Just a Touch More About Me

I went out to eat with relatives yesterday.  It was a spectacularly pleasant day and we went to a dark, wood paneled restaurant called Nothin' But Beef, or Try To Find Something Without Beef, or something like that.  It was also an expensive restaurant and a tough choice for someone like me who doesn't want to eat meat.  I was restricted to a bowl of potato soup or a house salad, and I'm not making that up.  My relatives ordered more expensive dishes than SuperK and I did, and they also had drinks.  No one wanted dessert except one of my relatives - he ordered a large, expensive dessert and insisted that everyone share the treat.  When the bill came, my relatives just split it down the middle.

"You don't want dessert?  Fine.  Here!  Have some of this and pay for it," was the rough translation.

So I ate inside - which I didn't want to do - at an expensive meat lover's restaurant - not my first choice - and got stuck paying for someone else's food - I don't even like paying for my own food. After about an hour I was so pissed I got up and went outside and made some phone calls to Program buddies.

Can you see why I'm going to hell?  Me, me, me, I didn't get what I, I, I wanted.

Wait, it gets better, or worse, depending on how much you like to see me suffer.  I did this under a heavy cloud of self-righteousness  because I wouldn't treat someone else that way.  And this is true: I'm a little more attuned to what other people want and I try to accommodate these wishes.  Not by nature but because I've had a lot of practice - I've hung around you people for 25 years and I've learned that when I take care of myself I don't feel very good about myself, an odd statement given that I have just finished explaining how pissed I got because I wasn't getting to do what I wanted.

Of course I felt guilty about my behavior.  It did not go unnoticed.

Let me recap: I didn't get to do what I wanted to do; I didn't behave very well - not outrageously but not well - and I didn't feel very good about it.  It doesn't make any difference what someone else is doing, either - it's what I'm doing.

I pray every day that I be the best husband, son, and brother that I can be.  Mayhaps I should add a few more categories of relative.  I also pray that I be of maximum service to my fellow man in whatever guise that may take.  Mayhaps I should listen when I'm saying that phrase.  I think I'm saying that but hearing something along the lines of ". . . of maximum service to my fellow man as long as it fits into my plans."

It could be a long, strenuous eternity for me if I keep behaving like this.

From Me to Me, Naturally

Deep Thoughts, from me to me.

If I do exactly what I want to do then I shouldn't expect other people to necessarily be as enthusiastic about it as I am.  They may be but they also may be not.  This doesn't have very much to do with whether or not it's a good thing to do.  "A good thing to do" is a very subjective phrase.

If I bend someone else to my will and they're not thrilled about it, then I shouldn't look so surprised.  If I don't want to be so surprised, maybe I can find out what someone else wants to do before I try to make them do something else.

Don't bend someone else to my will and then pretend that I didn't know that I had my big bending tools out.  I know when I'm doing what I want to do and I know when I don't know what someone else wants to do.  This is all selfishness on my part.  The goal is to think of others before I think of myself.  It's no trick to think of myself first.

If someone I've bent isn't happy about it, don't make them feel uncomfortable about being unhappy about it.  However, this is a masterful trick of personality manipulation and part of me is pretty impressed at anyone that can do it.  If I behave in a selfish manner and I can make you feel uncomfortable about it then my spiritual sickness is in fine mettle, fine form.

"Being of service" is a tricky thing to do.

A Little of This, A Little of That.

Albert Einstein:  "Don't worry what other people are thinking of you because they're not doing it very often."

This from the 7 AM meeting: "I have two factories in my head - one manufactures bullshit and the other buys it."  I can't stop the manufacturing but I can stop leaving the outlet store with two huge shopping bags full.

I went for coffee after the meeting.  I was yukking it up with the guy making my drink, trotting out some tired old material about putting a large drink in a small cup.  I love travel - it allows me to use old material on a new crowd.  Anyway, we chuckled a bit: "Thanks for bringing some humor in today."  This was some "being of maximum service to my fellow man."  It seems so insignificant to me as to be hardly worth doing sometimes but the fact that the guy said something makes me suspect that not many people do it.

I've been away from home for about a month, attending meetings regularly and I can still stroll in, sit quietly by myself, and leave without being accosted.  This is OK in my case - I've been sober a while and honestly, if I want to meet some people I should stick out my own hand - but all too common.  Makes me wonder about the reception that fearful, suspicious newcomers get and this is the whole reason that the meetings are held.

"If you want a hand the best place to look is at the end of your own arm." - some random engineer at FoMoCo.

Small Stuff

So many incidents in my life make me remember to pay heed to The Little Things.  One of my favorite stupid Program slogans is: "Two steps to serenity.  One: don't let the small stuff upset you.  Two: it's all small stuff."

I was thinking idly of an incident just a few months ago when Super K, a friend, and I stopped at a coffee shop after a nice hike.  SuperK ordered coffees for all of us, only to discover that she had left her wallet in the car.  She worried about holding up the line while she retrieved her money when the guy behind her paid for her drinks, refusing her offer to reimburse him.  He said he was having a great day and left it at that.  I'm sure he wouldn't remember doing that if he was under oath and it is still stuck in my mind.  A little thing making a big difference.

I'm not so quick to ascribe bad motives to people anymore.  It's my instinct to do so, but I've learned to pause a beat, see what else may be going on.  When I'm not behaving in a clinically paranoid manner I find that there are a ton of really nice people out there; I find that most people are nice.  Not everyone is trying to screw me over.  I don't spend all day trying to hose other folks; why would I think everyone is trying to hose me, all the time?

At the 7AM meeting yesterday a new guy told this story: he had locked his bike but forgot to loop the chain around an immovable object.  When he returned his bike had taken a hike.  He was pissed.  He talked about violence, visiting violence upon the perpetrator.  After a frantic and furious search he found that someone had seen the unsecured bike and held it for safekeeping.  He thought someone had screwed him and someone had done him a favor. 

I made a few phone calls yesterday to people who never call me.  We had nice talks.  I think I made a difference.  I didn't make a phone call yesterday to a good friend who takes my flight from The New City winter to sunnier climes as a personal affront.  It's not altogether clear why he thinks my behavior has anything to do with him.  I NEVER think about ANYONE but MYSELF!

I got to keep my finger off the trigger.

Absolut

Relative:  Not absolute; comparative.
Absolute:  Unconditional; free from restraint or control.

I mull over my all-or-nothing, right-or-wrong, black-and-white personality, my need to fit things completely, unreservedly into neat little categories.  I need to be absolutely sure of everything, absolutely happy, unconditionally certain of the way forward.  It has to be Great!  Wonderful!!  Spectacular!!!  I don't have time for headaches or slogging forward or making do.  I want my thinking process to be like flipping a switch: no doubts and no vagaries.

Yeah, good luck with all that.

HoHoHo

Christmas Day, 2012.  I'd say Happy Holidays but I'd piss off the traditional folks.  But if I say Merry Christmas then the secular humanists are going to be all over me.  I'm screwed.  I'm always getting screwed.  The world is against me, the cards are stacked against me, everyone hates me, guess I'll eat some worms.

If today is a great day for you, rock on.  There are a lot of people who really enjoy the holidays and I say bully, bully.  There are families who get along well and people who like to shop and decorate and all that crap.  Certainly the intent behind this holiday - ironically on a date that has more to do with trying to bamboozle ancient pagans into buying into a new religion than anything else - is wonderful.  Giving gifts, thinking of others, let's go wassailing and all kinds of other things that don't usually happen is hard to argue with.

But if you think today is a great big pain in the ass, rest assured that you're not alone.  There are a lot of expectations.  There is a lot of money spent.  There are a lot of people around who you may not spend much time with, and often for good reasons.  It's easy to be overwhelmed and disappointed.  I used to quote the statistic that more people commit suicide around the holidays than any other time of the year until I found out it wasn't true.

As Jon Stewart said, and I'm paraphrasing: "Ah, the holidays.  When you have a 4 hour meal with your in-laws who you only see once a year.  What could go wrong with that?"

The best Christmas SuperK and I ever had was the first time we put some serious distance between my family and ourselves.  We were in New Orleans.  When I pulled into the hotel I asked the bell hop if any restaurants were open on Christmas.  The Old City was very religious and traditional and almost everything was closed.

He looked at me strangely:  "They're all open," he said.

SuperK and I had gumbo and a couple of dozen raw oysters drenched in horseradish and hot sauce for our meal.

Priceless.

Meditation: A practice in which an individual trains the mind and/or induces a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit, although it can be argued that meditation is a goal in and of itself.

Meditation helps free me from the obsession of self.  It helps me to stop thinking about me, a Herculean task of Sisyphean proportions.

