Write or Wrong

Write Down: To put into written form; write a record of.

I'm telling you that there really is something cathartic and deeply revealing about writing. The founders struck gold when they suggested that we complete a written personal inventory. I spent way too much talking about all my problems, mostly to people who agreed with me, instead of doing something about them. At the end, I didn't even bother to talk; I began the Think-A-Thon. If you want some real bullshit, ask an active drunk what he's thinking about. It's the stuff of bad movies, the kind where you want to yell at the screen: "What is the matter with you? Don't go into that abandoned saw mill where an entire family was cut into pieces yesterday and they haven't found the killer yet and you can hear the saw running right now!"


My thoughts have a way of sorting themselves out very nicely when I write them down. And I tend to dispense with a lot of the self-justification, too, especially when the writing is for my own personal consumption. What's the point of lying and exaggerating when no one else is going to see what I've written? Sometimes when I'm talking --OK, most of the time -- I can feel the boundaries of my stories start to stretch and blur. I wouldn't call it lying, despite the fact that it is pretty much lying, but I sure take some liberties with the hard facts. I make myself look just a little worse or a little better depending on how I want to manipulate my audience.

Write it down. Read it. Eat the evidence. In that order.

Unfair Though It Be, It Still Is

Punish: To cause (a person) to undergo pain, loss, or suffering for a crime or wrongdoing.

Sometimes I don't like what happens to me. I just don't. Sometimes painful things happen. Sometimes I cause myself pain by my behavior but a lot of the time the simple fact is that life comes at us furiously, ferociously, quickly. I get blindsided by a big linebacker. I didn't see it coming. That's the problem with not being able to predict the future - I don't always see it coming. There are things that, in retrospect, I see that I should have seen coming, but a lot of the time stuff happens. It hardly seems fair because it is, in fact, not fair. That's part of life, the unfairness of things.

I used to think that I was being picked on at random by a cruel and unjust god. I thought I was being punished for my behavior. Actually, now that I think about it, there were times that I was being punished for my behavior, and rightly so, I might add. It wasn't god that was punishing me, however. If I ignore my mother's advice not to stick my hand in the kitchen disposal I'm likely to lose a couple of fingers. My mother didn't punish me -- the whirring metal blades did. It's the nature of the disposal, not the nature of the warning.

I try to act well today, to the best of my ability, and then take the hits. Nothing has killed me yet.

Afraid of Heights

I'm constantly amazed at how life moves inexorably forward. It's like unraveling a big ball of yarn to get to the chewy treat in the middle. The problem, of course, is that I can't keep my hands off the yarn. I've got the end of a strand and I'm pulling as if my life depended on it. Usually the unraveling isn't happening fast enough for me so I take out my switch blade and start hacking away at the yarn. I've got ten or fifteen pieces of string in my hands and I'm pulling for all I'm worth and the ball is wobbling and spinning like crazy, then it catches on fire and blows up and falls off the end of the earth.


"How'd that work for you?" my sponsor asks, tossing me yet another new ball of yarn.

Patience is disconcerting. I want to see what's going to happen. I don't want to wait, secure in the knowledge that everything is going to work out for the best. I want to make things go forward. I want all my dreams to come true and all of my nightmares to get back into the nightmare closet, or at least under the bed.


Sometimes I feel like I'm standing in a thick fog right at the edge of a cliff. I can't see the bottom but sense great distance. I can hear waves crashing on what I assume must be hard rocks far below. And my Higher Power asks me to step out over the edge. "I'll take care of you," my Higher Power says. "You won't fall, and if you do, it'll be OK."

"What was that second thing again?" I ask. "The part about maybe falling?"


There's a famous story in the bible about some disciples in a boat, in a storm, with a lot of wild tossing and swamping of the vessel. Out of nowhere they see the main god of the story walking across the water toward the boat, which is a pretty neat trick. I don't think I can walk on water yet. I tried a couple of times, fueled with a case or so of beer and some pretty wild hallucinogens, but don't think I met with much success. That's what people told me the next day, anyhow. One of the head disciples, buoyed by his faith, took off towards the main god on top of the water, but he got afraid and started to sink, even thought the main god said he could do it.

