Codify (verb): To organize or collect together (laws, rules, procedures, etc.) into a system or code.
Used in a sentence: “Sometime after the age of 50, Joy learned to count and codify her blessings.”

When it comes to writing stuff down, not only am I believer, I’m an evangelist. Want something to appear in your life? Write it down! Want to remember what makes your life work? Write it down, make it your mantra! From the time my girls were old enough to share hopes and dreams bigger than toasting their own Pop Tarts, that’s what I kept telling them. At first, they just followed along. I’d find little slips of paper with all manner of colored marker memos and affirmations tucked here and there. Then somewhere along the way, like all things in our family worth repeating, our habit of making lists took a little twist. We didn’t just write things down, we acronymed them. While everybody else was LOLing with their BFFs, we were taking the key letters of our must-know or must-have items, and flipping them into off-the-wall sayings we couldn’t forget if we tried.

“What’s MRC?” Tom asked, pointing to the sticky note we’d stuck by the family computer.

“Modem, Router, Computer,” I replied. “When the Internet goes down, that’s the exact order we have to stop and start our connections if we don’t want to be stuck in login limbo for hours. MRC.”

“Many Red Crustaceans,” Helen said. “That’s how we really remember.” She and Becky made my list into an acronym and then turned the letters back into a hokey string of code words none of us could ever erase from memory. “When all else fails, remember Many Red Crustaceans, and you’re back in business.”

Last time I saw it, the sticky note was affixed to some important business paperwork I was cramming in a Staples box for my Big Move to Rangeley. I chuckled. At the time, the thought of requiring any sort of complex strategy for keeping my 50-foot phone cord connected to dial-up was almost as funny as Many Red Crustaceans. But now that faster-than-a-crawl networking has found its way across the Big Lake, sustaining my wireless tether to the Verizon tower atop Bald Mountain does necessitate power cycling my cabin-office devices. “Ooops, gotta MRC again,” I say as I drop to my knees and reach for the first plug. But I am so grateful, so happy as hell to have my woods-wired version of an M and an R and a C, that I don’t mind reenacting the sequence. It’s my lifeline to the kind of challenging, rewarding work that used to tie me to a cubicle chair at the end of a long commute. It’s my connection to you, my readers, to family, friends, to all that I think I need to know from social media and Google, and think I must have delivered right to my doorstep on those special days when our UPS guy or gal is feeling adventuresome. So, hey, if I gotta get down with the dust bunnies once in awhile to keep my Verizon Home Fusion fused, it’s a winning combination.

While I’ll never take for granted the godsend of connecting to “the cloud” out here, I don’t need the code letters right in front of me anymore to remember how. I’ve internalized them. But I haven’t stopped codifying my blessings and putting them forth on paper.

“JPRB…what’s that stand for?” Becky wanted to know when she saw it scribbled in the corner of my desk calendar. “Juicy Plump Red Berries? Just Purchase Roast Beef? Jolly Puppies Ride Bicycles? And what’s this little symbol you put next to it?”

“Joy. Prosperity. Rediscovery. Balance.” I answered. “My mission statement distilled down to four letters, my basic formula for a life well-lived. And the symbol is Sanskrit for the power of good intentions raining blessings down upon the fertile universe.”

“Kinda looks like a boob shooting out some lightening bolts into a cereal bowl,” she teased. “But, hey, whatever works, Mom.”

I’m pretty sure it does. At the very least, it keeps me reflective—focused on giving the gifts I hope to receive. And sometimes, if I’m really blessed, I get all four letters at once and I have a moment like I did on Thanksgiving.

Like I told Becky, my little Sanskrit scribble is just a reminder to “put it out there” to the universe, a signal that sparks my side of a two-way conversation with Spirit. When I attract and cherish moments of joy, prosperity, rediscovery and balance, then I am blessed in kind. And my blessings are often synchronized with what I’ve come to recognize as special “here ‘ya go” hellos from heaven. A perfect rose. The number 42 over and over again. A song on the car radio during the few hours a year I bother to turn it on.

“When I put it out there the right way, I get all kinds of signs,” I told Becky. “It’s like Spirit telling me I’m on the right track—through personal, intuitive soul symbols. Do you have a personal, intuitive soul symbol, something really special and memorable?  I bet you’d be surprised at what shows up if you know how to ask, and what to look for as blessings in-the-making.”

“Hmmm…Personal Intuitive Soul Symbol,” she repeated. “You do know if I made that into a code, it would be PISS for short. Doesn’t sound very enlightened, but at least I can remember it.”

“Whatever works, honey,” I said.

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For more “Camp Connectivity,” see:

• I dream of Genies
• I dream of Genies (remastered)
• Directionless TV