Photo by bady abbas on Unsplash
On Sitting Alone, and What to Do With the Time
This is Part One of a three-part series on intentional time alone in a café. Parts Two and Three (on reading, and on making things with your hands) are coming soon.
Not long ago, I was sitting in a café with a friend, talking about nothing in particular, the way good conversations tend to go. At some point the topic drifted toward something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: how many people are choosing their own company more than ever before. As if on cue, there was a living example right in front of us, a young woman sitting alone at a nearby table, completely at ease, quietly enjoying themselves.
My friend looked at them, then at me, and asked (a little hesitantly, a little curiously) what one could possibly do alone in a café for any stretch of time. It was something she’d always wanted to try, she said, but she worried she’d look awkward. Like she was waiting for someone or something.
I asked her three questions. The same three I’ll ask you now.
Do you like writing? If yes, keep reading, you’re in the right place.
Do you like reading? If yes, [Part Two is for you →]
Do you like making things with your hands? If yes, [Part Three is waiting →]
The honest answer, which I’ve tested many times: nobody is looking at you. Everyone in a café is either absorbed in their own world or quietly envying yours.
Before we begin, a few conditions I’m setting for all three parts of this series, to keep things realistic and grounded:
- You’ll have around one and a half to two hours, a proper, unhurried sitting.
- You’ll have a table to yourself, not a bar stool or standing counter.
- You’re leaving your phone in your bag or at least face down. That’s the whole point.
So, You Like Writing
Good. You’re in excellent company, and honestly, I think that cafés were made for writing. There is something about ambient noise, a warm drink, and a table that isn’t your desk that loosens the mind in exactly the right way.
The best thing about writing as an activity is that it asks almost nothing of you in terms of supplies. A notebook and a pen. A phone with the notes app open. A tablet, a laptop, the back of a receipt. I tend to use a mix of digital and analog depending on my mood, but the format matters far less than the act of starting. So choose your tool, and let’s begin.
Five Writing Exercises to Try in a Café
1. Simple journaling prompt
Write about your day, what you’ve already done, what you’re planning, what’s sitting quietly at the back of your mind. Your feelings, a stray thought that keeps returning. There’s no wrong way to do this. Think of it less as a diary entry and more as thinking on paper.
2. A beautiful memory
Choose a memory. It can be from childhood, from last summer, from any point in your past, and try to reconstruct it as fully as you can. Not just what happened, but the small details: the light, the sounds, what things smelled like, how you felt standing in that particular moment. The further back you reach, the more interesting the reconstruction becomes.
3. Write about yourself in the third person
Step outside yourself for a moment. Begin writing about your current situation as though it were happening to someone else. Give this person a fictional name, describe the café through their eyes, what they’re looking at through the window, what they’re thinking. Then go further: who are they? Where did they grow up? What does they love, and what unsettles them? It’s a surprisingly freeing exercise, and it often reveals things that first-person writing keeps hidden.
4. Observe someone nearby
Choose a person, or a group, sitting close to you. Watch them gently, without staring. Notice their gestures, their clothes, the rhythm of their conversation. Now invent their story. Where are they coming from? What are they celebrating, or working through? What happens when they leave this café today? Let your imagination lead and follow wherever it goes. This is one of the simplest ways to begin writing in a café when your mind feels blank.
5. Open a book and continue a line
This is my personal favourite, and the one that never fails to unlock something. I keep a small notebook where I copy out lines from books that stop me, sentences that feel alive or strange or unfinished. When I don’t know what to write, I open it, pick one at random, and keep going from there. The story that emerges is always a surprise. If you don’t have a notebook like this yet, start one today. It’s one of the best writing habits I know. A line I’ve returned to more than once is from Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping: “It is better to have nothing, for at last even our bones will fall. It is better to have nothing." I once wrote three full pages from that sentence alone.
That’s all for Part One. If any of these exercises find their way onto your pages when you were sitting alone in a café, I’d genuinely love to read them. Feel free to send a few lines my way.
- Zoe