I frequently confuse being productive with being busy.  I can stay busy.  I can go out into the backyard and dig a large hole, then fill it back in.  This would keep me busy although I would hardly call it productive, unless of course I was looking for something in the large hole, didn't find it, and then realized I'm renting so I better fill the $#!! hole back up.  Or I thought hole-digging would be good exercise or more likely, I went into the backyard to get my shoes, which I put out there for some reason that I can no longer remember, forgot what I was doing, saw a shovel, and began digging randomly.  I would look up with a confused look on my face when SuperK would lean out and say:" What are you doing, dear?"

Work is a nice cover for productivity.  So is child-rearing.  I'm not saying those things aren't good or productive, just that they take up big chunks of time, chunks of fixed time.  It easy to split a day up into go to work, work until lunch, eat lunch, work until quitting time, go home.  That's a day.  But when those things stop or are taken away, what then?

I regret nothing.  I move forward and things work out the way I want them to, or they don't.  All I can do is move forward. I'm not in charge of what happens when I get wherever I end up.  I try to remember that the effort is up to me but the results are up to god.

I'm So ANGRY

Anger: An emotion related to one's psychological interpretation of having been offended, wronged or denied and a tendency to react through retaliation.   Or so says Wikipedia.  I left my beloved Webster's at home.

I am pondering anger this morning.  I have a terrible temper, which makes me so mad.  The men on the paternal side of my family all had big tempers.  I vowed to avoid this tendency, obviously unsuccessfully.  And the men all have a nice, passive-aggressive type of anger: not angry all the time but when the anger surfaces it's best to get out the way.  It's a very common technique for people who want to control things.  If I'm angry all the time people are going to move away; if I blow up at odd times people are on their toes and I'm better equipped to manipulate them.

Anger is a manly manifestation of fear.  It's easier to get my way when I'm violently angry than when I'm weeping quietly, although sometimes I do that, too.  It all depends on whether my fear is venting outward - anger - or burrowing inward - depression.  These are both very effective ways to get attention, to get what I want from you

Today when I'm angry I do two things.  First of all, I keep my mouth shut.  Nothing good comes out of my mouth when I'm pissed off.  Then I try to look at why I'm angry, especially if I'm angry at another person.  This is growth for me - my tendency is just to saddle up my anger and ride off into the sunset, six guns a-blazin'.  I almost always find that someone has touched something uncomfortable in me and it's easier for me to blow up than to take a look at what I don't like about myself, try to change it for the better or accept it for what it is.  Finally, (OK, that's three things) I try to look at the source of the anger.  I almost always find a person who isn't doing that well and is trying to make themselves feel better by devaluing someone else. Nobody thinks this consciously when it's going on but it's what's going on.

On and On I Go

I'm really getting annoyed that I didn't start using the Crisis List earlier.  Here's an update about a situation that so falls in the category of "This is what you're complaining about?  Really?  No shit?"  It's a distressingly  large category for me; I don't have much to complain about.  Anyway, I left the New City and its winter weather and drove 1000 miles due south where the weather is . . . how shall I put this? . . . somewhat milder.  Actually, it's #$!! perfect.  I realize that anything I say after this is going to make me sound like the spoiled, ungrateful brat that I am.  

Anyway, we're staying in a ground floor apartment in a vacation rental.  For the first few weeks there were a couple of nice women and their noisy dog staying upstairs.  They worked so they weren't terribly loud but they weren't quiet, either.  They told us that they were leaving for another assignment and that someone else would be moving in after they left.  (Ed. Note: brilliant use of a redundant comment, probably meant to lengthen what is already a fairly boring post - was there any confusion that the new people would move in before they left?)   The point here, if I can relocate it, is that I immediately put this on the Crisis List: New neighbors would be noisy.   I imagined a bunch of drunken college students blasting Metallica at 2 AM and peeing off the deck into my backyard.

I met the new neighbor yesterday.   She arrived in a Volvo.  She's my age - and I'm old - and she is here because her extremely pregnant daughter is close to delivering her first child.  To recap: I have a lovely middle-aged woman who is going to be at her daughter's house visiting until she becomes a grandmother, at which point she'll be helping to care for a newborn.  I don't believe that I'll see her much and I bet she's going to be tired when she's here.

This is what I worried about.  This is what I wasted my time worrying about.

Da Phone

I make a lot of phone calls.  Most of the time I'm doing OK when I make the call and a lot of the time I get hold of someone who isn't doing as well as I am.  This is what we call a symbiotic relationship - listening to someone else talk through a problem really helps me, usually a lot more than it helps the person who is getting something off their chest.  It's amazing to feel like I'm being helpful.  It didn't happen much when I was drinking.  I didn't ever care about anyone then - now I usually don't care about most people, a big improvement even though it may not seem like one.  It's the old adage about taking an interest in someone else to everyone's benefit.  I forget this on a daily basis.  I'm worried about me and I don't care about you but when I pretend I care about you then I find I actually start caring about you and then I feel great.    I have to start out pretending that I care before I can work up any actual caring.

I got a call from a friend yesterday that I call regularly but who doesn't often call me.  I had left a few messages but hadn't heard back from a few other guys and I needed to talk a bit.  My buddy was doing well, better than I was, so I got to talk.  I don't talk all that much.

I bet it helped him more than it helped me.

Crisis!

I was battling some free-floating anxiety yesterday.  This means that I was feeling anxious about some things that weren't actually real.  They sure weren't likely to happen.  It was my fevered brain struggling to come up with problems.  I didn't have any problems so I made some shit up.  It’s what comes naturally to me: Problems.

So I trot out my trusty Crisis List and wrote down the things that were bothering me.  It helps me visualize what’s going on and makes me write down what I think the solution is.  But yesterday I could be bothered to even write down the Crises, preferring instead to let the anxiety free-float to its little heart’s content.  I did decide to get up this morning and write down the anxiety makers but I couldn't remember one of them.  It was obviously quite important and pressing.

The second one was for something that hasn't happened yet and probably won’t happen – it falls into the category of “Imagining the Worst Possible Scenario Even Though That Is Damned Unlikely To Happen.”  It’s a very popular scenario in the Seaweed household.  In fact, it may be the most popular scenario.  I can’t think of anything more popular than imagining problems where no problems exist.

The third and last category was total bullshit.  The solution I wrote down was this: “Really?  Really?”  I couldn't believe that I even had this as a problem.  It was in the category of My Ferrari isn't working well problems.

Restless guy.  I would have been one of the dudes on a wagon trail getting scalped and freezing and starving to death a hundred and fifty years ago.  I would have left a reasonable existence 

It's STILL All About Me

I sent a note to a buddy of mine yesterday and I called him King John.  I was joking; moreover, I have no idea where the impulse to call him a king came from.  I thought something so I said something - I'm working on the brain-mouth interface but it's a big job.  These impulses are one of my qualities that people either find endearing or that gets me beat up from time to time.  I think some people find it endearing.  No one has said so but I have to assume there's somebody out there.  Hello?  Anybody?

He responded immediately as if I had criticized him for being too big for his britches - he wasn't angry but he was depressed.  We quickly cleared it up but I'm still laughing at how eager we are to beat ourselves up.  The President of Mongolia can be talking about water rights issues in the high steppes and I'll think: "Is he talking about me?"

No, I'm not self-centered at all.

Disengage

I need some time where my mind is not engaged on some cognitive task.  It's not productive for me to always be productive.  As as ex-salesman - which doesn't sound as cool as ex-Navy Seal - I was an early adopter of email and car phones, the precursor to the ubiquitous cell phone.  I've been careful not to let them run wild in my head.  My brain needs time to breather, to exhale and stretch it's wings, like a hawk floating upward on a thermal air current.  When I tak it out of gear and let it idle for a few minutes good things happen.

Missing the Whole Point

If you want to improve your meditation skills taking a meditation class is frankly missing the whole point.  It's like taking a class entitled: Excess Class Attendance: Breaking the Vicious Cycle.  It's like being late for a class on how not to be late for class.  Don't study it - just do it.  Just practice it.  I don't mean to suggest that a class can't be a good idea but it's a tough place to start.  If you want to relax don't buy 10 books on relaxation technique and read them as fast as you can, keeping a notepad handy to outline each chapter, giving yourself tests and Surprise! pop quizzes.  This is why you can't relax.  Relaxing is not doing something.  Stressing on proper meditation technique is the anti-meditation.  

Do they give grades in meditation class?  If so, do they grade on the curve?  Are you competing with other people in the class for good grades?  Do you study for hours, eyeing the competition?  I'm so competitive I'd try to screw with other people so that they would fail and I'd improve my class standing - I'd tap my foot irregularly or compulsively clear my throat to try to knock the competition off it's game.  I wouldn't care if I sucked at meditation - just as long as I was better than you.  How am I going to get into a good Ivy League college and earn my master's in meditation if I'm not at the top of my class?

I'm getting jacked thinking about it.

