An architect, a romance writer, a computer scientist, and a college drop out walk into a coffee shop.

I found a group of people who want to spend an hour every Tuesday and Thursday to write. There’s something nice about meeting strangers with no expectations, saying what we’re working on and getting into it. I’m working on writing this blog, a romance writer next to me has to untangle her love triangle that her agent doesn’t think will sell, this cute computer scientist man across from me is writing a super hero novel, and there’s a boy who just dropped out of college five days ago because he wants to get into writing films.

I wonder if the internet did not exist, would we ever run into each other? I think the answer is a clear resounding no and that’s beautiful to me. The internet has siloed us like never before within our own echo chambers but it can also introduce us to people we would of never met in our lifetimes. This post is a result of this hour, this hour of silence, this hour of editing, this hour of reflection. The computer scientist said it best, I have to problem solve and expand so much creative energy during my day job that I don’t know if I would ever write if I had to go home. I agree with him, when I go home I rarely do anything that requires brain power. I’m glad the internet exists to force me into this.

I watched this video on Youtube about a lens review but it got to a point where the reviewer said that when he used to be a photography teacher, he would assign one half of the class, “take the best photo you can possibly take,” and the other half, “take 10000 photos.” The students that took 10000 photos ended up being better photographers every time because at some point because there is a quality to the quantity. The quantity becomes quality through editing, sifting, reflecting, and trying again. It’s picking the ones you like the best and being able to explain it, it’s finding a new way to take a photo of a subject you’ve seen hundreds of times to see it in a new way, and it’s figuring out through enough practice the way the camera finally starts to capture what you see, not what you imagine.

I’m taking that to heart where I am throwing myself into situations where I get to meet so many new people all at once. I joined an LGBT group that meets every third Friday of the month to just chat and have drinks, I meet with a group of board game players who meet at a cafe every Sunday to play board games, and now I’m meeting this melange of people who get together every Thursday to write. In the quantity of people I’m meeting, there will be some quality right? The hour of writing is almost over and I realize that each of these people were my alternate life paths, the romance writer who I would of been if I never came out of the closet and wrote about unrequited love, a computer scientist if I never found design or architecture, and I was the college drop out when I left architecture school. So an architect, a romance writer, a computer scientist, and a college dropout walk into a coffee shop and they’re all the same person.