Coffee shops

The coming and going of people is grounding when all the mind wants to do is fly away to a place where it’s safe to be yourself. It’s soothing. Treat yourself with coffee and a pain au chocolat to make up for having to sit down and work when all you want to do is read about the depictions of death in Western art and maybe recreate a scene or two.

Parks

Who takes their laptop to a park to get some work done? Someone who’s sick and tired of staring at the same wall wondering where did it all go wrong. Someone who takes any disappointment as an excuse to quit, to run away. Someone who’s tempted to draw a little blood to fend off boredom or loneliness or frustration or even, sometimes, accomplishment.

Office

You are a Professional Writer. A Professional Writer who writes in an office with a nice view overlooking a prim, try-hard artificial lake and surrounded by people who appear successful. Congrats. You’ve made it. You look like a Professional Writer. Someone who has to be at a certain place at a certain time and have deliverables sent to the person who paid for them at the end of the day. Someone who looks like she can pay her bills, even though everybody knows that’s not what writers do. Is this not what you always wanted? Are you still not happy?

The BBQ area in your building complex

Careful. One misdirected football from the children playing next to you can ruin your computer. It can hit you in the head and give you a killer headache that will ruin the rest of your day. But it’s so beautiful outside, and you don’t need to buy anything, and you don’t get distracted with the need to drown your voice with other voices for every idea you dare to put on the screen. Maybe that place among the screaming children and the flying footballs is the best place to teach your voice how to walk.

Your dining table

Your back hurts, and you wonder for how long you can go without getting a snack. Your back hurts so much. Maybe you need to get out more. Work out. Stretch your legs. Let the sun kiss you more often. The sun is the only one willing to take that risk nowadays. Maybe one day you’ll take it up on its offer.

Bed

Are you really working? Or are you in the agony of the many worlds, not quite with us, not quite gone yet? Running toward the ever-moving goals post? Are you still alive at all?

I was supposed to write a short story the other day but I ended up writing this. Just as I’m supposed to be working right now but I’m finishing this post instead. But how can I not? Every time I come here to post a short story, a photo, or just a blog post like this, it feels like the right thing to do. Hopefully one day I won’t have to do anything else.

I have written a short story or two last week. However, now that I’m working with an editor, it’ll take time before they appear here, or hopefully, with a dash of luck, in a publication.

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Want to read another blog post? Try these: Journals | Decisions