Forever: For all time, for all eternity; for a lifetime; for an infinite amount of time.
Never: At no time; on no occasion; in no circumstance.
I had to look these two words up to continue my fascination with the Ends of the Spectrum. They're both pretty good words.
Middle: The part between the beginning and the end.
I'm not familiar with this space, this in-between part. It implies restraint or continuation. I want to Be There already or I have no interest in starting. I want to be at the end. I want the task to be completed. I'm interested in the result, not the process. I want to get through the middle part to get to the final solution.
Always: At all times; ever; perpetually; throughout all time; continually; every time.
I was talking to a friend of mine about the difficulties I'm having accepting my sinus to oral cavity communication.
"So is it always going to be like that ?" he asked.
We both laughed. Of course, it's never going to be any different. There's no way I'm in the middle of a healing process or a series of procedures. It's done. It's complete. It's never going to be the way it used to be.
The idea is to give up, to turn everything over to god at the start, and then get to work on changing what I don't like and accepting the consequences, whatever they may be. My personal technique, alternately, is to fight and fight and work until I've exhausted all options under my power, then ask god for help.
Clueless: Lacking knowledge or understanding; uninformed.
Tuesday, April 25, 2017
Sunday, April 23, 2017
Half Measures
Back from China where my access to the internet was not robust. I did a lot of writing but wasn't able to post much of it.
Anyway, I'm under the impression that there are two relevant measures of time for me: Never and Forever. As in: "This is never going to get better" or "This situation will last forever." And ever and ever.
This makes sense for a man who is All or who is Nothing. Who is Completely Stopped or under Full Acceleration. What is it our literature says? Half Measures availed us nothing?
Half Measures Seaweed. That would be a good nickname for me.
Anyway, I'm under the impression that there are two relevant measures of time for me: Never and Forever. As in: "This is never going to get better" or "This situation will last forever." And ever and ever.
This makes sense for a man who is All or who is Nothing. Who is Completely Stopped or under Full Acceleration. What is it our literature says? Half Measures availed us nothing?
Half Measures Seaweed. That would be a good nickname for me.
Monday, April 3, 2017
The Man Who Tried To Master Fear
There's a story in our main text called "The Man Who Mastered Fear." To be clear - that is NOT me. I have not mastered fear. It doesn't kick the hell out of me all of the time anymore but it's still more the master than the servant.
When I listen to people in recovery talk about their drinking I often feel a disconnect. A lot of them have some horrific low-bottom stories to share and even more were able to put together some semblance of an adult life with families and jobs and cars. I can't really identify with the low-bottom drunk or the high-bottom drunk - I was more of the mid-low bottom variety. My very first meeting featured a speaker who was a really bad-ass go-to-jail-a-lot kind of drunk. I remember walking out of there thinking: "Now that's an alcoholic." I had not yet grasped the concept of listening for the similarities and not the differences. I'm sure today I'd be able to relate to a lot of what that man had to say.
The point is that I can almost always relate to some feeling or attitude that another alcoholic has. The external wrappers mask a lot of similarities in our internals. In the story about the man mastering fear he relates how he recovered from a crippling nervous breakdown by doing the simplest, easiest things at first, a little bit at a time. He wasn't able to jump right back into the fray and take up where he left off. Near the end of the story he talks about traveling:
"Some of the things that used to stop me in my tracks from fear still make me nervous in the anticipation of the doing, but once I kick myself into doing them, nervousness disappears and I enjoy myself. In recent years I have had the happy combination of time and money to travel occasionally. I am apt to get into quite an uproar for a day or two before starting, but I do start, and once started, have a swell time."
This has given me a lot of comfort over the years by letting me know that my uproar isn't a freak show.
