Mission Creep

Complicate:  To make or become intricate, difficult, or involved.


It has been said that A.A. is a simple program for complicated people.  Boy, is that true in my case.  I can complicate the hell out of anything.  Why would I make something easy if I can make it really, really, unnecessarily hard?


Part of the rationale behind the move to The New City was to unburden myself of so many needless complications.  I moved into a much smaller living space which required me to get rid of a lot of crap that I was hoarding and storing and hauling around, but never touching.  I kid you not there were boxes that had been sealed up in the Pleistocene age and never reopened.  I don't know what was in them.  I put them out on the curb for the garbage guys.  My car situation got simpler.  The services that I required no longer seemed a requirement and were jettisoned.  I paid good money for things that seemed important yet I've lived happily for a year without any of them.


"Can you believe I paid $100 a month for that?" I'll say, my slack-jaw dropping in amazement.  "What was I thinking?"


It has been funny watching my tendency to list back into complications.  Vaguely, my living space becomes mildly unsatisfactory.  I look longingly at someplace bigger, someplace in a cooler part of town, someplace on a quieter street but in a nice neighborhood close to the action.  I can't stay up past 10PM anymore so I have no idea what kind of action I'm looking for.  Maybe a nice wheelchair store.


The military has a phrase called "mission creep."  It suggests the tendency to start out with one goal in mind then to slowly embiggen and complicate that mission over time.  I start out with something simple in mind, only to add layers and layers of complexity until I'm dealing with a huge, unmanageable mess.


Now where have I heard the phrase "our lives had become unmanageable?"  It sounds so familiar.

Silly, Silly Bankers

I rang up my sponsor this morning.  After we exchanged pleasantries I said: "I have something I want to run by you.  This is going to fall in the category of Problems of Prosperity."


"Yeah, excuse me if I don't hold my breath until you have a problem that doesn't fit in that category," he said.  I'm not sure why I call that smart-ass on a regular basis.


I have been casually looking to buy a home in The New City.  I placed the equity from the house we just sold into a savings account, resisting the urge to buy another stupid car or another stupid piece of electronics or something else stupid.  Nevertheless, I had hoped to take out a mortgage if we find something appropriate to buy, especially since interest rates are so low.  I assumed that the fact that I had enough in the savings account to pay cash for something much less expensive than my last house would earn me some Banking Good Will, should such a thing exist.


Here's the funny thing about that: because banks were so eager to loan money during the recent big bubble boom in the real estate market -- literally throwing cash at any warm body who alleged anything positive financially, with nothing in the way of factual documentation -- that they lost a lot of money on bad loans.  Hard to imagine that happening with such a solid business model.  Now, because they're so familiar with residing illogically on one end of the spectrum, they're finding it comfortable to swing wildly to the other end of the spectrum.  Ergo, they don't want to loan money to anyone.


They keep asking me how much money I earn, not how much money I've saved.  I have had no luck whatsoever convincing them that the savings part is more important than the earnings part.


"Who cares?" I say.  "I have this money saved up."


"We care," they say.  "Go away until you start to make a lot more money."


"I don't want to make a lot more money," I reply.  "That takes a lot of work and there's a lot of pressure involved."


"Go away," they repeat.


I feel like I'm in some Kafkaesque nightmare alternate reality.  These bankers must all be drunks.  They must be fucking with me.  They're having a drink right now, and a good laugh.


"Have you ever considered that there's a middle ground?" I wonder, watching them fill in little blanks on their little forms.


"Security," they say, pushing a red button on the intercom on their desk.  I half expect a trap-door to open up under me, revealing a tank of sharks or boiling oil or sharks swimming around in boiling oil.  Special sharks, obviously, to handle the boiling oil.


I don't even know if I WANT a mortgage.

My Little Man is an Idiot

Wisdom: The quality of being wise; the power of judging rightly and following the soundest course of action, based on knowledge, experience, understanding, etc;  good judgment.


Knowledge:  Acquaintance with facts; range of information, awareness, or understanding.


"We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us."


