The Great Outdoor Coffee Shop

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The current self-improvement book I’m reading (here I am, 37 years old, still unimproved) argues for ironclad habits as the efficient, lazy way to get yourself to do the things you don’t want to do. That way you connect one action with another action and you’re doing the thing you don’t want to do before your lazy, stupid brain has a chance to wriggle out of it. The opposite is also true, and you can start to associate certain actions with other actions to avoid the thing you’re supposed to be doing. In the latter category, I’ve created an ironclad habit where whenever I sit down at my desk to write I somehow end up facing away from it and scrolling through my phone looking for sewing projects I’ll never start, let alone finish.

So today, I’m writing this from one of the places I appreciate about Los Angeles: the outdoor coffee shop. I’ve put in my headphones, I’ve turned on my computer, and now somewhat magically words are appearing on this page. My body seems to have remembered that computers can be word processors in addition to procrastination machines. 

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The entrance to the patio area of the outdoor coffee shop. A convertible lurks just outside, on the street. A wooden fence. The hedge filled with psycho birds. Self bussing station. A sandwich board faced away from me. Plants in pots.

Birds flit around me. A dog dozes nearby. Over my productivity playlist (it is humiliating to admit how much of my creative output I owe to the 1994 Little Women soundtrack) I hear palm trees rustling, cars zooming past, a woman talking about how she’s planning to go to Chicago more this year.

This particular coffee shop also has a flock of aggressive birds living in its hedges. At any moment you may have to dodge a tiny sparrow darting towards a croissant crumb. It keeps things interesting.

The patio has a table section, for people like me, doing serious writing, or people meeting a friend to talk about Midwestern travels. There’s also a lounge-y part around the corner, with slouchy couches and low tables. Great in theory, but always a bit waterlogged after the rain and more in the line of fire of the aforementioned birds.  A few tables are scattered right next to the street, for people who can’t stand to be too far from cars for too long.

Part of the reason writing in public is so effective, I think, is not just the fact that you’re not in the same physical space as your undone laundry and unanswered emails and unmade bed. It’s because it’s humiliating to be caught procrastinating in public. I don’t want people to look over my shoulder and think, “Wow, she came here to write and look at her now—she’s never going to even start those overalls, let alone finish them.”

I won’t start the overalls and I won’t finish the overalls but here I am, having put down what seems like a respectable amount of words for you to read, despite having wasted most of my week thinking of what to say.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The “serious writing work” section of the outdoor coffee shop, with gorgeous cars and apartment buildings visible beyond its wooden walls, hinting at the glory of Los Angeles, California.