Mathematics

I'm sitting at the airport ready to get on a plane with a very, very small seat to take a very, very long flight.  I think the seat is shrinking as I type.  I think it's now vanishingly small.  It may actually be vapor at this point, but I still have to sit in it for ten hours.  Ten long, long hours.

Anyway, did I mention that my flight has been delayed two hours?

When I met with my sponsor a few days ago I shared some mini Fourth Step stuff with him.  One of the things we talked about was the fact that I am very careful with my money.  I am loath to allow it to leave my hands, especially when the exchange is with someone who is trying to cheat me; everyone, in other words.

We laughed about the $646 check that the federal government mailed me recently.  I said that I should spend it all on tips during my vacation since it was money I wasn't expecting to have.  If the government had never sent the money to me I would have never known the difference.  My sponsor jumped all over this suggestion.  He appeared more than willing to spend my money which irked me slightly.

We got a cab ride to the airport today.  The price for the ride was determined beforehand but didn't include the tip for the driver.  As we got near the airport I pulled $15 out of my wallet.  I looked at it for a minute and then put $5 back.  Then I got out the $5 and then put it back again.  I took out five $1 bills.  Over the course of the next few minutes I added a single $1 bill to the pile until the total reached $14.

I held onto the $14 for a while.

I added the $1 for a grand total of $15, in case your math skills are lacking.

Ben has it all, the whole $15.

Whoo Hoo!

Free, Free, Set Me Free

Free:  Not imprisoned or enslaved.

I have had a couple of things bugging me.  It's not the bugging part that's so irritating or the things that are causing the bugs but the fact that I've been bugged for far too long and with far too much intensity given the nature of the bugs - it's that I have done what all good rationalizing drunks do - I've endured the bugs.  I hope that they'll vanish in the dead of night, all of their own accord.  Then I do what all drunks working diligent programs do - I started to do the work to take down the bugs on their own turf.

 I do believe in the bromide that I won't change anything until the pain of the bug becomes greater than the pain of changing something about myself to transcend the bugginess.  I have an extraordinary capacity to take pain, apparently, given my unwillingness to change things.

Anyway, I scheduled a coffee with my sponsor and prepared for the meeting by doing some writing on the things bugging me.  These are two pretty easy things.  I write every day and I like my sponsor and I LOVE coffee.  And the writing helped a lot and so did the coffee with my sponsor.  It's not that I learned anything new - there weren't any lightning bolts out of the blue.  I don't know why I think that I have to have an epiphany.  I almost never do.  What happens, though, is that the work sets me free and the talking about what's bugging me with someone else sets me freer.

Free, free, set me free.

Money Matters

I am now paying for my newspapers.  No, I do not feel better about myself.

The government of the United States of America sent me a check for $667.  It came in an envelope with no supporting documentation.  I am cashing that bad boy in a hell of a hurry.  I'm very used to the "We have recalculated your tax bill and you now owe us . . ."  This is a new one.  Maybe my Higher Power is saying: "Enough with the bitching about money."  I have never in my memory calculated my tax bill correctly.  Why don't they just tell me what I owe them?  They're obviously redoing whatever I've done.

I think they're fucking with me.

Traveling

"He was taking a kind of strength from the journey.  There was exhilaration just in the going; motion was a principal of his life . . . and in it there were properties of healing.  IT was not that he was going toward something, to a destination, to an appointment, though indeed he was and that was all right, but what counted now was the sheer act of going, the blind conviction of purpose and meaning in the simple act of going on."  

I'm getting ready to take a big trip, a two month trip, to a place several thousand miles away, into a different culture or two.  I'm exhilarated and I'm afraid.  I wish I could sit quietly in one place for the rest of my life and I wish I could be in motion all of the time, always in motion.  I wish I could be so self-aware that everything was clear and I wish I could be bombarded with a million billion new things.

I wish I could have it all.

Good Stuff

Stuff:  Miscellaneous items; things; personal effects.

So how easy is this?

To be grateful today for all of the good things that I have in my life, and there are a whole lot of them.  Because I don't like to be grateful, apparently, and because I forget what I should be grateful for, obviously,  I have had to make an actual list, an actual written list, that I have to look at every morning or I tend to drift right into disastrous thoughts of a Biblical nature, like plagues of frogs and locusts and rivers of blood.

I'm like a little kid whose mom has to pin notes to his coat so that he can remember to do things he's supposed to do.

It helps - it helps to look at that list.

"Oh, right," I say.  "That's some good shit."

Then I ask for some patience and perspective with the things that I don't like for these are things that I should also be grateful for.  Just because it hurts or stings or is temporarily unpleasant doesn't mean it isn't a good thing because it often leads to good things later.  Perhaps I can tap into the river of blood to open a transfusion clinic, that kind of stuff.  Just because I can't see into the future - and thank god for that - doesn't mean the bad stuff isn't going to end up being good stuff.

