Step One, Being the First Step . . .

.Control:  To exercise influence over; to suggest or dictate the behavior of, oversit.

After I spoke with my Old City sponsor yesterday and was thrown out of the house, I went down and had a lovely coffee at my favorite coffee shop, sitting outside in the sun on a beautiful day, while SuperK worked away at home doing things that I thought were unnecessary, an opinion shared by exactly no one else currently alive on this earth.  When it's 6,973,738,433 to one you know you're swimming upstream.  NASA was reporting signals coming from distant planets circled by dying suns agreeing with the decision to do the things that I deemed unnecessary.

When I came home SuperK, The Stager, AND The Professional Photographer were in the condo. I immediately threw myself out of the house.  I went down to our small storage locker in the basement and loaded up the truck with many, many boxes of crap that we should have thrown away 4 moves ago.  I did have to first remove the offending chair, the source of yesterday's thrown-out-of-the-house rationale  - I handled it gingerly in case it was a grudge-bearing chair.  One can never be too careful.  I drove the crap over to a much larger storage container that we have rented to store the crap in, at a not insignificant price.  Smart people throw away the crap at the start - I choose to move mine around, trapped in a devilish maze of circular logic.

"Who exactly is in charge here?" I groused.  "Me, or the crap?"  I didn't answer myself.

Our real estate agent is a lovely, lovely woman that I'm very fond of.  She knew that I was not happy.  I always think I'm fooling people when I'm acting like an ass but I'm never fooling anyone.  This is why I try not to act like an ass - that, and the amends stuff, which I loathe doing being a faultless, arrogant prick.  My lovely, lovely wife had a talk with the agent, explaining that I'm a control freak and I get frustrated when I lose control, which I do all most all of the time.  There's a reason that we have a Step One in our Twelve Step Program.  For the novice let me paraphrase Step One: "You are not in control of ANYTHING!"

I timed my return home to coincide with the offending people vacating the premises.  SuperK suggested that I write a short email to the agent; an excellent suggestion.  The email was very, very well received.  Alcoholics aren't the only people that think it's all about them; they're not the only people that think that they need to change something to make other people happy.  I had to emphasize repeatedly that it had nothing to do with anyone but me.`

Everything is about me.