STEP 10 is not so much a task to be performed, as it is an awareness.  If the quality of your life is diminished by an unfortunate circumstance to be surrounded by small thinkers, bloviating know-it-alls, or  narrow-minded-judgmental souls, and this understandably exhausts you, I implore you to spend some time with little kids, preferably ones who are not your own, those are costly and require way to much of your undivided attention, perhaps the kids who live next door, and preferably ones who are smart, funny, witty, and have wide open minds.

It is stimulating to be around people who think big; who are open to all the prospects of all situations, who want to explore a variety of options, who want to experience new things, and it’s just ironic that in my world, the bigger thinkers are the smaller humans.  The older I grow the more I realize that many adults have lost their spark, and it is little kids who relish in the possibility of all things, they are in love with the wonder of wondering. 

If you have been in want of less toxicity in your life and you are now in the Round-Up phase, weeding out what does not make your life better, it might be that you really just need some new people, who think in a different way, ways that are more in tune with you.  Some of us need the company of people with big ideas, and finding companionship with humans who make you feel “connected” is a big deal. 

I need to be around people with spark, and a continuous want to open wider, and that is why my friendships are so valuable to me.  That I now have two little grandchildren who also have a spark is like the icing on the cupcake of my life.  If you are thinking of STEP 10 and how it might be part of your life just know that you have to participate; it requires intent and will, you might not realize that you have to make an effort to get these relationships and then cultivate them, they don’t just show up at your door (unless like me, you live next door to your amazing granddaughters.)

I am far more excited by words, thoughts, or ideas than might be considered “normal” but what is essential, as we know, with deep gratitude to Antoine de Saint-Exupery, is invisible to the eye, what is on the outside matters so much less when you understand STEP 10.  If you are feeling like your life needs a jolt, a kick, or a jump over the fence to where the grass appears to be greener, you might just be in need of some time spent with thinkers, the kind who think until their thinkers are sore…the kind with whom conversation is energizing.  This is one of the things about STEP 10 that makes me feel really good, that it’s wonderful to wonder, to be curiouser and curiouser…and for those of you who are stuck in jobs, families, or neighborhoods where you CAN’T get away from the little minds and the narrow thinkers, I urge you to use any chance you can get to wrap yourself up with people who think bigger thoughts, and if you don’t have the good fortune to have adorable brilliant grandchildren next door to you as I do, then get some books.  They don’t have to be big books, they just have to be ones that will expand your thoughts, wide…like at the dentist, Open Wide.

I’m blessed to know some people who have trained their brains to never let an anxious or worried thought linger for long in their heads…they are very aware humans, embracing the present moment (as self-help books are wont to espouse) who know that the world is going to keep spinning, and things are going to happen, or not, and people will behave in a suspected way, or not, no matter what…so they give up neither their precious time nor priceless energy, thinking about things that would cause or invite feelings of unease.  They do not create disquiet in an otherwise harmonious life…

Some people I know are like skittish kittens and doomsday preppers, and are anxious or worried almost all the time about almost anything that their brain can grasp hold of…ridiculously running with preposterous ideas…in what seems like a constant jumpy or unsettled state, and even in moments of calm, take any opportunity to let one tiny idea fester, and create an all-consuming awful disturbance in what could otherwise be a most tranquil life…

STEP 9 is a proposal to use your imagination in a positive way.  Some of you do it over and over…you know you do; you make something out of nothing…you think of the worst possible thing that can happen, based on nothing but your imagination running wild with a negative thought.  WHAT good does this do?  WHAT is the point of this?  Use your imagination instead to make something out of nothing in a GOOD way.  I know people who already know and live STEP 9 and they are splendid souls, and most of us would be better off if we tried to mimic the behavior.

