Life is so hard I need a vacation . I’m gone for the next two weeks. When I come back, I’ll dive into the problem of how to make a living doing obbies. Later!

Hate the morning commute? I know what you mean! Every morning, I drag myself out of bed and take a LONG twenty minute walk to the Yoga studio. It sucks! I sure wish it were closer. And that’s not even half of it. The toughest part of my day comes after lunch. I usually make myself a big stir-fry and by the time I’m done with it, I’d really like to take a nap. But do I let myself? Of course not! Instead, I walk down to the Diesel cafe and bear down for a few hours on my work. Sometimes, I don’t come home till I finish reading an entire book. That’s how dedicated I am. By the way, the third Harry Potter book sucked. What’s happpened though is that I’ve come to associate Diesel with work. I don’t want to ruin a good place like that. I need to branch out and find other places to camp out.

I checked out a number of places, mostly in the Somerville/Cambridge area. I judge them according to two criteria:

1) level of natural light (the more the better)
2) layout (I like a place that feels open)

Here is what I found, starting with good old Diesel:

Cafes:

• Diesel Cafe (257 Elm Street, Somerville) — Huge place with a warehouse-like design, situated in the heart of Davis Square, this place is well populated with laptops. The small seating area near the entrance has a good amount of light. They do have comfortable booths and sofas in the back. It’s a great place to go camp out for hours at a time. They are open till 1am on weekdays and 2am on weekends. One downside is that the bathrooms are really stinky, likely due to the high traffic volume.
• True Grounds (717 Broadway, Somerville) — Small and cozy with a decent amount of light, this place has a homey feel to it. I hear they have really good coffee and espresso (I wouldn’t know since I’m a tea drinker). The free wireless is a big plus.
• O’Naturals (187 Elm St, Somerville) — As the name suggests, it serves organic, healthy, fast food. The place has free wireless but they turn it off during lunch time. The downside is that they close at 4pm.
• Soleil Cafe (1153 Broadway, Somerville) — Small, sunny and pleasant. They also close at 4pm. If you ever order food here, the service is very slow.
• Tower Cafe in the Tufts Tisch Library (35 Professors Row, Medford) — Very small, only a few tables. They do have more couches and chairs you can sit and hang out or read a book.
• Sherman Cafe (257 Washington st, Somerville) — Pleasant and relaxed, a good place to work. It has free wireless.
• Algiers Cafe (40 Brattle St, Cambridge) — Exotic, beautiful and atmospheric, I can’t believe that I’ve never set foot in this place until recently. It’s not as bright as I would like but the atmosphere of this place is so awesome that I’d be willing to overlook it. Check out the upstairs, they even have a little roof patio for nice weather. It’s a great place to take your date to post dinner/movie, hangout with friends, or immerse yourself in a novel. Laptops feel out of place here. I believe they do serve alcohol. And oh, the service is really slow so you may want to ask for your check when you order or go up to the counter to pay when you are ready to leave.
• Dado Tea (50 church st, Harvard Sq & 955 Mass Ave, Cambridge) — They have two locations. The one at Harvard Square has a slightly better layout and feel. Very nice place to work.
• Peet’s Coffee & Tea (Harvard Square location: 100 Mount Auburn St, Cambridge; Boston location: 176 Federal St; Brookline location: 285 Harvard St) — The one at Harvard Square is nice but very crowded. I haven’t been to the Boston location.
• Espresso Royale Cafe (44 Gainsborough St & 286 Newbury St, Boston) — The location at Gainsborough St (near Symphony Hall) has an open layout and pleasant feel. The one on Newbury St. is smaller and not as bright.
• La Luna Caffe (403 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge) — They don’t have the best layout but the imported gelato more than made up for it. If you have a sweet tooth this might not be a good place to study. During the two hours I was there, I had a tiramisu AND two scoops of nicciola and I’m not even into sweets (well I guess I have a weakness for Italian sweets). I hear they have great espresso and they also have live jazz on Thursday and Friday nights. And oh, free wireless.

Libraries:

• Somerville Public Library West Branch (40 College Ave, Somerville) — Tiny and cute, this library feels more like a house. The light situation isn’t the best since they keep the shades drawn all the time, but it is passable.
• Boston Public Library (700 Boylston St, Boston) — The outdoor garden seats are absolutely amazing during good weather. They have a cafe too. I’ve only poked my head in there once, don’t remember much about it, will report back if I stop over again.
• MIT Rotch Library of Architecture & Planning (77 Massachusetts Ave, building 7-238, Cambridge) — It has a large, open study space with a whole wall of windows overlooking Mass Ave. The light situation doesn’t get better than this. It’s superb for some quiet reading/studying. The library has a calm, upbeat and pleasant feel. it doesn’t feel as geeky as the Science & Humanities Library.
• MIT Science & Humanities Library (160 Memorial Dr, building 14S-134, Cambridge) — Study area with a good view of the Charles River.