Here's what I see in The Rooms: a collection of tremendous talent.  Seriously.  The average drunk/addict is talented, clever, smart, and charming.  We stagger in and begin to listen to other people and we read the books and we collect the knowledge.  All well and good.  Problems arise when we fail to execute this knowledge or worse yet, execute it poorly.  We consume the knowledge, then skulk off and think think think about it by ourselves, applying a twisted filter of alcoholic reasoning until we justify some bizarre course of action that only makes good sense to someone who is used to living in an alternate reality.


I'm in the midst of dealing with a situation that I have researched heavily.  I am heavily armed with facts, yet I have no idea what to do.  I vacillate wildly from extreme to extreme.  Things that made a lot of sense yesterday seem ridiculous today, and I'm guessing I'll be scratching my head tomorrow, wondering what the hell I was thinking when I discarded my first plan.


Very frustrating for this methodical, logical, diligent German peasant.  I figure if I do the research then I'll make the "right" decision.  Now, mind you, I'm not scoffing at the research, just my belief that this will make things become crystal clear.  Sometimes in my sobriety I have to go with my gut.


One of my favorite scenes from Seinfeld is an exchange between George, who is conflicted about a decision he has to make, and Kramer, who is dispensing counsel:
K: "What does your little man say?  You HAVE to listen to your little man."
G: (hesitating) "My little man doesn't know."
K: "Listen to your little man, George!"
G: (disgustedly) "Ah, my little man is an idiot."

Middle of the Road

Center:  A point considered as the middle or central point of activity.


One of the reasons I was at all conflicted about the music documentary is that I have a long, storied history of saying I was going to do something and then not actually doing what I said I was going to do.  I frequently exacerbated this bad habit by not telling anyone I was changing my plans.  At the last minute I would decide to do something else I thought was going to be more fun or I'd forget or pass out or just not get up off the couch and make the effort.  


I tried to continue this technique when I was getting sober.  I really stuck with it as far as phone calls were concerned.  Someone in The Program would call and I wouldn't call back.  A lot of it was simply fear; I was afraid of dealing with other people.  My buddies confronted me about it, though.


"Did you get my phone call?" they'd ask.  "Pick up the phone and call back."  They brushed off my excuses, explaining that actions like returning phone calls was part of the social contract between adults.  It wasn't negotiable or weird or an unreasonable thing to expect.  Someone calls and you call back.  Move to a cave if you don't like doing this.


The flip side of the coin is that nobody likes to deal with rigid, inflexible people.  All of us make plans then change our mind, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for trivial ones.  Who among us hasn't agreed to do something and decided later on that they didn't want to do it?


Yes, you in the back there, with your hand up?  No?  I didn't think so.


All of us get to bail every now and then.  I'm OK with it when it happens to me.  I understand.  I do it, too.  I don't do it terribly often, though, because I think I need to be reliable with my commitments, which is another area I wouldn't mark as one of my strong points.


More middle of the road stuff.

Progress Not Perfection

Progress:  To improve; advance toward perfection or to a higher state.


Here's what 24 years and 1 month buys you:


I made plans a few days ago to join some guys in The Program for a rock documentary or "rockumentary," if you want to sound really cool.  I didn't know too much about the band being featured so my friend who was organizing the get-together burned some CDs for me to listen to.  While the music was good it wasn't really my bag, man, so I started to regret my decision to go.  Plus, the movie started at 9:30 -- at night, mind you -- when it would be quite normal for me to be going to bed, not going out.  I'm definitely not cool anymore, or "cool" as it were.


How to do this, I wondered?  LIE!  LIE!! LIE LIE LIE!!! That's what came to mind.  That's always what comes to mind when I imagine being uncomfortable and wonder how I can squirm out from underneath this feeling.  "That's the ticket," I thought.  "Not a big bad lie but a little pleasant unoffensive lie."  I didn't think that wouldn't smell too bad rotting in my garbage can.  I could profess being tired.  I could say "something came up."  I could, of course, blame SuperK.  This is why most people get married: to have a built-in excuse whenever we need to lie about something.  That way my friend could develop a resentment against my wife and I'd come out smelling like . . . well, not a rose but not a rotten rutabaga either.


The reason I tell the truth most of the time today is because I can't remember what I said 20 minutes ago.  So I figure if I stick with the truth then I don't have to worry about what has or has not come out of my mouth.  It was exhausting keeping track of all the lying going on when I was really into the lying game.  I had so many stories to organize that I couldn't hold them all together.