The Excel Spreadsheet of Life

I know that when I get frustrated with my life that I'm trying to control my life.  I'm trying to control people, places, and things.  I'm The Director - I'm arranging the set, the scenery, the actors, everything to my own liking and if only everyone did exactly what I wanted then everyone would be happy and by everyone, I mean me, because what do I care about anyone else?  Get serious.  This is all about me and how happy I can be.  My instincts are not interested in trying to expand my spiritual self or trying to live a life of service to my fellows.  My instincts are rampaging and they, to coin a phrase, or to lift one like a thief, balk at investigation.

I find myself trying to fit my life into little boxes that I fill in with little productive tasks and achievements and accomplishments.  I do not Go With The Flow.  I do not Wear The World Like a Loose Garment.  I don't admire a sunset or linger over a meal or talk to my friends on the phone or decide to take an extra 10 minutes of meditation because it feels so damn good to sit quietly, to not spin at a 1000 revolutions per minute.  Those things involve some sense of serenity and patience and they're things don't fit into a slot very well.  I can see having a slot that reads: Study Greek Philosophers.  That sounds impressive, a real achievement, a task to be completed and checked off.  Lingering over a cup of coffee while sitting quietly doesn't seem to merit a box on my Excel Spreadsheet of Life.

I'm still pondering my friend's surprisingly strident response to my email; it obviously dug into my Ego instinct with sharp talons.  The guy is an achiever and I can see him trying to pack his Excel Spreadsheet of Life full of worthy accomplishments.  Yesterday, I sat out in the back yard as the evening came along and I had a nice short meditation session.  It doesn't sound as impressive as taking a class in meditation at the local Zen Meditation center.  That would require transportation and a fixed time slot.  It would be easier to explain to someone that I spent my afternoon studying Zen Meditation in a structured class.  It's harder to say: "I was feeling a little zipped up so I made a cup of herbal tea with honey and sat down to be quiet for a minute and the minute turned into half an hour."  That sounds, to this over-achiever, like someone wasting some time.  A class sounds so productive.  

So be it.

Emotional Hangover

Still a little angry this morning.  Not deep down in my bones, ruin my entire day angry,  but I can hork up some irritation pretty quickly.  It's more of a "whatever, dude" kind of anger, kind of a pleasant day-dreamy kind of anger, but I could get it going if I wanted to.  It makes me see how dangerous an emotion it can be for me - it was positively deadly, venomous, when I was drinking.  And it's not the anger that's such an issue; it's what the anger can become if I indulge it.  Resentment, fury, vindictive fury, take no prisoners burn down the house fury.  I don't try and pretend that I don't have a temper any more - I try to channel it away from the women and children.  It's fire for me.  Burn down the house - cook my food.  The choice is mine.

I also have to be careful with good feelings although not as careful as with the anger.  I can drift off in totally delusional flights of fancy, although these are a lot more pleasant and not nearly as destructive.

Delete Forever

I sent an email to a friend yesterday reminding him of a humorous episode that took place in his life many years ago.  I also commented about the weather, which is really, really nice where I'm staying at the moment.   REALLY nice.  I have been complaining about cold weather my entire life.  It is the most ancient of my ancient-ist topics.  I get cold easily; I hate being cold; I hate snow - in fact, one of the main goals in my life is to never, ever touch snow ever again.  I carry a flame thrower around in a backpack so I can melt any snow that comes within 100 yards of me.  I curse audibly when I see snow on distant mountaintops.  Most people believe that hell is very, very hot - I call that an excellent vacation spot.  I'd be in hell wandering around looking for the thermostat to turn up the heat.

"Can I at least get a jacket?" I'd respond, if the demon who was in control of the HVAC system told me to go back to my fiery pit of molten lava.  "It's $#!! freezing in here."

Hell for me would be like Siberia or North Dakota.

This guy responded with some comments about my life style.  He called me an Epicurean.  I believe that means an individual who spends all of his time seeking carnal, sensual pleasures: food, touch, weather.  First of all, I thought: "Yeah, no shit."  I'm an alcoholic.  I spent my entire life trying to avoid pain and maximize pleasure.  That was the entire purpose of being alive to my thinking.  

Then I thought: "WTF?"  I don't see myself that way at all.  Don't get me wrong: I like comfort as much as the next guy but you people have taught me that if I'm not living a life of service to other people and seeking to grow my spiritual life I'm not making much progress in growing as a person.  And I didn't really see why my email generated this kind of critical comment.

So I sat down and wrote a blistering response, which I did not send; something about "restraint of tongue and pen" is stuck in my consciousness.  I looked at my note again in a few minutes and deleted the whole pissed, vindictive mess.  I did keep the original email from my friend, figuring  that I could put something together when I wasn't so angry.  After a few more minutes I deleted it  - using the "Delete Forever?" option - forever.  I knew nothing good was going to come from that thread.  It was a train wreck waiting to happen, waiting for me to stride into action with all kinds of justified anger.

I come back to the old saying: "Who has The Program?"  I said it before SuperK brought it up.  I said it before I called my sponsor.  I know deep down that this has nothing to do with me - I'm betting my friend is in an uncomfortable spot and I happened to be a target of convenience.  And I know that I need to write and reflect on the content of his response; for me to get so angry suggests that the thrust and parry got close to some fact or truth about my own life that I'm not entirely comfortable with.

Gratitude? Gratitiude!

Sometimes when I'm feeling grateful - when the moon is in the 7th House and Aquarius is rising, or something like that - I have to pinch myself that I have access to this Program.  I wish I didn't have to wash up half dead on a beach somewhere in the Caspian Sea to earn my seat but I sure have something that most people would love to have.  

It's all about the spirituality.  It's all about the spiritual awakening.  It makes me so grounded in life.  Things just make sense.  I don't feel the obsessive drive to have the things that my instincts make attractive to me.  And even more astounding is the fact that I enjoy the things that I do have.  The more I'm able to grow my spiritual center the simpler life becomes.  I'm able to break things down into smaller and smaller building blocks.  I'm not driven to have more of everything and pissed that I only have what I have.

OK, that passed.  I think I'm getting a little ungrateful again.  It lasted 15 minutes or so which doesn't sound like much but is actually a pretty good run for me.

Recovery Is Like a Shark

Yesterday SuperK and I went to a meeting that I had scoped out.  I had the time right but the location wrong and the location is a very, very important part of a normal, effective scoping out.  For most people this would be a failed operation but one out of two is a pretty good average for me.  SuperK was fazed for not one second.

There was an older guy already standing outside the meeting place; we introduced ourselves and exchanged pleasantries.  Don started talking.  He had 35 years of sobriety but drank again when his wife died two years ago - he was back at his second meeting.

We talked for a while or rather Don talked at us.  If you're looking for a good sounding reason to drink, a justified reason, losing your wife of 50 years to leukemia isn't too bad as terrible, awful, horrible reasons go.  I'm not able to speak to the kind of program he was working before his wife died but I'm going to assume it wasn't the best.  It was a good reminder talking to him.  

Recovery is like a shark - it has to be constantly moving forward or it dies.

I gave myself credit for a meeting.

Big Things - Little Things

I know I'm getting older because I question with increasing frequency the value of what it is that I'm doing, exactly - that and because everything hurts most of the time.  SuperK brought this matter up yesterday - this is the rough equivalent of humming "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" over and over in my ear.  The tune is in there and it's hard to get it out.

The struggle is seeing value in the Little Things.  The Little Things aren't as impressive in my mind as the Big Things.  If I'm not changing the world, to great public acclaim, then I don't feel like I'm accomplishing much.  The Book talks about this - apparently I'm not alone in my superficial grandiosity.  The Book says that few of us can be people of great prominence, and it implies that most of us don't want to be, really, if we're being honest about it.  The Book says maybe we can make a difference by arranging for the cake and coffee after a meeting, when so many suspicious newcomers can begin to sense a program that can make a real difference in their lives.

"How much does that pay, anyway?" I was tempted to ask when someone suggested that I take on the coffee making duties.

I'm glad I didn't.

Hedonic Adaptation

Hedonic Adaptation:  A measurable and innate capacity to become habituated or inured to most life changes.

I read a fair amount and often run across things that are helpful in enabling me to understand other things, sometimes important things.  There's a lot of good stuff out there.  

There's this from a series of psychological studies and I'm quoting from the report directly: " Hedonic adaptation is most likely when positive experiences are involved.  It's cruel but true:  We're inclined - psychologically and physiologically - to take positive experiences for granted.  When great things happen to us we're thrilled!  For a time.  Then, as if propelled by autonomic forces, our expectations change, multiply or expand and, as they do, we begin to take the new, improved circumstances for granted."

I know that I get bored easily.  Restless, vaguely dissatisfied, eager for something new, something else - not unhappy, exactly, but not content.  Some of this is due to my profound lack of gratitude but some of it is me being human, if you care to believe this study.  I get bored, I try something, sometimes something really huge and big and new, and then after a while I get bored again, and I'm ready for the next great thing.

