Bleeding Deacon

One of the strengths of The Fellowship is that we don't have any paid positions besides my $223,000 per annum salary as Lord of Recovery.  I still have a resentment about the stinginess of this paltry sum.  I'm glad I have The Steps to help me work through this.  

Anyway, we rely on volunteers to open the doors and make coffee, loosely run the meetings, and clean up afterwards.  We call this Service Work, or You Do It Because I Don't Want To.  Here in Vacation City we have an individual who serves as the secretary of each of the seven morning meetings.  The secretary hands out readings and gets a leader each day, someone who speaks briefly to establish a topic.

Here's my problem: the commitment is for the period of one year.  I've never lived anywhere that had a position last more than 12 weeks (12 Steps - get it?) and most places figure a month is long enough.  I've always believed - and it's my personal experience - that commitments get people involved in the meetings, sometimes serving as an unofficial cattle prod to encourage regular attendance so these incredibly long time frames mean that only seven people get to serve over the course of a year.  That's not too many people for a group that probably has a hundred regular members.

So I get the bright idea to bring up at our monthly business meeting the suggestion that we pare this back to 3 months.  I do this with full knowledge that it won't go anywhere even though it's a brilliant idea.  Most people are resistant to change and alcoholics absolutely loath it.  We could be sitting in a burning building, debating whether or not to leave, and half the group would want to table the idea until everyone got all of their skin burned off.

I was at dinner with three of my closer friends in recovery here - men who have Programs that I respect, thoughtful, open-minded men.  As we wrapped things up I thought: "Why don't I float a trial balloon here to get a feel for how virulent  the opposition will be in the official business meeting?"

Well, it didn't go very well.  In fact, I managed to generate a little less than 0% support for the idea.  I mean there wasn't the slightest whiff of support for the idea.  I believe the comments began to take on a dismissive, mocking tone - the guys seemed to be enjoying the piling on process.  Granted, I hold my opinions in high regard and don't like to be mocked openly but still.  The general consensus seemed to be that I wanted to take on a service position but didn't want to commit to a whole year which wasn't the point at all.  I was forced into a defensive posture immediately and had to defend my turf against an unrelenting attack, which made me aggressive which means I got pissed and started to counterattack, employing exaggeration and prevarication as my primary means of defense.

The problem with someone like me, an analytical, linear, arrogant person, is that I think my ideas are irreproachably brilliant and I really struggle when my idea is the better . . . you know . . . idea.  A group of recovery experts could hold a three day conference on why 7 service positions per year is better than 28 service positions per year without ever getting me on board.

Anyway, the business meeting in on Saturday and I'm not going.  :(

Actually, I was glad for the feedback.  Nobody wants to be told how to fix something that's working just fine.

Spandex, Redux

I have been off my writing game the last few weeks.  This either means that things are going incredibly well or just the opposite.  I'll let you make that call.

To celebrate this re-emergence I'm going to dedicate the entire post to dictating, word for word, something that is going on in the life of my friend Spandex, something that he shared with me in the greatest, most secret-ist confidence.  

Oh, wait, I just lost interest in that.

Actually, I've been thinking about how important it is for me to take the long view.  I too easily get caught up in what's in my head right now, certain that the way things are at the moment is never going to change when, in fact, change is the only thing that is certain.  That, and incoming salvos from SuperK.  Those are pretty regular, too.

Somehow I have to make sure my belief that staying in the minute, being where I am, is the best way to get through life in one piece lines up with this knowledge that I have to have some perspective, future-wise, with the ever-changing nature of my life.  A lot of Yin and Yang in this Fellowship stuff.  It makes my head get dangerously close to exploding if I think about it too much.

I like the idea of visualizing a trek up a steep, rocky trail, the goal being to get to the top of Mt. Not That High.  I don't want to spend all of my time staring at my feet plodding along, with all of the rocks and everything.  Every now and then I need to look up to see where I'm going to end up, the goal, the treat, the pay-off, otherwise it's just rock, rock, rock, etc etc.  But then again I can't be looking up all of the time or I'll trip over a rock or fall off a ledge.

Little of this, little of that.

