’s perfectly acceptable to scroll through Facebook in the library. But if you are clearly a student in a coffeeshop, you have to be a student in a coffeeshop. You have to appear to be hard at work or you look like an idiot.
At age eight, I was using a visualization technique without realizing it. Marie Forleo asks, “How would you behave if you were best in the world at what you do?” Eight-year-old me answered, “I would do my writing in a coffeeshop”.
Today’s episode of FabulosiTEA is one of my favorites. We discuss the spaces that have inspired artists from Monet to J.K. Rowling. Beyond being a fun conversation, I enjoyed gaining insight on my own spaces – what does my ideal artist life look like, and how can I build it into a reality?
I think I’ll go journal in a coffeeshop to find out.
Episode 10: In Which We Discuss Artists in Residence goes live at 15:00 EDT.
