Seven seems to be a magic number. If you break a mirror, you will have seven years of bad luck. If you marry, you start to feel a restless itch after seven years. If you plan to sue anybody for certain crimes, you have seven years before you reach a statute of limitations.

Well… it’s been close to seven years since I’ve moved away from my parent’s house, and only now do I feel like a completely new person. When I turned 30 this year, a coworker said that I was entering what will be the best decade of my life, that I will gain a confidence and maturity I didn’t have in my 20s, while also still maintaining my youth. H.E. said as much years ago, but I was too close to my angst to believe him at the time, and he was too close to the mark for me to even consider his advice.

Seven years ago, I was young, scared, idealistic, and full of wistful dreams and crippling insecurity. If I was unhappy about a situation, I grumbled a bit, pissed and moaned, ranted and raved, and bitched and complained. I’d unload in letters and phone calls to my friends, reveling in my oh-woe-is-me if I didn’t like my job, if my long-distance boyfriend-not-boyfriend didn’t write, if my mother continued to pressure me to do something with my life. I’d complain, and my friends would coo and pout with me, saying things like, “Oh, I know what you mean; I’m the same way!”

Then along came a problem-solver, a person used to finding solutions instead of being part of the problem, a person used to working around the objections of executives, a person with the same determined, rational, and patient mind of any tech support personnel worth his salt. That person was H.E., and he warned me in dark tones, “Don’t ever wish aloud for something in front of me unless you really want it because I’ll get it for you.”

I should have taken that promise seriously, but I’d already waved it away like so much smoke, his Mr. Fixit title already forgotten, and I launched into my first woebegone tales and fanciful dreams. You all know what sort of tales and dreams they were, the kind that you share at bitchfests with close friends—how you hate your job; how you can’t stand living at home; how you hate the way your significant other is treating you; how you dream about being a writer, an artist, a singer, or an actor in the same way you dream about marrying into riches and royalty one day, or winning the lottery.

Because, you know, misery loves company, and it’s just such a purging, such a relief to share with friends what you’d like to change in your life. Never mind about actually changing it.

And H.E.—well, H.E. would have handed me the moon had I asked for it, or even had I bitched about a moonless night. If it was in his power and I wanted it, he’d make it so.

But see… with me, it was okay to want. It never occurred to me to actually go after what I wanted; I was too scared and content to even consider it. Oh, I wished I had a higher paying job, and H.E. suggested I go job hunting. He gave me lists of numbers to cold call, scripts to read over the phone, templates of résumés and cover letters, and an unrelenting schedule using all those things. I wanted to write? The list of numbers were for ad agencies who might need copywriters. Living at home made me tense? He gave me the numbers to the rental offices of apartment complexes and told me to move out.

It was like going to the doctor and saying, “It hurts when I do this,” and the doctor replies with, “So don’t do that!”

And it upset me. It irritated, annoyed, and maddened me. It drove me insane. “Can’t you just listen?” I asked. I expected him to chime in with me, “Oh, yes, your boss is a jerk. Oh, wow, do I know what you mean. Oh, you poor thing, you have it so tough.” I never expected him to try and find a way to make me happy, and I certainly never expected him to ask me why I didn’t do that for myself.

“You complain about [blank], but you won’t do anything about it? Do you like complaining?”

“No, of course not!” Truth be told, I did, but you didn’t hear me admitting it, or even believing it. I complained. He advised. I made excuses. He pointed out that I was making excuses. Then I got upset, changed the subject, became defensive, took the offensive, verbally attacked, argued, or shut up and left, ignoring him completely. A week later we started all over again.

Years went by, and I got used to his mending ways. Not happy with my situation? Change it. That is, if I can—and I usually can, I’ve found. It got to the point where I started giving unsolicited advice to other people—people who’ve complained about something in their lives, friends and strangers alike, people I’m certain I irritate, annoy, and madden to the point of insanity.

They complain. I advise. They make excuses. I point out the fact that they’re making excuses. But I’m not out to give them the moon if they want it, so if they use other tactics to avoid changing the very thing about which they complain—which, if you think about it, is the true heart of the problem, their unwillingness to take control of their lives—then I stop advising them. I just don’t have the patience for it.

It hurts when you do that? Well, don’t do that.

It took me seven years to learn this. I wonder how long it will take others to learn it.

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