{"id":538,"date":"2011-11-07T13:21:23","date_gmt":"2011-11-07T12:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/?p=538"},"modified":"2011-11-07T13:26:43","modified_gmt":"2011-11-07T12:26:43","slug":"serendipity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/serendipity\/","title":{"rendered":"Serendipity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Just as I walked up to the metro on Saturday, the doors shut in my face. I was literally one second<\/em> too late.<\/p>\n

Damn. Steamed. I’d been working in the Starbuck’s on the Place St. Francois for the last couple of hours. Yes, I know, Starbuck’s is a big, evil chain store that sells sub-par coffee for over-par prices and manipulates people with all kinds of marketing gimmicks. But it’s the only coffee shop I know of around here where I can get out of my head and into my writing properly. If I stay at home on the weekend I’m constantly being asked for food by the resident teenagers or feeling like I ought to be doing laundry, and I can’t get anything done.<\/p>\n

See, in a place like Starbuck’s there are a lot of distractions. Babies crying, background music, other people working and talking, low lighting, lots of people coming and going. So many distractions, in fact, that I have no choice but to tune them all out and concentrate fully on the task at hand. And Starbuck’s, evil as it may be, does have one thing figured out: how to leave you alone and not make you feel guilty for taking up space. It’s like the Apple store I went to in Albuquerque<\/a>, where the Japanese guy was just working away at one of the demo computers and nobody minded. I appreciate that.<\/p>\n

Plus I secretly want to be J. K. Rowling.<\/p>\n

I’ve always liked writing in the midst of chaos. In college, I wrote all my essays parked in a coffee shop near campus, drinking foamy lattes and eating chocolate chip cookies. Back then, in the dark ages, that meant writing by hand on a pad of paper, like in the picture at the top of the post. Now, with a laptop, it’s so much more efficient! As long as there’s a plug and tons of distractions, I can go into my zone. When I found out J. K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter in a coffee shop, it clicked. Someday I, too, would write a blockbuster in a coffee shop.<\/p>\n

So there you have it, people. It’s finally happening.<\/p>\n

Anyway, back to the metro. The monitor said the next one wouldn’t be there for 12 minutes, so I went into the news shop in the metro station and browsed the magazines. I took down the Economist<\/em>, put it back. I can’t read it, it’s too dense and I object philosophically to the absence of bylines. Wired\u00a0 <\/em>was really tempting. Then I caught a glimpse of the Technology Review<\/em> hiding on a shelf behind. I pulled it out and looked at the cover.<\/p>\n

Oh. My. God.<\/p>\n

There on the cover of the Technology Review<\/em> was a blurb that said Stem cells get personal. <\/em>I may have mentioned that the novel I’m writing involves stem cells. I’d just had a bit of a block on the subject back in Starbuck’s, and I needed to do some research. I opened the article, and it was perfect. Exactly what I was looking for. <\/em>How’s that for divine intervention?<\/p>\n

I was so psyched that I went out for a run when I got home.<\/p>\n

\"bare<\/a>I realize I have been remiss in reporting on my barefoot running adventure<\/a>, so here’s an update for those of you who are interested: I haven’t put on a pair of regular running shoes since August. No kidding. I only wear my New Balances Minimus Trail shoes now. In fact, I wear them almost every time I leave the house for anything, I like them so much.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, I don’t know whether it was the elation of having found the article on stem cells and unplugging the block in my writing, or the fact that there was a cushion of soft-looking fallen leaves on the ground, but I had a sudden urge to make skin-to-earth contact, and not with my face like I did last week, but with my feet. I took my shoes off and ran about 2 miles barefoot. The leaves took the worst of the bite out of the nasty little evil stones on the path.\u00a0 I ran along the beachfront in Preverenges, in and out of the water, feeling like a little kid. Then when I got back to the really evil section of path I photographed on my earlier post, I sat down by the lake and put the New Balances back on.<\/p>\n

What a great run! A lot of people had given me strange looks, but I just smiled and carried on. My feet felt so happy.<\/p>\n

I know you want to try barefoot running, too. In another astonishing stroke of serendipity, I ran across a how-to video this weekend so you can get started in the comfort of your own living room! In honor of the New York City Marathon, Christopher McDougall, of Born to Run<\/a> fame, has an article in\u00a0 the NYT Magazine this Sunday.<\/a> There’s a video of him hopping from one foot to the other, demonstrating how to work on your running form. If you don’t have a subscription to the online NYT, you can see the video at this blog, Hunter-Gatherer<\/a> (written by a NYC barefoot runner type). Running barefoot may seem crazy, but trust me, it’s going mainstream. In a few years you’ll be thanking me for getting you started, because you will be so far ahead of all the other sad losers out there.<\/p>\n

Images: top,\u00a0 StarbuckGuy<\/a>. The other one is my foot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just as I walked up to the metro on Saturday, the doors shut in my face. I was literally one second too late. Damn. Steamed. I’d been working in the Starbuck’s on the Place St. Francois for the last couple … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[8,3,5,9],"tags":[78,80,81],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1R58n-8G","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":546,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538\/revisions\/546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}