while shocked that its been 2 months already

Sometimes I take a few short moments to actually take in what's going on around me. Most of the time, these moments are paired with a cup of good coffee. I recently read a book entitled "How Starbucks Saved My Life". An appropriate book for a Seattle native to read. Not that the book is about a literal cup of coffee saving someones life but on how the experience of working at a Starbucks branch in New York city changed one mans view of the world and the people that are its make-up.

Ever since my first cup of espresso at 14, I realized that coffee is so much more than a tasty treat intended to wake you up and swig as quickly as you can to get your morning going or re-vitalize you in the late hours... No. Coffee should be a meeting point. A time of reflection. Yoga for the palate. Like tea is for the Britts, coffee is for Americans, which we borrowed from the Italians.

At 20 I took my first step into Barista-hood. I got a job working the mid-shift in a tiny shack of a drive-thru espresso stand supplying the masses of Conway and freeway drivers with the ever addictive stimulant of espresso and a short conversation. I do not exaggerate when I say that in the 2 minutes I spent with these people each day I became the bar-tender to their emotional lives. I knew more about them than their mothers did. Mike, with his iced 20-ounce (that's a Venti for those who only speak Starbucks) Irish Cream Breve, lost his job and I was the first person that knew about it. Mike came at the slow time of day just so that we could chat for a few extra minutes each afternoon. Glenn always came twice a day, brought his beat up Dad-mug and while I filled it with a frothy Hazelnut Latte, he would share his idea's of sustainable farming and give the barista's fruits and vegetables from his farm. He'd talk for hours if we let him, but he always saw when we glanced up to see someone lining up behind him and he would always continue his conversation without pause as he drove off. I never did finish a conversation with that guy. Raine brought her 3 year old daughter with her for a decaf mocha in the mornings and we chatted about life thru the car window. These people have stayed with me and I think about them often.

I always played my mix CD's when I made coffee. I had the "Vintage Mix", the "Smooth Mix" and the "Kick A** Mix". We had a rule at the coffee stand I worked in: No country music, no Rap or hard rock music allowed. I just can't imagine handing someone a cup of coffee thru the drive-thru window at the same time as "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy" is floating out the window as well. Gross. I'm sharing life with these people and that life is classy. Oh yes. Ella, Billie, Aretha, Ryan and Bruce. These friends of mine got me through long days and enticed people to share with me. Even now my house is like a cafe. You walk in, I say "Hi! So good to see you! Can I get you anything?", my espresso machine already primed and ready to pull shots - decaf, half-caf, breve, latte, vanilla, chocolate... Long day and need a shot of Kaluah in that iced latte? I'm on it. All the while my favorite artists are wafting thru the house, enticing conversation and pulling at our emotions, creating a sound-track to our lives. Music has a connection to the emotion like nothing else, and caffine has the unique ability to break down the barriers of even the most timid guest.

I feel like the training of attitude and speech that I learned as a barista has infiltrated my every-day life and it is a good thing. In 2 minutes I can get a lot of information out of you and you won't think anything of it and I'll order your drink for you at Starbucks and make sure its just as you like it and as I walk out the door to wherever I'm going, wish your sister better health and tell you I'll see you around. I think we all have that ability in us and many of us use it to our advantage while others say they are introverts or too shy to serve people in this way. Personally, I no longer believe in intro- or extroverts as we think of them today. I believe we are all just people, differing looks, differing opinions, differing lifestyles and political views but still just people. All of us have a story, all of us have something unique to share and often, if we get over our said "shyness" we'd learn a lot from these people that we walk shoulder to shoulder with in the grocery store. As a recovering "introvert" ( I was painfully, overly self-aware), it was always nice when I'd spill a cup of coffee on myself and some "extrovert" would give me a handful of napkins and tell me that I'm not the first person to do that and certainly not the last and to have a wonderful day. I learn a lot from these people. The ones that take the extra 2 seconds to make sure I have a good day despite the coffee stained shirt and 2nd degree burns. And I love them for it. I learned that if it makes me feel this good to have someone care about me, so randomly and so easily, that I could do that for other people and it doesn't hurt me one bit. Quite the opposite.

I have a particular friend, Adrian, who lives and breathes amazingness in interacting with people. I have learned so much from merely watching him say hello. He very naturally yet very purposefully draws people into comfortable conversation and finds a way to connect you to what you are most passionate about, what you need most or who you would identify with best. Quite a few of my close friends I met thru an introduction from Adrian. He purposefully lives in a part of town that has more of the homeless and the urban poor than most communities. It allows him to interact with them every day and learn how to serve them better. Adrian heads up an organization called ServeLA (www.servela.org) to assist the large community of people that, for any number of reasons, struggle to gain what most of us take advantage of everyday; education, food, job, shelter or a place to lie down at night. I am inspired by him to do more than I am now, to be more and to do more to purposefully serve those around me.

