office away from home

There's a coffee shop close to my house that offers free WiFi service as well as a very comfortable "living room" next to a fireplace. They've gotten used to me coming in from time to time to work for a few hours, and no one bats an eye when I slip off my shoes and prop my feet up on the coffee table. The folks here—I sit at the coffee house now writing this—also are cool about patrons bringing in food from surrounding establishments.

There are the usual folks—the ladies who gather in pairs and threes to discuss Bible passages, the executives conducting their schmooze meetings over cups of hot caffeine, the stay-at-home parents who come in for a few minutes to share a cookie and a cup of tea with their toddlers, and a few full-time telecommuters and freelancers like myself who break the monotony and loneliness of the home office with a coffee shop change of scenery. There are also the few homeless people who will wander inside, especially during the colder winter days, to warm up by the fire. There's one man in particular who comes in pretty much on a daily basis to "borrow" a newspaper to search the classifieds and work out the crossword puzzle. He's always dressed pretty decently, but his unwashed odor and plastic grocery bags—containing his few possessions—are sad giveaways.

With the free wireless service, I always bring the iBook with me to the coffee house, unless I'm specifically trying to escape my computer for awhile. And, because it's frequently rather noisy—with all of the conversations on top of the cappuccino and espresso machines squealing away—I'm sure to have a pair of headphones with me as well.

This morning when I came in, the fireplace area was already at maximum capacity. I steered myself to one of the tables in the window, where I could spread out my collection of books, magazines, and notes, and still be close to a power outlet. An unexpected playlist showed up when I launched my iTunes—one of the other laptop users at the coffee house had set up tunes to share. I started listening to the anonymous sharer's Norah Jones, Nick Drake, Live, and Pearl Jam as I sorted through e-mails, scouted websites, and plowed through a few research magazines. I took a break every so often to look around the room, trying to guess whose playlist I was listening to. One by one, the mobile computers got packed off out of the building, so it became a game of process of elimination. The last candidate was an iBook belonging to a guy sitting with his back to me; I congratulated myself that he'd been my first guess anyway.

I found a way to grab his e-mail address—I'm sneaky like that—and sent a note thanking him for sharing his tunes, as I was enjoying his selection of alternative music. A minute or so later, he started looking around the shop, no doubt in attempt to locate his mystery iTunes moocher. Finally, he turned around in his chair and smiled when he saw a fellow iBook user. "Jen?"

That's a fun way to meet someone. Not that this was the beginning of any lifelong friendship, but I did watch his stuff while he used the restroom a few minutes later. In 2003, I'd heard about "Pod shares"—where strangers walk up and plug their headphones into each other's iPods for a few minutes. I liked the idea and got excited thinking that I'd meet lots of these folks in the airports and all over Oregon, Washington, and Canada—as I'd just gotten my iPod a week or two before embarking upon my Pacific Northwest scouting trip. Alas, I never even saw a Pod share, much less participated in one.

But the shared playlist thing intrigues me. It offers an an invitation for those in your immediate wireless network to know a little bit about who you are, without the direct contact of someone plugging their headphones into your MP3 player, and without the social pressure of having to strike up a conversation out of nowhere. Maybe this is the new way to find love and friendship, using music to connect wirelessly with someone who may already be sitting right next to you?

I'm seeing a growing number of other independents in the coffee shop, with peak hours seeming to hit in the early morning and mid-afternoon. While such coffee houses offer all the comforts of the home office—high-speed internet connection, electrical outlets, and hot beverages to keep us perky—there's one thing they have that the home office doesn't: being around other people. Even when we're tuning out the noise with our headphones and are focused on our books and laptops, there's strong reassurance in breaking out of the isolation of working from home.

Four hours of attempted off-site work is enough for me today. Time to head back to my office, get something to eat, and try to be at least somewhat productive before Duke takes on Southern in the NCAA tournament tonight.

best day of the week

It's Thursday! It's the best day of the week!

It's true: I have a favorite day of the week, and it's not Friday or even Saturday. Periodically, when I go into my "Happy Thursday" song and dance, people look at me rather quizzically. "Thursday? What's so great about Thursday?"

