The way I know it needs me

My favorite place to write is Panera.  Maybe it's silly but I figured it was an East Coast place so I didn't even bother looking for one last week.  It's where I used to go at least twice a week when I moved to Easton, after my year sabbatical out in the country at Teena's 1800's original farmhouse on the Choptank River.  Easton was my first place of my own, my only place all my own.  I loved it so, my own little sweet kitchen where I used to wile and dance every morning.  My own comfy couch and extraordinary windows that let in the best yellow sunshine, the magnolia out the kitchen that I knew like an old friend.  I could walk to the best local coffee shop and music venue in the world from that little pad with the light purple bathroom and the bedroom that I turned to my studio with the wall length book shelf. The coffee shop there was my all time favorite, but people like Rudy and KJ or my students showing up at random, just like how it's supposed to happen at the local place, made it hard to get my work done.  So Panera out on Route 50 used to feed me, next to its gas fireplace, it kept me caffeinated and with my heart in the work and the work in my head all winter long.  These were the days of the earliest drafts of my novel.  Imagine my great happiness driving to the strip mall in Newport today only to discover a Panera Bread right next to the Ross.

That's where I am now, hoping a coveted outlet opens so I can sit and get in to chapter four the way I know it  needs me to, gnawing at me to gnaw at it.  I'll warm-up a minute on this blog here, eat my salad and Vermont-cheddar-mac-n-cheese, get the facebook-spacing out of the way.  By this day next week there will be my very own room with a beckoning call, a perfectly fit desk against the front left wall.

There is nothing better in the world than knowing what you love and living it.  It keeps me grateful, and my feet eager to be on the ground.  It's true what they say anyhow, to thy own self be true...when I'm out there stumbling and adventuring around I always know I'll like what I get to see.  It's what happens, because I always remember to bring along me.