I took one of my solo hikes this week. It does me good to wander around in the hills surrounding Vacation City until my legs start to give out and my feet hurt, something that is happening earlier and earlier in the hike, I'm afraid. I like being in nature and I like the fact that the physical exercise clears my head. Because the terrain is not suitable for agriculture or housing I'm able to leave every one else behind very quickly even though I live in a hugely populated area. It's not unusual if I don't see another person for 3 or 4 hours. It's nice to stop for a minute, catch my breath, and hear only the sounds of nature. It's not so nice, chicken-shit that I am, to imagine a bear or mountain lion taking me out or to mistake a bird rustling in the bushes for a big rattlesnake. I'm acutely aware that by far the most dangerous part of my day is the drive out to the trails. It just isn't a good day for me unless I have something stupid to worry about.
SuperK isn't exactly thrilled when I do this, although she puts up with it. I wasn't much of an athlete when I was young and things have only gone down hill since then, so there's a very real possibility of me twisting or wrenching something a long way from any help. I'm worried about rabid coyotes when I should be worried about breaking my leg and spending a night in the bush. This was my first hike since the hike right before this one, the hike where I took a fairly nasty spill. The trail I was on that time, of course, was the flattest, un-rockiest trail in the area except for one short spot where I had to do some ascending and then, by default, if I wanted to get back to my car, which I did, some descending. I was carefully, carefully, making my way down a steep section, using my hiking poles, feet turned perpendicular to the slope for maximum grip - all of my previous falls have been in the going down part when I patch-out on lose gravel or dirt - mincing, really, as opposed to manly hiking, when I took a long step down, planted my foot on a big rock, which turned and skedaddled down the hill, leaving me in a bad spot. I fell hard in the gravel, banging my arm on a boulder, before coming to rest on my . . . you know . . . ass. I took a breath, checked for broken bones, inspected the alarming amount of bright, red blood on my left arm and left leg, and struggled to my feet. Really what I had done was abraded skin on rock so I had a ton of little cuts - it looked pretty impressive but wasn't anything serious.
I'm always surprised at how fast these kinds of things happen and how weird it is being in the event, vaguely aware that it could be bad. There's a pause in reality where my mind becomes hyper-aware of what is going on and what the outcome could be. That whole slow-motion thing is real. And every time I come out the other end of something scary physically, in one piece, my old love-affair with my physical ass is rekindled. I'm a little more careful about everything. A day and a half in the jury pool had the same effect - it makes me appreciate how quickly a bit of hurry or inattention when I'm driving a couple of tons of glass and steel can have catastrophic consequences.
I was somewhat worried that SuperK might try to put her foot down on the solo hiking but like the married couple we are, it took her a couple of days to even notice my wounds, at first thinking that I had spilled jelly down my forearm. The abrading process had produced a long, very red wound - it didn't hurt, it wasn't anything serious, and that part of my injury healed quickly, but it was kind of gruesome looking for a short stint.
"Huh," she said, or some such thing. She's aware that I'm going to do what I want to do in matters not directly affecting other people. It was a good response. I respected it and thought it was, if anything, funny. And as you can see it didn't stop me from going out by myself again.
Saturday, July 18, 2015
Friday, July 17, 2015
Seaweed
Malcontent: A person who is not satisfied with current conditions; a discontented person.
A group of discontented members has broken away from one of my morning meetings, after an extended period of bitching about it, and started a new meeting - at the exact same time as the old meeting, ironically enough. I started to use the word "malcontents" but opted to use what I thought was the kinder, gentler "dis-" prefix instead, finding out after the fact that they basically mean the same thing. Anyway, I'm not opposed to this move at all. The original group is too big, in my opinion, which tends to favor the more aggressive, confident members as well as the blowhards who simply like the sound of their voices, the lonely hearts who may or may not be alcoholics but obviously love the opportunity to talk at length about themselves before a mostly attentive, polite audience, and the occasional deranged individual who should be in a supervised setting taking the appropriate psychoactive medicine indicated to quiet down the demons in their heads that are running the show. The group, located in an urban environment, home to the homeless and mentally ill, is a little messy, in other words.
Imagine that - a messy meeting full of alcoholics.
