Plagarism

"Anxiety, like the most effective parasite, is indiscriminate in its choice of host.  It plagues the ignorant and dimwitted as well as the brilliant and clever.  But its message, of contingency, of risk, of skepticism, of flux: that is never dumb.  Anxiety's message can never be waved away.

And yet that - waving away - is precisely what the anxiety sufferer is always trying to do to anxiety's message.  Tortured as he is by the truth of uncertainty, he develops an adversarial relationship to that truth.  He loathes it.  He fights it.  He refuses it.  He wants it dead, silent, gone.  He wants it to end.

This is where the danger creeps in, for there is no surer way to compound anxiety's power than to reject it outright . . . hoping beyond reason for some panacea - the right job, the right partner, the right city, the right therapist, the right home, the right friend - to snap my constitution into stable order.  And I can tell you that the search is worse than useless.  Like the ropes that tighten around your wrists the more you struggle, the discomfort and confusion of anxiety deepen the more you try to elude them.  The harder you fight, the farther you fall."

I lifted this verbatim from a newspaper article.  It really resonated with me so that's that.

Seaweed, Ignored.

My father has been in and out of the hospital and rehab trying to regain his strength and mobility after a series of falls.  He hasn't been much of a robust eater as he's gotten older - not helping his balance at all - and he compounded this problem by losing his dentures.  he cleaned them and left them in a tissue on the bathroom counter and that was the last anyone saw of them, probably swept away by a diligent cleaning woman.

Getting the dentures remade by his current dentist - who doesn't do fittings remotely - is going to entail a number of visits to his office, no small task for a man who needs help to get out of bed.

I suggested to my mother that perhaps a different dentist - one that specializes in geriatric patients - might be able to accommodate an on-site fitting.  I was not upset when this suggestion was flatly, categorically denied, demonstrating that "contempt prior to investigation" is alive and well in the general population.  I remarked to SuperK: "i don't believe that my parents have ever taken one of my suggestions, ever."  She made no comment, biting her tongue, no doubt, marveling at my tendency to never take anyone else's suggestion, ever.

Fine.  A weak man doesn't eat enough to build up his strength and now he's forced to drink pureed cube steak and string beans.  Wonderful decision.  It's not so much the fact that my always brilliant suggestions go unheeded but that there's zero discussion.  No, and that's that.

At least when I get all stubborn on your ass I usually calm down to the point where I can eventually listen to some different points of view.

What do I know?

Dynamite Truck Driver Seaweed

Happy-Go-Lucky:  Carefree or untroubled.

An interesting turn of a phrase.  Are we to assume that you have to be lucky to be happy?  That you have to go someplace, get lucky, then you'll be happy?  I like Devil-May-Care, too.  That's more along the lines of "Go screw yourself because I'm going to do whatever I want."  What if the devil does indeed care?  There's an ominous taint to that.

I think I'm a devil-may-care guy.  Happy go lucky- not so much.

I don't get people who are untroubled in their minds.  It makes ABSOLUTELY  no sense to me. I assume that they're lying.  I mean you can't come up with something to worry about?  That's fucked up.  Give me 10 minutes and I guarantee I can infect your untroubled mind with something poisonous.  

The point is that while I'm kinda joking here I realize that I'm a long way from happy-go-lucky.  I don't have the constitutional makeup to breeze through life.  I'm always going to be fighting it, to some degree, swinging back at whoever's swinging at me.  I'm like a dynamite truck driver.  I've learned how to slow down and check my mirrors when I'm backing up but I still have a truck full of dynamite.

I Wonder What . . .

"Someone who knew what he was talking about once remarked that pain was the touchstone of all spiritual progress."

I'm guessing that someone was Bill himself, our shrinking violet of a founder.  I'm guessing he did a lot of slipping in of his own wisdom and passing it off as the words of a great sage.  He rightly assumed it wouldn't have looked too good to say: "I - a man who knows what he's talking about - etc etc."

God love him.  Where would we be without a big, loud-mouthed salesman as one of our founders?  (Ed. Note: I was a big, loud-mouthed salesman.)

I was doing some off-line writing today, scribbling some thoughts down about my proneness to anxiety.  I went back over my Anxiety List to see what was there.  I saw some topical, worry-du-jour entries, things that really were the cause of some temporary, easily identified anxiety.  It's OK to be anxious when you're facing something that generally causes anxiety.  It's understandable, at least.  These things come and go; they're dealt  with or they disappear of their own accord.

And then there are things that show up over and over and over.  I sure spend a lot of time worrying about my health.  My main objection to this is that I've been blessed with a strong constitution.  I don't often get sick; I don't have any serious injuries or conditions; my family history is strong; but still, with any ache or pain I'm sure the end is near.

I'm going to assume I should be learning something here.  I wonder what it is.

Circumstances On Rampage

Rampage:  To move about wildly or violently.

