Coffee Novelist

Expectations for Tripio

Coffee Novelist

August 12, 2019

Every morning before I go to work, I practice Yoga for about five minutes. I have been doing this for years now. Along with three cups of coffee, this short practice gets me energized for the long day ahead.

Recently the practice has undergone a momentous evolution and change of intent. Since the day five years ago that I discovered Recovery Yoga, my yoga practice has been preventative in nature and direction. I practiced yoga in order ”not to”. It was a practice that was hopeful yet fundamentally defensive. I practiced Yoga in those mornings, and every other time I practiced, not to be afraid of my future, not to drink, not to feel sorry for myself, not to give up on my life in the days, weeks and months ahead.

Over the more recent years my practice has become, in conjunction with many other intentions and practices I have discovered and implemented, one of belief and encouragement. I slowly began to align the asanas with my mind and knew that I would have a good day following each practice. Yes, I have been fooled a few times over the years but that is why I call it a “practice’.

The most recent development to this evolution ties directly to Tripio. I now start every morning” letting go” of my expectations for the book. I think I had to do this around the time Howard Behar http://howardbehar.com/ signed up to provide a blurb for Tripio. Things seemed to be going so well for Tripio that I began to dream of possible financial success for the book. I began an imaginary list of things I would buy and places I would go with the buckets of money I would make off the sale of Tripio. The possible outcomes could be said to be beyond my wildest dreams, although I can dream pretty wildly. Some of that mental wondering is understandable. I did decide to publish Tripio with the hope it would provide a second revenue stream. When the expectations began to include a parasailing weekend in Malta with Scarlett Johansson, then I needed realign my expectations.

So every morning I tell those expectations for Tripio to get on their horses and leave town. My morning yoga practice is now one in which I am trying to prevent expectations for my life from being unrealistically good, instead of fear ridden and preventative. I call that progress. Though I am still keeping a weekend free for Scarlett.

“May I help who’s next?”

Oregon Street Coffee House

Coffee Novelist

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August 5, 2019

Tripio opens with a prologue, which was the suggestion of my editor. He felt the book needed something to grab the reader right away. My immediate reactionary, immature and arrogant thought was that Tripio is great and that its greatness demands patience! Those thoughts did not travel from my mind to my mouth and I mumbled a more agreeable and conciliatory response to my editor.

As it happened, just before that conversation I had been looking through my notes and old journals for the want ad I responded to for the job at Starbucks. I did not find it but knew I now wanted to use the original want ad for the prologue. This is covered in fascinating detail in post #17. Today, I want to go a little further back to a time before Jay knew Starbucks existed.

The prologue finds Jay working at the Oregon Street Coffee house in Dayton, Ohio. That coffee house was situated in the middle of a slowly gentrifying section of downtown Dayton called the Oregon District. As such, the Oregon Street Coffee house had neighbors that were becoming upscale bars and restaurants, a comic book store with a vast selection of porn mags in the back, and a vacant but soon to be rehabbed stand-alone movie theatre.

If the neighborhood could be described as up and coming, that could not be said for a good deal of Oregon Street’s regulars. Oregon Street opened its doors at nine in the morning and the regulars would take their stools at the bar and spend hours there sipping their coffee, smoking cigarettes, and discussing their plans for the afternoon or evening. Those regulars were indeed sitting at a bar, because the Oregon Street coffee house was a real bar for many years. But in Jay’s time the drink they served there was warm and brown coffee supplied by Dayton’s one and only coffee roaster. The regulars and the history of the place were only a couple factors contributing to the character and unique vibe Jay found while employed at the Oregon Street coffee house. The coffee was not what Jay liked however. Later in Tripio Jay admits that “the Cosmodemonic does the coffee right’, after he tries a cup of coffee at a coffee house in Chicago that reminds him of Oregon Street’s brew.

