Coffee Shop Observations: #6
A return after 1.5 years to off the cuff writing
It’s been 1.5 years roughly since I last did one of these pieces. That’s a very long time. I strive to keep doing what works for me, even it’s been long gaps (long gaps in meditation, long gaps in working out, long gaps in being employed) so I am here once again, with a coffee next to me, a computer, and 25 minutes. I recently had the experience of re-reading these pieces and I was genuinely entertained by them. Is it narassistic to enjoy your own writing? Perhaps not that different than comedians thinking they’re funny, or musicians enjoying their own guitar solos, engineers enjoying their own software, chefs enjoying their own food. I found myself eagerly reading the next one, laughing at my own wit at times, and feeling refreshed by how raw and authentic the writing was. An uninterrupted stream of thoughts, un-inhibited by perfectionism, overthinking, anterior motives. So, I continue to write
For anyone who has followed these in the past, you might be wondering what kind of coffee I’m drinking. We are back indeed on the decaf train (I also just broke my rule of no backspace so we are going to stick back to that) and have been on the decaf train since February. It has felt nice to take back control of the mornings and have them start however they start without the need to get caffeine within me. I digress though because this series is not about me, it’s about writing. About getting thoughts from the observed phenomenon before me into the phenomena that is the digital, written word. About warming up the ol’ thought engines upstairs in the noggin and being able to create. I recently heard on a podcast that the opposite of anxiety is creativity. That since anxiety kills creativity, it should be the case that creativity can kill anxiety. I can be an incredibly anxious person at times, and so this resonated. Something interesting (I have no idea where this sentence is actually about to go, and I typically dislike when I start sentences like this because who am I to arbitrate interest for others but anyways here we are I need to stop rambling in this parenthesis blurb that is surely not meant to be this long) is that creativity seemingly comes from the root of creating. And in creating, there is no judge. There is no standard. There is no criteria. There is no expectation. It is simply the act of creating. Making something from something. Making a pot from clay. Making a poem from thoughts. Making a meal from ingredients. Making art from trauma. Making meaning from symbols. Making melodies or rhythm from surfaces. Making purpose from inner callings. Making chairs from wood. Making rock rings from rocks. Making mala from beads. We do this all the time. If creativity is the opposite of anxiety, then creativity must be able to extinguish anxiety the same way that anxiety can so quickly extinguish. And if the tool to extinguish anxiety is something that we have access to tap into any day…then that’s pretty profound.
Wow I am tired, and I still have 11 minutes to write about something. I’m glad this publication now has the caveat that these pieces will be “likely-regrettable” but nonetheless, it is liberating to write without a backspace. A backspace is overthinking. It is pursuing an end. That end might make sense; you might be writing a marketing message that needs to convert or else a business won’t be profitable. You might be writing a wedding speech that needs to be under 5 minutes but does justice to a lifelong friendship. You might be writing a resume that needs to land you a job so you can provide for your family. You might be writing to reach people in a deep place that no one else has reached, and that takes refinement. But maybe, just maybe, the best thing we can do when we create is to remove the backspace button. To fix on the fly, make the most of what comes. Life has no backspace button. We keep going, making the most of what mistakes we made and the regrets we carry. To err and to regret is to be human, so there seems to be little point in lamenting in the past (this is written by someone who is eaten themselves alive on the inside over regret, ruminating and replaying past moments like a devil at a record player spinning the record back manically hundreds of times). This writing experiment has showed me how much writing can be produced when you don’t get to edit. How much more content gets brought out into the world. How liberating one feels to just spew. The backspace exists everywhere in our lives, it is not confined to just our keyboards. It exists in the endless efforts to change how we look, to backspace birth marks or body hair or eyebrows to something else. It exists when we overthink the perfect pickup line to go talk to the person we want to, only to find out we have backspaced back to nothing and the person has sense left. It exists when we are too scared to put ourselves out there and need to keep refining who we are until we are so exhausted from the effort we just give up going anywhere to begin with. It exists when we have a voice that needs to be heard, but we are too scared to take that leap. This is defintely turning into the proselytizing tendencies I have on my little soap boxes so I’m going to hard pivot in these last 3 minutes but just leave with the idea of thinking about what liberation would appear if we were discplined to not use the backspace button.
Ok so the pivot: AI is fucking wild and has changed immensely in the last 1.5 years. Did AI write this whole thing? Not a chance, this is Alex Tzinov through and through. How are we going to hold on to our humanness? That’s the task.
And now 5 things I”m noticing about this coffee shop.
- They have new artwork that is pretty neat
- They have some great tunes going
- The barista working today is doing an exceptionally meticulous job with the dishes as if she’s being watched (I may or may not be sitting at the same bar is before that is 10 inches from the sink)
- I love writing here
- I love being