Dude was fine with it, of course.  "The truth is, Horseface," he sez.  "I'm going whether or not anyone shows up."  Now the deal is that I can't do this consistently.  I can't change my mind and leave people hanging at the last minute.   But I'm hardly a friend if I can't show some flexibility with others.




Since there were a few people going I didn't feel too bad about flaking out on my friend

Simple Not Easy

Easy:  That can be done, got, mastered, etc. with ease; not difficult; not exacting.


Getting pissed off at something or someone and then picking up a drink is easy.  Working on your character defects and your spirituality and your amends is not easy.  It's simple, but it's not easy.   The directions can be explained relatively quickly but the execution is going to take some time.


"But I like easy," I remarked when I came into The Program.  "Easy is the way to go."  This was the era of Half-Measures Horseface.  Easier, softer Horseface.  I was not known for my diligent work or any kind of consistent, sustained effort on anything.  I was under the impression that the benefits of The Program would be given to me all wrapped up with a fancy bow on top.


Simple:  Easy to do, solve, or understand, as a task, question, etc.


The Program is not rocket science.  There are only 12 Steps, well explained in The Big Book then flogged half to death in the 12&12.  A member with a few years of solid sobriety can give a newcomer a pretty good overview in an hour or so.


There's a lot to recommend in simple.  It can make things easy.  For instance, I'd like to own a brand new Ferrari.  A black one with a spiffy red stripe.  I'd like that a lot.  Now, I'm not that smart but I'm pretty old so I've had some nice things that I had no business having in my life and I've learned some lessons doing this.  Not a Ferrari.  I think I drove a Fiat once but that's as close to an Italian supercar as I've ever come, or ever will come if I value my marriage to SuperK.


So I see high speed tires that cost $750 a piece and two thousand dollar tune-ups and astronomical insurance rates and . . . well, you get the idea.  So I own a Subaru.  It's not turning any heads as I floor it, forcing the four squirrels that power the vehicle to really start running in their cages, but it's not causing me any angst at night, either.


Simple.  That's the way to go.

Horseface Steve -- Helpmate

Help:  To give assistance; be co-operative, useful, or beneficial.


I'm still trying to get my arms around the idea of what it means to help someone out.  The definition doesn't seem to make allowances for anything along the lines of "when I want to" or "when it makes sense to me."  For instance, I don't want any help changing the oil in my car.  I'd have to get out the operator's manual -- where that is, I have no idea, because there's not a chance in hell that I'll ever understand how that large and complicated piece of machinery works -- to even figure out to open the hood, for god's sake, or maybe I mean the trunk.  Wherever the engine is located.  Car salesmen are always trying to show me what's under the hood.  I wave them off like a caliph dismissing a slave.  I'm not getting anywhere near a confined area full of hot, loud, violently rotating pieces of metal.


So you can be the best oil-changing guy in the world, eager to help me change my oil.  You can explain how important it is to change the oil and how much money I'd save and how much fun it can be working on your own car with your own hands.  The reality is that I don't want this help.  This is not help; this is an invitation to have one of my fingers severed.  Go help someone else change their oil.  Thanks for thinking of me but I like my fingers.


I remember when I grasped the fact that when SuperK wanted to talk to me about something that she found upsetting, she didn't expect me to solve the problem.  She wanted me to listen to what she had to say.  That was the help: the listening.  As the Smartest Guy In The World, I was chomping at the bit to offer wise, effective solutions.  That was what I wanted to do, not what needed to be done.


I know there's a god up there because we have mechanics who can change the oil in my car for a very reasonable amount of money.

Horseface Steve -- Eater of Fruit

More Big Picture musing from a Big Picture guy . . . 


I enjoy sitting outside on my front porch, reading and watching the odd world of The New City stream by.  Also, I like to snoop on my neighbors.  I like to wave at people and say hello and make a stab at something marginally amusing with varying degrees of success.  I know most of the people who live in the nearby apartments and houses well enough to say hidy-ho.