The breakaway group has siphoned off a bunch of the older members. I get it, I do - it can be hard listening to people talk who don't have a very polished message. And if you're new you're probably going to wallow in The Problem instead of gravitating toward The Solution. I had so much shit going on that I needed to get off my chest when I was getting started that it was hard to see anything positive, solution-oriented, in the world. I'm sure I wasn't the preferred speaker for many of the older members. I'd love for each share to be wise and profound, full of nuance and understanding. I'd also prefer to be driving a Ferrari instead of my current car, currenlty worth about 17% of a used Ferrari engine.
I went to the original meeting today. Attendance was down about 25% and it was a GREAT meeting. I had to laugh at the topic for this book study: Tradition One, group unity. Frankly, I felt a sense of release that the judgmental, irritated folks had gone elsewhere - I would cringe when one of the less-polished people would begin to talk, feeling the disapprobation begin to rain down from the rafters. I got to hear a bunch of people talk who didn't normally share and I didn't have to listen to any of the missing old-timers who can get preachy and teachy some of the time.
That being said I'm definitely going to add the new group into my regular rotation. I do like to hear from solid members with a lot of experience. Just not all the time and not at the expense of the new folks. If I don't hear any good solution stuff my Program will suffer and if I don't hear the rawness oozing from the new people my Program will suffer, too.
I'll be interested in seeing how the new group shakes out. Sometimes we overestimate our opinion, believing that the way we feel is the way everyone feels. Many years ago a similar splintering occurred and some malcontents took their ball and went somewhere else to play. That meeting is still in existence and it is still a fraction of the size of the original group.
Little of this, little of that.
A group of discontented members has broken away from one of my morning meetings, after an extended period of bitching about it, and started a new meeting - at the exact same time as the old meeting, ironically enough. I started to use the word "malcontents" but opted to use what I thought was the kinder, gentler "dis-" prefix instead, finding out after the fact that they basically mean the same thing. Anyway, I'm not opposed to this move at all. The original group is too big, in my opinion, which tends to favor the more aggressive, confident members as well as the blowhards who simply like the sound of their voices, the lonely hearts who may or may not be alcoholics but obviously love the opportunity to talk at length about themselves before a mostly attentive, polite audience, and the occasional deranged individual who should be in a supervised setting taking the appropriate psychoactive medicine indicated to quiet down the demons in their heads that are running the show. The group, located in an urban environment, home to the homeless and mentally ill, is a little messy, in other words.
Imagine that - a messy meeting full of alcoholics.
The breakaway group has siphoned off a bunch of the older members. I get it, I do - it can be hard listening to people talk who don't have a very polished message. And if you're new you're probably going to wallow in The Problem instead of gravitating toward The Solution. I had so much shit going on that I needed to get off my chest when I was getting started that it was hard to see anything positive, solution-oriented, in the world. I'm sure I wasn't the preferred speaker for many of the older members. I'd love for each share to be wise and profound, full of nuance and understanding. I'd also prefer to be driving a Ferrari instead of my current car, currenlty worth about 17% of a used Ferrari engine.
I went to the original meeting today. Attendance was down about 25% and it was a GREAT meeting. I had to laugh at the topic for this book study: Tradition One, group unity. Frankly, I felt a sense of release that the judgmental, irritated folks had gone elsewhere - I would cringe when one of the less-polished people would begin to talk, feeling the disapprobation begin to rain down from the rafters. I got to hear a bunch of people talk who didn't normally share and I didn't have to listen to any of the missing old-timers who can get preachy and teachy some of the time.
That being said I'm definitely going to add the new group into my regular rotation. I do like to hear from solid members with a lot of experience. Just not all the time and not at the expense of the new folks. If I don't hear any good solution stuff my Program will suffer and if I don't hear the rawness oozing from the new people my Program will suffer, too.
I'll be interested in seeing how the new group shakes out. Sometimes we overestimate our opinion, believing that the way we feel is the way everyone feels. Many years ago a similar splintering occurred and some malcontents took their ball and went somewhere else to play. That meeting is still in existence and it is still a fraction of the size of the original group.
Little of this, little of that.
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Sorry About That
Responsible: Answerable for an act performed or for its consequences; accountable.
There's a lot of stuff in our literature about taking responsibility for our actions. I'm not big on this action. This is not one of my favorite actions. I'm much more willing to look at you and your behavior, to try to find fault in what you've done or left undone. It is definitely easier to pour over the boring minutia of someone else's life than to look at the instances where I may have behaved badly.
Apologize: To acknowledge some fault or offence, with expression of regret for it, by way of amends.
