Boston Cream Dream

A brisque, blustery Monday morning commute and New York seems too sleepy to notice itself. I’m on the very edge of myself, eyes open and making every street mine. For the first time in weeks, I notice my own breathing and I feel ready for the day, for the week, for the everyday task, for the…moment. I skipped my pre-planned, pre-packaged breakfast in favor of the donut cart. A donut cart that sits right outside my office – I normally walk by it every day with my head down, having consumed a very calculated, cost-efficient and healthy breakfast with the occasional exception of those really painful, come-to-soon mornings that happen sometimes. Always, when I do default to the cart, even when I order, I keep one earbud in to block out the noise of the world. The guys inside are always nice and smiling – and they always give me 25 cents off. But when I stop there it’s almost like some kind of mini failure representing my entire life and career- failure to plan, to watch what I eat, to resist un-meticulous impulses, to spend a limited amount on breakfast. Today, the wind is out on the town, kicking up skirts and driving up hair like a kid on a sugar high, and I feel right there with it… moving alongside instead of towards the long months of winter and work ahead represented by my sleek black office building. It, by the way, looks rather shiny and nice today. (If it were a person, I think I would tell it so.) I’m not waiting for my future today. Not today. I’m living in it. When people ask what I want to do, I say I want to help people. Its not really that simple…but then again it is. Today I don’t ask myself any questions, like other days. And I refuse to give answers. What are you doing with your life? What are you doing for the world? Why are you doing X, Y and not Z? Your hardest does not change the world, why are you not trying harder? No comment. Cuz I’m still writing the press release. Today, I take both my earbuds out. I say “how are you doing” and I mean it. I order a Boston Cream. They say smiling “we havent seen you in a while. Good to see you” (and I believe they mean it). $1 instead of $1.25 today. Big smile. “Have a great day”. Oh I will. Its no Mahatma Ghandi. Its no sustainability in Africa. Not today. Just one, small, happy exchange and a Boston Cream. But maybe on some microscopic, low-frequency wavelength – the world felt it. Maybe not. But I will say, this one hell of a Boston Cream.

If you've never seriously considered therapy, then you just need more of it than the average person

Sometimes, you dont know that you're good at. Sometimes you dont think you can do what you know you can. Sometimes you think if everyone is lying to you, then you're the biggest liar of all. Sometimes you decide on exactly what you will say to every single person who supported you in the case that you might let them all down. Sometimes you feel confident that you might very well ruin everything you touch. Sometimes you get to work early and you actually care that absolutely no one will notice. Sometimes any lives you may have touched, any path you may have altered, don’t matter enough to stand judgment when you call them up one by one to the stand in the wee hours of the morning. Sometimes you realize you may be singing a whole octave lower than the song you wrote yourself requires. Sometimes you notice you’ve let your parents problems right on in to your own life, welcoming them at the door with a plate of fruit and cheese and those little non-recyclable appetizer plates that could be single-handedly responsible for global warming. Could you be responsible for global warming? Or maybe just global boring. Is it you, your parents, society or your health insurance provider that expect you to be such a healthy, well-balanced yet wildly successful and shiny-bright human being? Some days, when you go to lock your apartment door behind you, making a mental note to buy Drano, and dig for your keys in a bag full of crumply receipts you haven’t yet logged in your checkbook, you definately know its not all about you. No one has to tell you that. If it was all about you, they would leave the subway doors open the extra 3 seconds so you could safely slip on the train, as opposed to jamming your right shoulder in the doors with unfettered determination not to let life leave you behind. And some mornings, a lot like this one, you get tired of shoving your way into your future in favor of standing alone on the platform, watching the overcrowded train pull away toward success, faces smushed up against the glass. And then its “This train is delayed because of train traffic ahead. Please…be patient.”

Sometimes you spend all your time waiting for always – which will be, well, never. So you’ll just have to leave a voicemail on your own machine and plan to pick it up tomorrow when you’ve had a better nights sleep.