Just a few months ago, when I would find myself working at my kitchen table, unshowered and still in my pajamas at 4 p.m., the notion of querying ELLE Magazine with an essay on love gone toxic seemed impossible and really, quite laughable. In my new office space, flanked by a small population of entrepreneurs chasing dreams, it doesn't.  It might even be halfway written.

Or that's the hope, anyway, and the reason for this project.

On Jan. 1, 2013, I purchased a 24-hour pass to Cruzioworks, the less expensive of two coworking spaces in my current city of Santa Cruz, Calif.

(For those unfamiliar with the term coworking: It's like a gym membership, only instead of loping along on a treadmill in pursuit of a more toned physique, you sit — or stand — in a shared office, in pursuit of self-employed success.)

Sleek and airy, the coworking arena at Cruzioworks fills the ground floor of an old newspaper headquarters. A wall of windows reveals an amusing stream of pedestrians on their way downtown, or through the ever-revolving door of an adult pleasure shop across the street, where I imagine them perusing French ticklers and leather whips. "That one looks like it will leave some good welts, what do you say honey babe?"

In my new coworking space, the prehistoric printing press has been replaced by 30 or so well dressed geeks; designers, software engineers, and entrepreneurs with start-up dreams twinkling in their eyes -- like Joey Jelinek, 26, who wears a bandanna every day until he launches his company, "Chimpdig." There is also a built-in cafe, an array of desks and plush arm chairs, and a break room, home to the perpetually empty coffee pot.

If you haven't guessed by now, I am a freelance writer. I just turned 28. And I may be clinically insane.