On Coffeeshops

My love for writing the dissertation in coffeeshops is boundless. Unbounded. Without bound.

Sure, there’s the distraction of wireless internet access to contend with. (Unlike with the intermittent access I have at home, where I’m only able to steal my neighbour’s wireless when it’s not too humid out. And only in one corner of the apartment.) You might think this would make home a better place to write. Avoid the temptations of Facebook and the Onion and Bitch PhD and Sudoku Combat and Pandagon and I Don’t Like You In That Way by simply making it impossible for them to suck you in. Seems like the most responsible way to get the dissertation written, no?

Yeah, maybe. But I prefer a different approach: engaging in a particular form of self-delusion, wherein you begin by convincing yourself that the fellow patrons of the coffeeshop know that you are frittering away your afternoon—and by extension, your life—fucking around online. Then you convince yourself that the good opinion of said patrons is actually very important to you. (Both these steps involve a considerable amount of self-deception, to be sure.) Finally, you use this desire to be thought well of as an incentive to stop frittering away your afternoon and start writing your dissertation.

It’s pathetic, I know. But it works.