There's a young couple across the street who did a lot of work putting in a pretty impressive garden in a laughably small space.  Most of the stuff made sense to me -- tomatoes, greens, squash -- and a few things made me chuckle.  Corn?  In a geranium pot?  I can see tomatoes from across the street but I don't think anybody is going to be eating fresh corn unless they get it at the store.


Anyway, they walked over and handed me a small container of cherry tomatoes a few nights ago.  I was touched at the gesture.  And the timing was perfect because we were having a salad for dinner that night; those tomatoes got scarfed down.  The next morning I found another container of tomatoes on my front porch, with a note.  It was mostly in text-speak so I have no idea what the note said but I'm hoping it was nice.  Maybe it said: "I hope you choke on these poisoned tomatoes you dirty %$!!."  I don't think so but you never can tell.


The point is that all these folks did was give me some extra fruit that was going to end up on the ground, probably.  Being a Big Picture guy I'm found of splashy excess, not a simple life lived simply.  Those delicious tomatoes were a delicious reminder to be nice all the time.  You never know what's going to make a real difference.


I'm keeping the note.  It was sweet.  It was a small gesture.  And I could read it.  Most of it.

An Astonishing Fact

Astonish:  To fill with sudden wonder or surprise; amaze (from the old French root extoner, "to strike with lightning.")


". . . their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult to solve."  


The guy who chaired our meeting this morning read from the Doctor's Opinion and he shared a lot of great stuff, but he talked too long and he didn't talk about me or call on me or refer to me in any form or fashion.  Unbelievable!!  


If I move slowly back into reality -- loathsome task though it is --  he did a great job.  My sponsor suggests I refer the newcomer to the doc's opinion so he can see what the problem is.  It's hard to tease out the problem itself when we're in the midst of a problem that tells us that we don't have a problem, and we're hanging around with people who have the exact same kind of problems that they're also blind to.  Here are the facts: we have an allergy to alcohol so we react in an unusual manner to its effects and we have a mental obsession to alcohol so we can't seem to walk away from the stuff once we start.


"Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol.  The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false."


Elusive:  Tending to avoid or escape from by quickness, cunning, etc.; hard to grasp or retain mentally; baffling.


My sponsor also suggests that I be honest about my love of alcohol.  Today, still, after many years of sobriety I suspect that if I could drink and "get away with it" I would drink.  By "get away with it" I mean have the same peace and freedom from fear and angst, the same camaraderie with my fellows, the same connection with a Greater Power that I have today.  This is the false promise that alcohol whispers in my ear.  It reminds me of the good times.  It tells me this time will be different. It tells me I can drink like a normal man.


But I CAN'T.  This has been my experience.  

I Been Working on the Railroad

Work:  Bodily or mental effort exerted to do or make something; purposeful activity; labor; toil.


This idea of work is something I'm careful to attend to.  There are so many levels of work, so much  variety in the idea of exerting effort that I had never considered.  I used to associate work with something unpleasant I had to do to make money so that I could show you how important I was.  I particularly like the idea of "purposeful" activity in this definition.


Purposeful:  Having a purpose (intention; aim; resolution; determination); determined; full of meaning.


I pay homage to the idea of Working the Steps.  I ask people all the time: "How's the Program treating you?"  Serenity Stan shot back once, tired of all the times I asked the question, obviously: "What exactly do you mean by that?"
"Tell me about the work you're doing," I said.  "Tell me what kind of work you're doing on your recovery."


I think that there's working through the 12 Steps, sequentially and with purpose, for the first time. It's very important and it's relatively easy to mark your progress.  Then there's working the 12 Steps in more of a maintenance fashion.  I know I drifted off a little bit into self-sufficiency after my first successful foray through The Steps.  I remained active, attending meetings and being of service when possible, but I quit the steady effort needed to maintain my program.  I didn't grasp the idea of how to keep forging ahead.


My sponsor asked me some questions: "You know that phrase about 'restraint of tongue and pen'?"
"I LOVE that phrase, " I said.  "Of course,  I know it."
"What Step is it in?" he asked.


I had no idea.


"You know the idea of treating someone who behaves badly as if they were a sick person?" he continued.


