Writing In Coffeeshops Again

Yes, a new creative life IS possible after burnout: your nervous system needs the right conditions under which it can make a different choice.

The first principle of Somatic Spellwork is that if we want to rewrite the story of the nervous system, we need to change the setting: meaning, if we want to change our nervous system patterns so that what feels impossible becomes accessible, we need to create the kinds of conditions in which our nervous systems can make different choices.

The Golden Equation of Autism, as presented by Dr Luke Beardon, states that Autism + Environment = Outcome. That is, the sensory conditions in which an activity or task is to take place is at least as important as an Autistic person’s inner state, disposition, or desire, and often more so.

As late-diagnosed, high-masking AuDHD creatives, we are so used to approaching the desire for change by focusing on what we feel we lack internally and how we can perform better that we too often miss how a change in our environment can be the most accessible & pleasurable approach.

A new coffeeshop recently opened not two minutes from my house. For the last six months or so I would drive by expectantly, sneaking past the sleepy building, hoping to catch a sign of life inside. I wasn’t just looking for a sign of life—what I wanted was the promise that a new creative life was possible, right now, with my body & life in the shape they are currently in.

It’s been LITERAL YEARS since I’ve had a coffeeshop home/satellite office, which is sad because, for my entire life, reading & writing in a coffeeshop has been one of my very favorite things in the world.

Pre-COVID I had a few years of getting to live out my dreams of working in coffeeshops as a solopreneur & yoga therapy program manager, zooming between the yoga studio, my yoga therapy office, and a handful of favorite South Austin spots, laptop and planners and snacks in tow.

And even before that, there were bohemian dreams—fueled by reading various Beat writers, Anaïs Nin, and A Moveable Feast—of writing epic existential poetry in cafés in my native Montréal, then, hopefully, in equally grimy and glamorous New York City and Paris.

If you’d have asked me, at pretty much any point in my life, what dreams I had for myself, the answer would have been: to write. Books were life: I never went anywhere without at least two. Journals, pens, stationery, school supplies were the most enticing, magical of implements I got to play with as a baby witch. My heroine and role model, Anne Shirley of Avonlea, was a writer, and there was no doubt in my mind that I would be, too.

I was a hyperlexic, precocious reader, highly gifted with language from a young age, and so there was never any doubt in my mind that I would be wildly successful, since I’d never received anything but praise and wonder for my writing skills. I worshipped at the altar of literature, haunted the aisles of used bookstores, and got my bachelor’s degree in English lit and creative writing.

I bought a copy of The Artist’s Way in 1995 in the Borders bookstore that used to be in the World Trade Center on my first trip to NYC and became a lifelong morning page enthusiast, quickly getting the hang of writing three longhand pages most days, filling a journal with them every three months or so, and continued at that pace for the next 25 years.

Post-COVID (which for me also means post a nasty ankle fracture) my life got much smaller, then smaller still with Autistic burnout. In the process I lost any connection to a third space of any kind: somewhere to be around other adults also engaged in their own creative pursuits, getting to benefit from the proximity to their focus and concentration.

The few coffeeshops that are close enough to qualify as a potential satellite office are all missing some key ingredients: a warm, spacious vibe; plenty of parking; not being a Starbucks; and—maybe most importantly—serving decaf espresso beverages. (I do not understand why some shops obstinately refuse to serve decaf. Let me have my inferior coffee, you insufferable snobs. I don’t care that I’m too weak for the real stuff, let a bitch have her decaf iced lavender latté FFS.)

I don’t know exactly at what point I stopped believing that the creative life of my dreams was possible. As such things go, it probably happened slowly, imperceptibly.

Maybe it started when I married a poet and stopped writing my own poetry.

Maybe it happened when I moved from the West Coast to Texas and lost the ability to go outside much at all because it is so hot and dry and bright out here, and far too much for my mossy constitution to handle.

Maybe it happened through the years of learning to write marketing copy—or writing on the internet at all, for that matter—which as it turns out was a long, slow apprenticeship in masking and/or performing my own voice as opposed to, you know, expressing my true nature through my words.

Maybe it happened as the world around me got scarier and scarier and the future more and more uncertain and the grief of everything we’re losing, everything we will still lose, and why would I get to live out my creative dreams amidst all that, privileged colonizer that I am?

Maybe it happened as the world shrank around me after I broke my ankle in January 2020, and again two months later when we went into lockdown, and I genuinely didn’t know if I would ever walk or leave my house ever again.

Definitely the nail in the coffin of my creative dreams was the dramatic skill loss that accompanied my AuDHD diagnosis and subsequent burnout. I watched the thing that had mattered most to me my entire life slip through my fingers like so much sand, leaving nothing in my hands but a gritty emptiness.

Mary Oliver wrote that “the most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave it neither power nor time.” But what about us burnt-out baddies, who are feeling the deep, insistent call to our creative work, but who do not have control over how much power or time we might devote to our pursuits? What does our path back look like?

I thought the change would somehow come from the inside: that a new sense of confidence and clarity would overcome me and bring me back to the page. Or maybe the stars would align and some immutable planetary obstacle would be removed via cosmic rotation. It should come as no surprise that what ultimately renewed my ability to write was a change of location.

The baristas at my new satellite office are cute (by which I mean gay), they play Billy Joel and Talking Heads, and gave me compliments on my Fleetwood Mac t-shirt. I can get excellent tacos from the food truck outside. Sometimes there are DOGS there that I can PET, and just generally I’ve really enjoyed being out of my house for a few hours a few times a week and feeling like I’m part of the community of the coffeeshop.

According to my punch card I’ve made 8 visits to the coffeeshop so far, and each one has been delightful. Some days I’ve gone with my laptop and wrote emails and/or essays. Some days I’ve gone just with journals and books to just soak in the sweetness of my revived, dreamy creative life. Every visit has refilled my (sustainable, to-go) cup. Every visit has expanded my creative universe.

The coolest thing is that I don’t even need to go to the coffeeshop for the magic to work. Just knowing it’s there makes a huge difference, even on days when I’m not. I get to be a writer who writes in coffeeshops again. I’m back to living the dream.

Want to know the funniest part? The coffeeshop is attached to a climbing gym, and a climbing gym is where I fell and broke my ankle back in 2020 which is what caused my life to shrink two months before the COVID lockdown.

The spirits really said, Alright girl, time to get back out there: here’s a coffeeshop LITERALLY TWO MINUTES FROM YOUR HOUSE, with exactly the right vibes, decaf espresso, lavender syrup, seating that is relatively comfortable for your hypermobile body, DOGS, TACOS, and ample parking, and a lot of it in the shade. Oh and it’s connected to a climbing gym because we have a great cosmic sense of humor. Now can you please go and write some shit?

You betcha. I can. I will. I am.

Thank you Switchback Coffee + Beer. I love you.