The visits Jay takes to his “coffee house under the tracks” show that Jay is homesick for his artsy coffee house in Dayton. At the same time, he acknowledges that his new employer has better coffee. Tripio is set in 1992 but Jay’s choice in where he finds his coffee fix has been repeated millions and millions of times since then. In the novel, Jay is simply going about his life making day to day decisions. He wasn’t choosing sides in any debate over whether his employer was responsible for the closing of coffee house like Oregon Street. That is the subject for books to come. Jay is about to face life changing circumstances which will make him decide bigger things than where to get his coffee: his employer is growing and is offering opportunities, he is trying to sell his first novel and his new lover is expecting a baby.

By the way, if you are ever in Dayton, don’t bother looking for the Oregon Street Coffee House, it closed a long time ago.

NOTE: I wrote this post many months ago. In light of the tragic shooting that occurred yesterday, I hope this post will help show that the Oregon District in my hometown has been in existence for some time and will continue on. It will take effort one day at a time to recover, but it will.

What if I stayed at Starbucks?

Coffee Novelist

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July 22, 2019

“I think I wrote Tripio in part to close the loop of “what if”?” Those are my words from an email to Kevin Knox. I was thanking him for reading Tripio and providing the great blurb I used on the back cover. The “what if?” refers to the proposition embedded in Tripio that Jay could have stayed at Starbucks, having been granted 268 shares of Starbucks Stock Options, and as of 2018 became a millionaire. A millionaire just by steaming milk. Of course, it is not quite that simple, as you will see when you read Tripio.

There is so much truth in what I expressed to Kevin Knox in that email. I now find it odd that it had not really occurred to me consciously that that question is surely what helped generate the creation of Tripio. I was tired of carrying “what if?” with me. Tired of replaying the decision to leave Starbucks. Tired of doing it every time I heard about Starbucks, saw a Starbucks location, cup or commercial.

The days when I was contemplating leaving Starbucks were conflicting and confusing. My significant other and I wanted to raise a family of more than one, but not in a big city like Chicago. This was 1994 and as hard as it is to believe now there were not Starbucks everywhere. I knew that Starbucks was “blowing up”. I did not think, however, that Starbucks would blow up to the extent that they would have 3,600 locations in China as of today (read fast-they are building one there every 15 hours). About the clearest memory I have is of a 3 week long headache I had as I made the decision to leave.

What if? I would have a million dollars, all things being equal, and that would automatically make me happy. Isn’t that what everybody wants? My life would have been so different. I would have a beach house on the ocean, cars, travel experiences and a secure financial future.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/55/Twenty_dollar_bills.JPG/120px-Twenty_dollar_bills.JPG

So why didn’t I stay? Well, you will have to read Tripio to find that out. By saying that I am not merely trying to sell the book. I had to put that question to rest, just as I told Kevin Knox. The “what if?” question is better off in the pages of Tripio than relentlessly occupying my thoughts all these years later.

“May I help who’s next?’

Fear is now my bitch

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July 18, 2019

“Have a little faith baby, have a little faith.” Oddball-Kelly’s Heroes

I made it home Friday around five p.m. after a cold, physically tiring work week. As soon as possible, I took a soothing hot shower, in which I envisioned the work week literally being washed down the drain. Dried off, I opened my email. Good news! I have been accepted to appear on a coffee centered podcast out of Hawaii called, My Favorite Coffee Story. That is when they resumed the podcast after a break. This was, however, just what I needed to hear as the long week had worn me out. I took the news as a reward for the work I had done on Tripio all week, most of it before leaving for my job at 6:15 a.m.

Yet, the podcast success meant more to me than a pat on my own now cleaned and dried back. I had a moment on Tuesday morning before I went to start that 12 hour day when I almost sent the original version of the podcast query. I had written it. I had revised it quickly one time. I had to get to work. But, if I sent this query now, in the dark and cold predawn hour, hope of its eventual success would get me through the long cold day on the job! I would get a “yes” and be one step closer to making Tripio a financial success!! I will send it now and be on cloud nine all day at work! Good idea, I thought.