Two Big Books

Whenever I'm asked to be the speaker at a speaker meeting I do a little prep work: reading through some of my favorite passages, jotting down reminders of some of my most cherished jokes, deciding on the relative appropriateness of personal anecdotes.  These notes are often in my journal but I also use slips of paper, old envelopes, and the like.  It's interesting to me to see how some themes come up over and over - it makes clear the fact that there are some behaviors wedged inside me but good, and I'm not very successfully in my attempts to purge them from my being.  They go in okay - it's the getting them out that causes problems.

Anyway . . . . 

"We shall claim that our serious character defects, if we think we have any at all (got to love that qualifier - we're in Step Four at this point and the author is suggesting we may not even be at the point where we admit to ANY defects), have been caused chiefly by excessive drinking.  Our present anxieties and troubles, we cry, are caused by the behavior of other people - people who really need a moral inventory (in other words - it's not me: it's you).

Let's expound, shall we, on the idea that the best defense is a big offense . . . 

"The moment we ponder a twisted or broken relationship with another person, our emotions go on the defensive.  To escape looking at the wrongs we have done another, we resentfully focus on the wrong he has done us."

Oh, yeah, baby.  To recap: I DO ... NOT ... LIKE ... LOOKING AT MYSELF.

I have been rereading the Big Book of my childhood religion, a tome I made it through several times when I was still drinking and one I have avoided since I've been sober for reasons that are unclear even to me.

Here are my thoughts . . . 
It's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.  There is a good chunk of solid spirituality in there.  Not stuff I would associate specifically with this religion, either, but would attribute to any religion or philosophy that is striving to promote a spiritual way of life.

There's a lot of history in there, too, much of which I find pretty dubious factually.  Not lying dubious but convenient dubious.  I suspect that most religions try to lure in people by slipping in some stuff from their religion.  Selling out, compromising, negotiating, call it what you will.

A lot of time is spent talking and talking and re-talking about how important it is to believe a certain way if one wants The Ultimate Heavenly Reward upon one's death.  If you've already bought into the specific concept of your chosen religion it gets boring hearing over and over and re-over how important that concept is.

And there is, of course, some shit that I find deeply offensive.  So be it.  It's not like I swoon over every share at every meeting I go to.

I'm digging the re-read.  I'm also going to shelve the book when I'm done.  I get it.  I'm going to read something else.  You're preaching to the choir, you know?  One of the things I learned in sales was that once you got the order then just get the fuck out of there.  Don't give the buyer a chance to rethink his excellent decision to buy your shit.

A Pack of Twenties

Over the weekend I parked my new very expensive car sort of close to the meeting - I've graduated to parking on the same street as the church but I'm still a few blocks away.  This may or may not be admirable in a character-building sense - false modesty is a very real threat to the existence of the human race - but it ended up being lucrative.  As I stepped onto the sidewalk I tripped over a twenty dollar bill folded over once, right down the middle.  I'm not adverse to money so I bent over to pick up the bill which turned out to be five twenty dollar bills.  I spun around once, surveying the quiet, Sunday morning street scene, then tucked the cash in the pocket of my thrift store jacket.

What to do?  I would return a wallet, of course, probably, maybe.  I could figure out a way to try to locate the owner of a piece of jewelry or a set of car keys, but cash is a little trickier.  I thought about making an announcement at the meeting but how would that sound?  

"If you lost a hundred bucks in twenties please see me after the meeting - all you have to do is identify the five twenty dollar bills and they're yours."

I pondered something murkier: "Hi.  I found something outside the meeting.  If you lost something please see me after we close."  That sounded weird even to me and I have a high tolerance for weird.

I mused about tacking a similarly worded note up on the fence post where I found the money but then I've got my phone number in the public eye with a murky suggestion that I've got something valuable.

I actually talked to a few friends before the meeting started and the consensus was that "it's your lucky day."  SuperK said that anyone wandering around the bar district on a Saturday night with a handful of loose bills could probably afford to lose it.

Now, here's what I did do.  I left the twenties in my shirt pocket and headed over to my coffee shop. I have this loyalty card thing that I use so the money comes off my account when the card gets swiped.  There's really no way to tip that I'm aware of and I try to be a generous tipper - people that are in the service industry work hard and don't get paid enough, and I have some extra cash that quite frankly would be better off in their hands than in mine.  So I get my timing right and slip a twenty to a couple of the women who are nicer to me than my general behavior warrants.  They both look surprised - one calls me "sweet" - and they both take the money.  I then had lunch out and tipped ten bucks on a fifteen dollar sandwich.