I find myself talking a lot about bettering our community, about doing more for the people we live around, about changing the world. These things can happen. Your dream for your life and the lives around you can come true. You can repair a broken relationship. Life may not be like it is in the movies, but I don't know if you've noticed - most of the time great things happen to people in movies because one of the characters isn't afraid to ask the first question, speak the first word, give the first smile or, when the occasion comes along, to save someone's life. We're here for a purpose. I don't know if you know that. You, yes you, are where you are for a purpose. So do something about it.

While in my car

Its an odd feeling when I’m sitting in my car waiting for the stoplight to turn green and just in front of me I’m watching a gas station employee put up the new price for a gallon of gas. It feels like being a little girl again sitting helplessly as somebody takes the change from my piggy bank. The only issue is, I’m sitting amongst 100 other cars with all the drivers watching the same thing. And when the light turns green, we all push our gas pedals and listen as the sound of our acceleration turns into the “cha-ching” of an olde timey cash register and we all just continue driving. I envisioned as the ring of the register faded in my ears, all of us turning off our engines, getting out of our cars and staring as the man somberly took down the 4 and replaced it with a 5… slo-motion and very epic, like an M. Night Shyamalan film.

The feeling hit me again a few moments later. I was in need of a few of those thin plastic garment bags you get from the cleaners when they finish dry-cleaning your shirts. I went to the first mom and pop cleaner I could find and asked for 2 bags. Pop gets them for me and tells me its $2.00. I joke, “Two bucks? You’re killing me here!” as I’m handing him the quarters. Pop apologetically explains, “The gas prices, they go up. The gas prices…”. Yeah, I know. Why do you think I’ve only got quarters to use?

It’s not so much the gas prices or the economy or any of that. I’m struck by my feelings of being stuck, the inability to create and further positive change. I’m the product of youth rally’s and summer camps that encouraged us to be history makers and world changers. Much of my parents generation have been the ones to host such events for us only to tell us when we get home that we should stay safe and keep our heads on our shoulders. It was a confusing time in life. Not that it’s much better now. In what world do our dreams become realities? In what lifetime does our plan for World Aid actually come to fruition? And in what mind-frame do I need to be in to not let my frustrations of my “normal” life side track me from my calling for life?

The predictable reality is that only if we all decide together to be history makers and world changers is the world ever going to change. And, if I get so hampered by the changing of the U.S. economy and the fight over oil, I am never going to join any group of people for long enough to see that change I so desire.

The truth is, we have to live fearlessly. We have to shake the dust off our feet and run toward whatever it is that we are passionate about. If enough of us run in the same direction, the world will be redesigned.

while walking

I have tried to be many things in my life, yet disciplined is not one of those things that I have achieved. I recalled recently a list I created when I was 18. It was supposed to be my morning routine. I worked as a music teacher as well as working a late shift at the Boys and Girls Club and felt that waking up "early" was important for personal time and well-being. What I had done to appeal to my senses was draw, yes illustrate, my alarm clock with a flashing "8:00 am". This was supposed to give me enough time to perform my complete list of disciplines before heading off in the early afternoon to guide little ones thru the design of music and then off again to supervise other little ones as they played with scissors and billiard sticks. Yet, I contain the talent known to many as Procrastination. This talent is in direct opposition to Discipline. I could not, for anything, get out of bed before 9am. Could not. Most often I'd be pushing it to 9:45, 10:00. This always left me rushing to get that list finished, or rather, rushing to leave everything as it was.

I'm a stacker. When I was in school, I would take all of my homework and projects and research papers and stack up all of the books in front of me so that I could stare at my huge pile of work to do and fall into depression just before trying to write my speech on Productive Perspectives for Mrs. Frisk's class. Not productive. I would do it on purpose thinking that it would jump-start me into a fury of amazingness, high grades and happy looks from my parents and teachers.

The stacking, the list of daily tasks, the white board up on my wall right now that's supposed to encourage me with check-marks when I've completed my day's duties... these all are supposed to grant me discipline... and always, these things intimidate me to inactivity. What I should have written for my speech was something titled "I Just Peed My Pants in Panic, a Biography."

I currently have an early morning routine that I would love to stick to. Basically, I get up, eat breakfast, chew my chewable vitamin, grab my iPod and go for a walk in the morning. The walk is multi-purposed: limber up before morning yoga (if you've ever tried to do yoga after sleeping all night, down-dog is the meanest most torturous form of waking up ever), get my vitamin D from the sun (because chewables can't provide all of natures goodness), say hello to the world of West Hollywood and think my thoughts. I cannot tell you how many issues I work out in my head while hearing Chris Martin croon in my ears. 