I knew what was coming next so I kept my mouth shut, especially since he had just reminded me I didn't know which Step contained advice on how to keep my mouth shut.  I learned from this exercise that I needed to keep studying, to keep reviewing, to keep my mind open to new truths and hints.  Just because I had made it through the formal, official, progress-easily-tracked part of the Steps didn't mean the work was done.

Horseface Steve -- VIP

Important:  Meaning a great deal; having much significance, consequence, or value.


I am splitting the responsibility of the secretary position with SuperK for a Tuesday evening 12 & 12 meeting.  The secretary is the person who gets the speaker, starts the meeting off, and makes sure the building is cleaned up and secured for the night.  When the meeting ended last night everyone cleared out to talk or head home, leaving me inside cleaning coffee pots and counters and turning out lights.


"I am way too important to be doing this," I muttered.  "Don't these people know I've been sober for 24 years?  Someone else, someone not as important as me should be doing this scut work."


The fact that I think I'm way too important to have to do almost anything but cash checks and accept praise is an old and familiar defect of mine.  Egomaniac with an inferiority complex, indeed.  When I ponder doing something for someone else I immediately calculate the praise I'll receive, the effort the action takes, and how much credit I'll get for being such a freaking saint.  My self-centeredness is beyond belief.


This has always been my instinct: to figure out what's coming back to me.  It seems so much more important than my part in making life easier for someone else.  This program constantly provides me with reminders of how critical it is to NOT TAKE MYSELF SO SERIOUSLY.   I think my life is full of millions of little chances to make a small difference and very few opportunities to make a big splash.


Our home lives are such a great place to start.  If I can't get up in the morning and treat the people with whom I live with caring and concern, then I'm not off to a very good start.  And it's not enough to simply not act like an asshole -- I need to do better than that.  I need to quit looking through people as if they didn't exist.  If I can't get to work without cursing another drive or brushing off the hello from a barista, then I'm in my own head, way too important.


Way too important.

5D

Chaos:  The disorder of formless matter and infinite space, supposed to have existed before the ordered universe.


Last night I chaired a meeting on 5D of a local hospital: The Psychiatric Ward.  The floor where you need a key to get in and a key to get out, and a different key to get on the elevator.  It's hard to get very far if you don't have access to many different keys.  A lot of people in the Pysch Ward suffer from mental illnesses that are controllable UNTIL they drink or smoke meth or shoot heroin, at which point the medications they take don't work so well and they are thrown into crisis.  Psych Ward meetings are usually controlled chaos.


I was reminded of the unmanageability of my life at this meeting.


When I left I drove to nearby clubhouse to catch the second half of a meeting that SuperK was chairing.  What was the topic, you ask?  First Step.  The original Powerless Step.


Most of the time god whispers but from time to time god puts an amplified bullhorn right up to my ear, and shouts at the top of his lungs.


Today I had a couple of conversations with friends in recovery, and I brought up the cat.  Both of them are pet owners and were very sympathetic.  Neither of them had any great, new insights or access to a magical healing potion prepared by a shaman from Bhutan, but they were supportive.  I wasn't looking for The Answer.  I just wanted some validation that I was behaving reasonably and that my emotions were understandable.  Both of these people had contacted me with no real agenda.  I encourage alcoholics to use the phone even when things are OK because you never know when you might catch someone who is having a tough go of it.


It's not always about you.

Horseface Reality

Justify:  To free from blame; declare guiltless; acquit; absolve.


I needed to laugh at myself yesterday.  The obstacle was that any humor would interfere with the righteous anger I was carefully nurturing.  I was like a freezing hiker trying to start a small fire, in a windstorm, with wet matches, in 6 feet of snow, and someone kept blowing on the match.  I couldn't let the humor overwhelm my humorless need to be right.


I had another conference call with my handler from The Evil Empire that I work for.  I know I'm repeating myself, being redundant, saying the same thing over and over, but this is the organization that treated my poorly a while back (they really did -- I'm not making this up) which cost me a bunch of money.  So I took some income from them while technically upholding the terms of my contract (I really did -my behavior would stand up in a court of law) which evened the score.  It wasn't the right thing to do but I thought about it long enough and hard enough to justify doing it.


