1) Books.
Read them, buy them, gift them. Cover your coffee table, your dresser, your backseat. Steal them from your exes and send them anonymously to lovers and enemies. Arrange them by color or theme or chronology or in a just-so secret way only you understand. Spend all day in a book store and buy nothing. Spend five minutes in a book store and buy five things. Give up on bad ones, if you can, or squint and skip and read real fast if you can’t. If you’ve been away from them (as I often have), be kind to yourself and come back gently, with a favorite, or something trashy, or short, or all three.
2) Coffee.
One need not be precious about coffee to take pleasure in it. Drink any but the worst of it. Always pay for someone younger. Don’t ask to make it when company comes, just make it. Fill a thermos to make a long day more comfortable.
3) Records.
Take a date to the shop and flip through the old cheap ones, laughing at the album covers. Pop into a new shop on a lonesome travel day and find yourself at home. Buy records from the young bands on tour selling them for $5 or $10 just so someone will have it, so it will be Out There. Put one on when you get home, then keep flipping and switching every few songs, late into the evening, like tending to a needy fire. Know that they are imperfect and will become more imperfect and don’t be so careful with them that it’s not fun.
4) Play.
Set up Scrabble. Put a puzzle together. Bounce a ball. Find your old Yo-Yo and untangle the string. Has a Slinky ever gone down the stairs in your place? Ask people “what if?” and “have you ever?” Spell something impolite with the letters on the hobby store shelf. Keep old newspapers stacked up somewhere so you can always make a mess. Take a different road to work, try a different cocktail, follow the instructions in reverse. Let yourself play.
5) Cooking.
Make some food, ya dingus. Fill your space with good smells and real food. Mess up recipes and invent new ones and get used to improvising. Get a good sharp knife and keep it sharp and learn how to use it (I used YouTube). Make too much and give some to friends and take it to the office. Make your favorite as often as you like without apologies, and get a little better at it every time.
6) Walks.
Get a good bag that’s comfortable and wear good socks and give away your bad shoes and walk if you can (if you can’t walk in them they are bad shoes). Poke around alleys during the day and go through that little park if you’re not in a hurry and walk through the curvy, overly-landscaped bits of the big buildings that the architect drew so full of life but that no one every walks through. But you will.
7) Drawing.
Need a friend? Draw one. Sad? Write I AM SAD in big silly bubble letters. Angry? Draw a mean little skull saying mean things you’d never say yourself, not out loud. Make funny (but kind!) pictures on the whiteboard in the shared conference room. Draw what you eat and what you see or practice your circles or put devil horns on the Bad Men in the newspaper with a fat fresh marker.
*** Originally published as List No. 20 of the 7x77 newsletter project.