…Make a song out of a word you read in a fairy tale.  Make a painting out of the dream you had last night where you had iridescent gossamer wings.  Make a love out of an unexpected smile shared across a room.  Make a skirt out of a tablecloth you found at the thrift shop.  Make doll slippers out of zebra duct tape with cotton balls as the adornment.  Make a wind chime out of old mismatched stainless spoons you saw in a box on the side of the road.  Make a poem out of a nonsense word your granddaughter uttered at the bus stop.  Make a friend out of the stranger you see walk by your house every day when you get your mail.  Make a delicious dinner out of the last four pieces of produce in your refrigerator.  Make a long fabulous necklace out of the three short strands of beads you never wear.  Make an organized masterpiece, in all the folded glory you can achieve, out of your messy linen cupboard.  Make yard art out of an old truck spring and the rusty forks of a rake.  Make the best use of your idle mind today, any way that you can, and I think you will be glad you did…

I propose that ownership of your shit, or ownership of your glory, is an integral part of becoming a better version of yourself, and if it is yours, you may use it.  If it is something you know of, or heard about, or read, or that happened to somebody, it does not count.  Period.  This is how I can best summarize STEP 8 of our journey, which may be unclear to some of you.  I was married for a short time to a man who had an anger problem, an alcohol problem, a cocaine problem, a money problem, and a job problem, and during the time that I was his wife, those problems were mine.  It could also be stated that at that time my parents had a daughter problem, or that my infant had a momma problem.  You see, we each own our part of the experience, however, I only “own” my portion…what happened to me, what I saw with my own eyes, what I felt with my own heart, what I heard with my own ears, the wounds that are my own are the only ones that I can own.  If I choose to default to role of victim over every single thing that goes wrong in my life, because I went through ___, whatever _____it might be, that is my choice, that is your choice too, if however, I choose to let those experiences shuffle on back to the dark dusty closets of my thoughts, that’s my choice too.  You see we all make the choice to default to the shit or not.

I know people who have had bad things happen to them.  I know people who have done bad things to other people.  I have a neighbor who has not spoken to her daughter in 30 years and know a woman who has not spoken to her mother in 20.  I know people who have been raped, I know people who have had to bury a child, I know people who had their parents die when they were young, I know people who had such awful parents they likely would’ve been better off had their parents died…EVERY person owns that story which is their own and I know some who default to THE story, THE event as the reason for everything…every failure, every upset somehow goes back to THE thing, yet I also know people who never let those stories have any power at all over anything, people who confidently go through life with all sorts of experiences where they have actually been victimized but give those experiences no power and never play the victim card.  The ones for whom life has been rosy, always, and nothing bad ever happened, well, good for them! and I mean that!!  but for the rest of us…STEP 8 encourages you to own it, and get on with it.  Have you ever read a memoir, or some sort of non-fiction work, and thought to yourself, ‘wow, I bet her mom wishes she were not such a horrible parent!’ or ‘I bet his ex-wife wishes she had been less greedy and more loving’ …my list of possible scenarios could go on for paragraphs, but the fact is, we, the participant in our own life, the first person narrator, the “I” and the “mine,” owns each and every detail of everything…whatever happened to us, whatever we did, ANYthing that we experience is our own.  If we heard about it or read about it, that is not ownership, that is gossip and rag-mag propaganda, but if we participated in it, or were a recipient of it,  it is ours to do with as we see fit.

A girlfriend of mine wrote me one day this winter, “don’t disappoint a writer” and I thought, she’s so right!!!  …but I also thought, don’t disappoint anybody, if you can help it, because how we behaved to THAT person, becomes their story…either dwell on it for your whole life and let it be the event that defines you or the reason you are ____blank, or just be done with it and send it off into the stratosphere.  I think that there are some people who default to what has happened in their life, it becomes what defines them whether they intended this or not, and that story is re-run over and over and over in their minds over time.  It becomes their reason or their excuse for anything that they don’t want to take responsibility for.  Much like Big Bang, Seinfeld, or Friends reruns, we KNOW exactly what this episode is, and we know exactly what is going to happen, and nothing is new to us at all, and we know exactly what word comes next, “Bazinga!”  “These pretzels are making me thirsty!”  “Pivot!”  yet we don’t turn the channel.  People who let those bad experiences define them or become their default are like people who watch the same shows over and over or don’t ever want to read anything new.  For STEP 8 I think what I want to share, what I am trying to express, although not articulating particularly well today, is that if you are in need of a healing of some sort, or a joyful noise of some sort, just do it.  Either tell the awful f**king story one last time, and get it out of your mind and do not give it any power for any more days of your life, or tell an amazing f**king story, something wonderful, and  vow to make more amazing stories, and not living off the bones of the only one you’ve got!  Here is the deed, here is the title…go