Unfortunately, when I use the phrase "even the score" then I'm doing something that a good prosecuting attorney would completely savage during the cross examination in The Horseface Court of Law, which is really the court of law that's the most important court to me at this point.  Not that I'm out there breaking the real law, either; a pretty guy like me, with my horseface and all, wouldn't do too well in prison.  


It was another one of those conversations where I try to deflect and dance and direct the conversation to places where I don't have to reveal what it is that I'm really doing.  What I'm doing, while technically correct, is violating the spirit of our arrangement.  They wouldn't say: "Horseface, you gorgeous beast, that's OK with us."  I would be disciplined, if not removed.  


In Horseface Reality, a really lousy kind of reality,  I justified this for a while.  I really believed they had screwed me out of money -- and yes, I'm aware that the 12 & 12 devotes several pages explaining how to correct bad behavior that arises out of a selfish pursuit of money -- so I thought it was OK to behave this way, as long as I technically, legally behaved well.  Ethically - not so much.


At this point I knew that I had totally pooped on the concept of "To Thine Own Self Be True."  I mean, it's easy to forget this concept -- it's only on the !!##!! recovery coin that I carry around with me all of the time.


Of course, being a failed Director I could only manage to steer the conversation out of dicey waters for most of the hour it took.  Of course, eventually it washed up into a fetid back eddy where I was trapped in a foaming whirlpool for a while.  I couldn't get the conversation to move back into the main part of the stream and I had to really dance.  I wasn't lying, per se, but I was making someone believe something that wasn't true, which I believe is the definition of lying, unless you're floundering around in Horseface Reality.


This is stressful for me so I begin to get defensive and being a guy, of sorts, defensive works best when mixed with anger.  People back away from me when my anger starts percolating.  I've got a lid on it most of the time but it's not gone, not by any means.  


I muted the phone and found SuperK.
"Help me," I pleaded.  "I'm getting pissed."
"Shhhhh," she said, with a gentle downward motion of her hands.  "Calm, calm."


Eventually, the logjam broke and I was free again.  I walked out of my office and said: "Look."  I raised my arms, showing large circles of perspiration.  It wasn't hot.  It wasn't humid.  I wasn't sick.  This was all stress related sweat.  It's stressful being deceitful.  I wish I wasn't so good at it because it really screws with my serenity.  I'm a TREMENDOUS liar.  It really comes naturally to me.  The truth -- not so much.


We discussed the wisdom of resigning my position with the organization.  It would be the right thing to do.  It's somewhat frightening because there's some little amount of money involved, but not enough to justify those big circles of sweat.


I'll tell you this: I feel free today.  I don't need this in my life anymore.  My serenity is EXTREMELY valuable.


I'm waiting a few weeks, of course.  I have another commission check coming.

Going, Going . . .

Death:  The act or fact of dying; permanent ending of all life in a person, animal, or plant.


I do not like the idea of permanence.  I bet that some of that can be explained by my resistance to The Original Permanent Fact, the one that I need to avoid; namely, the expectation that I'm never going to drink again.  After 24 years of sobriety it still makes me nervous to think that way, and rightly so, because it deflects me from the Original Spiritual Purpose; namely, to live One Day at a Time.  I do like Dr. Bob's comment when asked what he thought about never drinking again: "I believe that if I continue to do what I'm doing today that I don't ever have to pick up a drink again."  Maybe he said that -- maybe not.  I'm not the most trustworthy source of information.  Sure sounds like something a man with a profound spiritual existence would say, or something that a man with a profoundly warped ego would make up.


Anyway, we have an old cat -- seventeen years old -- who is struggling with her health.  Seventeen cat years equals . . . well, I have no idea how many human years that is.  We're not sure if she's just old, or having some serious health problems.  She's not saying.  She's playing her cards close to the vest.  She's always kind of been a bitch that way.  Last night we weren't sure if she was going to make it until morning but she seems to have rallied a bit.


The experience of seeing something alive begin to make the transition to something dead makes me ponder what it means to be alive.  I don't like the pain of loss and when I'm in the middle of it I have a tendency to fall back on the old defense of "It's not worth getting attached to anything.  It's not worth it."  I'm reminded of the old saw we pass around The Fellowship: "The good news about being sober is that you get to feel everything again.  And the bad news is that you get to feel everything again."  It's pretty cool when things are going well; not so much when they aren't.