It was on such a morning walk that I realized my disability in discipline was all in my head, not in the list or written on the wall. I always say that we have been given the tools to achieve anything, yet I never applied any of the proper tools. Intimidation is a tool, useful when working for the mob. Intimidation obviously makes me pee my pants.

What I had previously considered as a tool of discipline was actually equivalent to Michael Scott carbo loading on an huge dish of Fettuccine Alfredo moments before starting a 5k Fun Run. The Office. Always good for life lessons. The obvious: apply the wrong technique, end up with the wrong result. The morning routine that I had just started applying for the more selfish reasons of enjoying the early morning sunshine and a few moments to myself with some good music was completely outside of any stack of stuff to do, any check-board or any pictorial lists that I could conjure up. The result is that thing that I had, for all these years, been unable to achieve - discipline. However, I call it by another name: "Get up early, eat some breakfast, chew my chewable vitamin, grab my iPod and go for a walk."

What it is is that we tend to give labels to things we want, things we struggle with, things we can't attain, goals, dreams, whatever. What we should be doing is just that... doing. Acting. Living. It is in simply doing what I know is right that I achieve greatness. It is in encouraging others to do what is right that they achieve greatness. It is in doing what is right that we will change the world. 

while sitting at a cafe

Have you ever taken the time to just sit and observe the social activity around you? 

I think society should affect us, make us take a reflective moment and hear what our surroundings are saying and then what we are supposed to do with our new-found information.

So often I feel as though I am walking through social happenings, playing the part of a non-speaking role, not seeing or participating.

Here I sit, overhearing a conversation behind me in which the person speaking never stops talking, therefore never listens, never actually participates in that conversation. I know that sounds inaccurate, that he's talking and therefore he is active. However, he is not affected. He is not allowing the person the space to influence him.

I also observe from my seat that the Beat Generation is not dead. Running past me was a 20-something guy, with his unlaced leather boots, tapered tight black pants shoved into his burnt red scrunch socks and that certain hat that only a beatnik would wear.  He was running back with some money to buy a book of original poetry from a bearded gentleman wearing a forlorn look. 

How am I affected by this situation I am in? Do I look at it and appreciate its uniqueness? I won't lie. I am completely distracted by loud Mr. Talker guy behind me, but he is also part of the landscape I have found myself in. I decided to sit here and be inspired.

A) Never give up.

We've heard this so many times - Nike in the 90's just wanted us to do it, Diesel promised successful living with their clothes and Honda apparently held the power of dreams. But how does one continue pursuing something when the world distracts us from our passions? Take the older gentleman selling his poetry. It is something he loves, you can tell. I had walked past him on the other side of the street. He was sitting on a bench and his very low almost muffled "Poetry?" barely caught my ear as I walked past the books displayed in his hand. I wondered, as I saw him again on this side of the street, leaning against a tree waiting for the beatnik kid to come back, how many times he went to wherever it was he considered his home to fill the pages of some journal with more rhymes. Does he live alone? And what kind of determination does it take to come here or there just to sell one or two books of his thoughts in verse?

B) Stay creative.

As I look at Beatnik Kid, I so want to see something of myself in him. I love that he not only bought a book of poetry by some unknown guy, but he ran, literally, to the ATM and back to support the unknown art. I love the very faintest of smiles that was brought to the face of the Gentleman Poet, so slight underneath that beard that you almost didn't recognize it as a smile. I love that Beatnik Kid is who he is, probably fights for his uniqueness. I wanted to get to know him, if only to find out where he bought his hat.

C) Take the time to shut the heck up.

Don't get me wrong, Mr. Talker guy had some words of hard-earned wisdom, but I was so frustrated by his lack of consideration that I stopped hearing his words. This, I felt, was probably happening to the listener on the other end of the phone conversation. Sometimes I feel that we just love the sound of our own voices so much, or we are too insecure to hear others say we may have faults, that we just don't shut up. There were plenty of great words spoken, but just imagine if the questions he asked were of a genuine curiosity of the other persons answer and not of a rhetorical nature? He would then listen, be affected, gather correct information and then, encourage, exhort or simply... agree. 

Imagine if we stopped talking and started acting? And really, how dare I just sit and observe when I could be a part of any one of these lives and be affected by them... oh, and motivate them to continue on in greatness. I don't know if Mr. Talker would listen long enough, but there's nothing wrong with being a sneaky encourager.