SuperK accuses me of never apologizing. I tell her that this is because I never do anything wrong. She is not impressed with this assertion, believing it to be profoundly untrue. Part of it, I think, is my hyper-competitive nature - I'm always trying to "win," whatever that means. I am very qualified to find instances where she has behaved badly. People get married just so they can have someone at arm's length to blame for everything they don't want to take responsibility for.
I did NOT apologize for never apologizing.
There's a lot of stuff in our literature about taking responsibility for our actions. I'm not big on this action. This is not one of my favorite actions. I'm much more willing to look at you and your behavior, to try to find fault in what you've done or left undone. It is definitely easier to pour over the boring minutia of someone else's life than to look at the instances where I may have behaved badly.
Apologize: To acknowledge some fault or offence, with expression of regret for it, by way of amends.
SuperK accuses me of never apologizing. I tell her that this is because I never do anything wrong. She is not impressed with this assertion, believing it to be profoundly untrue. Part of it, I think, is my hyper-competitive nature - I'm always trying to "win," whatever that means. I am very qualified to find instances where she has behaved badly. People get married just so they can have someone at arm's length to blame for everything they don't want to take responsibility for.
I did NOT apologize for never apologizing.
Monday, July 13, 2015
Gated Community
Sometimes my wife doesn't lock the windows in our trailer house - not often, but sometimes. We've lived in some big cities and we've lived downtown in a few of these big cities so, as a general rule, we're pretty good at keeping an eye on our shit; not paranoid about it but warily vigilant. People tending toward mayhem look for easy targets. Today we live in this tightly packed trailer park where the management closes a fence at night - prompting one of my smart-ass Program buddies to quip that I live in a "gated community," my retort being that it's really there to keep the residents from getting disoriented and wandering onto the freeway at night - and it's a community where we all kind of look out for each other so there's not much chance of anything sinister happening.
That has not stopped me from mentioning this to SuperK. I like to make mountains out of molehills. She has mostly complied and that's more than I would do for one of her requests, I'm sorry to say. The other day I came home from swimming and she walked around the corner exclaiming: "Where have you been?"
"At the pool," I said, a bit confused.
She pointed at the front door which was standing wide open. Not unlocked. Not ajar. Completely, totally wide open. I had been gone for 3 or 4 hours.
I have not revisited the whole lock-the-window thing.
That has not stopped me from mentioning this to SuperK. I like to make mountains out of molehills. She has mostly complied and that's more than I would do for one of her requests, I'm sorry to say. The other day I came home from swimming and she walked around the corner exclaiming: "Where have you been?"
"At the pool," I said, a bit confused.
She pointed at the front door which was standing wide open. Not unlocked. Not ajar. Completely, totally wide open. I had been gone for 3 or 4 hours.
I have not revisited the whole lock-the-window thing.
Friday, July 10, 2015
Problem People
Problem: A difficulty that has to be resolved or dealt with. (Ed. Note: Unless you're an active alcoholic at which point it becomes something to avoid, bury, or run from, screaming into the night).
Book study this morning. Rarely have I attended a bad book study meeting. Here's some stuff . . .
"If our circumstances happened to be good, we no longer dreaded a change for the worse, for we had learned that these troubles could be turned into great values." I like to think of this as the concept of The Other Shoe Must Surely Drop. First of all, what happens when the first shoe drops? And why is that shoe an OK shoe and the second shoe is the portent of some disaster? A question for a wiser man, I think. Anyway, the point is that if things were really, really going well for me then I was inevitably thrown into a deep depression, quaking in dread that The End Was Near. Who lives like that? I was almost happier when my life was a disaster because I could say to myself: "Well, that was inevitable and I deserved it anyway." If I was miserable what could you do to me? If I was happy you could snatch it away.
Early on in our Fellowship a bunch of doctors and psychologists made an exhaustive study of some alcoholics to see if they could come up with common personality traits. "They finally came up with a conclusion that shocked the members of that time. These distinguished men had the nerve to say that most of the alcoholics under investigation were still childish, emotionally sensitive, and grandiose."
Well, that sounds like a whole lot of work to come up with an obvious conclusion. It apparently pissed off our early members who were probably easily pissed off.
"We have been talking about problems because we are problem people who have found a way up and out, and who wish to share our knowledge of that way with all who can use it."
OK, that I can use.
Book study this morning. Rarely have I attended a bad book study meeting. Here's some stuff . . .