When I listen to people in recovery talk about their drinking I often feel a disconnect. A lot of them have some horrific low-bottom stories to share and even more were able to put together some semblance of an adult life with families and jobs and cars. I can't really identify with the low-bottom drunk or the high-bottom drunk - I was more of the mid-low bottom variety. My very first meeting featured a speaker who was a really bad-ass go-to-jail-a-lot kind of drunk. I remember walking out of there thinking: "Now that's an alcoholic." I had not yet grasped the concept of listening for the similarities and not the differences. I'm sure today I'd be able to relate to a lot of what that man had to say.
The point is that I can almost always relate to some feeling or attitude that another alcoholic has. The external wrappers mask a lot of similarities in our internals. In the story about the man mastering fear he relates how he recovered from a crippling nervous breakdown by doing the simplest, easiest things at first, a little bit at a time. He wasn't able to jump right back into the fray and take up where he left off. Near the end of the story he talks about traveling:
"Some of the things that used to stop me in my tracks from fear still make me nervous in the anticipation of the doing, but once I kick myself into doing them, nervousness disappears and I enjoy myself. In recent years I have had the happy combination of time and money to travel occasionally. I am apt to get into quite an uproar for a day or two before starting, but I do start, and once started, have a swell time."
This has given me a lot of comfort over the years by letting me know that my uproar isn't a freak show.
Sunday, April 2, 2017
Happy Birthday To You
Couple of things I heard recently that made me laugh.
"When we come into The Program it's like we're driving a station wagon full of all of our shit. Then we slam on the brakes. And all the shit comes forward suddenly and forcefully, all at once."
"My mind is like a dryer full of tennis shoes." This is a good image. All the noise and banging and clanging of big shoes ricocheting around the inside of a stainless steel drum, going nowhere.
Where I got sober we celebrated anniversaries with coins - here we celebrate birthdays with chips.
I went to the business meeting yesterday that serves as a clearinghouse for any issues that impact all of our 7AM meetings. We're probably talking an attendance of 400+ people a week in these seven meetings. We get maybe 12 people at the business meeting, which is about average and not at all surprising. The meetings are a big ball of contention and irritation. Tempest in a teapot. I never used to attend business meetings because I would get so annoyed at the trivial bullshit but I recently decided what better way to learn how to deal with trivial bullshit - and trivial to me, by the way, and obviously not to a lot of other people - than by putting myself into the Den of Trivial Bullshit.
At our last business meeting we finally decided to introduce a three minute timer into the meeting as some of our members enjoy the sound of their own voices quite a lot and to the detriment of others who might want to talk. This topic consumed the time and energy that the government might expend say totally revising the tax code. People were passionate. There were some hard feelings when we voted the timer in, especially by the people who tend to talk too long.
Yesterday the big controversy was over cake. I am not making this up. The 7AM groups have a Cake Person who is responsible for bringing a cake for any member who wants to celebrate a Program milestone a little more formally. It's a nice tradition, I think. People get to gather around a few of their closest allies, blow out a candle, and then briefly tell everyone about their journey. It's not bragging - it's gratitude.
What could go wrong with this? Well, let me tell you, a lot can go wrong. First of all, there was some uncertainty as to who the cake person was even though it's announced every morning. And what if the cake person isn't there? Then who do you ask about providing a cake? Moreover, what if someone just decides to bring an ancillary cake to be nice? We have a new woman who's a chef who makes these amazing cakes because she is going a little nuts with all of the newly found free time she has. Being a guy who loves early morning, excellent, free cake I assure her that there is a special place in heaven carved out for her.
The Midwesterner in me wanted to suggest that if you wanted a birthday cake then you should go buy your own fucking cake and quit bitching that someone else wasn't doing it.
I don't think there was much objection to the fact that there's an extra cake. But some people thought that the anniversary cake should receive precedence over the secondary cake. The anniversary cake is brought into the meeting room from the kitchen for the presentation, adorned with a burning candle and accompanied by a variation of the Happy Birthday Song, adapted for a Program celebration - it's then cut up and offered around during the course of the meeting to anyone who wants a piece. Some people didn't like the fact that the extra cake might get the same consideration. It was decided that if you wanted to bring cake that wasn't birthday cake then you should just leave it in the kitchen where anyone who wanted a piece could go serve themselves, like animals. DO NOT dishonor the real birthday cake by carrying a tray around to deliver non-birthday cake to celebrants. I should point out that the cake that the chef makes beats the hell out of the store-bought cake.