Here's some more: "Surprise is a potent force.  When something novel occurs, we tend to pay attention  to appreciate the experience or circumstance, and to remember it."  It seems to me that this explains a lot about culture shock.  Many of us are too timid or afraid or uncomfortable to take the step into the new thing.  The change can be very uncomfortable.

But I highly recommend it.

Prone to Anxiety

I get into these periods when I battle anxiety more than I care to.  "Prone to anxiety," as my buddy Little Westside Johnny says.  It's a thing with me.  It's a thing with many drunks but it appears to be a particular curse of mine.  My head doesn't process minor fear very well.  I go to mild, free-floating anxiety at the drop of a hat.

The Crisis List is helpful and irritating all at the same time in this regard.  I write the stuff down and then I write down how the stuff is resolved a few days later and marvel at how much time I waste in my life worrying about things that never come true.

For a super-efficient, obsessively productive German peasant it's a lot of time.

Those Kooky Sponsors

I have an Old City sponsor - I've had him as a sponsor for most of my 25 years - and a New City sponsor.  One is a retired judge, conservative and religious and totally conventional  in all aspects of his life and the other is an old hippie - a real California, 60s hippie - who lived in communes and is a passionate atheist.  One has never lived more than 5 miles from where he was born and the other is spending the winter in Thailand or Ecuador or I have no idea where.

They're both great.  I need them both.  Both of them piss me off from time to time and both of them hit the nail on the head, too.  To say they come at things from different points of view would be the understatement of the year.  Sometimes I need to be reminded that I'm not relying enough on my Higher Power and sometimes I need to be told that I'm only human, that I need to give myself a break.

Guess which one says which?

P&M

Prayer and meditation is all about forming a partnership with my higher power.  I'm not much into partnerships as a general rule; I'm into taking hostages through violent means.  I'm into control and dictatorships.  If I owned my own law firm, I'd call it Seaweed, Seaweed, and Seaweed.  I like the sound of my own name so I'm going to slap it on the side of my building - which I'd call The Seaweed Building - as many times as it would fit.

"Yes, I have an appointment with Mr. Seaweed," my first client would say.

"Which Mr. Seaweed?" I'd say.  "We have three of them here."

"I don't know," would be the perplexed reply.

"Get the $#!! out of here," I'd say.  I wouldn't make much money as a lawyer.

The point is that I spend way too much time talking and way too little time listening.  I can't be bothered to listen when I'm meditating - and that's all about the listening - so you can imagine the problems I run into when I'm praying.  There's a lot of dictating and laying down of the law when I pray.  There's isn't much supplication or confession or thanksgiving or praise - it's more of a detailed list of demands presented with an angry snarl.  One of my fondest fantasies is to have a direct phone line to my higher power so I could make sure that he, she, or it is with the program.

"Here's what I need you to do today," I say to god, simultaneously checking my Facebook account.  "Are you taking notes because I'm only going over this once?"  I have a long history of trying to push god around.  It doesn't work very well but I'm not shy about it.

Why I'm Going to Hell

Another List that I keep on a regular basis to supplement my Crisis List is one I call Reasons Why I'm Going To Hell List.  It's quite a long list and I'm deliberately, willfully leaving off some very good reasons why I'm going to hell.  If I don't the List gets overwhelming in its length, detail, and complexity, and I slack off on my updates.

Willie and I tell each other: "You're not going to hell but wherever you end up there's going to be some bad dudes there."

Anyway, today's reason falls in the general category of "I'm Never Happy With ANYTHING!"  While that's not technically true I sure have a tendency to ferret out the dark, rotting underside of any person, place, or thing.  I can see a defect at a 1000 yards, at night, in a driving rainstorm, right after someone has tossed a beaker of battery acid in my eyes.

"Ow," I say, wiping acid off my mug.  "Hey, is that a minor inconvenience possibly awaiting me over that next mountain pass in another 1000 yards or so?"

I roll into my temporary apartment and immediately start complaining about the things that I don't like or the things that I forgot to bring.  

Part of this, I believe, is normal human nature.  I believe this, I believe, because I do it and I'm uncomfortable when I do it so if I pretend like everyone else does it then I don't feel quite so insane.  I know that when I'm in the midst of something new I try to wait for a bit.  A lot of times I just go to bed and get up the next day - when I'm tired I really can focus in on the crap.

I can see clearly now the something is something . . . 

Salty Snacks

Here's 25 years together . . . 

SuperK and I have been on the road for 3 days - 3 long days of driving, most of it the rain so far.  We get along great when we travel but 3 days in close quarters is enough to grate on anybody's nerves, especially when I'm one of the people in the close quarters.  I'm tough enough in distant quarters let alone close ones.  We got to our crappy hotel last night after long day 2.  I offered to walk over to the truck stop to buy a couple of sandwiches for dinner - either that or The Rainbow Room - as neither of us wanted to sit in a restaurant for an hour to get something to eat.  It wasn't even the restaurant at the truck stop - it was the gas station at the truck stop.

I didn't mind doing this.  I'm a pretty good husband.  I'm also annoying as hell most of the time.  The Agony and the Ecstasy, to coin a phrase.  (Note to self: if anyone ever offers to name a new party drug after me I'd like to use the name Agony).  

"Get some chips, too," said SuperK

I got some chips with the sandwiches.  I didn't think about the selections much but I have no doubt I got what I wanted.  I wasn't trying to be overly selfish but I did go get the sandwiches.  I was exhausted and I almost had a nervous breakdown trying to sort through all of the options on the crappy sandwiches.  Parsing the relative merits of 25 different kinds of chips was way beyond my powers of concentration.  I still had the 1000 yard stare from all of the driving.  I returned to the motel.

"I don't like these kinds of chips," said SuperK.

I declined to comment a wise declination.  Her comment really didn't bother me.  I was tired and so was she and I had no desire to start WW III over some crappy chips.  This is new behavior and this is also learned behavior.  This is why we've been together 25 years.  No WWs over salty snacks and such.

She apologized later.  She also ate the chips.

Cool Prayer

More about prayer, my new favorite thing to do, even though I am far too cool to pray, being more of a very cool Eastern philosophy meditation guy, which I can't do worth a shit . . . 

The problem with my praying pre-Program was that I prayed at things; I was a Prayer On Demand kind of guy.  I knew what I needed to be happy and I asked to get these things post-haste or, better yet,  to have impediments to my happiness removed.  Generally speaking I'm more interested in avoiding pain than obtaining pleasure, although it's a close call.  The Book addresses this deficiency: it says that we may ask for anything whatsoever as long as we add the qualifier: Thy Will Be Done.  Or: Your Will Be Done.  Or: Dude, Whatever seems cool to you.  There's also the suggestion that we can pray for whatever we want as long as what we get is in some way a help to others; this seems like a total waste of time to me, seeing as I'm pretty detached from the well-being of others, worried that it may take some of the pie off of my plate.

My uncool mother, who I've never seen meditate but who prays a lot, says that it's OK to ask for whatever I want.  She thinks my god or higher power isn't too worried about my selfishness.  She doesn't think I'm going to pull the wool over god's eyes.  The praying is for me - it's not for god.  That made me mad until I tried it and found it worked just fine.  I do believe that if I add the They Will Be Done to the end of whatever outrageous crap I'm coming up with I have my bases covered.  That phrase is kind of like Liability Insurance - it covers all ills.

Now, how can I make praying cool?

A Logical Linkage

Our Steps suggest that it is quite helpful to pray and meditate, and also to engage in self-examination.  There's a sentence in the 11th Step - I confess to being unable to locate it with a lazy and cursory search so I'm forced to paraphrase - that says that although all three of these practices are wonderfully helpful the real power is when they're logically interlinked.

I do the self-examination thing on a daily basis.  You're reading my self-examination at the moment.  It's very revealing.  I do it because it's hard for me to bullshit myself when I'm writing.  I can do it when I'm talking and trying to impress someone but frankly I don't see the point when I'm all by myself writing.  I also try to meditate although this usually evolves into a nap or a wild sexual fantasy or a careful, detailed accounting of some terrible vengeance I'm going to wreak on someone who definitely deserves it.  Meditating is cool - it's done by cool people who study Eastern philosophies and travel to Bhutan to do it.   Praying is not cool - it's done by nice people who dress up once a week and all go to church together.  As a cool guy I've been working hard on my meditating and slacking on the praying, with predictable results.

My head is usually full of crap.  There are a lot of people yelling and screaming and generally causing a lot of mayhem.  When I meditate I try to slow down and ignore the mongol horde.  Praying is more like trying to talk over the gibberish, like when my sister was pissing me off when we were kids, and I would stick my fingers in my ears and make a lot of squeaking noises.

