Downtown Train

green coat

This is the coat that proves my point that fashion isn’t frivolous.

Wherever I go people compliment me on the coat. Even a homeless guy (I kid you not) told me: “That’s an attractive coat.”

It’s from J.Crew and was touted as peacock green. I used a 25 percent off coupon code to buy it.

The coat seems to put others in a good mood when I wear it.

I boarded the downtown train. Clutched the pole near the door because it was standing room only.

After two stops I felt a hand on my sleeve. I turned around thinking it was someone who knew me wanting to say hello.

A guy standing nearby motioned to a newly empty seat. “Thank you.” I sat down.

As soon as I arrived home I installed the Tom Waits song “Downtown Train” in my iTunes library. Waits’ gravelly voice is like no other.

I was touched that a stranger didn’t take the empty seat for himself. Such acts of human kindness restore my faith in the inherent goodness of people.

Is hate learned? I don’t think people are born hating. It comes from seeing others as competition. I talked about the American pie metaphor years ago in this blog: how everyone’s grabbing not just for their fair share, but bigger and bigger slices at the expense of allowing others to have their slices.

The scarcity mindset (Brene Brown wrote about it in one of her books) is alive and well. This mindset is reinforced when citizens are allowed to go hungry. When others are told they must compete to get into elite colleges. When any number of prerequisites are imposed for obtaining success.

There’s a better way. There’s a way out of the fear of not having enough or being enough.

It starts with practicing gratitude. It continues with having compassion.

As we head into the holidays I want to give some insight in this blog that I think can empower readers.

A quote goes like this: gratitude is when what you have is enough.

Especially at this time of year a lot of us can be depressed. My goal is to help readers feel good.

It comes down to slowing down and stopping to smell the American beauties of life.

Seeing the beauty in yourself and others is a way to feel merry and bright. Good people are out there. Kind people are out there.

In the next blog entry I’ll quote a star athlete who riffs on feeling good in the guest column she wrote in the New York Times this week.

Write Where You Are

I’m not a Hipster. I don’t follow trends.

What I write about might not make the bestseller list like James Patterson. It’s called a bestseller list for a reason–those books sell millions of copies.

Yet I’ve always been a Visionary in thinking that you can have your own version of a full and robust life living in recovery.

To this end I’ve formed a business and I’m set to publish a second nonfiction book.

That’s what it’s like to be a writer of left of the dial topics:

You’re not Danielle Steele. You won’t live in a building on Central Park West.

You prefer the hidden streets and neighborhoods that no one else wants to explore.

You toil away every day on your writing. If you’re lucky, there’s no writer’s block.

You have something to tell the world so you say it loud and clear.

You create a blog when the New York Times won’t publish you.

You won’t quit in your goal of championing recovery for everyone.

Here’s the scoop:

The writing life is not for everyone. It’s for those of us with an artist’s temperament.

It helps if you have a head for business too so that you can sell tons of copies of your books.

Having a mission for what you want to accomplish by writing a book is imperative.

My goal is to help mental health peers succeed at going to school and finding and keeping a job they love.

In a perverse way, this would satisfy the Republicans and Conservatives who would like to see that no one uses up “entitlements.”

Yet riddle me this: isn’t the mortgage tax deduction on an income tax form a kind of entitlement?

My goal is to help mental health peers live full and robust lives.

A J.D. is not required to have this kind of life.

A Sense of Place

I’m giving a talk on employment on Saturday, November 12 from 5:40 to 6:40 p.m. at the 2016 NAMI-New York State Educational Conference.

In employment as in housing environment makes all the difference. Finding the job you love is imperative. Finding a home to call your own is imperative too.

I’ll talk here about a sense of place. Living in a city or town you love makes all the difference. I’ve lived on Staten Island. I’ve lived in Brooklyn: boroughs of New York City.

I’m not a fan of moving into neighborhoods and gentrifying them. I’m proud that I wasn’t ever guilty of gentrifying a neighborhood.

Where you live and where you work can sustain you emotionally not just physically or financially. Making money by making art–what’s not to love if you’re a quirky or creative person?

Staten Island was all white all the time when I lived there years ago. It’s where a cop killed Eric Garner in a choke hold.

Sometimes where you start out in life is not where you have to remain. A lot of times you have to leave that place to have a better life.

Everyone needs to live and work in a place where they feel they belong.

I’ll be talking at the educational conference about how I coach peers and others in writing resumes and finding a suitable career.

The info about the conference will be posted on my website on the author appearance page so you can click on that link for more details.