But in that moment, I caught myself. This was how I used to think. This thinking was a carry over from my stress filled job search days. Days when I felt my family was in a state of financial stress. The job I had then was not cutting it. If I had a job, that is. Those days were hard and I don’t want to recall them here. But, I did send off countless resumes and applications in that mind frame of momentary hope. It was, unfortunately, a hope born of fear and anxiety.

Jobs were hard to come by during the “Great Recession”. I will never know for sure if those fear induced applications, resumes and cover letters did not work because I sent them off hastily. Looking back, all I am sure of was that I sent lots of them off just to give me a few moments of mental relief. This Tuesday morning there was enough of that emotional debris left in my head to make me want to click “send “on the Coffee Story podcast query.

Fortunately there was also a newer, stronger recognition from me that morning. I knew what I was doing. I was going to send a fear based query, just like the good old days when fear ruled my mind. Well, these days fear is my bitch. I did not click send. I went off to work. I then spent Wednesday and Thursday mornings reviewing and enhancing the Coffee Story query and sent it Thursday evening. Yesterday, I received tangible positive acknowledgement that I had learned something. “Coffee Story” had like the query and said yes.

The decision to wait and go to work on Tuesday without the fear based hope that I’d be on a podcast promoting Tripio by lunchtime was a better one than clicking send on a poorly constructed query letter. It reflected a change in me from one of a fear based mentality to one of confidence and belief. Over the last few years, I have learned to take Oddball’s advice and have a little faith, baby.

May I help who’s next?”

A dream of Tripio

Coffee Novelist

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July 16, 2019

I spent yesterday doing lots of laundry, food preparation and watching sports on TV. In and around these day to day activities I looked through some old journals (Sketchbooks of the Mind) for topics for posts. Luckily for you I found quite an interesting reference to “my Starbucks story”.

The excerpt I found was written in January 2016 but I did not yet note the exact date of every entry as I do now. The rest of this SotM shows me that I was applying the wisdoms and practices I had been reading and researching since getting out of rehab a few years earlier. The dream excerpt is from an entry called “Detecting Dream” and follows:

“On the bookshelves are books and such and also old Starbucks paraphernalia and maps and facts. The woman, a mother, explains that her daughter is a District Manager in Pittsburgh. I tell her, in turn, my Starbucks story”

I was studying dreams and doing some dream interpretation at that time. Dream interpretation can take some time and can be a tedious process. However, I have also found it to be very rewarding and enlightening. After all, one is tapping into your own subconscious mind as it is free from the burdens of physicality (sorry football broadcasters if I use this word correctly). In fact, the following year I compiled an entire separate dream journal and found it to be a rewarding use of my time.

But in this case, I did not interpret this dream. I did not follow up on searching for any meaning. I simply recorded it and moved on. Oddly enough the very next dream I had was noted and I recorded an interpretation of it.

I wish this post could motive a reader with something as simple as “Dreams do come true!” or “Follow your dreams!” Well, it does not. The entries that followed regarding writing projects I was contemplating were on projects that did not come to be. They did not mention starting a novel about my days at Starbucks.

I might have to sleep on that one….

“May I help who’s next?”

My self published masterpiece

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June 30, 2019

SOMEDAY EVERYTHING IS GONNA BE DIFFERENT

I few nights ago I watched “I’m Not in it For My Health” which is a documentary on Levon Helm. The DVD around for a while on loan from the library and I had put off watching it because I knew that Levon had died in 2012. It was not stretch to assume that the documentary would likely conclude with Levon’s last days or even his death. Finally my interest in the documentary overcame my reluctance. I felt ‘I’m not in it For My Health” to be worth watching but I won’t give away the ending.