Something about a lack of faith, or "O, ye of little faith," or something like that.


I want what I want when I want. Screw all of this patience shit.

Regretfully Yours

Regret: Sorrow or remorse over something that has happened, especially over something that one has done or left undone.


The Seven Deadly Sins. The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. Venial sins and mortal sins. We sure have a lot of lists of things that we can do wrong and get punished for. Has anyone ever put together a list of good stuff? Seriously, I'm not aware of anything. There must be people who sit around all day and come up with things that you can get punished for. Do we really need these lists? Do I really need someone to tell me I acted like an ass and then give it a ranking? Man, you were a total ass last night.

I can't even imagine what we would call all of the nice things. The Four Ponys of the Have a Nice Day in the Park? What is the opposite of sin? Maybe we should build a place that you would have to go if you did something nice. "I'm sorry, sir, but you were observed petting a puppy. You're going to have to come with us. That's a class 4 felony in the state of Ohio."

I wonder how many hours in my life I've wasted considering what could have been. I'm not a productive person when I'm wallowing in my own guilt. And it's becoming easier to do as I get older. "If only I'd . . . ." Then when I get tired of making myself feel miserable with this hobby, I drift into the "why did I do what I did" line of reasoning. I also take a perverse pleasure in this. Regret is like sitting in a cold drizzle without a raincoat. It's not going to kill you but it's not pleasant, either. It's a toothache. It's underwear that are too tight. You can get around but you can always feel that waistband digging into your soft, white belly flesh.

The Steps really try to get us to bite off manageable pieces of life. We do things, make some mistakes, then try to right our wrongs. After that, we're instructed to move on. Buckeye Mark says that if his wife tries to dredge up old behavior that he has apologized for, he doesn't take the bait. We don't have to keep making amends.

I think I need to figure out what the Seven Undeadly Anti-Sins would be. I bet they wouldn't be too manly.

One Day . . .er . . uh . . What's That Slogan Again?

Mull: To cogitate or ponder (usually with over).

The more I mull over our slogan of One Day at a Time the more amazed I am at the beauty of this concept. Mind you, I have been mulling this concept over for 22 years so I'm not a quick study in the mulling department. From day one people in A.A. told me that the key to a happy life was staying in the moment. Our literature is full of this suggestion; we make plaques adorned with the slogan; our trusted elders and twisted sisters and bad boys state the fact over and over. But I have to think about things. I have to try them out. "Don't stick that metal fork in an electrical socket, Horseface." How many times have I heard that? Not enough, apparently. I have a whole drawer of melted forks.

I have re-engaged with The Serenity Prayer after a long absence. I used to say it frequently, slowly savoring every word, trying to extract all of the meaning that I could from its three parts. But I got bored with that and started in on the free-form meditation. I thought that I could tame the bucking bronco that is my brain by sitting quietly and peacefully. I'm not saying no good came of this but it isn't the easiest thing in the world to do. The brain does not want to be tamed. It wants to run the show. It wants to buck.

Now I'm simply saying the words of the prayer over and over. I'm not thinking about it too much. I think that I'm just trying to jam up the works so my brain can't ramble off on its own. It's like turning up the TV to drown out the sounds of your kids. Your kids are still making noise you just can't hear them anymore. Maybe they get tired and wander off. Maybe my brain will just stop shouting at me.

It's worth a shot.

Practice What I Preach? No Way, Not Me.

Blowhard: A person who talks much and foolishly or boastfully.
Jackal: A person who does low or dishonest work for another: from the notion that the jackal hunts game for the lion and eats the leavings.

Do you remember the saga of THE BLOWHARD and THE JACKALS? Trust me, I do, because it's another one of those sagas where I don't get my way. Unfortunately, I find that the definition of the jackal and the blowhard apply to me with some regularity. This is probably why they annoy me so much.

