It's pretty cool how a place called Caribou Coffee has helped push my creativity back where it should be.

I used to write a lot. I've got a good chunk of a fantasy novel out there, ready to be continued and finished. I wrote lots of material for my website. Creativity was good. Then it just seemed to dry up. Between many hours spent at work (actually working), television shows, console games, and socializing with friends, I lost all grasp of time. And with that, I seemed to lose my creative outlet. Not good.

But recently, I've started killing time at Caribou. It started as a place to kill an hour or so before our weekly game of Warhammer/ Planescape. See, the Tuesday night games are not far from work, but far from home, so I had to spend time somewhere. Restaurants suck and people look at you funny if you waste time writing things. Why not a coffee shop, where I can sidle up with a tall mocha and be left alone?

I had thoughts of doing a webcomic (a fun endeavor, but one that ultimately failed). And so I would 'kill' time, drawing on a sketch pad. It worked well. Then when I started running a campaign for these guys, I started plotting out the details of the nights' adventure there, fleshing out what I had already planned to do. And I could knock out a good two pages of notes in an hour's time, which was great.

And no, it's not some delusional effect of the caffeine. It's not even the artiste-atmosphere. There are no beat poets standing up, Sinfest-style, proclaiming their gothic woes to an unsympathetic crowd. At least not on the nights I go. Just some tables, some cushy chairs, and a quiet, mostly intelligent crowd.

I realized that this place is great because it isolates me. I love my friends, my roommates, but I need to get out to do this sort of thing. If I'm at the house, I can talk to Jay, Ray, or whoever has dropped by for the night. I'll inevitably get distracted by Playstation, an episode of 24, or something else worthwhile. Or I'll get sucked into the daily grind of doing laundry, buying groceries, tasks that are neccesary yet neverending.

Now I'm spending two or more nights a week there, crafting ideas for novel, game systems, ongoing campaigns, even occasional reading. I've reached the point where I recognize the patrons, those who share Tuesday nights with me, and those who spend almost every night there. There are groups of teens that I know I would have belonged to, if times and locales were different. It's fun to watch them scrounge up enough change for one more cup of java, as if the establishment would run them off for loitering. There's a blonde mother and daughter pair that comes every Tuesday (and the daughter is near my age and quite attractive). The programmer with his titanium Mac powerbook. The neighborhood board of directors meeting to discuss the construction interfering with their home lives.

I don't really know their names, and that's all the better. If I socialize, if I add them to my rapidly expanding circle of friends, then they become part of the 'problem' and I lose my refuge. So I'll stay antisocial elitist, working on my yellow notepads (and eventually my laptop computer). I'll feverishly write until that knot rises on my hand, a sure sign of developing carpal tunnel syndrome. I'll push until I feel that I've come a little farther. Or at least until I decide that paying $3.50 for a drink is beyond my limit. I'm enjoying the delusion, so why not keep it up?

Of course, did I write this at Caribou? No. But I thought about it.

B.Mooney