I did some praying over the last few days..  Helped me out.

Wait:  To be, remain, or delay in expectation or anticipation of; await.

I have been grooving big time on the Crisis List.  I should have done this years ago and not simply told other people to do it and then not do it myself.  I write down the date and then I write down what's bothering me.  Some days I'm clean - nothing to List.  Some days I have quite a List that I have to clean up.  I find that about half the time - and I'm totally making up this percentage - the item listed requires some kind of concrete action on my part and about half the time - this percentage is completely accurate - I have to Wait.

If I wake up and my tooth is killing me then I need to call the dentist.  That's the action that's required on my part.  Of course, I don't have to do this or I can delay the action because I'm afraid.  I do both of these things from time to time.  That's why items keep reappearing on my List.  Frankly, if I don't take the action then it's my own damn fault.  My dudes don't give me much support when I'm not doing something I should do.  That's on me.  "You're bitching about that again?" they say.  "Weren't you supposed to do something about that?"

If I call the dentist and the earliest he can see me is late afternoon, then I have to Wait.  I've taken the action and now I have to be patient.  It's funny how things that require patient waiting often change a lot and often they just self-correct.  That's why I wait, even though I don't want to.  I'm much more into quick, rash action.

Interesting how I came up with the dentist as an example.  That guy hasn't been on the list like 25 times in the last 27 days.

Anxiety:  A state of being uneasy, apprehensive, or worried about what may happen; misgiving.

I don't think there is a concept more fascinating to me than anxiety.  I've looked up the definition of anxiety more than any other word in the last several years, and I've looked up a LOT of words.  The big qualifier in that definition is may.  May implies a possibility of indeterminate likelihood.  There is not the slightest assurance that a thing is going to come about, making the worry a big #$!! waste of time.

Fear I get.  Fear is primal and it is helpful.  Fear is looking in a dark cave and hearing an angry growling sound, and not going in.  Fear is seeing my fellow caveman assure me he can fly and ending up smashed up on the rocks below, deader than a doorknob.   Fear keeps me alive - anxiety makes me miserable.

I've been enjoying my Crisis List.  Nothing has come of anything on that list and some of the stuff is ridiculous in retrospect.  Some of it is patently ridiculous when I write it down.

"Really?" I say to myself as I project some ridiculous, implausible outcome.  "This is how you're going to spend your time this morning?  Worrying about this?"

Alcoholics.  There isn't a bright, sunny day that I can't ruin with my anxiety.  I can worry about anything.

Go ahead.  Give me a try.

Little Johnny

I marvel at how solving problems makes such a big difference in my life.  I still laugh at my  belief that I might be able to get out of things without experiencing any problems.  Getting through challenging things has done so much more to shape my character than getting what I want.  

My friend, Little Westside Johnny, is coming for a visit.  Maybe my Old City sponsor is sending him out to spy on me;  given my history of lies and deception a little checking-up isn't a terrible idea.  It's more likely that no one else is thinking about me at all.  This seems about right when I consider how much time I spend thinking about myself.  It really isn't necessary for anyone else to waste any of their time pondering my circumstances.  

Little Johnny and I did some pretty extensive traveling together in the day.  We were reminiscing about a few of the more memorable trips, one being to a country in the Middle East that was a few ticks past our comfort zone - we didn't see another foreigner the entire time and the tourist infrastructure was sketchy at best.  We followed that up with a visit to a remote, remote camp in the Ecuadorean Amazon.   We were out there.  It took many hours by plane, jeep, and dugout canoes to get where we ended up.

These weren't comfortable trips in a physical sense and they were emotionally draining as well.  We both experienced anxiety attacks.  Yet both of us agree that these may be the two best vacations that we ever took.  With the stress and the overcoming of the stress came intense satisfaction.  We achieved something - we got somewhere.

Also, some of the greatest lines in my life came out of these trips.

Little Westside Johnny, bent over, gasping for air, ankle deep in mud and swamp water, gobbling Hostess cinnamon buns and pretzels in a desperate attempt to consume enough calories to keep up with all of our much younger comrades: "I'd give up my entire 401K to get airlifted out of here."

Silent Seaweed

SuperK and I are getting ready to head south for a few months this winter.  We rented a small one bedroom apartment for our trip, fairly close to some family members who seem eager to have us visit, an oddity in my family - normally they're looking askance at what I'm doing.  I've also been talking to my distant immediate family who are suggesting that they're going to come and visit.

The thing about my family is that we're not a close-knit group.  We love each other and wish each other well but we've never spent much time together outside of fairly standard holidays.   When I lived only a few miles away in The Old City I got visits every 8 or 10 months.  After much angst and self-searching and introspection I attained some acceptance about this.  I saw my part in it - I saw my major part in it.  I've mentioned that all of these folks see the world through a similar lens, and then there's me: I don't have a lens of any sort.  I don't think they find me disagreeable, just odd and confusing, and since I am odd and confusing I can't get too worked up about this.

So the point is that the chances of my elderly parents traveling by jet airplane 3000 miles to visit me is . . . ahem, remote.  I believe that they believe they're coming but it ain't happening.  My mother asked today, during a phone conversation that I was barely listening to, if they could stay with us for a couple of days when they visit.  I guess they plan on spending the rest of the trip that they're not going to take with my cousin who has a real house with extra bedrooms and who inhabits the same planet as my folks.

"Sure,"  I said.  "That'll be great.  We'll have to get a hotel room when you're here because we only have the one bedroom place."

Comments like this reinforce the opinion of many if not all people that I should simply try not to speak.  I believe my mother is irritated that I didn't spend the additional 50% that it would have cost me to rent a place with an extra bedroom or two or three in case family members who aren't coming anyhow do come and want a free place to stay.  It's not that I don't want them to stay with us - it's that there isn't any place for all of us to sleep.

This was all counterproductive.  It didn't go anywhere good.  I could hear SuperK yelling from the back room: "Say yes!  Say yes!!"  But I had already spoken, and was still speaking even though I was thinking: "Why am I speaking?"

This permitted my mother to switch into martyr mode, a many layered affair with nuance piled on top of nuance, perfected after years of practice.  This gives her an excuse not to stay with us or to cancel the trip that she isn't going to take anyhow.  What's so irritating is that my parents have plenty of money.  They never spend any of it and they're still saving for god's sake, at 85 years old.  They're probably saving up for jet skis or a snowmobile.  I don't get it.

I don't get it, alright.

Counseling

Sign on an office seen last night walking home: "Northwest Counseling: Specializing in individuals, couples, and families."

SuperK: "Glad she's got it narrowed down to everyone in the human race."

Pondering Seaweed

Ponder:  To think deeply; deliberate; meditate.

I further ponder writing . . . 

I ponder it when I'm unsure of a course of action and I ponder it when I'm upset.  When I'm mad or pissed or angry or furious or irritated or annoyed - or any of the other code words men use when they're afraid - I try not to do anything.  Same thing when I'm anxious or agitated.  I never do anything when I'm ticked or peeved or honked off.  Taking actions when my emotions are running high is a recipe for disaster.

This often entails writing - not only that, but writing when I'm in pain.  I'm impatient.  I don't like waiting and it's nearly impossible when I'm uncomfortable.  So my M.O. is to act Right Away!  Don't ponder or wait for additional information; don't ask for guidance from my friends and my higher power; just Do Something Right Now!!  I'm not Uncle Joe - I'm not moving kinda slow.

One of our Promises states that "we will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us."  In my case that was all situations that existed.  My drinking companions used to put their hands over their faces and say: "Where's Seaweed?  Where's Seaweed?"  I'd laugh delightedly when they pulled their hands down.  I really thought they had disappeared.  That's how easy it was to baffle me.

The Eleventh Step adds this assurance:  "We relax and take it easy.  We don't struggle.  We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while."  That's a powerful incentive for a dude who struggled and didn't relax or take anything easy.  That's a payoff.

By ". . . for a while" we mean more than 20 minutes.

Skinny But Tough

Solve:  To find or provide a satisfactory answer or explanation for; make clear; explain.

And there really is something to be said about solving problems, as opposed to avoiding them or masking them or burying them under an avalanche of drugs and alcohol.  I'm not suggesting that problems can't be delayed or sidestepped, only that they have to be dealt with in some fashion other than closing one's eyes and hoping they go away.

There is a sense of satisfaction with actually confronting something and coming up with a solution.  I'm not afraid of the problem anymore; been there, done that.  The older I get the less fearful I get - I've been through a lot of things once or twice and nothing has killed me yet, although a few things have inflicted grievous injury.

I'm skinny but I'm tough.

