The Coffee Shop Chronicles - A New Beginning

It has been two years since I wrote my last Coffee Shop Chronicle. New coffee shops have continued to sprout up everywhere. Two new ones have opened just this year in my own town, that adds to the three, non-chain fabulous coffee shops we already have.

I happen to be sitting in one of these new coffee houses as I write this. Today is Monday, June 19, 2017 and it's my birthday. I am still one birthday scone away from that momentous half century mark, not that I am terrible worried about it. My forties have been adventure filled, I expected nothing less from my fifties.

Being a Monday, I should be getting groceries and catching up on laundry, but it's my birthday and those things can wait until tomorrow. Instead I started my day with birthday love from my family, a walk at the beach, and then an hour long massage. And now here I am, at The 205 Coffee Bar, preparing for a return to The Coffee Shop Chronicles.

I have no idea if I will be able to write these stories again, even though many things have been pointing in this direction the past several months. I am afraid, afraid that the stories that once were so popular amongst my readers, will not be the same. But they can't be the same, I am not the same, a lot of life has happened in two years. I am a different writer than I was two years ago. I must remember; you can never go back, your only options are standing still or pushing forward. I chose forward.

Recently, I read an article in the Spring issue of Artful Blogging by Nicole Knutsen, titled Playing Shop Girl. In the article, she has me imagine my blog/website as one of many storefronts on internet Main Street. She asks the questions: How would you design it? What would you sell? Who would be your customers? Those questions got my creative mind churning. These were questions I had read before, but I always struggle with the answers. My stumbling block is what to sell, selling not being my focus. I started making a list of answers to these questions, and suddenly it became clear. Just because it's a storefront on internet main street doesn't mean it has be a retail gift shop.

This week I am beginning to build my website. I have known for a while that I have outgrown this space. As I continue to receive publication writing requests, I need more than just a blog, I need a website. The new site will be paisleyrainboots.com, I bought the domain name last night. While I can't serve you a cup of freshly brewed coffee, I can design a website that feels like a coffee shop. A place with industrial concrete floors and a gallery of my painterly altered photographs on the white shiplap walls. Large, reclaimed barn wood harvest tables with maps spread out over them will fill the middle of the shop.  We will gather around those tables planning adventures together and sharing stories. At the far end of the room will be a large, field stone fireplace surrounded by leather couches and comfy chairs. On one of the couches will lie a floppy-eared, furry friend, ready to listen to anyone's troubles in exchange for gentle strokes of the fur (I know you can't have dogs in places that serve food, but it's my coffee shop). This will be a place to return to again and again, a place of creative inspiration.

The new website will also be the perfect place for the return of The Coffee Shop Chronicles, stories from other coffee gathering places as I work to create my own virtual coffee shop. Eventually this blog will move there too, because I am nothing without my photography. It will be hard to leave this place that I have called my creative home for the past five years, so many stories of life, growth and loss. There will be a link to here on the new website: My Blog - The Early Years, because I can't let it go completely.

I will keep you posted when the new website is up and running and the first new Coffee Shop Chronicle is ready to be published.