Earlier today my tech support and I worked together to finalize the specifications for the paperback edition of Tripio. He adjusted the cover specifications and I added some “front matter” to the manuscript. We uploaded both several times. Each time they were rejected, we tried again. On the second try for the cover and the fourth for the manuscript the “upload successful” notice appeared on my laptop screen. Both were now approved for sale. I ordered five proof copies so soon I could physically hold Tripio as a book in my own hands. They won’t arrive for a week or so. Barring any notice from Amazon, Tripio will go on sale on April 11th and everything will be different. Except it doesn’t quite feel that way.

My tech support (my second oldest son, in real life) and I talked and caught up for an hour. His work the direct or self publishing of Tripio was done and he then went off into his weekend. I spent the next couple hours in the kitchen preparing tonight’s dinner and did a few chores for the coming week : washed the dishes, swept the floor and read a couple texts from two of my other adult children …Some day, everything’s going to be different.

SOMEDAY EVERYTHING IS GONNA BE DIFFERENT

If you don’t recognize the last line in the paragraph, it appears more famously in the Band’s version of Bob Dylan’s “When I Paint my Masterpiece”. I always liked that song and have favored the ones Levon sang from the Band’s catalogue. I am not labeling Tripio as a masterpiece. Though it would be cowardly not to admit that I have not had daydreams of monetary success and critical acclaim for my novel.

My first experience at self publishing had been completed. I was not sure if would call this “upload successful, click to send” exercise a confirmation that I have, after nearly two years, finished painting my masterpiece. I know Levon won’t mind too much if I don’t feel like celebrating just yet. As I noted earlier the proof copies will arrive in several days. Maybe things will finally start to be different when finally get to hold “my masterpiece.”

**SOMEDAY EVERYTHINGS GONNA BE DIFFEREN**T

My masterpiece

Coffee Novelist

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June 30, 2019

I few nights ago I watched “I’m Not in it For My Health” which is a documentary on Levon Helm. I had it around for a while on loan from the library and had put off watching it because I knew that Levon had died in 2012 and the documentary would likely conclude with Levon’s last days or even his death. The documentary was worth watching and so I won’t give away the exact ending.

Earlier today my tech support and I worked together to finalize the specifications for the paperback edition of Tripio. The cover measurements were slightly off and I added some “front matter” to the manuscript. We uploaded both several times. Each time they were rejected, we tried again. On the second try for the cover and the fourth for the manuscript the “upload successful” notice appeared on my laptop screen. Both were now approved for sale. It was done. I ordered five proof copies so soon I could physically hold Tripio as a book in my own hands. They won’t arrive for a week or so. Barring any notice from Amazon, Tripio will go on sale on April 11th and everything will be different. Except it doesn’t quite feel that way.

After we got our work done, my tech support (my second oldest son, in real life) and I talked and caught up for an hour. He then went off into his weekend. I spent the next couple hours in the kitchen preparing tonight’s dinner and did a few chores for the coming week : washed the dishes, swept the floor and read a couple texts from two of my other adult children …Some day, everything’s going to be different.

If you don’t recognize the last line in the paragraph, it appears more famously in the Band’s version of Bob Dylan’s “When I Paint my Masterpiece”. I always liked that song and have favored the ones Levon sang from the Band’s catalogue. I am not labeling Tripio as a masterpiece. Though it would be cowardly not to admit that I have not had daydreams of monetary success and critical acclaim for my book.

All that being said I am a little too long in the tooth to call this “upload successful, click to send” exercise a confirmation that I have, after nearly two years, finished painting my masterpiece. So I know Levon won’t mind too much if I don’t feel like celebrating just yet. As I noted earlier the proof copies will arrive in several days. Maybe things will start to be different when finally get to hold “my masterpiece.”

“May I help who’s next?”

A trip to Starbucks

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June 9, 2019

I woke up refreshed this morning after a surprisingly good night’s rest. I say surprising because I did not sleep in my own bed but slept on a roll out couch at my mom’s condo. Most people do not sleep well out of their routine and I am no exception.

Thankfully though I am up, clear headed, at the laptop with a cup of coffee at hand. All routine except the coffee was brewed, extracted and produced using a percolator. See the above image.