I had a meeting yesterday with THE BLOWHARD to discuss in greater detail the transfer of some of my responsibilities to THE JACKALS. As you might surmise, I didn't look forward to this. In fact, my preparation included trampling all over one of my cardinal rules: "Restraint of Tongue and Pen," or the more familiar "Keep Your %^*!!# mouth shut." I tell people to practice this rule and I intend to do so myself, but there is a certain distressingly irritating group of individuals (Note to self: do some writing to confirm that these individuals are mostly indistinguishable from own self) who bring out the worse in me, which is pretty bad and lurking just a millimeter below the surface.

Both of us tried to maneuver the other into a time slot and location for this meeting, which I didn't want to attend, that was personally convenient. I have to hand it to THE BLOWHARD. He hung in there. He's almost as much of a control freak as I am. But he doesn't have my finely honed skills in the ancient art of feng shui manipulation. He's good but he's no Horseface.

I should admit, I guess, that I spent a lot of time muttering and spluttering as I tried to direct him where I wanted him to go even though it made almost no difference to me one way or the other. I just wanted to be The Controller and not The Controlled. Frequently, when I get control of a situation I find that the outcome isn't to my liking after all. And I get upset trying to gain this end.

The point is that on the way to my meeting I returned a phone call from Mr. Ubiquitous. We laughed about it, and he told me to pray for the guy. I replied with a comment that is unprintable in even this profane blog. And as I was leaving the meeting, walking out into the parking lot, Shorty buzzed in, and we laughed some more. Shorty's shtick is writing, and he asked if I needed to do some and then make an amends. I was able to honestly say no, despite my murderous, self-righteous judging.

What makes the whole exercise difficult for me is that THE BLOWHARD comes by his moniker honestly. He reminds me of a smarmy televangelist dressed in a $2000 suit or one of those infomercial dudes selling one implausible scheme after another. As I listened to the unbroken string of bullshit coming out of this guy's mouth, I thought: "He really believes what he is saying." This from a guy who evades work like it's the plague, takes credit for anything good while shifting blame for anything that's a failure, and is so politically connected that you it's dangerous to screw with him.

It isn't really a lie if you believe it.

Eyes Turned Inward, Looking Outward

BMOC: Big Man On Campus.

Let's start off with the facts. I'm not a big man on campus. In fact, I was called into the dean's office many years ago and told to get off the campus. I was about 20 lbs underweight because I thought that eating solid food was optional. This looked very nice on my tall, naturally bony/skinny frame. I was going for the Heroin Chic look: gaunt, dull eyes, greasy hair, unsteady gait. Nobody screwed with me, I'll tell you that. They didn't want to catch whatever it was that I had. Now I am a man, although I have a very pronounced feminine side and bet that I would look fantastic in panty hose and cocktail dress.

What does that make me? Not a BMOC that's for sure. I want to make a big splash. I want to be highly visible. I want to donate 10 million dollars and have a hospital wing named after me (The Horseface Steve Memorial Wing for the Advanced Study of The Androgynous), but only if the 10 million was a small part of my vast fortune, leaving me a huge pile of cash for selfish pursuits of the flesh.

One of my favorite hobbies as I flee headlong into the night, screaming at the top of my lungs, is to avoid work. I put on my pork pie hat and mirror shades and head down to a local coffee shop to sit outside, slack-jawed, and watch the traffic go by. I have become friends with the young people who staff the place. Apparently the pork pie hat is not as threatening as Heroin Chic. They seem pleased that I'm there.

This never would have happened in the old days. I wouldn't have made the effort. I looked right through people, partially because I was unable to focus my eyes most of the time, but mostly because I wasn't interested in other people. I didn't really care how anyone else was doing. I discovered that one of the women that I know is an actress. I went to see her in a George Bernard Shaw play last night and she had the lead role, and she wasn't half bad. I'll be able to say something nice to her tomorrow, about something that is important to her.