It takes just 7 seconds to turn anything around.  You might think I need to have my head examined, but imagine…You have seen the same stunning red-head at the same elevator you use in the lobby at work, almost every single day for a month.  Her hair is shimmery and her smile is wide and she looks like the kind of woman you really think would suit you, and there are, it’s true, some nights that you fall asleep thinking about what a beautiful sight she would be to your eyes waking up beside her one day…and so you finally ask her for her name, and then a few days later with frequent chit-chat, ask her to dinner that weekend.  You meet at a restaurant you have heard from your coworkers is very good, and you find out that you and she only live around the block from each other!… and your conversation flows as easily as the wine, and there are no awkward moments of silence where you are grasping for something to say…Then the server comes to the table and this radiant red-head with mesmerizing green eyes is terribly rude to her, and you are aghast!…and you know, from every GQ article you ever read, that the way a date treats the server, is an excellent indicator of a person’s character…and so you feel conflicted, so pretty vs. such an asshole, and you begin to feel the slight nausea of deflation set in…and then the soup arrives, and the slurping sloppy sound she makes with every spoonful is worse than any *nails on a chalkboard* could ever be, and you realize in that moment that you will one, never date her again, and two, now have to take a completely different route to work and use another entrance, so your timing and elevator needs are modified so you can avoid her, at least until the uncomfortableness you feel about the situation has subsided…”She seemed like she would’ve be perfect for me???  PLOT TWIST!”

All you ever wanted was a Beagle, from the time you were a little girl you said someday when you grew up and had a house with a big yard you would have a beagle and would name her Belle…and you finally have your own home, and a yard! with a fence!…and you bring your little puppy home and the first night all she does is cry… so you take her out of her training crate and she seems to sleep nicely next to your bed on a blanket,  but when you walk into your kitchen to make coffee the next morning, you discover she has chewed during the night, completely, on all four legs of every one of your dining room chairs.  When you get out of the shower the next day, you find she has eaten the decorative throw pillows from your couch.  EACH one.  The following weekend you come in from getting your mail and see she has peed on your brand new white wool rug that Crate&Barrel only sent you on Tuesday.  You spend hundreds of dollars on obedience training, and hours of your Sundays over many weeks with these puppy lessons, and get the idea that your vision and dream of this happy dog named Belle, that wears a yellow bandana around her neck, greeting you every day at your door after work, is instead going to likely be laying in a crate all day, every day, because if she is not, everything in your house  will be ruined in your absence…”She’s all I ever wanted???  PLOT TWIST!”

You sell your sports car, your “baby,” your “after Sunday pancakes, take a drive to clear your head” car that you saved for years to buy,  so that you can present a stunning diamond engagement ring to your girlfriend, now fiance, and she loves it so much and you feel so happy and proud to see her casually use her left hand for so many more tasks.  You empty your savings account months later to pay for the flowers for her dream wedding and to pay for the tuxedos she says the groomsmen have to wear.  You sell all of your guitars on Ebay to help pay for the honeymoon that she says she has always wanted, and So-and-So got to go to this place, and she does not want to be outdone by So-and-So…and before you know what has happened, you have sold your house that you loved, with the cherry wide plank floors (although small, it was yours) and you loved the trees on your street, to move to what she calls  a “better” area, with nicer schools.  Three years go by and you discover that your wife has been fooling around with the swimming instructor of the pool where your son takes lessons.  A year later you are living in an apartment in a town you don’t even like, with hideous emerald-green shag carpeting, with vapor clouded windows, paying child support to your ex-wife, and the swimming instructor now gets to flip your son’s Sunday morning pancakes on the eight burner Wolf range in the kitchen with the Carrara marble countertops that used to be yours…”I thought we had the same vision for our life, together???  PLOT TWIST!”