I'm getting there.  I may keep one for myself.

Four People? Two People Too Many

So a friend of mine from The Program suggested that SuperK and I join his wife and him for dinner.  I know SuperK would like us to have a more active couple-to-couple social life so I agreed to the plan, some vague misgivings hanging, fog-like, in the back of my head.  Now I really like this guy - he's kind of a weirdo, a hydrological engineer who just opened a guitar repair and sales shop - and I enjoyed talking to his wife the one time I met her.  They're transplanted Canadians who are somewhat hilariously out of place in the glitz and glitter and speed of Vacation Town.  

And SuperK is right at the top of my list.

The problem with me - among a seemingly endless list of problems - is that I'm wary of the multiple-person social dynamic.  I'm really cool one on one.  There's a modicum of control in that scenario.  With four people - especially people who have just met - there's too many people. I don't know any other way to say that.  You know the vibe - you talk then you talk then I talk then someone asks a question and then the conversation veers off on a new track.  It seems so aimless and pointless to me.  I don't really care what you do for a living and I fail to see why anyone cares what I did.  I realize that there are many of us who enjoy this scenario.  I'm not one of them.

Here's an example: I'm invariably asked what kind of job I had.  I've toyed with ways to make "I sold instrumentation to heavy manufacturing in either process control or predictive maintenance applications" more palatable.  I've tinkered with ways to simplify this absurdity: "I was involved in thermal imaging."  A few times I made an elemental response: "I helped people find something that was going to break before it actually broke."  Nothing.  Bupkus.  Blank stares.  I've never been asked a follow-up question, ever.  I've even started to say: "It's OK - no one knows what that is."  I'm thinking of making a laminated badge that reads: "Please don't ask me what kind of work I do" and wearing it around my neck, affixed with a piece of cheap string.  If someone starts to broach the subject I could just point at the badge.

I really should go back to saying that I'm an illustrator or an animator or a Best Boy Grip.  I could amuse myself by making up a preposterous string of bullshit trying to explain what those jobs entail.  I think if someone knows I'm lying they'd find the explanation more fun that the instrumentation angle.

I also don't find all that many people very interesting.  I'm not saying I'm all that interesting but I don't want to sit around a table and hear the excruciating minutiae of someone's life.  That's one of the benefits of getting older - you don't have to make an effort any more.  You don't have to pretend you're interested.  I don't why this sounds so shocking to me.  I don't care if you don't find me interesting.  The fuck do I care what you think of me?  Go talk to someone else.  I'm fine here, silently judging everyone that I can see.  It's enjoyable.  What you did for work is NOT enjoyable - it's a random fact bouncing around an uncaring universe, striking me like the trillions of photons bombarding my face as I sit here.

So . . . you see the problem.  My wife - a normal human woman in all regards, especially when it comes to the caring what other people think of her regard - is not pleased with me when I behave this way.  Last night I behaved pretty well with our dinner mates but apparently said something to SuperK that offended her.  I have only the vaguest memory of this and I certainly meant no harm when I said it, but I'm still in the shit house over it.

I'm mulling over, this morning, whether I should bring this up as a topic or whether I should let it pass of it's own accord.  I am, of course, way out there in the unreasonable response arena, wondering why I'm coming up with these activities that I don't enjoy while simultaneously annoying my spouse.  My unreasonable response at the moment is that I'm not going to arrange these get-togethers any more - let her come up with something if she wants to do something social.  Why is it me doing the Event Planning - which would be an excellent fake career to have - when I don't enjoy it and when it angers my wife?

Just Another Jerk With A Cell Phone

Respect: An attitude of consideration or high regard.

I am constitutionally incapable of ignoring people who are fucking around with their cell phones during the course of a meeting.  To me it's the equivalent of saying: "Hey, thanks for sharing but I have to check my Facebook feed."  I try to imagine how I would feel if I was at my first meeting, sweating blood, trying to get up the courage to talk about topics that have been tormenting me for years, only to look around the room and see ten people fiddling with their phones.  I think I would have been knocked off kilter, and I have a tremendously stable kilter.  Now, I realize that this kind of behavior is much more prevalent today than in my time but it still seems . . . well . . . rude.