Toothsome Lass

Because I know everyone is on the absolute edge of their respective seat waiting to see how my trials and tribulations with my teeth is going to play out, I say this: I went to the dentist today and had some of the work done.  I was wavering between not doing anything when something definitely needed to be done and calling the dentist to practice my ability to deliver a venomous screed of profane rage.  Instead, I  chose something in-between.  I'm also grateful tonight: grateful for Novocaine and dental schools.  One hundred years ago my tooth would have gotten worse, growing more and more painful, until the decay would cause the thing to simply break off.  That sounds lovely.

And I'm laughing about that phone call with Willie.  When I'm IN FEAR I can't see too inches past my nose.  You could slap me around the head and shoulders with the solution and I'd miss the whole point.  God speaks to me through other people.  He doesn't speak to me directly even though I think he should.  God gives me answers in direct proportion to the amount of effort I put into finding a solution.  This is why I call people - they're not wrapped up in the fear and they can see things much more clearly.  And he doesn't give me the answers when I want them.  I spent day one praying and writing and talking to people, and I made a decision.  When I woke up on day two I was still afraid.  Damn.  I had to go to work again.  I hadn't done enough work and I hadn't made the right decision or the fear would have been gone.  I listen to the fear - it's telling me something.

Willie said, in response to my thanks: "Shit, no problem.  I wasn't upset so I could see the situation more clearly than you could.  And what do I care about your teeth anyway?"

He didn't actually say that - I said that.  But we joke all the time about the fact that if something  doesn't concern us directly, then frankly we don't really care about it.  That's an exaggeration but not as big a one as you might imagine.

Mind-Muddle

Muddle:  To confuse mentally; befuddle, as with alcoholic liquor.

Yesterday I called the dentist's office to get a more through explanation on the estimate.  They kind of cleared up the mind-muddle but not really - I was still confused.  I got up this morning and I was still upset so I knew that the action I had taken wasn't going to cut the mustard.  I didn't enjoy the first action so you can imagine I didn't fancy any additional unpleasant action.  I did some writing - still upset - and I made some phone calls.  I wasn't sure what to do, vacillating wildly between doing nothing and doing all the recommended work, between never talking to the dentist again and calling up and giving them a piece of my mind.

Willie called back, both a blessing and a curse, but mostly a curse.  He listened to me talk.  He empathized and he laughed at me and he came up with a couple of suggestions, both requiring me to call the office again and get yet more information.  I wanted the advice.  I want guys who know me to tell me what they think.  I can take the advice or I can leave it alone - it's not like anyone has a gun to my head.  My friend Loveland was in town for a day this weekend and we went to a meeting together; he told me: "I want people to take my inventory.  Tell me what you think I'm doing wrong.  I can't fix it if I've got it justified in my own head."

I called the office again and was decidedly un-upset after the call.  I'm heading in tomorrow to get some of the most pressing work done.  It took a while for me to get to that decision.  I had to hang out with the discomfort until the solution presented itself and I had to do the work to be in a position to get that solution.  I was lost on my own.  When I was drinking I would have gotten good and drunk and simply buried the whole problem deep down inside.  Worries about my teeth would have been another one of those hundreds of nagging termites ceaselessly devouring my insides.

Now, I'm not saying that I'm looking forward to the solution . . . 

More Step Work, Dammit

So I'm back at the dentist yesterday for a cleaning.  The last time I was in The Chair I had a bit of an emergency: a broken tooth.  The dentist did a stellar job fixing the problem while also spending a little of his free time looking around inside my almost 56 year old mouth for any other things that might catch his attention.  Not surprisingly, he found some!  At the top of his list were three additional teeth that needed to have crowns put on them.  Now I'm not doubting that I have some teeth that aren't in tip-top shape and I would much rather have a dentist finding a few optional problems than one missing something important, but I'm not having any symptoms and I don't have dental insurance and these procedures are #$!! expensive.

I fretted some at the time but didn't do any of the additional work, with no dire consequences.  After I had my teeth cleaned yesterday the dentist did an oral exam; he noted the same three teeth - which apparently weren't too much of a problem a year ago or they would have let me hear about it before now -  and also a shitload of other things.  He got up and told me the office manager would print out a suggested treatment plan.

It topped out at just over $12,000.

I was pretty upset on the way home.  If you want to upset me screw around with my health; money is a nice trigger as well.  And  it's not like we're talking about my car or plumbing - I may need a tune-up but I don't have any problem delaying that.  But my mouth.  I envision teeth cracking off at 3AM accompanied by a drumbeat of horrible pain.  And when I'm afraid I get pissed.  Guys get mad when they're afraid; it's a lot more manly than being a-scaired.

I wanted to call the dentist and give him a piece of my mind.  But I remembered something that vaguely sounded like "restraint of tongue and pen."  And tongue and tongue and tongue.  And tongue.  I may have read that in a book somewhere.  It may have saved my ass about a million times.

I didn't make the call.

I went to a meeting last night and chaired, selecting restraint of tongue and pen as the topic.  I didn't provide specifics about why I needed to be restrained, only that it involved someone trying to take some of my money away, trying to cheat me, to take advantage of me, to pull the wool over my eyes.  I heard good things.

I got up this morning and during my Quiet Time I sat quietly with my discomfort.  I want to act but knew that I needed to sit quietly.  Drunks don't like pain so we try to make it go away with drugs, alcohol, coffee, food, sex, work, exercise, anything but feeling the pain.  It was OK sitting with the pain.  Emotional pain is nothing but a feeling.   Feelings aren't real and they aren't going to kill me.  We don't ignore feelings in The Fellowship but we don't give them any unnecessary power, either.  My first sponsor was fond of saying: "I don't give a shit about your feelings; tell me what you're DOING."

I swam this morning - always a good stress reliever - and then called my Old City sponsor, a man who is roughly as paranoid about money as I am.  I knew I was going to be preaching to the choir but also that talking about my anger . . . er, fear . . . with another person would weaken said fear.  It helped even though mostly he laughed at me.  Prosperity problems or something like that.

Now I'm writing about it.  I've made my opinions known recently about the ferocious power of putting pen to paper.  This is really helping, too.

But I have to call the dentist.  I have to make a decision.  I don't want to do it.  I'm afraid that I'm going to hear something that I don't want to hear.

But I'm not angry.  I'm calm.  I'm thinking clearly.  I believe this is what's called Working The Steps: using the principles of The Fellowship to practical effect in my life.  Reading, writing, talking about things at meetings and on the phone, prayer and meditation.  This is why I work The Steps.  These are practical, tangible results.  This isn't theoretical stuff.  

Written Inventory

I've started to make a little crisis list at the back of my journal.  I've told other people to do this for years without bothering to do the work myself.  I'm continually amazed at the power of writing things down and not only because writing is a creative outlet for me, a pleasurable release; something really clicks into place when stuff that is in my head is looking back up at me from a piece of paper.  The same thing goes for discussing issues with other people, using words actually spoken out loud.  Thoughts can seem so terrifying and insurmountable bouncing around inside my head.  I panic.  I don't know what to do; I act rashly and make wrong decisions.  When I write them down they lose a lot of power.

"Really?" I say.  "Really?  This is what's eating you up?"

This is one of the reasons our founders have us make a written inventory.  They got it.  And lest we members of The Fellowship spend too much time patting ourselves on our collective backs about the brilliance of said Fellowship, let's remember that every spiritual, moral, and religious organization in recorded history has emphasized writing stuff down.  We know because they wrote it down.  They didn't just think about like drunks do.  A drunk figures thinking about something is as good as doing it.

For my crisis list I write down the date and then I write down what's bothering me.  Then I write down what I think the solution is.  It helps to see the game plan.  Sometimes it's clear I need to do something about what's bothering me and seeing that on the paper lets me know I can act or I can stew.  And sometimes I see the solution isn't clear or it's in the future and I have to wait.  If my car is making a weird, rattling, clunking, grinding, whirring noise I need to call my mechanic and make an appointment, and then I need to wait for the appointment.

See?  Action and waiting all wrapped up in one problem.

Our Community

OK, I'm officially sick.  I'm not sick - I'm sick.  The microorganisms have stormed the ramparts and overwhelmed the defenses and are now pillaging and looting the ruins of my castle.

I'm a sullen sick guy.  I don't complain but I want everyone to get the #$!! away from me.  SuperK, on the other hand, is a bit more dramatic.  She's sure she's dying and she's going to let you know about it.  On the few occasions when we've both been sick it has been quite the funhouse.

I digress.  I've been pondering at greater length, in my woozy narcotic-like haze, the community that I belong to and how important it is in my life.  I have a group of very close friends with whom can discuss anything - and I mean anything - that's troubling me.  Sex, money, relationships, religion, all of that stuff that was strictly off the table in my family of origin.  I'll never forget the first time that I tried to talk to my blood kin about some marital difficulties, fortified no doubt with the success that I'd had with my recovery family.  Holy shit, I might as well have rolled a live hand grenade into the room.  I never made that mistake again.  I kept my mouth shut as I was taught.