You work so hard to afford to pay for school and do extraordinarily well in college, better than most of your classmates who don’t even have jobs and many who don’t even maintain as full a course load as you do, and your professors proclaim you will go ‘so far’ and you will be able to achieve any success you put your mind to, and you apply to the most prestigious firm in the city you always dreamed to live in, whose offices are in the “it” building, run by the lawyers who get the “it” cases, and you do well, very well…you have bigger paychecks than you ever dreamed of, but you work 68 hours a week, you have not had a boyfriend in 6 years and have not been on a date in two; the last time anybody kissed you was your Dad, at Thanksgiving, as you headed out the door right after dinner so that you could catch your plane to be back at work Friday morning, and you worried and worked all weekend to make up for that missed day, you don’t even like turkey anyway… you have not had a quiet Tuesday night to sip wine and read a novel, or talk on the phone to a girlfriend in nearly a decade, and  you have not made any friends at work because every single person you meet also wants the ONE job that will be available next October when so-and-so moves to Michigan, and you wonder, “what am I doing?!” …”This is living my big dream???  PLOT TWIST!”

AND here is the magic…It takes about 7 seconds to “DO” STEP 7.  Accept that this is absolutely NOT AT ALL what you were thinking your life, or a specific situation or scenario was going to be, ACCEPT that there is absolutely nothing that you can do about what has already happened.  Well, ok.  “OK!” that’s it, that is all you can say or think or believe.  I imagine yelling it out, as STEP 7 suggests, is the way to go.  You certainly could bemoan your situation.  You certainly could ‘woe is me‘ until the cows come home, but why?  Why suffer one more second?  Why let that voice in your head, that annoying non-stop-narrative spend one more moment “telling” you what you already know?   In just 7 seconds you can be done with every one of the negative thoughts, and reiteration of dashed dreams!  You see my friends, you are not alone.  You are not the first person to find that your plan did not become your present. It is not the end of the world.  NO!!  It is simply this…a change in the story line, yours, and yours alone, the story of you…

Comme Je Fus     

As I was

I know a woman who is very different today than she was six months ago.  She still works for the same company and has the same phone number, but she is not the same.  I don’t know that it is any better, from the woman she was last year, we can’t really know anyone but our own selves, and I don’t judge, anybody, so it is neither my place nor my desire to assess if this becoming is an improvement from the ‘before‘ or not.  All that matters is if she thinks it is.  All I really know for sure is that it is possible to completely let go of who you were, and become who you will be now, in just six months.  Will this new different person now be her?  Or is this new different person just a temporary her?  Who can know?  Perhaps even she doesn’t know.

STEP 6, for any of you who might be in need or want of a change, seems to be neither a question nor an answer…a pondering I suppose… and that it is a quote from Sex In The City, one of the best shows ever written, AND from Carrie Bradshaw, one of the best characters ever written (in my ever so humble opinion) just makes it all the more exceptional…Maybe some people need a year, maybe some people need a decade, maybe some people need more than just this one lifetime, to become who they will be… but I do know one thing, it turns out that six months is a period of time that is sufficient to transform one’s self fully in body, attitude, mind, and behavior.

I suspect that people can become so set in their ways and frameworks of thinking, their tiny boxes all in a row, that they, without intent, and without purpose, end up being closed off to ANYthing or ANY possibility that is different from what they “believe” they like, or want, or think.  I also understand that this type of person, even if they didn’t plan to, often becomes so judgmental because they simply can’t imagine thinking in some bigger way, or outside of their comfort zone.  I sort of see it as Dorothy living in sepia toned Kansas, and in Oz, opening the door into the bewildering awesomeness of something else, something new, something she never even dreamed of, magnificence that she never even imagined…THAT big!

