Leisure as Work, Work as Leisure

Will Pate, who I think is wise beyond his years, said something at the last Charlottetown weblogger meeting that has stuck with me.

We were talking about the Wifi Charlottetown project, and the notion of locating WiFi hotspots in various cafes and restaurants in the city.

Will said this was important because as work intrudes more and more into our leisure time, we need to make work “more leisurely.” This is another way of stating a goal I’ve had for a while, which is having a “vacation like life.”

As I sit here typing this in Timothy’s coffee shop, using the Little Mac Shoppe WiFi connection, it’s surprising how, even though I’m doing “work,” it doesn’t feel like it.

Somehow being outside of an office, with a phone and a desk and other work trappings makes me about twice as productive; the white noise of the coffee shop hubub makes for a good workspace, I guess.

Perhaps this is the greatest selling point downtown Charlottetown (or downtown anywhere) has a workspace: working out and about makes working an obvious thing, and something that is inexorably linked to the community around. Sitting in front of my terminal in my home office, I could be anywhere — in a hotel room in Budapest, in an office tower in Toronto. Sitting here at Timothy’s, I am in Charlottetown, participating in the life of my community.

As if on cue, Dwight, who I worked with on a potato project several years ago, and who hails from Emyvale, up the road from our old house in Kingston, and who’s now working for Food Trust PEI, drops in for a coffee. We spend 10 minutes catching up on our current projects, our kids, and so. Dwight goes back to the office, and I pick up where I left off.