All I wanted one morning of my recent mini vacation was to escape from everything and enter a creative space occupied only by me, my thoughts, dreams, imagination, journal and of course the pen. After entering what I believed would be the perfect place, I found people in the room and those on a television talking politics. “Oh my,” read my thought bubble, “not right now, people.” After the space failed to live up to my ideal writing environment, I decided to relocate to a more suitable place that was recommended by someone who was trying to support the needs of the writer in me. Well, when I arrived at the next location, I saw that it might have been perfect the night before, but that morning there were a host of convention seekers and transient folks doing the things that professional meeting attendees do before delving into the topics that make their industries successful. They create a buzz with their idol and often pretentious chatter and they busy themselves with their intentional networking movements in the common areas of the meeting space. And then there were the folks emerged in conversations with hotel staff about why this space would be a perfect location for their next shindig. While it may have been perfect for business meeting and shindigs, it was not so prefect for a girl like me who just wanted a creative space that promoted the artist within.
It was southern California, for crying out loud, and I was removed from the normal hurried pace of my life. Why shouldn’t I have expected a welcoming creative space for writing? The day prior, I was looking at palm trees, water and sunshine anticipating the writing potential on a calm, sunny, peaceful morning. That morning when I awoke it was cool and breezy with a view of construction. The new hotel entrance they were constructing would definitely be quite fancy when they get done, but for now it deserved those panels of black curtains to block the view or one of those walls you see on a busy corridor of city block when things are under construction. I began to wonder if the men laboring to smooth out the cement for the new walkway and laboring over the placement of the stone pavers for the planters and pillars even knew that those politicians on that television in the other space cared so much about them. I wondered it they knew or cared that the really smart people milling around me paid a lot of money for coffee, water and access to a big screen and a microphone to present powerpoint slides that day. I wished that somebody cared that the only table upon which I could rest my journal was positioned to prevent access from the outside to what I am told was the pre-construction hotel entrance. Their attempt to redirect traffic to the new temporary entrance by using the only table in the space failed miserably. Maybe they should have locked the door and hidden the key from the staff. Did dude really think it was ok to slide the doors open while giving me the “oops, I’m so sorry” look in order to pardon him for opening the door in front of the table being used to block the entrance. It was a little frustrating that dude, the service provider, was working hard to accommodate the traveler with the roller bag who must have missed ALL of the bright orange cones and the signage with large arrows directing him to the temporary entrance on the other side of the yellow construction tape, at my expense. Thanks to that helpful hotel employee I got a fresh whiff of the chorus of sandblaster noises needed to create a welcoming hotel entrance some day. Now I know that in addition to making a lot of noise, the process of grinding cement and smoothing walkways generates a lot of dust.
When I went to bed the night before, I planned to spend my morning in a quiet space with my journal, my computer, my pen and a cup of coffee. I gave it a gallant effort, but all I generated was this blog entry espousing my comedy of errors on a gray, chilly morning in southern California. And to top it all off, my coffee was cold by the time I found this noisy, dusty spot. As I sat giggling about the rather unbelievable series of happenings that morning, I got a text and then a call from a friend. She asked how my break was going and I started telling her about my morning and laughing out loud. Even though I wasn’t doing exactly what I planned to do that morning, it was fun to have the time for the adventure and to sit with my cold cup of coffee on a cool morning and laugh about it with a friend. While I was talking to her, she heard me say, “Pardon me? Are you serious?” to a person near me and I explained that the saga of the writer looking for the perfect place to write had gotten better. I had been asked to gather my things so that they could move the table.