On Where I Write - Julie

When I first started writing for fun, not homework, I was living in Portland, and quickly discovered that I was unable to write at home. In my apartment, I was surrounded by too many different aspects of my life – a disconcerting VISA bill on the counter, a St. Patrick’s day card from my mom containing six newspaper clippings, the remote, etc.

So began my fondness for writing in coffee shops, a cliché, of course, but I defy anyone to live 42 years without becoming some sort of cliché.

When I moved back to Ashland twelve years ago I started writing at the Beanery, the coffee shop where I wrote my high school Anatomy paper, “Skiing Injuries,” and where I read my entire American History textbook during one Winter Break from OSU, crying softly into my coffee when George Washington died. The place was perfect, it sort of matched my mind: dimly lit, carelessly painted baseboards and trim, thick with coffee smell, and staffed with surly employees. I sank into the wooden chairs, balanced with wads of newspaper, and wrote and wrote.

I took a break from writing for about three years, trying to get my postponed-for-the-sake-of-the-child teaching career back on track, and now that I appear to have done that, and now that it’s summer, and Sam is pursuing his Pokemon/Swimming/Legos/Playdate career in earnest, I find I have some time. I abandon the corporate cleanliness of Starbucks and the subtle Christian overtones of the other local coffee shop for the imperfect perfection that is the Beanery. And I write.