From time to time I get stuck in a shitstorm of circumstances that I don't care for.  I feel picked upon, of course, but it happens to all of us.   I'm better today than when I was drinking when stuff I don't like happens to me; I'm even pretty good when a few things happen at the same time; but I find myself in a backpedal when a handful happen all at once.  To make matters worse, when I'm in a backpedal then I react poorly to things that aren't all that important, effectively creating, all by myself, a few new things to be upset about.

Sheesh.

Hard Chairs

My dad is in the hospital.  After many years of wheedling and suggesting my sister and I finally convinced my folks to move into a retirement apartment where they have easy access to a lot of services that they need - meals, shuttles, medical care, etc.  Unfortunately, my dad continued to fall when they were still in their house, the by-product of a completely sedentary lifestyle and some surreptitious drinking.  He has been back and forth between skilled nursing care and a hospital bed - he's not doing all that well.  

My family has this weird habit of ignoring each other most of the time but demanding a heavy presence when someone is unwell.  My mom feels like she has to be at the hospital ALL OF THE TIME and because she isn't too swift behind the wheel of a car in the dead of a snowy winter and refuses to take a $10 cab instead, it has put a heavy burden on my sister, who's right there in town.  Frankly, I don't get it.  The few times either SuperK or I have been in the hospital the general attitude is: "Get the hell out of here.  Go home.  I feel like shit and having you sit there in a hard chair trying to cheer me up is frankly more irritating than not."

Now if I was at home - not 2500 miles away - I'd go to the hospital, muttering darkly at the injustice of it all, and sit there on the hard chair.  My sister I can't speak for - she's spending a bunch of time as a shuttle-driver and hard-chair-occupant and I salute her for it.  I assume she's being true to herself.  It's more than I would do.  Her behavior is probably more noble than mine, but I'm not all that uncomfortable with my behavior.  Somewhat uncomfortable, obviously, because I feel the need to write about it, but the positions I hold have been developed over a long period of time.

Ten days ago my sister and I decided that it would be more helpful for me to travel home after the busy holiday season than before.  There's a couple of weeks where the cost and inconvenience becomes prohibitive, especially since I just opened my wallet for a visit two months ago.  I continued to feed my sister updates on reasonable travel itineraries right up to the point when it was too late to do anything reasonable, at which juncture she and my mother decided that I should come home now rather than later.  

The cost to me would be significant.  I have taken great pains to assure people that cost is not paramount but that it is an important factor.  I'm not made of money.  So I have been trying to understand why they want me to come back now rather than in a month, using my already booked and paid for ticket.  I didn't get too clear of an answer besides some vague explanations of stress, which I think is somewhat self-imposed with all of the shuttling and hard-chair-sitting as a central feature.  I mean, he's in the hospital which is where sick people are administered to.

Here's the to thine own self be true part: I realize that my behavior may not look great on paper but I'm OK with it.  For the most part.  And there's a lot of history that goes into this.  It's like looking in on the Charlie Brown story where Lucy is trying to talk him into kicking the football which we all know she's going to pull away at the last minute so that he'll fall flat on his back.  If it was the first time she offered to hold the ball you'd think: "Yeah, go ahead and give it a whirl."  But you know it isn't.  Lucy has a track record that makes it inadvisable.

Which is kind of where I am with the whole thing.

To Thine Own Self - Or: "A Stroll Down Prevocalic Possessive Determiner Lane"

Thine:  Your; that belongs to you.  (Singular second person prevocalic possessive determiner - preconsonantal form: thy).  Ed Note: Huh?

To Thine Own Self Be True.

What a powerful sentiment that is.  I have taken so much strength from that short expression - found on our anniversary coins, by the way - over the years.  It gives me the resolve to follow my own principles.  I have to develop a solid-citizen spiritual way of life, with much counsel and study, and I then try to stick to these principles.  I believe that I live well, within myself and as a member of the general population, when I adhere to these principles.  I make mistakes.  I make a LOT of mistakes, but at the end of most days I can look back in peace as far as my behavior is concerned.

That doesn't mean I'm always comfortable with my decisions, some of which affect other people in ways that they dislike.  And sometimes these decisions don't look great on paper.  I'm out of the mainstream in my thinking and opinions from time to time.  And what's important to me isn't always important to other people, and vice versa.  I try to understand this when someone annoys me

Food in the Big Book

To the best of my knowledge the phrase "sour stew" does not appear in our literature.  Nor does the word "sour" or the word "stew."  In addition, salty is not represented

However, bitter and sweet are all over the place.

I'm hungry.

Will

Will:  One's independent faculty of choice; the ability to be able to exercise one's choice or intention; the act of choosing to do something. 

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of god as we understand him.

This is one of those steps that I don't try to look at too closely because it would drive me to distraction, leading eventually to a state of insanity yet more severe than afflicts me already.

So my understanding is that I need to give up the ability to make choices for myself, in the Great Scheme of Things.  I don't think the step means that I can't choose between cereal or oatmeal for breakfast, except for those cases where I don't have either and/or oatmeal and it's not breakfast time.  Rather that I should defer to my Higher Power in all things great and small.

