In this episode, we explore the importance and value of having a known ‘safe place’ in which to create anew
Do you have a preferred ‘safe place’ where you can get away from the usual hustle of the everyday? Where you can slow down, relax, unwind, be calm, be yourself, and, often, create? If you don’t yet have one, and you’re working on any kind of change, you’ll find it well worth while to seek one out that matches who and how you are.
People each do this in their own way, of course. One colleague goes for a daily walk along the river-bank; a family-member grows the vegetables in her garden; a friend set up a corner of the garage for her easel, her sketchboard and her paints. Another has a favourite tree, up on a small rise, to lean against and contemplate the city below.
One of the key criteria is that there’s a sense of calm - but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’ll be quiet. Some people need the noise, in a way that others don’t: for example, back in her bringing-up-toddlers days, another friend had a battered old couch in a backroom, away from the sleeping children, where she could sit and read in comfort with headphones on blasting out at full volume. That wouldn’t work for me at all, but that’s not the point here: the point is that it’s somewhere that works as a contrast and counterpoint to our everyday life, and that works well for who we are, not necessarily so for anyone else.
For most of us, there’ll be some fairly tight personal criteria for what works and what doesn’t. In my case, I’m not much of an outdoors-person: when I go for a walk, it’s more for exercise than enjoyment. I’m a bit too much of a loner, living alone, working alone, maybe a bit too asocial, a bit too much of the wrong kind of workaholic, so I need somewhere that will act as a decent counterpoint to that. Somewhere that’s maybe a bit more social, perhaps, but doesn’t demand interaction; somewhere where I can work, but in a way that’s different from my usual cluttered mess. A place with quiet music or quiet conversation in the background is fine, but I loathe noise-for-the-sake-of-it, so anywhere with junk-radio or, worse, junk-TV is a definite no-no. And these days I’ve also become largely allergic to alcohol, so there’s not much point in going to a bar or pub. And so on, and so on; we each have our own criteria and constraints.
For me what always worked best as a ‘safe place’ is the right kind of cafe. ‘The right kind’ is one that not only satisfies all of those constraints above, but is also somewhere that I can sit and work for some time: so it needs to be fairly large, and with distinct lulls in the day where I won’t be getting in anyone’s way, or hogging a table when others need it. Back in Britain, my favourite for this was a cafe-bar within reasonable walking distance from home:
…and when that closed down, a franchise-cafe inside a large department-store in the centre of town:
When I moved back to Australia, the COVID lockdowns were in force, so going out to a cafe wasn’t even an option for quite a while. Oh well.
Eventually the lockdowns did ease off, and I got into a habit of driving out perhaps an hour or so away each weekend to somewhat-smaller towns such as Maldon or Heathcote or Echuca, to try out somewhere new. (This is regional Australia: distances between places tend to be large…)
That was fun for a while, but the cost in time and fuel began to be a bit too much, and kind of missed the point of it all. I needed to find a ‘safe place’ closer to home: and for some months now that’s been the Brewhouse cafe in the centre of Bendigo town.
Early on a weekend morning, I park up on the hill behind the Cathedral, where free all-day parking is still easy to find, and walk down to the main road, close to the fountain that’s the central crossroad for the city itself. Then over the old tram-tracks, through the back of the McDonalds carpark, and across the pedestrian bridge over the river. That’s when the Brewhouse comes into view, just as the first hints of a mid-autumn sunrise start to come through from the northeast. (Again, this is Australia: the sun moves to the north here, not the south!)
It’s quite a big place, though the main cafe-bar is the taller part over to the right. It’s a cafe in the day, serving shoppers and lunch-seeking office-workers in the day, and then a busy bar at night. For me, it’s also been a good place for meetings with business-colleagues; I’ve done that quite a lot. No doubt today it’ll get busy here later in the morning; but right now, at not much after 7am, it’s still very quiet, with almost no-one else here as yet. Exactly what I need as my ‘safe place’ to do some real work on new ideas:
This time I’ve deliberately left my laptop at home: I don’t want the distractions of emails and the like. Instead, I only have a notebook and pen here, and the large tablet that I can set up in that upright position that’s easier for writing. Quiet-time, to get those new ideas down, and some new writing done.
It’s a ‘safe place’ in several ways: for example, I feel known there, feel welcomed, for who I am - rather than just a ‘customer’, a source of money to be shoved out of the door again as quickly as possible after food and drinks have been served. And whilst interactions with others are not required, not demanded, yet they’re still possible, and do fit well with what’s going on when they do happen. For example, two young women arrived at the table on my left, one of them holding a huge bouquet of flowers, which turned out to be a birthday-present for the other. Soon after that, a third young woman arrived, and they wanted to talk photos of each other with the birthday-girl and her flowers, but could only do it as pairs whilst the other used the camera; so I offered to take a photograph of all three of them together, which they accepted happily. With that done, I returned to my writing, of course, and they went back to their conversation; but they each said ‘Thank you’ and ‘Goodbye’ when I left, some while later. Small connections, over and done in a brief instant, with no need to hold on to any more than that; yet safe, and special, each in their own way.
And I chose that later moment to leave because the place was getting crowded: they’d need the table soon. Time to leave this quiet, friendly place, and move on. But I’ll be back again somewhen soon, the next week or so, perhaps, because it’s become that kind of ‘safe place’ for me.
Oh, and I got a lot of work done there, too, without interruption, without intrusion, without the distractions of emails or messages or ghastly junk-music. Which, for me, is an important part of what a ‘safe place’ is for.
That’s what works for me, anyway; yet what works for you? What, for you, is a ‘safe place’ where you can relax and recuperate and get creative work done? What criteria do you use to identify your kind of ‘safe place’? And what does it help you do, that for you probably wouldn’t be as easy or as possible to do elsewhere?
I don’t need to know your answers to those questions, of course; they’re none of my business, the answers are not for me but for you alone. Yet I do hope at least that they might help you find the the type of ‘safe place’ that you need - a ‘safe place’ that will support you in creating change that can make the world better for us all.
Enjoyed reading Tom. Thanks.