Coffee Novelist

10 thoughts to think over

Coffee Novelist

July 12, 2023

Ten thoughts I wrote down

Image result for the thinker with coffee

“Don’t translate, answer.”

Those were the instruction from my Russian professor in college. He wanted his students to answer his questions posed in Russian as responses, not having taken the extra step to translate from Russian to English to Russian to answer. I have something similar in mind with the thoughts I’m listing below. They are collected from my Sketchbooks of the Mind (journals) from the recent past. When you read them, just think them over. No need to like, comment or even agree or disagree.

I’m not after clicks, as is so often the intent of list posts. In other words, “Don’t click, think”. Have fun…

1.One cannot breathe yesterday's air

2.The universal truths are universal because the truth in them is different for everyone

3.My mind is my dedicated work space

4.If you don't posses it, you can not address it

5.If you can't let it go, at least let it flow

6.America is the land of cardboard boxes

7.The journey is not difficult once you decided to take it

8.Live cheaply to sleep deeply

9.It's not the book, the painting, the creation that matters, but what the creation creates that is most important

10.My life is hard enough for me to appreciate just how easy it is

This is a repost. The thoughts still apply.

Take me to the river

Coffee Novelist

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June 27, 2023

Take me to the river

This works for me. It really does. I have been tossing my attachments log into the Ohio River for at least five years now. It surprised me when I checked on the archives of the blog to see that I had only posted about it one other time. Perhaps because it is almost too personal a ritual for me. The history baked into it starts closer to ten years ago. In fact, I know there is a paper attached to the log from close to thirty years ago. Maybe that is the point. If it were easy to post about, to toss it all away, then why do it at all?

The river takes it away

When the river moves on past me, it only brings with it what it can carry. What it doesn’t have the energy or inclination to bring with it that day, the river leaves on the shore in the form of drift logs.

I find one there each year. On random days throughout the following year, I tape, glue, or staple mementoes of the year, or years past, onto it. My young adult kids and I take a long weekend every year at the same cabin on the river every summer. One of mornings when the river seems most calm and receptive, I do a bit of yoga, a short meditation and toss the attachments log as for into the river as I can. It then then moves off downriver. Works for both of us.

A trip to the river every year

This year I have taped a page of the interior design of my upcoming novel to my attachments log. The book comes out June 15th. I must say that it is an attractive cover and the interior design is just as enticing. I would even say that the interior design on The Trier was one of the revelations to me in bringing The Trier to market. I now know what interior design is. But it had to go.

It had to go so I can keep on writing. So I can move on to the next book in the series. So I can not become distracted by possible sales. So, I don’t allow yesterday to clog, block, or take anything out of today.

In order to it all to work, I put mementoes of all types of things on the log. Kroger receipts, reminders, copies of appointment confirmations, some going as far back one for my oldest son who will be thirty in a few months. To the river, all these are the same.

If you don’t believe me, take a look at the photo below. The attachments log is a dot in the middle of the picture.

See you next year

The grind for your mind

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June 21, 2023

The grind for my mind

My double espresso is pouring slowly and with intent into my favorite doppio cup. It is not yet five in the morning. In a few minutes I will go outside to sit and write or journal to the birds chirping up in the branches, still unseen, as it will be too dark

My mind wants my body and it’s five senses to be up and at it. My super and subconscious minds know that it will be a good day today. As a result, they woke me before the alarm. They know because my conscious mind, physical body, and five sense worked on this yesterday and the day before, and before that. I cooperated and got out of bed. This is a routine, a bargain, an understanding that I call the “mind grind”.

From grind to mind

It follows then, that in order to have my clear, energized mind produce and create the day I want, I have to prepare. If I want a great doppio at five in the morning, I have to prepare for it. It don’t just happen. Nothing does, nothing just happens. One conscious action I took a couple weeks ago to make a great doppio this morning was to buy the correct type of beans to make my doppio.

On Sunday, I grind a week’s worth. I have decades of practice listening to beans being ground. I know when they are ground fine enough to produce a perfect shot. Then I transfer these grounds into in a smaller, glass airtight container next to my espresso maker. There they sit until the follow day, waiting to become my doppio. The intensely flavored, crema topped doppio is the perfect start to my morning. Again, it doesn’t just happen. It takes a series of conscious intentional thoughts to create the actions that create the perfect doppio.

Find your mind grind

Apply the same process to creating the morning mind you wake up with. It takes intentional actions and preparation but like my crema topped doppio, it is well worth it. The doppio won’t make itself. Nothing just happens. If I want my mind to match the beautiful, functional simplicity of my doppio, it takes work and preparation as well.