The problem is that with every issue in my life I'm driving hard to the hoop.  I've taken the kickoff and I'm sprinting down the sideline and I can taste the dirt in the end zone.  My instincts have something to say about everything.  They're not interested in deferring to someone or something else.

It's not easy to do.   It's not easy at all.  It's not easy to say: "Whatever."  To live my life well to the best of my ability and take what comes with equanimity and good cheer, secure in the knowledge that the results will be in my best interests.

Try it if you don't believe me.  

I want MY results!

Horrible Diagnosis: Confirmed!

I'm pretty sure that there isn't anything that I obsess about more than my health.  It is my great Go-To issue when I want to get upset, which is apparently something I really love to do given the fact that I'm upset so much of the time.  When everything is going fine - when the skies are blue, a gentle breeze is blowing, and the angels are singing nicely, I can always count on the status of my physical form to bring the pain if receiving the pain is what I want to do.

I am of the opinion that the internet was created so that people can confirm The Truth of whatever they're currently worrying about.  It's very easy to take a set of symptoms, log on, and find out that you have a terrible, craven disease that's going to take you down and take you down hard.  I mean, it's on the internet so it has to be true, right?  The only medium more irreproachable than the internet is The Television, the greatest teller of truth since that night I tried to talk my way out of a DUI.

And the cruncher is that I'm really remarkably healthy.  It's one of the things I'm most grateful for when I'm not too busy trying to find a horrible disease to afflict myself with on the internet.

I really should enter a monastery or buy a sensory deprivation tank and use it as my home - dark and quiet, sloshing around in a warm bath.  Sounds nice.  I went for many years to a semi-annual men's recovery retreat held in a Jesuit retreat house.  At first I wasn't too thrilled about a priest running a retreat - recovering alcoholic or not - but those guys drank as much as I did. The point is that there were no TVs or radios and phone use was discouraged - the individual rooms were spartan - a bed and a writing desk.  There were no distractions.  It was comforting. It helped me reduce the tumult in my head to a dull roar.

Mulling

I am mulling over the difference between the amount of time I spend worrying that something bad is going to happen to me with the amount of time where bad things are actually happening.  It has to be like a billion trillion to one.   I spend a lot of time - an inordinate amount of my time - worrying about bad things that never happen.  And when they do happen they usually aren't all that bad.  I handle 'em just fine.

Ch-ch-ch-ch- change! Change of Fools.

Change:  To become something different;  to make something into something different.

That's a lot of somethings in one definition.  That's not a very specific definition.  Pretty broad brush.

I hear this often and I believe it to be a great truth: I do not change something that needs to be changed until the discomfort of staying where I am becomes greater than the discomfort of the change.  I simply do not make this change.  It does not happen.  I can look at something that clearly needs to be changed, often something that is causing me discomfort, sometimes great discomfort, sometimes outright pain, and I will not change this thing.  I fear the change process more than the pain.  I'm sure that the change is going to cause me more pain than the pain I'm already in.  Facts are useless in the face of this kind of mental onslaught.  Evidence is ignored.

That's pretty much my world view: it's going to be worse.  Bad things are going to happen.  And they'll never go away.  This is why I'm such a cheery guy.

A Sour Stew

Secret:  Knowledge that is hidden and intended to be kept hidden.

That is a great definition.  I am hiding something and I mean to hide it.  The definition doesn't speak to the motivation for the secret, however.  I suspect in my case that's all for the best.  My motivations aren't top shelf.

"We're only as sick as our secrets" is a suggestion that resonates with me.  I am amazed at the power hidden things have to ruin my peace of mind.  I can take a small fact or an illusion or a hallucination, and let it marinate in the sour stew found inside my head until it becomes a monstrosity.  It usually feels great to let that stuff out.  

Thumb Bashings

My main man Willie is on the move again.  Apparently he's taken a liking to moving a bunch of times for reasons that are dubious at best.  There's nothing as relaxing as buying and selling houses, packing up all of your crap and moving it a long distance, all while ripping out well-established roots with violence and prejudice, and then trying to fit in someplace new, all while doubting and second-guessing the whole sorry enterprise.

Here's the thing: everywhere I got there I am!  The Men living inside my head are hot on my trail.  That's one reason I don't try to get too perfect with anything - I know I'm going to be just as unhappy in short order.

It's all very upsetting and all very exciting.  I like exciting.  I hate upsetting.  Can't figure out how to cleave the two asunder.  I believe, regrettably, that upsetting can be controlled.  I cling to the belief that I can make the upset go away as long as I manage the things well.  The idea that I can bargain away all emotional pain, psychic pain, is as ridiculous as believing that I can escape physical pain.  I can't bash my own thumb with a hammer - primarily because I'm forbidden to own a hammer or any other tools that can bash, cut, or pierce - and "manage" my way out of the pain.  I can deal with it appropriately but it's going to be with my for a while.

Doesn't stop me from trying.Ba