The Johnson Rod Affair

I took my car in today to get the oil changed.  I don't like it when I have to give money to people who then do things to my car.  I don't trust them, believing them to be incompetent and corrupt.  Plus, I don't know anything about cars.  I'm pretty sure that they work by magic.  I've never looked in the front part of the car, where the "engine" is supposed to be located.  Sometimes car salesmen loosen the hood and beckon to me, trying to get me to look in there, but I wave them off.  I'd prefer not to know.  The compartment could be empty or it could contain wraiths or animals.  Nothing good could come from me looking in the engine compartment.  

Mechanics can say anything they want to me and I'd never be the wiser: "Seaweed, your Johnson Rod is shot to hell."  

"Well, OK, throw in a new Johnson Rod," I'd say.

You can see, for me, that a good mechanic is more valuable than a good heart surgeon.

When I was visiting Vacation City last year I took my car - which needed an oil change - to the car dealer.  They gave me quote for a lot of unanticipated work which was going to cost about 6X what I expected to pay.  Aghast, my worst suspicions confirmed, I fled.  It would have been cheaper to just buy a new car than submit to their suggested maintenance.  

I chose a company at random out of the phone book and they did the work - they were reasonably priced and fair.  I believed them when they told me what needed to be done so I did whatever they recommended.  I liked the owner.  We talked for a while about Vacation City and he was a good source of information.

I walked into his store today and re-introduced myself.  It took him a minute but he remembered who I was.  As he was writing up my work order I mentioned that a broken light fixture that he replaced last year had broken again.  Being as I own a Very Expensive Car it comes chock-a-block full of Very Expensive Parts.  I asked if he would call the Very Expensive Car Dealer to see if they could "do anything" besides collapse in laughter that someone would ask them to do something like stand behind their Very Expensive Parts.  I was OK with it, really - it wasn't his fault that the Very Expensive Part was a piece of crap in disguise.

I got back.

"Well, I called the dealer," he said.  "And they're really not going to do anything."

I laughed.  "Why doesn't that surprise me?" I said.  "Isn't that their motto: 'We really don't do anything.' "  I wasn't sure what I was going to do about the broken light fixture but I sure wasn't going to lose any sleep over it.

"We're going to take care of it," he said.  "We've ordered the part.  Come by in a few days and we'll put it in for you.  We think that our work should last more than a few months."

How about them apples?  You think that guy has a customer for life?  I didn't ask for this and I wasn't going to ask for this but he did the right thing.

I'm going to put in the top of the line Johnson Rod my next visit.

Rigorous Honesty

Rigorous:  Manifesting, exercising, or favoring rigour; allowing no abatement or mitigation; scrupulously accurate; exact; strict; severe; relentless.  

"They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty."

So I head off to my favorite Overpriced Specialty Coffee Drink Emporium to get my coffee today.  This establishment also sells a newspaper which I like to read but am not fond of . . . you know . . . actually paying for.  They offer access to the very same paper on-line.  This is OK if you like squinting at a little cell phone screen in the bright sunshine, which I do not.

So I've gotten in the habit of ordering my coffee, fixing it up with some kind of chemical which causes out-of-control tumor formation in lab rats, then picking up a newspaper and taking it outside with me, to read at my convenience.  I decline to offer any money for this service.  I'm a good customer, right?  It's really almost the same as reading it on-line, right?  The store has thoughtfully placed the newspaper stand right next to the door so that I can conveniently borrow it with a very low outlay of cash.  I just want to read the headlines.

Then . . . the newspaper stand moves.  Right next to the cashier.  The cashier can reach across the counter and touch the newspaper.  This caused me some brief consternation.  I'm guessing the store was losing newspapers to other enterprising ne'er-do-wells who don't thoughtfully return it when they're done reading it even though this isn't a fucking library.

Now, I'm not a thief.  I never stole stuff.  I'd like to say it was out of some higher moral principle but I suspect mostly I was afraid of being caught.  But on day two I bought my coffee and lingered at the counter a beat until the cashier looked away, then tucked a newspaper under my arm.  It was a furtive move on my part but not outrageously so.  I chatted with the servers, holding the newspaper, not hiding it, got my drink and went outside, where I read it as if nothing had changed.

I confess to a little thrill.  I can see how people steal things.  It's not that difficult.  I don't know why this surprises me - I'm a liar par excellance.  

Rigorous honesty - it's right in "How It Works" for chrissake.

Unsolicited Advice

Hyperbole:  Extreme overstatement or exaggeration.

At the meeting this morning I spoke of my tendency to beat myself up.  I was way over the top in my description - way, way over the top.  It is my style.  It is as close to lying that I can get and not be labeled a liar.  I was so far over the top that I was pretty sure everyone knew that I was making most of the shit up.

Now, to be honest about it, I am hard on myself and I have a long history of self-flagellation.  It's kind of a hobby.  I find it amusing to say non-amusing things about myself.  I'm not nearly as hard on myself as I was when I was drinking and I don't dwell on it overly much any more.  A lot of the people at the meeting know me and my love of the black art of bullshit.

Nonetheless, I received a call from a new guy who has reached out to me a couple of times.  He asked me if I wanted some unsolicited advice.

"Absolutely," I said, wondering if there is any other kind.  Nobody is harder on me than me so I'm never worried about what someone else might say.  It generally is a lot kinder than what I'm telling my own self.