Yes, Thursday is the day before Friday and so is kind of a "slide day" as we head into the weekend, but that's just a bonus on top of why I really love Thursdays. It has nothing to do with Thor -- Thursday is derived from Thor's Day -- though I'd be hard-pressed to knock a Viking god who roams about throwing thunderbolts. That's pretty cool, actually, but it's not why I love this day. My adoration of this fourth day of the work-week also has no correlation to "Must See TV" or the "power-house" line-ups that the television networks like to schedule for Thursday evenings.

While they say, "Every day is Saturday to a dog," Thursday has been my special day since I was in seventh grade. My class schedule that year gave me an extra study hall on Thursdays, which meant I could spend more time reading or nosing around the library. I was thrilled when I first saw my schedule card that year! Every week, I looked forward to Thursdays, especially the dark and rainy Thursdays, when I could turn the pages of an old book in the dim light and listen to the patter of raindrops against the window panes as I read. If there were a thunderstorm raging, so much the better.

If anyone ever doubts how much of a nerd I really am, they need only read this blog entry. Then they'll know the truth.

This Thursday, it's cold and crappy outside in metro Portland, alternating between heavy wet snow falling and just general heavy wet coming down. The perfect day for some stovetop hot chocolate, a stack of good books, and some writing and research to occupy me. A perfect day, indeed.

It's Thursday! The best day of the week!

What is your favorite day of the week?

cracked

In the past month or so, I have seen and experienced all sorts of craziness. This is happening in my neighborhood, in our city, in our country, and across the globe. Friendships falling apart over misunderstandings, people sending hate messages to co-workers and acquaintances, friends shooting each other (example: Cheney in Texas), churches being burned, ridiculous fights on internet boards, strangers being absolutely horrible to each other, weird illnesses and injuries, and mosques being bombed.

I was trying to console a neighbor yesterday, after she had found herself the victim of a personal attack (that had unfortunately been publicized). I wondered if there might be something going on astrologically to explain this eruption of tempers at home and across the globe, or if the American and even worldwide psyche is finally beginning to crack after a half-decade living in manufactured paranoia and under elevated threat levels. There's only so much the human soul can take.

Unfortunately, people are lashing out at each other, indiscriminately and unconsciously—but when a pot boils over, it does pretty much go all over the place. It seems the entire world is seriously on-edge.

Although I've admittedly been thinking of selling everything I own and going to live in a small RV—with four animals (obviously, some of my ideas are better than others)—I've also been praying that as a species, we might be able to forgive ourselves and each other. That we might be able to acknowledge the roles that we've each been playing in this madness, and choose being happy over being right. That we might stop all of the gossiping and finger-pointing, and speak to each other truthfully, with love and compassion. That we might honestly believe—and so manifest—that there is truly enough money, enough love, enough light, enough food, enough medicine, enough recognition, enough of everything for everyone, right now and always.

I'm hoping that as more people begin to recognize this current global trend toward vented frustration, that we'll also begin to rein it in a bit better. Sure, this energy has to go someplace, but there are many more constructive uses for it. We're all feeling very personally uncertain and vulnerable—and have been for years—but not a single one of us is alone in these feelings. In other words, it's not personal.

Maybe when we feel ourselves getting worked up in reaction to something seemingly inconsequential—that wouldn't normally bother us at all—we can instead harness that energy and direct it toward eradicating the true source of the problem.

Perhaps the best I can do now is to work even harder at being the best person I know how to be, and to endeavor to bring myself more fully into balance—to help keep myself from getting yanked around in all of this turbulence. I am spending more time in meditation and prayer. I figure the simplest and possibly most effective thing I can do is to keep up earnest efforts to be the most loving, most compassionate, most discerning person I can be—being more mindful of my thoughts, words, and actions, practicing true kindness, and trying to be more fully present in every moment.

And I keep sending out lots of love.

Of course, I'm also a human being—a heavily flawed one—so I'm easily distracted from simplicity and centeredness. I am open to suggestions of how to bring calm and healing to the current global morass. I am looking forward to the insights of others.