I don’t want to exhaust the metaphor here, but the beans in the mind grind equation here would be my yoga practice. The body and mind are linked. The issues are in our tissues, as the wisdom goes. I do quick yoga practice every day before work. This practice is brief but done with focused thought. The weekends will usually find me doing two longer practices. On those days I will add a meditation, sometimes practice the 5 Tibetans, and possibly some resistance with weights.

Other weekends find me hitting the treadmill and sauna at my local gym. In each and every case, I have developed mental exercises that accompany and enhance the physical. For example, in the sauna I image my fears and doubts leaving my body and mind in the form of drops of sweat. Hey, it works for me.

Be your own mental barista

There is more. I could add journaling, writing fiction, blogging, recording voice memos and many other practices to my mental self-care routine. The common thread to all of them is that they are intentional. They are all things I feel like I have to do to create my simple functional, clear and energetic mind.

It is work though. To me that means it would be easier not to do them. But, I do not want to drink a doppio, or any coffee drink, made for someone else, by someone else. That would be like grabbing someone else’s drink from the counter at a busy Starbucks and taking it with you. You are stuck with it. It may be coffee, but was it really yours? Ask the same of your thoughts. Who made them? Was it really for me or are they made by a mental barista who really doesn’t care?

I ain’t sayin’ this from a mountain top of course. I am just sharing that I have found a coffee grind and a mind grind that works for me. There is no doubt that you will find your own mind grind. Don’t worry, you will know it is working when you taste it.

This is a revised repost to honor International Yoga Day

Mind what you write

Coffee Novelist

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June 16, 2023

The Trier was NOT part of the plan. But there it is.

Follow your mind

I feel like I’ve hit a wall. Not creatively. That doesn’t really happen to me. As I say repeatedly, I do most of my writing away from this keyboard. In fact, I have spent the last two days writing the next story for my Altonstreet & Philpatrick series. These stories are in line to be novelized in a couple years, after my coming of age novel, Ironjaws. And even after Back outta the World, my metaphysical road novel. That’s the plan anyway. This is all part of my glorious 5 year plan, which I just posted. A good deal of the 5 year plan content has been written. But not all of it. I take comfort in knowing that what I will need is already there. I know where to find it. Not in the pen or in the keyboard or in the advice of others. It will be there when I need it. It’s there, waiting for me in my mind, which is free and never closed.

Don’t mind me

Recently, I had a temporary derailment. A crisis of confidence over whether to keep all this going. This. What I am doing now. Getting up at quarter till 5, turning on the radio to classical station on low volume and writing. Why am I doing this? To what end? For approval? For sales of Tripio? Is it a hobby? Is my writing the equivalent of art on the walls of a hospital or local coffee house? All these questions and more were triggered by me finishing Back outta the World. A day or two of quiet, personal celebration followed. I then began to search for an editor. Three responses and three strikes. All strikes due to reasons as random as the distinct paths of three falling leaves.

I feel like I should clarify that I do not feel as if the Pandemic is primarily responsible for the stasis. In fact, I believe I am doing a good job of living through it, giving it the time and attention it requires but not attaching extra worry and mental energy to it. To go further, I believe I have directed that mental energy that could be anxiety and worry to better places.

Remind why I do this

That being said, I was told in the search for editors that “I can’t write fiction”. Fair enough. But In that opinion, comment, analysis I found the reason I go on writing. In a nutshell, I write because I have to. I simply have to write. Oh, don’t hear it as anything grand, like I was born to write or the like. I ain’t’ that pretentious. In writing I have simply discovered a great way to use the time given me time between 5-7 am. I cannot sleep in. In these early morning hours, I have tried hating myself, my past, and my future. I have tried crouching in the shower clutching a mug of coffee and praying that a new man would step out of the shower when that mug is empty. I don’t like that quite as much.

You see, writing for me, is part of something bigger. It is part of my mind exercise routine I’ve been doing nearly every morning for years now. Writing is now a constant in my life. I value my writing and it, in turn, keeps my mind, body, and soul going in positive, productive directions. And most importantly, I can feel it when I write, and when I don’t. I do not mean reading what I have written and attaching a judgement to it.

In my mind

To clarify, writing keeps my mind on the present. As we all know, past, and future can distract, derail, and possibly stop us. If we let it. And, is it ever easy to let it. The focused intention on what we are doing when we write forces us to keep our mind in a productive, positive place, almost by default.

What you are writing doesn’t matter much here, and it shouldn’t. You are simply taking your mind out for some cardio or resistance training. In time, you will notice that the mind will repay you for it, just as the body does when it is exercised. You simply feel better all day.

