FEATURED ARTICLE
JANET
BRENT
s
“Explorations in Cafe Culture”
OMETIMES IT TAKES TRANS-
forming your environment literally to
transform your business. Never mind
the very real fact that space clearing
and decluttering is a thing. What I’m
talking about is working from
coffeeshops and cafes. It’s the digital
nomad lifestyle. The location indepen-
dent dream. It’s been my modus operandi for years, travel-
ing around the world in nomad hotspots like Chiang Mai,
Thailand and Berlin, Germany. Every day was a new adven-
ture as I explored the new cityscapes and found cafes to do
my work. My claim to fame was getting picked up on The
Guardian as a featured digital nomad. I was found through
Twitter, nonetheless.
Then I promptly settled into homebody life and stayed put,
indefinitely, back in Portland, Oregon where I grew up. To
say I felt defeated is an understatement. My flashy travel
lifestyle (flashpacker is another buzzword, a play off of the
travel “backpacker”—upgraded to digital gadgets and wi-fi
spots in the urban jungle) was no more. I told myself the
travel was no longer sustainable. I told myself I needed to
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stay put and hunker down to get serious about building my
business, all the while still struggling to pay rent each
month.
A new boyfriend came into my life, and not shortly after, a
cat. It’s not that I didn’t like or want these relationships, but
my enamored life abroad was squished back to the econom-
ic grind of the Western world, with some vague sense of
permanency that would make it harder to untether around
the world again. My once exciting life was now replaced
with routine. The best thing I could do for my creativity,
and for my business, was break out of routine.
Yes, I space cleared. I decluttered. I cleaned my room, again
and again. I beautified my desk corner. I had way too much
time on my hands, and still the flow would not come (coin-
cidentally, my internal flow was also months late).
I aura cleansed. I sound bathed in crystals. I did releasing
rituals with the New Moon. Still the flow would not come.
I work in the creative field, as a digital designer and story-
telling strategist. One day I’m designing a dozen Facebook
ads and the next I’m designing websites, and laying out
APRIL 2017