Priorities

Firstly, I do have the second installment on characters in a rough draft on my iPad, I promise. If life treats me well, that should go live this weekend. I wanted it to be up last week, but it's a lot of information to wrangle, and my life has taken a turn for the interesting.

I don't normally talk much about the details of my day to day–the plot of my life–here, but I need to chat.

So pull up a chair and have some coffee. Lets talk.

I've needed to take a break from writing–especially blogging–to do some soul searching and to make some big decisions, the real-world kind that involve life and money and happiness with my work.

A long story short, I needed to change jobs. I needed something different than what I've been doing for the last two years–working as the only employee in a little deli in downtown SLC. It has been a good job for me, but running a little stale, and my soul has been aching for something new.

And as these things tend to work, even before I was truly ready to change, I was presented with two possibilities, both by chance, both in coffee shops, and yet with two very different lives in store.

A new coffee shop is opening in town, a place called Karma Coffee, a place with big dreams and a vision with writing rooms and meditation rooms, a place to gather community, all in a beautiful converted house in a charming neighborhood. As someone with past dreams of opening almost exactly the same kind of coffee shop one day, it would be the perfect experience to try it – a place to give myself over to and help it become what it can be. I might not have time to write as much.

A few years ago, I would have given my eye teeth for that kind of opportunity.

Then, another job at a little place called Alchemy Coffee mere minutes from my house. It's cute and very well established, and incredibly busy all morning, lines of amazing regulars lining up for some of the best coffee in town. I would be an employee there, the business established, the worry of anything but my own duties taken care of. I happened to be there one day when I mentioned I wanted to work in coffee again, an act of serendipity. After my interview, I knew absolutely I could be happy there.

And I could see it there, as if I was a character in my own novel: my path diverged into two lives. I had to choose who I wanted to become.

One, the eventual coffee shop owner I thought I would be – the life I thought I would have before last year and writing and loving writing.

The other, working at a beautiful little coffee shop with people I enjoy, being able to learn and grow. And most of all, being able to focus on writing when I'm not there.

(And of course staying where I am, but we all know that's not how a good plot works, and I prefer to have an interesting plot.)

I'm sure you can guess which one I chose.

I gave up Karma for Alchemy.

I let go of my old dreams and opened myself up to the possibility of my new dream with no holding back, no old cobwebs of the things I once dreamed with their bits of dried corpses and trails of dust, no more wondering if I should go back to what I once wanted.

My old life is over. I'm a writer now, a writer who works at a cute corner coffee shop with mismatched furniture and local art on the walls, who smells like ground espresso and has ink-strained fingers, and is happy with the choice she made.

Even if it has meant taking time from blogging and The Novel to learn my new job, I will be happier in the long run.

Thanks for listening. I'll be back to posting as soon as possible.