Neither you nor I can control other people’s opinions. I can only control that I care about what I am writing. Which in the end, is the only writing worth doing.

“May I help who’s next?”

This a updated repost. The apron is new.

a thought on meditation

Coffee Novelist

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June 6, 2023

Meditation in school

My first real attempts at meditation took place several years ago at the School of Metaphysics in Indianapolis. The School was actually a house converted to function as a classroom, meeting room, and sanctuary. It worked. It “felt” different as soon as you stepped inside and shut to door on the shopping, eating, and consuming happening in malls, shops and restaurants outside it’s front door.

In that large front room, on a chair, or a mat, I took part in my first guided meditations.

I think most of us are familiar with the benefits of meditating as it is gaining some traction in popular media and culture. But, here I am talking about the self-revealing benefits one receives within and from their own meditation practice. As with a yoga practice, it is different each and every time. Like yoga, meditation escapes definition and labels. The reward is nothing you can pull into your driveway and show your neighbor.

Meditation at home

A couple days ago, I came across the handbook that I had used for those meditation classes. I had to shake the dust off it before I took it off my shelf. I looked at the cover, a little surprised I still had the thing. But I must have kept it for a reason. So, I brought the little book downstairs with the intent to review it. It sat for several weeks. Yesterday I opened it and began to look it over. I knew from the way the book had found me that there was something in it that I needed to read. I had no idea what it was, until I knew.

Meditation as thinking

The line that struck me was ‘Consider that wherever you are in your thinking is your meditation“. At first, it would seem that would shoot holes in the years of building and maintaining my meditation practice. Why bother? As long as I am thinking, I’m meditating, right? What a relief. I’m free to live my life, reacting, careening from on distraction to the next, one fear to the next, letting the raspy-voiced Allstate guy sort through my untended mind for his next payday.

Thankfully not. A meditation is defined as a highly attuned state of awareness. How long is that? Hour at the most? The real intent of the quote above was that it reminded me that meditation’s short time span, that state of awareness, can’t last. But it can be emotionally felt and mindfully experienced. Therefore, the time we spend meditation’s real value is that it can call attention to our thoughts the rest of the day.

Do Super-Sized Shopping Carts Equal Super-Sized Bills? – Consumerist

If I get irritated at getting beat to the best parking spot at Kroger on Saturday morning when I really need to be close because it’s my big haul and I don’t want to do this anyway because things are too expensive these days and it’s raining, and I forgot my coupons, then that is where I am in my thinking.

Meditation anytime, anywhere

Then, my meditation is not one of a highly attuned state of awareness, it is a mediation of getting beat to the best parking spot at Kroger on Saturday morning when I really need to be close because it’s my big haul and I don’t want to do this anyway because things are too expertise these days and it’s raining, and I forgot my coupons.

I can’t bring my meditation cushion to Kroger on Saturday mornings.

But, it feels rather good to be reminded that meditating is not always limited to a few minutes on a cushion. And that noticing my thoughts isn’t something limited to a specific time or location.

That in mind, I will read quote that found me this Saturday before I head out to Kroger, with or without coupons, rain or shine. I have a suspicion that when I get there every parking space will look about the same.

It’s a thought at least

Read to your kids

Coffee Novelist

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May 29, 2023

Read to your kids

The photo above is of me, Jay, from the epilogue of Tripio. Besides a dashing, handsome, and still young man, what do you see? I see so much that it is difficult to even write this post. I have no idea where or how to even start. Maybe that is why I messed around so long with applying the photo itself. I was “resisting” starting this post.

As I said, this photo would be from the time of the epilogue of Tripio, when Jay has left Chicago, Starbucks, and it’s 268 shares of IPO stock behind for good. He doesn’t look that dumb in the photo, does he? Yes, no, maybe? That is up to the readers of Tripio to decide.

Look a little more closely and you will see a wannabe writer who has had to stop writing and give up his dream of becoming a novelist. He will only have time read a bit and take a few notes now and again in his journals (Sketchbooks of the Mind, as Jay calls his journals in Tripio). By reading, I mean mostly read children’s books.

I say children’s books because if you look even closer you will see that the man in the photo is married, has two young sons and is working hard to support them. In fact, on break, he may be headed to the children’s books section of MegaBooks to buy some marked down hardback children’s books that he would read to his two young sons. Over and over again.

I did

As I write this post, some of those books are still on a shelf upstairs in the special spot I set aside. In Tripio, Jay calls buying those books, “the best investment I ever made”.