I never would have known.

Here's What I Think About That

Opinion: A belief not based on absolute certainty or positive knowledge but on what seems true, valid, or probable to one's own mind; what one thinks; judgment.

As someone who is infallible in his reasoning and secure in his own brilliance, possessed of all appropriate knowledge of all things great and small, I have to be careful that I don't appear too smug when I voice my opinions. While I feel a need to correct the incorrect, the other lesser mortals who walk the earth with me, lost in their own ignorance and misconceptions, it can come across as arrogant when I state my opinions as if they are facts. I have spent time with some of these opinions for so long and surrounded myself with other wise people who share my point of view, that I have convinced myself that what I opine is actually the truth.

I'm perfectly fine being a judgmental ass but, boy, does it ever irritate me when I'm in the company of someone who is just as judgmental as I am but holds a diametrically opposed opinion. "Man, is that guy inflexible," I think. "Why doesn't he keep an open mind?" Why, indeed. Because I like to be right. I like to be smarter than other people, or better informed. It feeds some dark space in my ego to poke holes in someone else's argument. It makes me feel bigger and more important.

This Program has taught me that I can learn a lot if I listen to what other people say on all manner of things. After all, I was totally convinced that A.A. wasn't going to work for me. I didn't want to hear that what I was doing wasn't working, so I turned up my nose at any suggestions came my way. One day at a time? Ridiculous. Live and let live? Idiotic. Keep it simple? I'm sorry, but I really must object to this line of reasoning. How can I control the world months from now if I'm mired in the minutia of today?

I can't listen when I'm talking.

I can't listen when I'm talking.

Things That Go Bump in the Night

Succubus: A female demon thought to have sexual intercourse with sleeping men.
Incubus: A spirit or demon thought in medieval times to lie on sleeping persons, especially women, with whom it sought sexual intercourse.
Devil: The chief evil spirit, a supernatural being subordinate to, and the foe of, God and the tempter of man.

I had planned to write something today about the existence of evil. I found myself distracted by the image of the Good little man on one shoulder and the Bad little man on the other shoulder. Actually, neither of them seems too intimidating. A tiny red dude with a tiny pitchfork telling me to leave a 10% tip or to put a buck in the basket -- instead of two bucks or five bucks, which should be the standard donation for most of us drinkers of three dollar cups of coffee -- doesn't strike fear in my heart. I'd flick him off. It seems too easy. There must be something more there.

So I look up some definitions. First of all, as a shallow man, which is a contradiction in terms if you think about it, the succubus doesn't seem all that bad to me. I'd have to learn some more about what else the succubus does, what kind of specific evil deeds and all that. Otherwise, I'm personally going to go with the succubus if I have to be tormented by a demon of some sort. The other stuff the succubus does is going to have to be pretty bad to make up for the major succubus fault, which actually seems like a positive quality. Maybe we need more succubi running around. It might occupy the men who seem to be the major source of the world's problems, anyway.

Then you have the incubus who apparently is not always successful in getting laid, which I would think would be the main goal if you're a demon. I'm no demonologist but I'm guessing there are a lot of drawbacks -- living in Hell, being consumed by fire, bad coffee -- so sexual intercourse might be as good as it gets. And what is this laying on top of people? That doesn't' sound comfortable or pleasant at all. I'm a demon I'm going to blow flames out my nose, not sneak in and lay on somebody.

Silence in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Right Vs. Wrong, Sort Of.

Conscience: A knowledge or feeling of right and wrong, with a compulsion to do right; moral judgement that prohibits or opposes the violation of a previously recognized ethical principle.

I believe that further information on "previously recognized ethical principles" can be found by calling 1-800-IDONTGIVEA!!#$!!. As someone who stumbled along in a blackout most of the time, I had only a casual acquaintance with things that I previously recognized, let alone moral or ethical ones. I was the one saying: "I did what now?"