Places I investigated and didn’t like

• Simon’s Coffeeshop (1736 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge) — The layout is very awkward. It’s basically a long narrow hallway lined with chairs. You won’t see me working here.
• 1369 Cafe (1369 Cambridge St & 757 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge) — Very crowded, hard to get a seat. The layout isn’t great and light situation suboptimal.
• Harvard Coop Cafe (1400 Masssachusetts Ave, Cambridge) — No natural light, terrible layout

Mix it up:

• Miracle of Science Bar and Grill (321 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge) — If you are in one of those moods where you’d like to get liquored up before you code or write that novel, then this is the place to be. Bright with windows on two sides, this little bar will satisfy your thirst (for a fee) and all your wifi needs (for free).
• Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (280 The Fenway, Boston)– My favorite place in Boston! The courtyard is absolutely stunning. You can’t study here. But come on a weekday in non-touristy season, bring a novel (preferably historical fiction), grab a seat on one of the benches around the courtyard and read for an hour (any longer than that your ass will start hurting). I guarantee you will feel divine. To top it off, treat yourself to a decadent dessert in their award-winning cafe before you head out, Mmmm). I love this place so much I just got an annual membership card. Oh yeah, this is the only place that isn’t free on this list (unless your name is Isabella that is, apparently, all people named Isabella get in for free).

Places yet to look into:

• Mariposa Bakery (424 Massachusetts Ave)
• Grand Coffeehouse (61 Somerville Ave, Somerville) — free wireless
• Darwin’s Ltd (148 Mount Auburn St, & 1629 Cambridge St, Cambridge) – free wireless
• Trident Booksellers & Cafe (338 Newbury Street) — free wireless (no outlets)
• Mary Baker Eddy Library (200 Masschusetts Ave, Boston) — gorgeous on the outside, curious to see what it looks like on the inside.

If you have any hard working friends who are looking for a change of scenery, feel free to forward this along. If you know a good place that’s not on the list, let me know and I’ll add it on.

My Peeps obby has failed miserably. This is the obby where I’m supposed to find/create a community of self-employed people. What I envision is a group that meets regularly to socialize, bounce around ideas, and generally support one another in our pursuits.

This is the first obby I started when I moved back to Boston. I posted an ad on Craig’s List, got some responses, and formed a self-employed women’s lunch group. We met a few times. Then, I was out out of town for a while and no one organized any activities. Slowly, the group fizzled out, all except for one or two women that I still keep in touch with.

I place a lot of importance on this obby because I’ve been warned that life as a self-employed person can be quite isolating. Seeing how I’m a very social person, I’m especially wary of this aspect of my new life. Now that I’m out of school and not working at a regular job, I don’t have anyone to interact with during the day. I want my own colleagues. You know, people to chat around the water cooler with and to eat lunch with, people to go to happy hours with and play softball with. Wait a minute, I don’t even play softball, but you get the idea, basically the social interactions that working people take for granted. Even though I’m doing all these fun projects, I miss the camaraderie, the feeling that we are all in this thing together.

You can understand my excitement then when I got this email about a business mixer from the MIT alumni association. Business? Business? Did someone say business? I went bright and early. It was held at an Irish pub in Kendall Square. To facilitate interaction, the event organizer asked everyone to put a colored dot on their name tag. ORANGE means you are an entrepreneur, BLUE means you are looking for a job and YELLOW means you are an investor. Since I’m an entrepreneur wanna be, I put on an orange dot. There were a few obligatory introductions but after a while, I found myself in some very engaging conversations. I met someone who’s starting a biotech company and several Internet startup founders.

At one point, I was approached by a very businesslike women in her late forties wearing a yellow dot. She shook hands with me and looked directly into my eyes,

“Tell me about your business.”

I was taken by surprise, then quickly gave her the two sentence oh-I-just-got-out-of-school-and-am-brainstorming-for-a-business-idea introduction. I saw impatience and disappointment quickly flash across her face (I’m getting better at reading people), and without blinking an eye she said,

“Get back to me when you have an idea”, and moved on.

Right then and there, I felt terrible. I felt rejected and out of place. “Why am I here?” I asked myself. All around me are go-getters building growth companies and hoping to make millions and billions. Here I am, dreaming to start tiny businesses that will hopefully generate enough income to make a living. When I think about it, our interaction was perfectly normal. She has money to invest and she’s looking for that little company that’s going to be the next Google, and she sure isn’t going to waste her time hobnobbing with an obbyist. She is just doing her job and pursuing her own goals. From my side, I should have recognized it when I’m not among those that will likely be part of my community and moved on. But somehow I let it get to me. I think the old go-getter in me is upset. Just because I figured out what it is that will make me happy in the long run — doing obbies with people, doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy to walk the walk.

The lesson I learned that night is not necessarily that I should stay away from MIT business mixers or all go-getters, but that I should be more deliberate when I go into these situations. If I decide that it is indeed worthwhile to go, I will need to inoculate myself psychologically beforehand so I don’t get swept up in other people’s goals or my own insecurities. I will need to figure out exactly what my goals are for attending that event and to meditate on them, to visualize what they mean to me in gory details. For example, my goal for attending that business social was to find people to join my community. I ought to visualize what kind of people I’m looking for. What are their mannerisms? What are their personal qualities? What do they care about? The more focused I am about what it is I want, the less likely it is that I will get distracted, including by my own emotions.

Back to what I was saying before, I’m still looking for my peeps (people who are self-employed or spend a good portion of their time pursuing independent projects, AND who are interested in making new friends). Maybe I will try events sponsored by the chamber of commerce. Any suggestions on where and how I can find them? Do you know anyone personally that you think I should meet?