I will also say that the people who don't have the courtesy to listen when someone else is talking generally have shit programs.  These are people who can't take 45 minutes to pay attention to what someone else is saying.  I know we're selfish and self-centered but jesus christ, are you kidding me?  It's like the jerks I run into from time to time who can't put down their phone while they're in line at a coffee shop.  I can hear the conversations these jerks are having and, trust me, they're not important at all.  I always apologize for these people when I'm checking out, commenting that it must be hard being that important or some such guff.

I come back to the old parable of the wine-skins at the wedding.  In this tale the host of a wedding asks only that each guest bring a jug of house wine with which to fill a large container so that everyone has something to drink.  The clever drunk, always eager to drink for free, surreptitiously slips in a jug of tap water, figuring it'll go unnoticed in such a large quantity of wine.  When the host draws the first goblet he ends up with a glass of tap water.  For, you see, all of the guests thought they could get away with something.  

What if everyone simultaneously spontaneously looked at their cell phones at the same time when someone new decided to share?  

It matters how I behave.

Feeling All Right

We read a story out of The Book this morning.  When alcoholics remember what it was like when they were drinking there is almost always some recollection about the first drink and how it made a confusing, isolating world all right.  There was a before - where we didn't fit in - and there was an after - when everything was alllllll right.  It was literally like flipping a switch - this is bad, and now this is good.  We were consumed with doubt and anxiety, uncomfortable in our own skins, and then we felt alllllll right.

Most of us drank too much the first time we drink.  Most of us felt like shit the next day while simultaneously hoping that we could do it again, real soon.  The first time I drank in a social situation was in the basement of a high school friend.  I don't remember the lead up to lying on a cement basement floor for a few hours but I do remember how cool and comforting that cement was on my cheek.  I remember that the spinning stopped as long as I stayed still.  I don't remember feeling bad about lying there, either, no sense or remorse or regret.  I was just lying down for a while in a dark corner of a concrete basement, on the floor.  That seemed to be appropriate.  Eventually someone came and hoisted me to my feet and off I went on a ten year drunk.

Our wonderful painter friend is gone now.  It took him approximately twice as long to do the work as he estimated it would.  I think he knows how much money he needs to pay his bills and I think our job provided him with enough money to pay his bills for twice the length of time that he estimated.  I don't think he was in any big hurry to get done once he figured that out.

Now, he did a great job - it was slower than I would have liked but it was better than I expected.  If he had worked more quickly I would have been happier but if he didn't do as good a job I would have been less happier.  See how it is with me?  You can't win.  If you're slow but good I focus on the slow - if you're fast but sloppy I focus on the sloppy.

I can spot a defect at a thousand yards.  At night.  With a blindfold on.  In a driving snowstorm.  
It's what I do.

Judge Karma

Judge:  To criticize or label another person or thing.

Here's another Karma, Kramer observation from the King of All The Judges . . . 

Our excellent painter guy shows up promptly at 8 AM and works right up until quitting time which appears to be whenever he wants to stop working.  The time varies a great deal but 3:30 has been the limit so far.  These hours do not make up a 60 hour work week.  They make up a 20 hour work week except for the days when he lets us know he'll be late because he needs to do something besides work on my house.  I don't pay any attention to what it is he needs to be doing because I could care less what he's doing if it's not PAINTING MY HOUSE!

He also likes to talk a lot.  I find this to be true with people that live alone - they infer from my presence in their presence that I must want to hear every last thought that enters their mind.  I wonder what it is about me that makes people believe this ludicrous misconception.  Normally this would be OK by me - he's a good friend and a great Program guy, but when he strolls into my space and says: "Can I run something by you?" it means he's not going to be running some paint past my baseboard.  Thank god I didn't agree to pay him by the hour.  I'd have to sign over my little mobile home to him just to cover the down-payment.

Did you know there's a chapter in the Bible called "Judges?"  I should read that.  I should write the sequel.  Who knows - maybe I wrote the original during a psychic break while on a bad LSD trip.