I find it difficult to get a handle on these big moral concepts, these sweeping psychological characterizations. I was able to sidestep the idea of behaving well while I was under the influence. Right and wrong were not especially interesting to me when I was in hot pursuit of pleasure. Pleasure trumps moral scruples. Guilt can be banished quickly and with brutal efficiency by a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20. (Note to self: what does the 20/20 mean? Do some research later while pretending to work. Justify laziness by stating: "At least I'm not surfing for porn.")

Normally I try to understand difficult concepts by dumbing them down. Let's say Right is the good little man on one shoulder and Wrong is the bad little man on the other shoulder. That's if Wrong hasn't totally mugged Right and claimed both shoulders as his personal fiefdom. I usually can't even find Right. Wrong has a electrified megaphone and an expensive visual media show, with lots of lights and dancing girls. Right has laryngitis. Wrong looks like Godzilla, blowing fire bolts out of his nose with that horrible, grating shrieking noise and Right looks like the animated mouse, Stewart Little, in his little vest and pork-pie hat.

I spent my time listening to Black Sabbath on Volume Eleven on my stereo that cost more than my car and all of my other possessions combined. I was going to listen to a polite animated mouse? Sure, I listened to hallucinations all of the time but not morally correct rodents.

I'm going to go now.

Of Eastern Mysticism and Giant Carp

On a recent trip to California I stumbled on a small Japanese meditation garden. I entered the lovely green space which was full of beautiful plants and tinkling streams flowing into pools filled with freakishly large -- frighteningly large -- technicolor mutant carp. I didn't dangle my toes in those pools, I can assure you that. There was a nice mix of shade and sun. Japanese lanterns and the like decorated the area. Ah, yes, the mystical Easterners know how to meditate, I thought. I'm really going to learn something today.

I was a little surprised when the path snaked over to an industrial chain-link fence which separated the garden from a parking lot. This was California after all. Cars were pulling in and out, discharging loud groups of people, doors were slamming, engines turning over. I was becoming a little distracted from the illusion that I was high up on Mt. Fuji on a Spring day when a large jet thundered directly overhead on its approach to the San Diego airport, which was quite clearly not too far away. All I needed to completely set the scene was a long freight train rumbling by.

I'm not sure I could come up with a better visual for my attempts to meditate. I'm trying to settle down and think good thoughts. But there seem to be fighter jets strafing into my consciousness and spraying my little brain with pellets of anger and fear and irritating people. There's a flaming chain-link fence a thousand feet high separating Calm Horseface from Normal Horseface (hint: not calm).

Today I will close my eyes and think about . . . about . . . giant carp crashing through my front door! They have me in their huge jaws, razor sharp teeth shredding my flesh!! Ahhhh!!!!

Sensitive: Easily offended, disturbed, shocked, irritated, etc., as by the actions of others; high-strung, tense, and touchy.

The definition of this word sounds vaguely like the profile in my high school yearbook, where I was voted "Most Likely to Become a Heroin Addict." Little did those people know -- probably because I skulked in a corner, wearing shades and a trench coat, repelling all personal contact -- that I'm afraid of needles. I proved them wrong. I did manage, however, to get addicted to everything else that is remotely bad for you. I guess my classmates saw the handwriting on the wall, which wasn't that hard to do since I used five foot high block letters scrawled in my own blood.

I have developed a moderately thick skin in my recovery. But it's not all that thick and can be easily pierced with the weirdest, stupidest, most inconsequential things. As a real hard-ass, bad-ass kind of guy I'm too embarrassed to reveal the things that get my goat today, and I don't even have a goat, and I wouldn't care if you took it if I did have one. What do I want a goat for? I would think it's illegal to keep goats inside the city limits. It would be just my luck to get arrested for lewd and lascivious behavior with a goat.

Don't let the little stuff get to you.

Tradition Six -- A Delusional Reverie

"An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose."

