Upbeat

Woke up with a hangover this morning. It might be the effect of pain relief I took for the hangover, because even half a dose of any drug does its job, even gets me high. Maybe I was already at the point of discovery and hangover somehow nudged it over the edge. Whatever it was, a feeling of renewal occured to me this morning, and as I was feeling good, I heard on the radio my old favorite, Stevie Wonder’s If You Really Love Me. Then the bouyant feeling went up a notch higher. I started to bounce up and down in my chair as I sang along and worked. It’s just a song, but it sure made me feel great!

Cafes like SUS, Rue Fauvert and Starbucks are places for the total experience. It’s the thrid place Ray Oldenburg talks about in The Great Good Place. These places are for gathering and talking about anything from business to personal, for reading, for thinking. There are literally hundreds of cafes within 30 minutes travel distance from the places I work. But I only go to selected few, because the total effect these places give me agrees with me. It’s the quality of drink/food, feel of the interior, selection of music and acoustics, crowd I enjoy being around at these places, and mobile phone in my pocket to stay connected with my colleagues, associates, clients regardless of the place I happen to choose to work that day (or hour). Any quality of these factors by itself can uplift me, like Stevie Wonder’s song did to me this morning. But put all of them together and we have a “ba”, in today’s case a “ba” to do focused work on my own.