Thanks to A.J. for bringing me in this week to fill in. More of my work can be found here. —Ben Gaffaney

Sometime in the aughts I read an interview with Amy Wells, the set designer for the early seasons of “Mad Men,” in which she explained that a key to the show’s realism was that in the early 1960s, home furnishings were mostly from the 1950s. Actual families don’t replace all their furniture at once when the calendar turns, they replace a piece at a time over a period of years, and certain furnishings, like Danish modern tables, should stay on set longer, since they’re durable and well-made.

I’ve used that interview as a metaphor for sobriety, that just as you take one day at a time, you can’t adopt every new behavior at once. You have to take what works for you in your own space, determine what serves you and what doesn’t. I avoided AA for years because it felt overwhelming to me, like I had to find a God, beg for forgiveness and start barfing out wisdom instead of gin. I thought I had to become AA Guy above all else.

Right now, I’m looking to remove some furniture. Let’s call it the Credenza of Self-Interested Judgment, where, on sight, I will place someone into a category or box of “valuable” or “useless.” It’s a solipsistic way to live, parsing out who serves my needs and who doesn’t, when I know quite well that people change and people surprise you. It’s like those thousands of AA and adjacent meetings have left no permanent mark at all.