For those of us who have already forgotten what we learned in Tradition Five – the Tradition immediately preceding Six – we might ask: what exactly is the "primary purpose" of Alcoholics Anonymous? “Oh, yeah,” we recall. “To carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers.” Sometimes I wonder if we reinterpret our primary purpose to read “to save every single suffering alcoholic in the world, whether they want to be saved or not.” This is why we have Tradition Six: to make sure we don’t get carried away with our missionary work.

We, who were once lost, have found a way out and we're anxious to tell you about it. We know what we're talking about and we're going to convince you that if you just do what we say, then you will get to live a life of unbelievable joy and absolutely no pain, skipping and dancing in the park, chasing butterflies on a beautiful day without a care in the world. There will be a lot of adorable children there and a delightful breeze. We will bring all of the resources at our disposal to this task.

Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit but don't most of us tend to think that A.A. is a pretty good solution to the alcohol problem? And what do we alcoholics do when we think we have a good idea? We go hog wild. We throw ourselves into the task with tremendous energy and optimism. We start to imagine that we have the answers to a lot of other problems as well. Maybe our techniques for dealing with a wet drunk will translate into effective solutions for all kinds of other social and moral issues.

While our enthusiasm is admirable, we have learned through hard experience that we need to focus our efforts on spreading the message to what we know how to do best: getting sober using our Twelve Step program. What do we suggest? Call your sponsor; go to meetings; read the Big Book; work the Steps. This kind of advice doesn't require a PhD in psychology. There isn't much to interpret there. We don’t need a lot of expert advice to carry out these instructions. I got a handle on these as soon as I rolled into A.A. enveloped in a cloud of pot smoke and beer foam.

In our Program’s early days our founders tried all kinds of wonderful experiments that blew up in their faces. We love to tinker with dynamite and a pack of matches. We tried the hospital technique, where we set up institutions under the A.A. name and tried to lure in alcoholics so we could wash them up, run them through the wringer, then hang them out to dry. This didn’t work out very well.

Then we toyed with education hoping, no doubt, to talk some sense into the drunk. After all, we were masters of logic when we were drinking. We could put forth such a convincing explanation as to how our car got off the road and into a pond all by itself that we ended up believing the story ourselves. Even more shockingly, we went so far as to dip our toe into law enforcement and the court system. “Don’t lock that poor drunk up; just sign him over to us and we’ll take care of everything.” And we were going to charge for our services and plow all the profits back into these various and sundry causes.

Bill W remembers: “Why, we thought, our Society of Alcoholics Anonymous might prove to be the spearhead of a new spiritual advance! We might transform the world.” I guess if we were going to be delusional about our own abilities we figured we might as well swing for the fences. A lot of these programs got started when the old timers had just a few years of sobriety themselves and couldn’t see the pitfalls in the glare of their own enthusiasm.

“Concerning endorsements – we saw as never before that we could not lend the A.A. name to any cause other than our own.”

Other People Are People, Too.

Considerate: Having or showing regard for others and their feelings; thoughtful.

When I was drinking I used other people for my own personal satisfaction. My relationships were based on a desire to feel better about myself. I never considered how my actions would affect anyone else. I was vaguely uneasy when I was manipulating someone for my own selfish desires, but I went ahead and did it anyway, then drowned the feelings of guilt and remorse in a sea of alcohol. I was that addicted to feeling good. I wanted to care about other people but my actions showed the real me, a selfish man greedy for more pleasure and less pain.

In early sobriety I still acted on these impulses but didn't have alcohol to mask the angst. As my sponsor says: "Sober up a drunken horse thief and you have a sober horse thief." I didn't acquire anything like real peace of mind until I started to change my behavior. And feelings of true concern for other people didn't surface until I practiced this unselfish behavior for a while.

I don't get to think about myself all of the time anymore.

How You Should Do It

Lashing: the act of a person or thing that lashes; specifically, a) a whipping. b) a strong rebuke; as, he got a tongue lashing.