Moreover, there's another larger group of friends - not close friends but still friends - with whom I can discuss almost anything.  I'll never forget the time when SuperK and I were struggling a little with our marriage - as all couples do and if you hope to avoid this you're delusional.  We started to see a counselor who was invaluable in helping us work through our Issues.  This is going to sound ridiculous but it's the truth: SuperK was much more upset with me than I was with her, but she was the one who needed to do the changing.  I don't mean to suggest I wasn't at least half the problem but the circumstances required her to adapt more so than me.  Anyway, she was dominating the air time in the office so at one point our counselor turned to me and said: "How about you?"

I said this: "I have a big group of guys that I talk to all the time about everything.  I don't really have anything I need to get off my chest."  I was about 40 at the time.  She knew I was in The Program.

"You don't know how many men your age that come in here and don't have anyone they can do that with.  No one, not even family members," she said.

Some of the time my buddies honk me off but I've never forgotten what this woman said.  I have guys who know where my steam release valve is located.  They reach over from time to time and turn the knob and a big, angry blast of steam vents and I feel better.  That's all there is to it.

And I'm repeating myself, saying the same thing over and over, but I  love the whole community I'm part of.  I love the older folks with more sobriety who have been through a lot more than me; I love the younger people that I can boss around . . . . er, share my experience, strength, and hope with, passing along my sobriety wisdom but also my old guy knowledge; I love being around women and really rich people and guys off the street, heroin addicts and meth users and weekend drunks.  I get the feeling that a hundred years ago people had stronger faith communities and social clubs and they didn't move around so much so that these ties were easier to build. 

But they didn't have what I done got.

Old Timer

We watched a documentary last night where a filmmaker sought out very, very old people to try to find out how they made it into their 90s and beyond.  Many of the reasons were well-publicized - good diet, no drug use and moderate alcohol intake for the non-drunks among us, exercise, enough sleep, and the like.  There were a few outliers represented as well - smokers and drinkers who made it past the century mark but most of the folks lived sensible, reasonable lives.

It made me reflect on some of the benefits of The Program.  Certainly we stop drinking and drugging and many of us give up smoking; we try to eat well or at least remember to eat at all, not always a given when we were ingesting thousands of calories of processed glucose as part of our daily alcohol intake; we try to give our bodies some exercise above and beyond popping  open cans of beer or walking to the car to drive to the Kwiky Mart to buy more beer; and we get enough sleep at night and some of us get to take naps, for chrissake, as opposed to having to drink a case of wine coolers just to fall asleep.  This is not subtle stuff.  It's not surprising that people who do these things live longer, healthier lives.

Old folks usually have an active social life - they aren't sitting by themselves in front of the idiot box, drinking alone.  I never take for granted the friendships I make in my recovery - the young people I can parent and the old timers who help guide my behavior and everyone in between.  People with a lot of friends are happier and happy people live longer.  And we see a lot of tangible benefits to having a faith in some kind of a Higher Power, even if it's only the group.  It was hard trying to navigate a world that I thought was hostile and rudderless.  It was stressful.  It didn't make any sense.  And this giving back to repay a program that helped save our lives is very satisfying - it gives meaning and purpose to life.

However, the reason I heard over and over that really resonated with me was around the concept of grasping.  As my spiritual life has expanded I've learned how deeply unsatisfying it can be to try to get things and then hold on to them; this makes the most sense to me when we're talking about things I can see: cars, houses, jobs, relationships, STUFF!  But the old people talked about being happy with where they were in their lives.  They didn't mourn their lost youth or concentrate on the death  that was certainly going to come.  They weren't struggling to hold on to their life.

I spend too much time doing that.  I'm aware of some of the limitations I have today that I didn't have 10 or 20 years ago.  Too often I think: "I've got X number of good years left."  That implies that I have bad stuff to look forward to, that I've really got to be productive before the good goes away and the bad comes rushing in.  That's terrible.  That's the kind of thinking that make me focus on the negative.

Why would I want to go back to my youth?  I was miserable, I was terrified most of the time.  Why would I want to regain that?  If I'm not happy with what I got now I'm never going to be happy.  If I think I can avoid some of the bad things that are surely going to come, if I focus in on them, then I'm one hosed dude.

On Death's Doorstep

I picked up some kind of bug this week.  I didn't do it on purpose and I'm an unwilling, hostile, adversarial host to this intruder.  Strangely enough, I have to battle the urge to say: "This is a waste of my time."  I want to get out of this vale of tears without ever getting sick ever again.  I would prefer that pain and suffering be optional, and I would opt the hell out.  I can't shake the absurd feeling that I've failed somehow when I get sick, that if I had taken the right course of action I could have avoided all of the unpleasantness entirely.  I did something wrong.  I should have done something better.  I get depressed when I get sick.  Catching a cold is not a moral failure.  It is not a character defect.

Whenever several trillion of these little bastards take up residence in me they invariably ride some kind of express train to my lungs.  It may have something to do with the fact that I smoked enough weed to carpet a two lane highway from Waukesha to Menominee Falls.  For the record I have no idea how far that is - those are just funny sounding words.  So I get the death cough - a ticklish, unproductive wheezing.  The problem is that it keeps me awake.  I don't feel that bad but I cough myself awake every time I try to fall asleep.  I'm on like no sleep.  I'm a jerk when I'm well rested so you can imagine how I'm behaving right now.

When I was in college I took microbiology.  I remember almost nothing about the class except for this one experiment we did.  Everyone was given several petri dishes full of agar - a food source for microorganisms - and a packet of Q-Tips.  We walked around and touched various surfaces with a QT and then inoculated the agar with whatever crap we had picked up.  I remember swabbing door knobs and handles on drinking fountains and the like.  Holy shit, those dishes exploded with mycobacterial growth.  It was a slaughter.  I have no idea how any of us make it through any day without contracting several fatal diseases.  It must be total armageddon going on inside my body all of the time.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to die from this one.

Am I on my death bed?  No, I'm on my regular bed.

Buddies

I spent a little time talking with one of my buddies after the meeting yesterday.  He's in the same class as me -  someone who got sober at roughly the same time as I did.  I get help from old timers and from new people but I especially enjoy a nice synergy with guys who stumbled in about the same time as I did.  We go through a lot of the same things at the same time in recovery and it builds a real bond.

This guy is a friend; this means he gets to hear my opinions.  I don't tell him what to do but I tell him what I think he should do from time to time.  As we are all aware, there is nothing more precious, more cherished than unsolicited advice.  The saving grace is that I expect my friends to do the same with me.  I don't want to spend any more time listening to people tell me what I want to hear.  When I took that kind of advice I usually ended up passed out on the floor - it wasn't great advice what with the overkill and mixing of different substances and the like.  I don't always like the unsolicited advice that I get and sometimes it pisses me off but that's OK - it doesn't change the friendship.  I get over it.  When I was drinking I didn't get over anything.  If you pissed me off then you were put on The List.  Once on The List it was nearly impossible to get off The List.  The List was the Siberian Gulag of Seaweed relationships although I'm not sure that banishment to that frozen tundra was all that upsetting to very many people.

My friend was going to see a movie and then eat dinner with his son.  His son picked the movie and suggested a restaurant.  My friend told me that he was going to veto the restaurant selection seeing as he didn't get to pick the movie.  I assumed this drunken stumble bum was lucky to be spending quality time with his kid, so I said: "Go to the restaurant he picked."

I could see that he didn't care for the suggestion.  Actually, it wasn't because I was picking up any subtle clues; it was more along the lines of him telling me he didn't like the advice, tossing in a handful of very, very bad words.  He was laughing but I could tell he was pissed.  I didn't tell what he should do - I told him what I thought he should do, assuming that he would do whatever the #$!! he wanted to do anyway.

He sent me a note the next day: the movie sucked and they ate where his kid wanted to eat.  He thanked me for my advice.  I don't know that he wouldn't have done what I suggested on his own.  I certainly had no idea what he should do.

Buffing Out the Conundrums

Buff:  To clean or shine with a buff.

I'm a car guy.  I really like cars.  I've bought a few of them over the years and I've loved most of them.  I don't consider myself really all that materialistic - kind of standard greedy, a common sentiment among pretty materialistic people who are trying to convince you that they're not  - but I love the cars.  I wax them and wash them and try to park them out of harm's way.  I bought what very well may be my last new car here in The New City - that explosive grinding sound you here is SuperK laughing and cursing and choking with rage all at once - and people have beat the hell out of it.  The agony and the ecstasy of the urban lifestyle.  