I must say the coffee it made isn’t bad. Then again, I am over two decades removed from Starbucks induced coffee snobbery. I left that behind when changing diapers became more of a priority than cleaning the grinds out of a French Press pot. Come to think of it, started at Starbucks in 1990 so I have three decades of perspective to write about Starbucks. What makes my viewpoint unique is that Starbucks will always be that small, unknown company, which was a big part of my life for four years. Not the global giant company which is a quick trip there and back for the rest of the planet. A good reason as any to read Tripio, I think. Speaking of which….

In Tripio, Jay and Kati take a train trip from Chicago to Charleston, IL to meet Kati’s parents. Kati wants to “convert her parents to Cosmodemonic coffee but they still have an old percolator”, meaning that it will be tough to get these older folks who use a percolator, to like the Full-City roast used by Kati and Jay’s employer. Could you search “Full City Roast” on your phone for me? I’m not sure it that term is used anymore. Thanks.

Now back to me. My daughter and I drove two hours yesterday to visit my mom. As luck would have it, there was Starbucks about half way there, so we stopped. That was yesterday. Tripio takes place in 1992 when there were only Starbucks locations in the Pacific Northwest and Chicago. It was not possible for Jay and Kati to stop at Starbucks once they left Chicago. They had to bring the coffee with them. I know that is hard to believe these days when having a Starbucks on the way to almost anywhere is not just a hope or wish but an expectation, no matter how long or short the trip.

Early in Tripio, Jay is taking a shorter trip, this time he is leaving his Starbucks after a shift and taking the bus home. He notes that “it was becoming a common occurrence for the other passengers sitting near me to look around to identify the source of the coffee smell”. Jay does not like to wear his uniform on the way home and as such does not volunteer that he is the one who reeks of coffee. Jay usually had had enough of coffee for the day and preferred to spend the bus trip back to his apartment with “a book to read or my current journal“

In the early 90s when I took any trip to anywhere from Chicago I always brought Starbucks, whole bean or ground, as a gift to my host. Weeks before the trip I would begin to accumulate the stash using my free ½ pound of marked out coffee we received each week. I would collect small amounts of an expired varietal in advance of the trip and freeze them until I was ready to take off. I would also ask a fellow barista if I could use their mark out for the week. Sometimes the suitcase I traveled with had more bags of coffee than articles of clothing. I fancied myself as the “Johnny Appleseed of good coffee” spreading seeds of wonderful Full City roast Starbucks coffee across the land.

Those 30 years have passed since I planted those seeds of coffee across the land. I wonder if one of the seeds grew the Starbucks my daughter and I stopped at yesterday?

May I help who’s next?

Terror at the Town Hall Pub

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May 28, 2019

Writing is not easy. It is not as easy as it sounds to sit down and write a good story. The relative difficulty of any writing effort takes a giant step into the Terrordome (apologies to PE) when you think of your creation being read by real living, breathing, thinking people.

In blog #12 I wrote about the trip I took with my daughter to Chicago. Part of the reason we took the trip was to do research for Tripio and part of it was simply to have fun. My daughter was going to college in a month so we combined the scouting of Starbucks locations used in Tripio with long strolls around Lakeview and Wrigleyville. One stop was the Town Hall Pub on Halsted, http://www.townhallpub.com/.

She had been there without me about a year ago, getting inside because she looks older than she is, and the same show happened to be playing the night we were there. She wanted to go back and described the premise of the show to me : “An improv comedy team goes on stage and takes turns reading those personal ads that start something like Dear Red line princess, I saw you last Friday morning as you took your seat and our eyes briefly held each other’s…’

[[File:Chicago top down view.png|Chicago top down view]]

In Tripio, Jay has three life altering scenarios developing during the summer of 1992. These three plots lines interact to create Tripio. A reflecting and reinforcing set of decisions Jay has to make is to choose one of three buses to take to his Starbucks work location. One runs up and down Clark, one up and down Broadway and the other used Halsted. These three thoroughfares are the backdrops for many scenes and setting of Tripio. My daughter and I had already walked past many landmarks used in Tripio : The Duke of Perth, Bento’s and even my old apartment. So it was no surprise that as we sat down for the comedic interpretation of the personal ads, my mind was still on Tripio.