He proceeded to give me some helpful tips and exercises on how to not be so hard on myself.  I listened bemusedly.  He said some good stuff which I might have tried had I indeed been hard on myself which I had not.

There's a point here somewhere.  See if you can find it, then report back to me.  I'm genuinely curious.

Self-Righteous Seaweed

I've been pondering my outsized, outrageous, out-of-line reaction to the sweet old lady who talks at every meeting and who always brings up religion.  Not just religion - a brand of religion that irks the shit out of me.  So I puff up with justified outrage.  I want it stopped - I want it stopped bad.  And I think I'm the man to do the stopping.

I allowed a couple of other similarly outraged people to draw me into their ire.  I'm not blaming them, mind you, because I'm more than happy to get self-righteous when it suits me.  I like looking down my nose at other people.  If I can point to any small personal growth over the years it would be this: I did not act.  I waited.  I'm an ass when I act quickly.  I'm an ass most of the time but I'm a big one when I pop off.

I started to pay attention at my meetings to religious and spiritual references.  You know what?  I found a lot of them.  It's just that most of them didn't awaken lousy childhood memories in me.  I found them to be innocuous and pleasant.  Some of them were pretty religious, too.

Today we read a section in our literature where it explains why we take great pains to make our organization so welcoming.  As our organization was finding its way early on we took great pains to keep undesirable people out of our meetings, if by "undesirable" you mean "anyone who wasn't old, white, male, professional, Christian, and college educated."  The section talked about a gay man who was almost booted out and then it talked about an atheist who was not welcomed with open arms.  In fact, when he went back out for a while it seemed that his group took an almost grim satisfaction over his stumble.

So here I am: Self-Righteous Seaweed, ready to throw out someone who is too religious.

Full circle, people, full circle.

Off I Go

Yonder:  In a distant, indicated place; over there.

I'm fascinated by what I learn when I'm knocking heads with an individual who has some of the same glaring character defects that I have.  I carom back and forth between outrage and sympathy, frustration and patience, understanding and confusion.  I must be a real handful .  But here's the thing, the saving grace: I'm always trying to learn.
to be around.

I hate to be told what to do because I'm so obviously right all of the time.  I'm selfish but I don't think so.  I'm stubborn and I believe I'm not.  I want to be left alone to find my own way and I don't want anyone else telling me otherwise.  I know when I'm on a roll my mind is locked down tight.  Nothing that I don't come up with all by my lonesome is going to penetrate those defences.  

I think a lot about how locked down tight drunks are when they come into The Rooms.  It's a sad thing, a mind not open to nuthin'.

Off I go, into the wild, blue yonder.

Extreme Recovery

Extreme:  Excessive, or far beyond the norm.

"So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making.  They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn't think so."

This is such a de facto fact-o for me.  I'm the problem.  I make my own problems because I'm totally consumed with myself but if you point out my extreme self-problem making capabilities I'm going to argue with you.  Because you are WRONG!

This quote comes from the instructions about the best way to begin to look at ourselves honestly, and for many of us this will be the first time that we've done this.  I know that my stance when I began my recovery was along the lines of "This isn't going to work for me."  So I didn't listen to anything you people had to say to me.  I was different and I was special, very special with very difficult problems that your cute little sayings weren't going to be able to touch with a 10 foot pole, which is a pretty long pole.

My time with my friend made me reflect about how I interact with new people in The Rooms.  I try to be kind and welcoming and sympathetic and all that crap but I've also spent a lot of my time talking to brick walls so I don't spend a lot of my time doing that anymore.  I can tell pretty quickly when a mind is shut tight.  

Fine.  Do it your way.  What do I know?  I'm trying to find my car keys.

Compromise

Compromise:  To find a way between extremes.

I had the opportunity to spend some time with an Earth Person the last few days.  As alcoholics we can be awfully difficult but we sure don't have the market cornered on difficult.  I see people who suffer from some of the same defects that plague me while not having this incredible, unbelievable, powerful support structure that I have access to.  A lot of people aren't very grateful - even those blessed beyond belief; a lot of people have their minds closed to new opportunities or ways of thinking about things - they're unhappy when things don't work out as they would like; a lot of people refuse to compromise or make the best of a situation that they find less than optimal - they tally up an incredibly large list of Must Haves and No Ways and are happy or unhappy accordingly.

I've always like the idea that - if I'm lucky as hell - I'm going to get like 50% of the things that I want.  If I'm lucky as hell.  My life is full of compromise.  My life is full of instances where I've found that every shroud has a silver lining, whatever the hell that means.  I try to be grateful no matter what, to see what I can take out of every situation instead of focusing only on what I can't take out.  Sometimes I even think about what I can put into a situation.

I see people get stuck in a disastrous maze of circular logic and watch as they spin around and around, trying the same solutions over and over, getting the same results again and again.  While I feel sorry for their pain I also tire of their story.  There is a lot of wisdom at being told to make a gratitude list or to empty some ashtrays or to talk to a newcomer, all code for "Quit your bitching and make yourself useful."

One of the greatest riddles of my life is this: Why can't I be happy when I'm thinking about myself?  And why does it make me feel good to think of what I can do for others?

That's two riddles, actually.