It still is.

Sorry to interrupt this four year old post. I certainly feel like I’ve gotten way better at writing posts. And novels, for that matter. All that has taken place over the three years since I wrote this. It has been much longer since I read to my kids. If you are a parent, read to the kiddos. Ok, back to the old one…

That is the best I can do in putting that photo in the context of Tripio. I hope it interested you in the book. I think I did a good job of keeping my observations short enough to fit into a blog post. Writing it created a desire in me to want to go upstairs and look through those old children’s books I bought years ago.

“May I help who’s next?”

You have improved. Not much choice. Still, your heart was in the right place.

Why I write coffee novels

Coffee Novelist

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May 22, 2023

A coffee memoir

For me, there was a lot to like about Annabel Townsend’s book, Ten Years of Misadventures is Coffee. I found so much of it familiar. Her memoir covers the years of her life that pretty much match the years of my life in my historical fiction novel, Tripio. The names, dates, and details are, of course, different. But, for each of us, it was a time of searching for the right launching point to start, or keep, a career in coffee going.

Coffee unites people in ways unique to the world’s second most valuable commodity. Oil is number one, a commodity known for causing conflict as much as anything. The unitive quality of coffee is how I found Annabel’s book in the first place. Our shared passion and fascination with coffee ties us together because we both wrote books on our experiences in the world of coffee.

Annabel was generous enough with her time to read my upcoming novel, The Trier, and supply a great short review which will appear on the back or front cover.

My coffee novels

Before this post becomes even more a commercial for The Trier, I will return to it’s original intent. As I read Ten Years and reflected on my Tripio days, I began to remember all the times I was asked, Why don’t you open your own coffeeshop? I didn’t have the answer then. It could have been that I didn’t have the money, time, or desire. Or, most importantly, I had just started a family.

Why I write coffee novels and didn’t open a coffeehouse

I am still occasionally asked why I didn’t start my own coffee place. Having finished my second coffee novel, and read Annabel’s, I can tell everyone why with the certainty and clarity that only the past can provide: Because writing about coffee is a hell of lot less complicated. As an author entrepreneur, I don’t have to worry about:

insurance for my coffee novel
staffing my coffee novel
standing in the rain next to my coffee cart at the farmer’s market while I write
finding the perfect location for my coffee novels
building code and commercial plumbing requirements for my coffee novels
pastry and food vendors for my coffee novels
good weather to bring customers out to visit my coffee novels
health and safety food handling codes requirements for my coffee novels
coffee brewers and espresso machines installed in my coffee novels
finding a coffee roaster for my coffee novels

Of course, writing isn’t’ easy either. But, at least I don’t have to stand in the rain to do it.

Speaking of the past, its about time for a new apron.

my coffee home

Coffee Novelist

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May 17, 2023

The front porch of my coffee home

My Coffee Home

I am out here now. It is dark, before dawn but everything is the photo above is there, expect me of course. I am enjoying my coffee and writing a bit out the front porch of my coffee home. Look at that. I have it made. I appreciate every second that I can sit there and write and drink my coffee.

That is what I was doing when my marketing materials arrived. The UPS guy pulled up in front of my coffee home and hopped out of his truck. We nodded to each other and he left put a cardboard box just about where I took this photo. I did not have to move. I knew that Tom at Coffee Homes had sent me the package a few days ago.

Coffee Homes

Coffee Homes is working with me to cross promote my upcoming novel, The Trier. I will let Coffee Homes define their work below

No alternative text description for this image

“Our mission at Coffee Homes is to improve the lives of coffee workers in Colombia and Honduras by addressing the pressing need for safe and decent housing. We strive to empower and uplift the coffee community through our theme of ‘Coffee People Caring About Coffee People’, by building homes that provide dignity, stability, and security for the individuals who produce the coffee we all love. We believe that by investing in the well-being of coffee workers, we can improve the overall sustainability and quality of the coffee industry, and create a brighter future for all.”

Colombia Partnership (coffeehomes.org)

The value of a Coffee Home

Don’t get me wrong here. I have always appreciated my home, which happens to have this porch to sit on and drink coffee and write this post. And my coffee home has a drip brewer, espresso machine, hot water, washer and dryer, sinks, stove, fridge, beds, basement, back porch, small garden in back, electricity, ceiling fans, hardwood floors, AC, and the list goes on.

But a reminder once it a while doesn’t’ hurt. That is what the UPS guy really left for me.

The list above consists of visible, material things. The real value of my coffee home, however, lies in the dignity, stability and security it has given me for well over two decades. If given a choice, you can take the material things away from me, I’m sick of cleaning and fixing them anyway.