That being addressed, it’s clear to me that people can change, and that they decide to do so when they realize that the rigid and unyielding small thoughts and somewhat close minded ignorance they had been living with is no longer serving them.  I don’t however believe for one second that it’s a regard as one way being “correct” and one way being “wrong,” but rather a blossoming, an awakening maybe, that exploring and experimenting with new ideas and new thoughts and new attitudes and new behaviors might lead to something “I didn’t even realize I’d want” so to speak…I don’t know if people who purposefully change drastically, necessarily consider their change “better,” only that because it is attempted with thought and planning, it’s recognition that *A has not been working the way I had anticipated, so I am going to try B.*

I hope if you feel you are in want of STEP 6 that if it is something as small as, “I think I want to shave my beard” or as enormous as, “I think I want to sell my house and move to Nepal and take a vow of silence” that you do it with care and attention to detail.  That you do it because it feels like it is what you want to do, not something you have to do.  That you do it because you want to be more than maybe you were.  Because, you know, like Alice says in Wonderland, “I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.”

STEP 5 today is in celebration of my father.  He is a person who does…He does more in a week than most people do in a month, than some people do in a year.  He is a person who does what he loves and loves what he does.  He is a person who never is blue, or low, or unbalanced, or unsettled, and if he has ever been ANY of these things, then he is also the greatest actor in the world.  He has never been lazy and never been lethargic, he has never been overweight, and has never been ill, and other than a cold every few winters and a hernia surgery once, he’s never been laid up or out of commission. He’s never been a drinker but he was a smoker when I was little, I’ve been told it was three packs a day, but I still can’t imagine it, but all the parents smoked, it was the 70’s, and then when he decided to quit, he just did that too.  Just. Like. That.

Some of you might think of “doing” as traveling, or trying exotic foods, or having hobbies, or being involved with sports, or getting together with his friends…answers to a question during a phone call such as,  “what are you doing?”  He does none of these things.  He has had a very small number of good friends during my entire life but he has never, as far as I know, gone out with them, ever, to do anything.  Some people on the outside looking in would get the idea that my Dad is the most boring man on the planet, but that’s the funny thing…his lifestyle would not suit me, AT ALL, in that I think it would be very boring to eat the same thing every day for lunch, and the same thing every night for dinner, and never want to travel anywhere, or have friends over, but his lifestyle and his passion for “his life” suits him so perfectly, that he is always happy.  It is not lost on me that my mother is right there in the same house as he, they are both now retired, and that his lifestyle suits them, as a couple, blows my mind…but my parents are still deeply in love with each other and as far as I can tell, are perfectly well suited for each other.  It is bold to say that my dad is the greatest man I will ever know, but it is also true. It is also true that today is his birthday and it simply is a coincidence that it falls on the same day as STEP 5.

A lot goes into discovering something you love to do, or in my Dad’s case, everything he loves to do.  My Dad for example LOVES to move heavy objects, piles of dirt from one place to another, giant tons of gravel or stones from point A to point B, he likes to dig holes or built berms, he calls it “tractoring” as in, “no Daddy can’t come to the phone, he is outside tractoring” and he probably loves his Kubota like some other men love their baseball mitt or dirt bike or favorite bar stool.  He is a major audiophile and has the most amazing sound system in his garage, better than most people have in their houses.  He likes to build things and fix things and tinker with things and create things and I don’t believe he has ever once taken a nap.  I have never, when the sun was up, seen him on the sofa watching television.  I have never, ever, not once-ever,  heard him use the expression “I’m bored” or sad/depressed/angry/upset…NONE of those descriptions of a state of being has ever crossed his lips.  He has, in that Iggy Pop way, a “Lust for Life.”  He does not follow sports, watch sports, or play sports.  That tonight is the Super Bowl means little to him, and the only television show I know for sure he does not miss is Q&A with Brian Lamb on C-Span…which happens to be on Sunday nights…at 8 o’clock…so while millions and millions of men will be watching the Super Bowl, my dad probably won’t because he is not interested in it…AND that is the key, at least from my observations, of this life, with this man as my Dad…the key is to be interested, deeply, in whatever interests you.