The other thought that comes to mind is how easy it is to take something for granted.  Seventeen years -- I can barely remember the animal not being around.  As I held my possibly dying, certainly fading, pet in my arms last night I thought of all of the times and places where her presence and behavior has been a given.  I marvel at how easy it is to ignore a lot of mostly good times and concentrate on the totally unfair reality that life must end.  As I've gotten older and my body has begun to tell me that things aren't going to get any easier for me as time marches on I have to marvel at how strongly I resist this.  "This isn't fair," I think.  "Who came up with this plan?"


I have always appreciated  how well we celebrate death in The Fellowship.  Not that we're glad that someone dies but we're not terrified at what comes next, at what we have left undone or what we shouldn't have done.  There's a lot of emphasis on all the good things in a life well lived and not a self-absorbed preoccupation on the dead part.


I was talking with Shorty about the end of his mother's life and comparing it to the death of an unhappy man that I knew, a drunk who never got sober.  I could see how someone who had lived a right life could let go when it was time, without bitterness or regret.  It was pretty cool.  And I could see how someone who had been selfish was terrified of the end, who wanted to hang on as long as he could.  Death was the enemy.  Unfortunately, you can't treat people poorly for years and year and expect them to rally around you when you falter.


Yep.

Horseface Steve -- Assistant to the Director

One of the short prayers I offer up every morning, in a cloud of incense smoke and overwrought emotion, is the request for help in being the best son, brother, and husband that I can be.  Everybody else can go to hell.  Just kidding, just kidding, sort of -- the second short prayer is help in fitting myself to be of maximum service to my fellow man and woman.


Anyway, I'm making the effort to call my parents every couple of days.  I have a hidden agenda, of course: to make them see, eventually, that I know what is best for them and that they should do my bidding.  My words, fortunately, are vague and non-threatening.  I keep my mouth shut.  I say the best things when my mouth is shut -- great wisdom pours out.  My mother is one of world's great Directors.  I can see today that I learned at the knee of a master.  That woman is On Message.  She has an agenda and you cannot knock her off that agenda.  She would have been a great press secretary.


I'm getting better at keeping my frustration under control.  The prayer, after all, is that I make myself available for whatever help is necessary.  I'm hardly a good friend if I'm making suggestions on landscaping while your house is burning down.  I might be a great landscaper and my suggestions might be brilliant but your fucking house is burning down.  Service work after a meeting is cleaning up the coffee machine.  That's the service work.  I can suggest away but that's what needs to be done.  I'm the guy suggesting that maybe we should try a coffee service or bring our own coffee or switch to tea, none of which needs to be done when there's a dirty coffee machine staring me in the face.


Pow-err-less.

The Traditions

Tradition:  A long-established custom or practice that has the effect of an unwritten law.   From the Latin root traditio, a surrender.


I attend a 12 Steps and 12 Traditions meeting in The New City.  I attended one in The Old City for many years as well, but we didn't do a Tradition every month.  I never understood why.  If the Steps tell us How It Works then the Traditions tell us Why It Works.  Whenever I attend a meeting that I don't think is very good -- let's be honest, there are some out there -- I usually find that I'm in a room where the Traditions are being trampled underfoot.  


Last night was Tradition Eight, which states that we don't charge for our services.  We can pay people who do non-recovery type work like print books and staff offices, but the face to face stuff is totally free.  I can only imagine how I would have reacted had some variation of the following scenario played out at my first meeting: "OK, Horseface, we charge $100 for an initial evaluation but we will waive that if you can't afford it.  Dues are $50 a month.  If you sign up for two years we'll drop that to $45 with the first two months free.  AND we waive the initiation fee for any family members that you bring along.  Now, I have paperwork prepared . . . "  Absent all of that I was still wary that I had joined some weirdo cult for a long time.


I have to remember that The Big Book was published in 1939 but The Traditions didn't come out until 1946, and they weren't ratified until the 1950 International Convention.  A lot of kooky drunks had complicated the hell out of everything by then.  It was the wild west for a while.  We didn't put The Traditions together calmly and thoughtfully; we put them together as a survival mechanism.


How cool is that the root of the word "tradition" implies powerlessness and surrender?