coffee shop.

Why do I do this to myself?

After only one or two hours max of studying, I decide that relocating to my favorite local coffee house will help me to study even better, and a change of scenery would do wonders for my melting brain cells.

This, of course, is a lie I tell myself to get me to the coffee house. 

I have a terrible time studying in a coffee house. I'm so easily distracted by, well, everything, that I get far less accomplished than I set out to. For example, instead of pulling my books out of my bag, I'm blogging. Why on earth would I bring my computer to the wireless-enabled cafe, you ask? Well, I told myself because I can practice for my upcoming exams by using the Blackboard activities my professors have posted. The real reason, which I blatantly refused to admit to myself until I was almost here? So I could sit at this little wooden table, absorbed in the white noise of conversations and overhead music, sip at my iced mocha, and let the thing that happens every time I come here happen again.

I'm not sure how to describe it - it's like my brain takes a vacation. It's like percocet for my imagination. I get really creative, thinking of all the exciting projects I want to start and all the beautiful things I want to create for my Etsy shop. I get wistful, nostalgic even. I subconsciously hope that a friend will pop up in the cafe and will want to sit down and have an extensive philosophical conversation with me. I contemplate life. I am reminded that my life is wonderful, in this cozy, caffeine-injected environment. I'm surrounded by stylish young people, bursting with potential and living on entirely different planets than the people walking by outside. When I come here, I think of how much I want to be one of these people: where the outside is represented strongly by the inside, and on the verge of independence from societal restraints. This of course is a projection of what I want myself to be and probably not nearly as likely real as I perceive it to be. I come here and realize that I *am* one of those people, that I *can* influence my own life in a meaningful way. That being a slave to this society is, in part, a choice. 

I realize how preposterous this all sounds, but it truly is why I come to the coffee house. To remember that the single iced whiskey of life is not nearly as strong as I sometimes believe. That a lapse in momentum in my day does not mean a lapse in productivity, or rather, that a lapse in productivity is not necessarily worthy of the guilt trip I usually give myself.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to being an espresso-sipping West Coaster.