Welcome to the Terrordome, minus Chuck and Flava. Instead, this Terrordome featured Jay and Kati and anyone with dialogue in Tripio. Chicago is known for its improv comedy and the team on stage did not disappoint. The reading of the personal ads received big laughs from the audience, my daughter and me included. Then about halfway through, for no apparent reason, I imagined that a male improv team member was reading excerpts from Tripio aloud. And the laughter kept coming! The audience laughed even louder as he improved words, sentences and scenes from Tripio that were not meant to be funny!

“Store meeting Sunday at 7. Everyone must be here. You will be paid. Mark”, initiated deafening laughter from the audience.

“I would have a chance to meet him and demonstrate what I know.”-drinks spitting out of the mouths of the audience because it’s so damn funny!

This went on for a few more skits. I did, however, collect my sanity somewhere along the way and enjoyed the balance of the show. I was helped by the proximity of my daughter and the desire to have a good memory of our trip together before she left for college. If lightning strikes and Tripio reaches a big enough audience that I have to go out and do readings from it (go ahead and laugh here), it is possible that those readings would occur in Chicago where Tripio takes place. If that dream scenario takes place, I promise to read anywhere in Chicago….except the Town Hall Pub.

May I help who’s next?

Howard Schultz’s Card

Coffee Novelist

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May 19, 2019

I just opened a folder that was steps away from where I now sit. I wanted to find a business card in order to use an email address I knew was there. I opened that folder and discovered the long lost Christmas Card Howard Schultz sent me. I was unable to move for a moment. If you have been reading these posts you will recall that the misplacing of that very card caused previous mental anguish. I got over it. I let it go. I put the mental anguish into a post. And I waited for the card to reappear when I was ready for it to.

It has been a year or so since I decided to not look for anything I lost. I decided then that I would not waste the time. I decided that when I lost something it was because I was not thinking with calm intention at that moment. Or I was trying to multitask, which is not possible (it is a false proposition creating by corporate America to justify paying someone one salary for doing two or three jobs). If the item stayed lost, then I no longer needed it. But most of the time, the item in question returns when I needed it to, now when I wanted it to.

I badly wanted to use the Howard card for post #34. When I could not locate it to place it in that post I searched places most I thought likely to find it, to no avail. It pissed me off. In my younger days I would have been mad enough to destroy something. However, on that day I was able to move on and create post #34 without the actual card.

As for this morning, the moment just before I stood up to look for the business card I was looking at this screen and the words “Blog 58”. No title, just a blank document. I was trying to decide what to write this morning. No urgency. As of this morning, blog number five, also about Howard, was published. So, I was not stressed as far as keeping up with content production. I have also just started Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. I have already felt the desire to post about what I have found interesting and relevant in her book. But, a lot of it can found in my own voice in my own previous posts. BTW Elizabeth, I am rocking. Those competing thought streams were not yet producing blog #58.

Before the moment I stood up I had yet another thought stream enter my mind, due partly to reading her book last night . That stream carried thoughts of fear. Fear is there always and Big Magic is doing to do a fab job of exploring and explaining that. My thought fear at that moment was “Why did I send Howard Schultz, a man who is worth three billion and who may run for president, an invitation to read my novel when I call his company ‘The Cosmodemonic Coffee company”?

That fear is gone now as this page is nearly full. It is gone because I remembered that I also sent Howard the excerpt from Tripio that explains that the word Cosmodemonic has no bad intent toward his company. Secondly, the fear left me during the moment I stood staring at the card because I was reminded that I once meant enough to Howard for him to send me a Christmas card.

‘May I help who’ next?”