I went on a long, beautiful hike in an old growth forest yesterday with SuperK and a few friends from The Program - wonderful day, wonderful people - getting back to this car late in the afternoon.  The note on the windshield, written on a min-sized paper plate, an odd selection in my opinion, was from a woman apologizing profusely for hitting the parked car some time during the day.  The damage didn't appear to be too bad but it was still a stinker of a note.  I called the woman and she called back.  She told me to have the damage buffed out and to send her the bill.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet.  I'm not sure I want to screw around taking the car somewhere to repair the minor damage, which pales with some of the more egregious thwacks by shadowy miscreants who did not leave notes.  

Anyway, it just made me feel good about life.  Such simple things, responsibility and honesty.  On the way home from the hike, before I was confronted with the mini paper plate,  we stopped for coffee.  While I was washing the bear repellant off of my hands SuperK ordered 3 cups of coffee, noticing after the fact that she had left her wallet in the car.  There were people in line that she didn't want to hold up but she owed the money which was not in her possession.  A conundrum.  The guy behind her said: "The coffees are on me."  She offered to fetch her purse and return the favor.

"No," he said.  "I had a great day.  I just finished a round a golf and it was a great day."

It's not that complicated.

The Man Purse

Focus:  To fix on one object; concentrate: as focus your attention on the case of cans you just picked up.

I came back home from my swim yesterday and parked The Tank in front of our apartment.  I opened the back hatch to get my gym bag and my Man Purse, which had fallen behind a 12 pack of empty pop cans that I put in the trunk, which I intend to take to the recycling center to give to the bums - we have a nickel surcharge per returnable can or bottle here in the very Green New City.  I magnanimously donate my cans to whatever guy is feeding the contents of his huge shopping cart into the can crusher - I'm a big, generous man, as you can see, handing off 60 cents to some homeless man.

Man Purse:  A bag of indeterminate size and shape that a man who has no focus begins to carry around so that he can keep all of the stuff that he normally forgets with him.

Anyway, I get inside and begin to struggle with all of my bags, trying to get my key out to unlock the door.  Finally, I give in and set down my gym bag and my Man Purse, noting the case of empty cans still in my right arm.

"What in the hell?" I mutter.

I had picked up the cans to get to my Man Purse, promptly forgot what I was doing, and carried them across the street, up the stairs, through the entryway, and down the corridor to my door, with no awareness of what I was doing.  I couldn't maintain my focus for the 15 seconds it took to retrieve the Purse and put the cans back down.  My mind was wheeling at such a high rate that I was off on some other mind trip before I knew it.  I could have climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro with those cans.

Is it any wonder that I drank?  I should be on Thorazine.

I'm Glad I Go To Meetings

The concept of The Middle Ground has been on my mind lately.  Specifically, the battle between changing what irks me and making the best with where I am.  The topic at yesterday's meeting was dealing with resentments, always a popular topic for someone like me who doesn't like anyone.  It reminded me of my first Fourth Step which included everyone currently living on earth as well as most people who have died in the last 300 to 400 years - I can't speak with any accuracy to anything before the Middle Ages.  Seriously, it was a big list.  I got a little carried away with my list.  It took me 18 months of sporadic drinking and using and ignoring The Program before I tackled the work I needed to do, and then I went hog-wild.  Remember that I have two modes: stopped or full acceleration.

A moderately new guy asked me this week to help him get to work on his 4th Step.  He also asked me to do this a year or two ago.  Obviously, he's procrastinating.  I don't spend much time judging people on their Step work, a statement that is such a total a lie because I spend a great deal of time judging everyone on everything.  It's a hobby - I'd work at a place that paid me to judge other people.  Perhaps I should say that I don't restrict myself to judging how other people work The Steps, overwhelmed as I am with judging everyone on everything.  Temporarily overcoming this imperious urge I suggested that he write down a small list of family members as well a few friends and work colleagues and make a start.  It's not the way I would do the Step but maybe it'll get him off the dime.  It's not exactly a searching and fearless inventory but it's a whole lot better than a whole lot of bupkis.

Middle Ground makes me ponder some of the more ambiguous concepts in our literature.  One phrase we trot out like a show horse is the idea that we need to be free from anger, a dubious luxury of more normal men.  Some of us suggest that this means we shouldn't get angry.  I think if I wanted to go completely insane as quickly as possible, I would pretend that I was never angry.  That's ridiculous.  The point is that when I get angry - and I will get angry - I'm getting a little pissed off right now - I need to deal with it appropriately, avoiding curse words, fisticuffs and the heaving of heavy items out of second story windows.  

Another overreach is all of the folklore built up around acceptance.  I think the idea to take to the bank is that the solution to all of my problems is with me - I can act or I can endure but I can't change People, Places, or Things.  It's not to imply that everything is fine and I should just put up with it.  I walked into my early meetings with a butcher knife stuck in my forehead and tried to convince everyone that I was doing great.  I took the positivity thing too far.  Granted, I needed to work on being positive as I was as bitchy as you could possibly be, but I had a butcher knife in my forehead.  It may have been a meat cleaver but it was in my forehead.  I was trying to keep the blood from running into my eyes and dripping on my clothes while maintaining a brave, cheerful smile.  The pain was excruciating   The old guys who helped me  took me into the bathroom and got the knife out.  They didn't laugh at me but they did say something along the lines of: "Uh, there's a cleaver in your head."  It wasn't OK and it wasn't a matter of acceptance.  It was a matter of getting the knife removed. 

Lloyd Braun:  "Serenity now - insanity later."

Analogous

I've always enjoyed analogies.  They take something amorphous and make it concrete.  The fir analogy is one of my favorites.  I know what fire is.  I'm familiar with fire.  I've used fire or its proxies to cook my food, warm up some water so I can have a hot bath, and heat my home.  These are normal uses of fire.  Normal people use fire like this.  Cavemen used fire like this at the dawn of civilization, for chrissake.  Bored with any conformity, I instead opted to start a huge fire using gasoline, kerosene, and other highly flammable accelerants and attempt to burn down the entire building, pausing only to stick my hands in the flames or to heat some water to a full boil for no known purpose.

I can apply this reasoning to my life in general.  I'm jumpy, edgy, and full of nervous energy.  I'm bored easily, frustrated when I don't get what I want and infuriated when things go awry.  I don't even want good things - I want NEW things.  The obscure point I'm trying to make is that I don't let this stuff dominate me.  It's close but I have the upper hand, barely.

Today I'm still using too much gasoline instead of some small sticks of kindling, and I'm starting the fire in a trash can in the kitchen instead of the fireplace but I'm keeping an eye on it.  I cook the odd marshmallow over the trash can and call it dinner, but I've purchased a fire extinguisher which I use when the curtains ignite.  I'm better but I'm not the complete package.  I'm a work in progress.  

I guess I just like to see things burn.

Sloganeering

Back to the transitional meeting today on a rainy Saturday morn.  God love these people.  The chairwoman suggested that each person that spoke today should give their sobriety date and share a few thoughts about their favorite slogan.  We had 50 or 60 people and we got through almost everyone.  A lot of people came to the podium, read one of the 3 or 4 slogans posted on the wall and sat down, to muted applause.  Most of them didn't want to say anything.  One guy, clearly drunk, came to the front unbidden, lead off with a quote by Nietzsche, moved along to one by Shakespeare, before being gently hustled off the stage.  He sat down and grumbled and groused audibly for a few minutes.  There isn't an inexhaustible supply of slogans so the later speakers were at a disadvantage and this clearly discomfited them.

The best thing about new people is that i can flog them with my old routines because really, I haven't  written any new material.   It's like listening to an old Steve Martin routine - funny enough for the time but no longer hilarious.  Maybe a polite chuckle or knowing nod is called for but not any hysterical laughing.  I always get a chuckle with SOBER - Son of a bitch, everything's real.  And FEAR - face everything and recover or . . . ahem . .  Screw everything and run.

One dude came up and asked me to repeat the SOBER joke.  He wrote it down on a napkin.  I'm curious as to where that napkin is going to end up.  We talked for a while until he began insisting that the language of the heart being spoken in The Program can readily be duplicated at his church.  Well, OK, if you say so.

Hee Haw.

Shaken, Then Stirred

I approach most situations with the technique, experience, and intuition of a 5 year old.  This has caused some difficulties in my adult life and it wasn't a joy ride when I was 5, either.

I start out by being impatient - I want things to be all fixed up immediately.  I want problems solved, conundrums plumbed, and mysteries demystified.  I want to know the future.  I want to control the future.  In my experience controlling outcomes is a rarity.  Outcomes come out sometime down the road, in a time and place of their choosing.  I can force and strain and grunt all I want and still not change the natural ebb and flow of things, the vagaries, the vicissitudes, and any other words that start with a V that I'm overlooking.

I also have a tendency to make do.  I want to look on the bright side of things.  Being positive and optimistic is a wonderful coping technique that I overdo.  I'm the guy sitting there with my hair on fire and my ass beginning to smolder, thinking: "Hey, this isn't so bad."  Sometimes I need to be shaken and stirred.

Somewhere in between.