May be time to clean the lint screen on the dryer

van Gogh, my go-to

Coffee Novelist

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May 2, 2023

277302176_10160265404805159_4808211543675846508_n (1).jpg

I went to see Exhausted Paint with my son. It was a fine way to spend a Sunday afternoon. I won’t tell you what I thought of the actual play. That is more something on my end, I admit. But it is impossible for anyone else to sit in my seat, next to my second oldest son on a day when my life is going really well and see the play I was seeing. So there.

I think that you would find more value in what I did do after the play. I went home and found my 30 year old ragged ass paperback copy of Letters to Theo. A book I called in Tripio, the best book on writing I have ever read. Still true. I read about ten pages and found these excepts. Just ten pages.

Is there anything about how to paint? About how to write, even? No. But in them, you can see the paintings.

I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?
Admire as much as you can; most people do not admire enough.
Try to walk as much as you can.
If one really loves nature, one can find beauty everywhere.
Autumn is coming fast, and that makes nature more serious and more intimate still.
Man is not easily content: now he finds things too easy and then again he is not contented enough.
Work is always a good thing.
I have been busy today with a great many little nothings, but they belong to my duty; if one had no sense of duty, who would be able to collect his thoughts at all?
Things that other care for have no attraction for me.
It is not always easy to fight against distractions, and if I had money it would be worse still.

I did like the play.

Practice

Coffee Novelist

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April 12, 2023

This post received my most views ever. I just noticed that the SEO and Readability faces were not green and happy. They are now. I wonder what that means.

“We’re talking about practice.” – Allen Iverson

Allen Iverson’s quote about is best listened to. His tone is disdainful and dismissive of practice. After all, people didn’t pay to see Allen Iverson practice.

I just estimated that over the last nine years when I began to practice yoga in earnest that I have completed 2,700 practices. But when I wrote that figure in my journal, I didn’t believe it. I’m sitting here now and I am tying to work out why I doubt my own math.

Practice

I’m in the middle of my staycation week. The time found me to write that down because I am not going to work today. But if I were, I would do a five to eight minute yoga practice beforehand. The morning practice, the short one is focused more on creating energy, utilizing quicker core based asanas. I do this five days a week.

Yesterday evening, I did evening practice in my garage, my sacred space. I did my “relax and release” practice. It is a 20 minute session mainly of asanas that are held a breathe or two longer and performed with the intention of letting go of the day. I did this practice simply to help me unwind after a busy staycation day.

Sundays I will go nuts and do my self guided 40-50 minute practice, also in my garage space. I do this if I haven’t gone to the hour long yoga class at my fitness center on Saturday.

All this to say that I practice yoga daily. I do take one day off a week though. Even something as beneficial as yoga is best served when put aside.

Practice

I’m sitting here now, still in the process of not getting ready for work and I am tying to work out why I still doubt my own math. Math was never my strong suit but nine times three hundred is fairly approachable stuff.

But yoga isn’t about getting ready for the game, or any certain defined destination. And its not about adding them up your practices to see what the total is.

But It strikes me that if you did anything else that many times, you’d have something to show for it. But then my yoga practice is not something that is not performed with intention of showing it to others.

Also, yoga isn’t set up to get right, finish or complete. It is one continuous practice, broken down each day. You don’t accumulate anything along the way. It is maintenance free. If you accumulate, buy or own something, you have to maintain it. Even after 2,700 practices, yoga doesn’t require any maintenance.

Image result for cartoon of a person doing math

That isn’t enough justification to keep practicing something that many times. I’m sure Allen Iverson practiced at least that many times on his way to the NBA. I’m not going to the NBA by practicing yoga. Heck, I’m not even going to work later.

In just a few minutes I will find my way to my mat for practice 2,701. I can’t put my finger on exactly why. I do feel I have gotten better over the years. Like I said, I am capable of guiding myself for about an hour on the mat. I recognize all the benefits post practice, both physical and mental. If anything, all the practices allow me to access those benefits in a shorter time period these days.

Practice

Even that does not lend itself to a clear jumping off point. I realize I’m using a very narrow definition of yoga here. It is the exercise flow yoga we have come to know in the west. The attempt to understand that small part of what yoga is has beaten me today.

I never will beat yoga, no matter how many times I practice. I am relieved to know that however. Not sure I want to even try.

Maybe that is all I needed to know to get me back on my mat today, where I can continue my practice. I was never any good at math anyway.

Allen Iverson played in the NBA for the 76s and was MVP in 2001