I think the point here is that my behavior often leads directly to the place where I am at.  It's unusual for me today to be surprised by the circumstances of my existence.  I speed - I get a ticket.  I mouth off to SuperK - I sleep in the shed.  I don't go to meetings - I feel like crap.  I rarely find myself somewhere that I can't attribute directly to my behavior.

I don't think I got to the point even though I said I was getting to the point.  I also don't think my painter friend would say I've been anything other than friendly.  The problem is that my desk sits right in the middle of the house so that when I'm home and he's working - as rarely as these two events coincide - I really can't get away from him.  It's not that I don't like to talk to him - it's that l don't like to talk to anybody.  Ever.  Why anyone would think I'm interested in what they're saying is beyond me.

The point, you say, the point.  I don't remember what the point is anymore but if he says anything to me about not having enough money I think I'm going to remember the fucking point.

Bruce, Driving Very Fast

So I'm still parking the new car a couple of blocks away from the meeting.  It's not that I'm embarrassed at the extravagance of a new car but that I try to be low-key in the display of my appetites for, after all, most of us over-indulge at something from time to time.  I think some of this has to do with growing up in a conservative area of the country in a conservative family who attended a conservative as shit church.  Self-promotion was not viewed kindly.  I run into people at meetings who manage to work in the length of their sobriety or where they live or what they did for a living or . . . yes . . . what kind of car they have.  Humblebrag I believe they call it.   You know the sort: "I've had a very difficult week - my Ferrari mechanic has moved out of the area."  If the food in First Class isn't up to snuff those of us wedged into the death coffins passing for seating in coach are not going to be able to dredge up very much sympathy.

So back to my homeless guy, Bruce.  I believe I've written about Bruce - he gently panhandles at the entrance to the parking lot of my coffee shop.  I usually talk to him when I pass by, throwing him a buck or two more often than not.  He sees me enough that he commented one day when I drove SuperK's car instead of my own.

Now the new car.  Frankly, I'm embarrassed enough that I'm actually driving out of my way to take an exit directly opposite from the one I want to take just so Bruce doesn't see me in the new car.  I'm aware that this is fairly ridiculous.  I'm avoiding a homeless guy that I've taken the time to get to know because I don't want him to judge my motives in buying a new ca

I will say this: if I have an accident in my attempts to avoid Bruce I'm coming back to take the repair bill out of his hide.

Karma, Kramer

Karma:  A force or law of nature which causes one to reap what one sows; destiny; fate.

I've been talking frequently with a friend of mine in The Program who has been sober a good, long.  He's a decent man and a solid fellow traveler in sobriety, and I like and respect him a lot.  One of his endearing qualities is that he admits to some human frailty - this is not always the case with people who have a lot of clean time under their belt.  There is a certain amount of preaching from the high mountaintop among the Long Timers.  Not all of them - not most of them - but some of them.  This guy doesn't do that.  I congratulated him on an anniversary north of 30 years a while back and he said, after a pause: "You know, Seaweed - I thought I'd be a lot further along than I am."  It was part joke, part hard truth.

Anyway, he is less well off financially than I am so he's been bouncing some money ideas off of me to see if I have any insights that might be helpful.  I have plenty of insights, good insights, but whether they're actually helpful is a matter of considerable doubt.  He's old enough to collect social security but it isn't enough for him to live on comfortably.  Fair enough and very frustrating and not at all uncommon.

Then he mentions that when he was younger and working a lot more that because of the cash nature of his business he would declare half of what he made, maybe a third sometimes, to lessen his tax burden.  I don't judge people and how they live their lives and what I mean there is "Are you fucking kidding me - you judge everybody about everything and no matter is too trivial to spark outrageous, self-righteous indignation on your part."  That being said I do understand why some people are frustrated when they ponder our tax code, believing that they're paying more than their fair share while others get off lightly.  I didn't perform those kinds of shenanigans but I did - I do - things that others might not view in a favorable light.

Anyway, here's the rub - because he declared so much less money than he actually made he paid a lot less money into our retirement system than he would have if the number he declared was actually . . . you know . . . accurate . . . with the result being that now he's collecting a much smaller paycheck and finding it isn't enough to live on.

Karma, baby.  Sometimes the easy way out at the time leads to consequences.  I think of this truth often.  I think of when I'm pondering an easy out with a lie.  The bad behavior sometimes allows me to get away with something but just as often it causes more complications down the road.