I don’t think there are any rules.  I think Julia Child has it summed up perfectly…what makes you happy and excited and interested in doing or participating? OK!!  Go, DO that.  AND for any of you who have yet to find that magic, the desire to “DO” whatever it is that makes you feel alive and engrossed and passionate and interested…well then, STEP 5 is an invitation, isn’t it?

Do you ever meet people or read about ones who totally turned their lives around?  People who were wrongfully imprisoned, or were addicted alcoholics, or had been brutally molested, or had horrifically abusive parents, or were disfigured in an accident, or lost everything and everyone of their family in a fire…people who REALLY have suffered.  People who would be justified in their screams and cries of “Why Me?!”  I mean real agony…not modern day middle-class ‘agony’ as in, “I can’t believe Comcast still has not come!” or “I can’t believe she canceled my manicure!” or “I can’t believe my Lexus won’t be ready til tomorrow and I still have to drive around in this Escape!”  or “I can’t believe the hot water heater is broken and it’s only 5 years old!” or “I can’t believe her soccer game is the same time as his band concert, what am I going to do?!”  …you and I have met THESE kinds of people…the ‘oh-me-oh-my’ uppity drama types, and I know you have, much like I have, wondered to yourself, ‘what would they do if they had actual real f**king problems?!”

There are people who have been to hell and back, and up the creek, and had to have the patience of Job to endure trials and tribulations that most of us can’t even being to imagine, who manage, against all odds it seems, to turn things around for themselves.  I have read about women who grew up in villages in Africa where they had little if any nutritious food and even less potable water, yet were brave enough and strong enough to walk miles to school, after working in the morning, so that they could get an education and make a life for themselves, and they did it!  I have read about strong handsome men who were crippled and blinded and burned in the preposterous unwinnable war, yet had the determination to try to heal and adapt and overcome, and did it!  I have read about women who had to bury their children due to incurable diseases or unexplained illness, who might have wanted to just lie down and die in despair and heartbreak, but instead managed to pick up the pieces of their crumbled dreams for their children and start a research foundation, and did it!  There are people who you might think would just throw in the towel…give up…but the human condition is generally such that we want to thrive.  We humans don’t want to give up, even when the circumstances might seem too grim to bear…BUT what is so bloody remarkable to me, and what I applaud and rejoice in, is people who make a choice that “THIS is not going to be my life” whatever *this* it might be.  If you find yourself feeling blue, or hopeless, or lost, or angry, or any of those emotions that make you feel Eeyore-ish, rather than sunny, joyful, confident,  and elated, celebrating Tigger-ish-ness, I implore you to think about people who have had a far more difficult time of it than you have, but managed to say to the universe, “Re-Write!”

STEP 4 is a celebration of living.

You know how good it feels, like down deep in your soul,  like how you feel it in your belly or a tingle in your spine, when you see a really happy loving couple?  Or, a joyful adventurous toddler, or compassionate nurses tenderly caring for someone ill, or a teenager being kind and helping an old man with his shopping bags, or, or, or…when you see happiness and good, you also can feel happiness and good.  STEP 3 makes something my Nana used to say to me even more clear and to the point, “pretty is as pretty does.”  BUT she could have just as well been saying to me, all those years of my life, happy thoughts show on your face, good deeds and kindness show on your face, doing unto others and all of that Golden Rule jibber-jabber is good for your skin,  and that nobody wants to see a miserable frowning sour-puss!  It’s quite likely that if you are in a “bad place,” nothing has changed since last night and this morning your thoughts are still racing, or you are still mad about ___blank, or you are still freaking out about the collection agency calling, or you are still sad about the argument you had with Tom, Dick, or Harry…BUT you don’t have to STAY there.  Bad Place thoughts are like a shitty motel…you might need to be there for a night, because you have to BE somewhere, but it’s no Four Seasons, it’s no place you want to stay for any length of time…pack up and get out!!!  AND my daughter just got back from the Four Seasons in Maui with her fabulous new boyfriend, so I have this detail from a reliable source!  It is possible to turn bad thoughts into good ones and give your perspective a tweak towards the happy…find a way to look to the bright side, even when the dark side is trying to pull you in…If you already always look lovely and seldom have bad thoughts, “Yay you!”  but this closing then is for the rest of us…So today, another cold day and another likely gray one, do your best to follow Step 3 if you think it might work for you…

