I have a colleague and former mentor that is blogging about the mental and physical processes she is going through as she accepts that she needs to have an amputation in order to be healthy. It is a courageous and helpful journal. Annie is opening her story to the world in the sure-to-be-realized hope that someone else will benefit. While I admire this I find it has a chilling effect on my own journaling — I mean isn’t it pretty trivial to describe the (relative) anxiety caused by the first trip to the laundromat? Yes, of course it is. Perhaps I can ease into it if I acknowledge that my stuff isn’t at Annie’s intensity.

Today I spent 30 minutes (it took two trips) proving to St. Paul Credit Union that I was worthy to give them $1500 cash in hopes that they would give it back to me at some point in the future. At one level, it makes sense: they want to know if you really are who you say you are, and if you live where you say you live. Still, I wasn’t asking for a line of credit, or a loan — just please take the cash and give me a good way to get it back someday. It illustrates that it’s possible to take for granted people like the woman at a different credit union (Linda is her name) that cashed my ASU checks for 20 years, and the dry cleaner owner/entrepreneur in Tempe that invariably thanked me for my business (Patrick is his name and he is a big Sun Devil fan.) There was an outstandingly cheerful waitress at Village Inn until about 4 years ago named Ember. She rocked.

I am rambling, but I guess the emerging theme is that there are many businesses and people to be thankful for. Don’t wait too long to tell them that they rock. That blend of 50% diet coke and 50% coca-cola didn’t jump in the glass all by itself; that’s what I’m thinking.