People don't want my advice. Most people don't want anybody's advice. People who know something about my past look at me and think: "I don't trust this guy enough to ask him where the bathroom is. I'm going to see what he thinks about the relationship I'm in?" I'm not offended anymore. After all, I don't have a great track record with things that can be done. I really don't know where the bathroom is. If I did, I would give vague and incomplete directions, and no one would ever find the bathroom.


When I try to come up with instances where people have called me up and asked what I thought before they did something, I pretty much draw a blank. This is especially true if someone thinks I won't condone what they're doing. All I can do is try to be empathetic, and to listen. People want someone to hear them out. They don't want to be told what they're doing is wrong. Sometimes they are really out of line -- bank robberies, hostage taking, non-alcoholic beer -- but most of the time it's anybody's guess how things will work out.

I don't know what's best for me. I know what's best for you?

I Must Admit That I'm Rarely Wrong

Moral: Implies conformity with the generally accepted standards of goodness or rightness in conduct or character, sometimes, specifically in sexual conduct.

Tough concept, this morality stuff. Lots of wiggle room for wiggling alcoholics to wiggle through. We have to interpret phrases like "generally accepted" and swallow whole huge concepts like "goodness" and "rightness." I have only a hazy idea what those words mean, and I can bend and twist them to fit my own standards of conduct whenever it's convenient or pleasurable for me to do so. I hold you to rigorous standards and allow myself to slop all over the place.

I think it's illuminating that we generally think of sex when we think of morals. The Big Book speculates that nothing causes alcoholics more trouble than sex. I got up a good head of steam on the Moral Express recently because I heard through the grapevine (and by "through the grapevine" I mean "I was gossiping") that a fellow traveler -- someone I like quite a lot -- was engaging in some sexual behavior that I find particularly distasteful. Just like that, I became judge, jury, and executioner because this individual wasn't hewing to my exacting standards.

Once my righteous indignation cooled a bit, I started to ponder sexual morality. Man, there are a lot of different ways to look at it. Some of us think that sex outside of a marriage is wrong. Some religions warn of dire consequences to those of us who engage in - ahem - self-gratification. Others think sex is OK only to conceive a child. One of us sees sleazy behavior and another healthy experimentation.

I really like the concept of "To thine own self be true." If it makes me feel bad inside, it's no good for me. If I am selfish in my pursuit of whatever sexual activity I think is reasonable, it's no good for me. If I can't tell my AA advisers what I'm doing, it's no good for me.

I need to keep a close check on my motives, dammit.

Feelings! Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Feelings!

Analyze: To separate or break up (any whole) into its parts so as to find out their nature, proportion, function, relationship, etc.


Today I wonder why I feel like I feel. It's important to me to understand the exact nature of my feelings. I'm sure I can manipulate my feelings until I like them. I can nurture and grow my good feelings like a patch of Serenity Stan's eggplant and banish the bad feelings into the deepest reaches of darkest hell. I'm sure I can do this.

Feelings: When unqualified in the context, refers to any of the subjective reactions, pleasurable or unpleasurable, that one may have to a situation and usually connotes an absence of reasoning.


Today I see that I am trying to understand something that is, at its essence, incomprehensible. Curiously, that rarely stops me. Someone asked once what happens when an unstoppable force hits an immovable object. That one put me into the fetal position for a couple of weeks, sucking on a baby bottle full of Colt 45. Sometimes I just feel a certain way. It isn't because of anything.


Quit thinking.

Look to the Dogs

Today I'm going to try to elevate my game and behave like a dog. Not even a great dog -- just an average dog that you could pick up for free at the pound.

Consider the facts:
A dog is always glad to see you. He can't believe you came home again and he doesn't care what kind of mood you're in.
If you act like an ass, your dog forgives you immediately.
If he acts like an ass and pees on the floor or eats a sandwich you carelessly left on the coffee table, he is so, so sorry and promises to never do it again.
All he wants to do is take a walk and play outside.
He sleeps like a baby.
Dog spelled backwards is God.

I should act like a dog today. It would be a huge improvement in my behavior.