I could take no more.
"If there's any cake left over after the meeting I'll take care of it," I said. I thought I was being pretty fucking funny. Not everyone did. I am not making this up. A few people pointedly disagreed with me, which I thought was even fucking funnier.
I'm not sure how things ended up. I'm really not.
"When we come into The Program it's like we're driving a station wagon full of all of our shit. Then we slam on the brakes. And all the shit comes forward suddenly and forcefully, all at once."
"My mind is like a dryer full of tennis shoes." This is a good image. All the noise and banging and clanging of big shoes ricocheting around the inside of a stainless steel drum, going nowhere.
Where I got sober we celebrated anniversaries with coins - here we celebrate birthdays with chips.
I went to the business meeting yesterday that serves as a clearinghouse for any issues that impact all of our 7AM meetings. We're probably talking an attendance of 400+ people a week in these seven meetings. We get maybe 12 people at the business meeting, which is about average and not at all surprising. The meetings are a big ball of contention and irritation. Tempest in a teapot. I never used to attend business meetings because I would get so annoyed at the trivial bullshit but I recently decided what better way to learn how to deal with trivial bullshit - and trivial to me, by the way, and obviously not to a lot of other people - than by putting myself into the Den of Trivial Bullshit.
At our last business meeting we finally decided to introduce a three minute timer into the meeting as some of our members enjoy the sound of their own voices quite a lot and to the detriment of others who might want to talk. This topic consumed the time and energy that the government might expend say totally revising the tax code. People were passionate. There were some hard feelings when we voted the timer in, especially by the people who tend to talk too long.
Yesterday the big controversy was over cake. I am not making this up. The 7AM groups have a Cake Person who is responsible for bringing a cake for any member who wants to celebrate a Program milestone a little more formally. It's a nice tradition, I think. People get to gather around a few of their closest allies, blow out a candle, and then briefly tell everyone about their journey. It's not bragging - it's gratitude.
What could go wrong with this? Well, let me tell you, a lot can go wrong. First of all, there was some uncertainty as to who the cake person was even though it's announced every morning. And what if the cake person isn't there? Then who do you ask about providing a cake? Moreover, what if someone just decides to bring an ancillary cake to be nice? We have a new woman who's a chef who makes these amazing cakes because she is going a little nuts with all of the newly found free time she has. Being a guy who loves early morning, excellent, free cake I assure her that there is a special place in heaven carved out for her.
The Midwesterner in me wanted to suggest that if you wanted a birthday cake then you should go buy your own fucking cake and quit bitching that someone else wasn't doing it.
I don't think there was much objection to the fact that there's an extra cake. But some people thought that the anniversary cake should receive precedence over the secondary cake. The anniversary cake is brought into the meeting room from the kitchen for the presentation, adorned with a burning candle and accompanied by a variation of the Happy Birthday Song, adapted for a Program celebration - it's then cut up and offered around during the course of the meeting to anyone who wants a piece. Some people didn't like the fact that the extra cake might get the same consideration. It was decided that if you wanted to bring cake that wasn't birthday cake then you should just leave it in the kitchen where anyone who wanted a piece could go serve themselves, like animals. DO NOT dishonor the real birthday cake by carrying a tray around to deliver non-birthday cake to celebrants. I should point out that the cake that the chef makes beats the hell out of the store-bought cake.
I could take no more.
"If there's any cake left over after the meeting I'll take care of it," I said. I thought I was being pretty fucking funny. Not everyone did. I am not making this up. A few people pointedly disagreed with me, which I thought was even fucking funnier.
I'm not sure how things ended up. I'm really not.
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