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.