STEP 2 might not be at all interesting to many of you.  In fact, to a number of you, it might be down-right disgusting and the thought of it makes you cringe, in fact, you’ve never given it any thought at all…you don’t like the idea, the smell, the effort, the color, and have never, not even once, considered it worthy of thought…but to me it is glorious…hot, dark, comforting, rich, complex, aromatic, smooth, energizing, delicious, bright, earthy, strong, lively magnificence…I have bought green beans and experimented with home roasting, I have bought ridiculously over priced exotic beans that I only used with my burr grinder and a French Press, I have bought cheap pre-ground grocery store coffee, and I have bought ten ounces of coffee beans scooped into a tidy brown paper bag that cost me more than a pair of Calvin Klein jeans.  I’ve ordered coffee from Ethiopia and Kenya, Costa Rica and Chili.  I’ve bought fair trade and organic, and I’ve perhaps purchased from companies who treat the farmers horribly or don’t care to sustain the villagers who work for them…but…in my life, I’ve loved them all.

I first tried coffee when I was in college.  I suppose like many addictions, that’s when they start. I worked at a fabulous gallery and my boss loved to have afternoon coffee, every day, and one day when I was 18, after I’d been working for her for many months, she asked me why I didn’t drink it…this was back before there were coffee shops of any sort on our little island, and back before Starbucks was even known here on the east coast, when coffee wasn’t “in.”  She lived with her husband in an apartment over the shop, and every afternoon he would bring her a mug of coffee and it smelled so good…my grandparents, both sets, drank coffee, so I had been around coffee, but never knew coffee…and truth be told, I don’t recall particularly liking my first cup of coffee, but I did like the afternoon break, the chatting with my boss, the connection that it seemed to induce and shortly thereafter I met a woman at school, a single mother much like myself, who asked me if I wanted to join her for coffee after our class, and THAT sealed the deal…the tables outside of the cafeteria were full of happy looking college students, laughing and talking and writing and smiling, and drinking coffee…the association was made very quickly for me…coffee = happiness.

Ages ago, when my daughter was in pre-school, I dated a guy who liked coffee as much as I did, as did his mom, and his mother and I would often, if not always, drink it after dinner when I ate with their family.  All through college it was not unusual for me to drink it in the morning, the afternoon, and at night.   It never has made me jittery or edgy, and I feel comfortable reporting that it does not affect my sleep in any way.  I have made lifelong friends over coffee and I have had first dates, and last dates, over coffee.  I am well aware that it is not an enjoyable beverage for many people.  In fact, neither of my parents drink it AND they never did, neither my sister nor my daughter drink it,  and neither have my last two boyfriends.  When my granddaughters were little, one of the first things that they associated with me was that I loved coffee, in fact my daughter once was scolded for using “Nana’s mug” which was not, at all…but a mug in my daughter’s house that had never been used until my visit!  In fact, when the little ones are here and they say grace at the dinner table, the youngest one concludes with, “and peace to all, and I love trees, and Nana’s breath smells like coffee”  then they crack up laughing, every single time they eat dinner at my house, and why I wonder is the laughter is at my expense, and do I really have perpetual coffee breath?  and I wonder what it has to do with gratitude for dinner and thanks for food,  this is still a mystery to me, but they’ve done it for years, and it doesn’t seem like they are going to stop any time soon!

