Step One
Admit that you are powerless when prompted to re-enter your password for SubzScription, the meal delivery service that sends you fresh ingredients to make your own submarine sandwiches at home. You had to clear your cache after you clicked on one of those “Why Hollywood Won’t Cast Tom Hanks Anymore” articles on the bottom of some website and now all of your passwords, including your prized SubzScription one, are gone. You know that a long and arduous journey lies ahead.
Step Two
Come to believe in a power greater than yourself and click the “Forgot Password” button. Somewhere, up in the cloud someplace, there is a benevolent being that can let you back into your SubzScription account, so you can change your recurring order. Your fridge is stuffed to the brim with black forest ham, and you have no room for more. But what good is all of this ham without some honey wheat to put it on or a spicy mustard sauce to add some kick?
Step Three
Surrender yourself to the all-powerful webmaster who sends the authentication code, recognizing that only through his grace can you stop the self-destructive habits that led you to lock yourself into a weekly payment of $139.99 for more cold cuts than you could possibly consume. It’s also best if you surrender yourself to the fact that you’re never going to feel okay about the call that came in from your credit card company immediately after your first payment. They said a scammer had purchased a “suspicious amount of sodium.”
Step Four
Make a fearless search into your own email inbox, including the spam folder. Sift through emails from all of the subscription services that you signed up for without recording any basic information about their terms of service. Reflect on how you could have afforded to buy your father’s pontoon when he retired if you’d only remembered to cancel your free trial of Sock-Tober, the spooky sock-of-the-month subscription service that charges annual payments every October. On the plus side, those Bram Stoker socks do start a lot of conversations. Well, you start a lot of conversations about them.
Step Five
Admit to the webmaster, to yourself, and to God that you can’t find the authentication code. Is it possible that you signed up using your old email address? You know, the email that you got locked out of a few weeks ago when you tried and failed to enter in the password three times with oily sub fingers? While you're at it, admit to your wife that you do know why raccoons have been making such a mess of your garbage cans: you’ve been throwing away uneaten bags of capocollo to hide your shame.
Step Six
Call your previous email provider's customer service line to ask a representative to remove your locked status and all of the defects of your character. Don’t mention that the endgame to all this labor is an 8-inch parmigiana.
Step Seven
Ask to speak to the customer service representative’s manager about removing the defects of your character. Rehearse what you’re going to say in your head as you get transferred and then say none of those things.
Step Eight
Humbly hang up in anger and make a list of all the customer service representatives who have harmed you. Then make another list of the kinds of subs you will make when you get this password thing figured out.
Step Nine
Make direct amends with the neighborhood raccoons for telling your wife that, “They’re disgusting creatures who eat garbage,” when you know they’re after a refined selection of cured meats just like you. Since there is, apparently, no way to cancel SubzScription, you’ll be seeing them a lot in the upcoming months, and it would be helpful to be on good terms.
Step Ten
Continue to take personal inventory of your fridge. What else can you do with just salami? A casserole? A bake? Some kind of a meat pie perhaps?
Step Eleven
Seek prayer and meditation on what your password might have been. What was your headspace like when you signed up for “The Works” plan and entered all of your credit card information into a website that promised to “give you the good kind of meat sweats.”
Step Twelve
Have an awakening as a result of this meditation. The password for your SubzScription account and email was “SleeplessInSalami”: a combination of your favorite Tom Hanks movie and your favorite food. Boy, isn’t the universe strange? And hey, you know what else is strange? All those unused SubStar points you’ve wracked up. You're entitled to a discounted case of soppressata.