I could probably count on my fingers and toes the total number of days I have gone without coffee since that first time.  I do get a headache most days if I don’t have afternoon coffee…and I suppose much like being dope sick, and like a junkie who just needs an eye dropper full to get through a day, I can feel 100 times better with just 10 ounces!  It’s like a miracle.  It is my “drug of choice.”  So, you might be wondering how THIS works into my idea of a 21 step detox/reboot…well, like I wrote, take what you need…and maybe some of you don’t know that you need coffee.  “He likes it, hey Mikey!”  …you never know until you try, and for all you know, it is the one thing you have not tried that will reignite you, it might just be the best idea you have all year…you just never know…

Let’s start at the beginning…Why are there ’12 steps’ and not five, or 16 or 21?  Is 12 the magic number for change, for behavior modification, or for turning things around in one’s life?  I know people who have turned their lives around by following “the” 12 specific steps, and I’ve been told that it’s not a step-a-day, that there is no specific time frame that one completes them, that sometimes one single step can take weeks….I think it is clear to all of us, that change, any change, is seldom rapid.  From what I have read about the formal twelve steps, it seems that the very first step is to recognize there is a problem, the word that is used in step 1 is ‘unmanageable,’  the recognition that one’s life is out of control.  This is a good word, because to me it means that the problem can be fixed, unmanageable is not the same as irreparably broken, it is not the same as hopelessly damaged, it is not the same as impossible to remedy, it is simply, at this time, unmanageable.  I think when we assess our lives or our current situations and we discover, or perhaps a better word would be ‘accept,’ that something has become out of balance or unmanageable,  it’s important to reevaluate and regroup if we want things to change.  So while I intend no disrespect whatsoever to the ‘real’ 12 steps, I have created something of an alternative, 21 steps, to take as needed if one feels one is in need of a reboot.  I start today in the order that they’ve come to me, and not in any particular order of importance, but simply to ponder and take or leave as you may need.

STEP I

I would like to think that step 1 here is pretty clear, BUT it is sometimes very hard to be positive or upbeat or to give off good vibes when you yourself are feeling negative or depressed, but I think it’s important to try to follow step 1, every day if possible.  Find something to be happy for, or happy with or happy about every day…even if your life has reached total shite levels, and the ONLY thing that you can think of is, “at least it’s not raining,” that is at least a step in the right direction.  For me it is crucial to be positive, as positive as possible, every day…I have had my share of awful in life and I have had my share of wonderful…and no matter what, there is ALWAYS something good to take and run with it…it can be as seemingly meaningless as “today I did not forget to take the shirts out of the dryer and so they are not a wrinkled mess,” or it can be as profoundly significant as “today I missed being sideswiped by a tractor-trailer on the bridge by a few seconds and holy cow I could have been dead if I were going just a little bit faster.”  You see, it does not matter WHAT it is, only that you find something positive and then spread that around as best as you can in whatever way that you can.  BE the Ebola or the Measles of “good ass-vibes.”

…If you smile at the snarky old lady behind you in the grocery store line (who recently had to bury her daughter who was killed in a mugging and was only 40), or if you smile at the frazzled mother with a cart full of frozen food and a poorly behaved toddler and a crying infant in a carrier seat (who thought for sure she would never get pregnant and now at 45 has two babies and is tired all the time), or if you smile at the old man who is mopping up the V-8 spill in aisle 11 (who worked his whole life as a bank manager but lost all his savings in a bad investment and now has to work full-time at 79 just to pay his property taxes), you might very well BE the ONLY positive thing that happens to them that day, you might be the only kindness or comfort they feel that week…you don’t know!  We can’t know other people’s pain or pleasure, we don’t know other people’s trials or triumphs, we only know how we want to be in the universe, and if we want to be positive I assure you, it’s infectious, and the more you spread it the more it will grow, like a science project in a petri dish, it will spread from you to them and they will eventually spread it too.  I promise, with practice, you will find it becomes easier, every time you do it and I promise that the more you do it the better you yourself will feel, and I also promise, much like the Wiccan’s spell,  “Ever mind the rule of three, What ye send out comes back to thee.”