"If our circumstances happened to be good, we no longer dreaded a change for the worse, for we had learned that these troubles could be turned into great values." I like to think of this as the concept of The Other Shoe Must Surely Drop. First of all, what happens when the first shoe drops? And why is that shoe an OK shoe and the second shoe is the portent of some disaster? A question for a wiser man, I think. Anyway, the point is that if things were really, really going well for me then I was inevitably thrown into a deep depression, quaking in dread that The End Was Near. Who lives like that? I was almost happier when my life was a disaster because I could say to myself: "Well, that was inevitable and I deserved it anyway." If I was miserable what could you do to me? If I was happy you could snatch it away.
Early on in our Fellowship a bunch of doctors and psychologists made an exhaustive study of some alcoholics to see if they could come up with common personality traits. "They finally came up with a conclusion that shocked the members of that time. These distinguished men had the nerve to say that most of the alcoholics under investigation were still childish, emotionally sensitive, and grandiose."
Well, that sounds like a whole lot of work to come up with an obvious conclusion. It apparently pissed off our early members who were probably easily pissed off.
"We have been talking about problems because we are problem people who have found a way up and out, and who wish to share our knowledge of that way with all who can use it."
OK, that I can use.
Thursday, July 9, 2015
Those Damn Books
". . . we discovered the best source of emotional stability to be God Himself. If we really depended upon God, we couldn't very well play God to our fellows nor would we feel the urge wholly to rely on human protection and care."
I'm going to do what now? Turn my life and my will over to a formless entity that I can't taste or see or hear, that I can't provide with an exhaustive list of detailed demands that, if fulfilled, would provide me with a boundless, limitless happiness?
Who comes up with this stuff?
I'm going to do what now? Turn my life and my will over to a formless entity that I can't taste or see or hear, that I can't provide with an exhaustive list of detailed demands that, if fulfilled, would provide me with a boundless, limitless happiness?
Who comes up with this stuff?
The Rural Juror
My jury summons prompted the standard Seaweed response to an unwanted task: "Oh, crap. Why me?" Implied in that comment is that I'd be very comfortable if it was you - anybody but me. The next indicated step was to try to figure out how to evade the responsibility. This, apparently, is very common as the actual summons sent to me listed all of my potential excuses - along with many more that I hadn't thought of - and the corresponding reasons why they weren't going to be accepted. Even the judge mentioned, wearily, that he was sure all most no one wanted to be there, potential jurors in a 5 day civil trial.
I'd say that this is probably common in the very prosperous country where I reside but I bet it's very common in most wealthy places. I know I spend a huge amount of time bitching about taxes and regulations that affect me and rules that I have to follow that make absolutely no sense and the stupidity of all of our duly elected representatives but the minute you ask me to donate a little bit of my time to be a part of the most important piece of our judicial system then I'm vexed, extremely vexed, that I'll have to miss all of my important . . . you know . . . lolling in the sun.
But here's the thing: once the proceedings got going I was totally, completely impressed with the patience and professionalism of the judge, the lawyers, and - most of all - the potential jurors. People really stepped up to the plate and did their best. I thought I'd hear all kinds of whining excuses but what came out was a ton of honesty, caring, and a desire by almost everyone to do their best. I thought people really cared. I was damn proud.
One of my coping mechanisms is to imagine the Worst Case Scenario - in this case a potential 5 day trial - and then figure out how to deal with it. I decided that I had already made it through Day 1 and that the remaining days hewed to a schedule of 10-12 and then 1:30-4. I mean, not exactly grueling. I was OK with it. I was ready to serve.
Never got called. I've seriously thought about going over and watching the trial for a day or so. I should be locked up.
I'd say that this is probably common in the very prosperous country where I reside but I bet it's very common in most wealthy places. I know I spend a huge amount of time bitching about taxes and regulations that affect me and rules that I have to follow that make absolutely no sense and the stupidity of all of our duly elected representatives but the minute you ask me to donate a little bit of my time to be a part of the most important piece of our judicial system then I'm vexed, extremely vexed, that I'll have to miss all of my important . . . you know . . . lolling in the sun.
But here's the thing: once the proceedings got going I was totally, completely impressed with the patience and professionalism of the judge, the lawyers, and - most of all - the potential jurors. People really stepped up to the plate and did their best. I thought I'd hear all kinds of whining excuses but what came out was a ton of honesty, caring, and a desire by almost everyone to do their best. I thought people really cared. I was damn proud.
One of my coping mechanisms is to imagine the Worst Case Scenario - in this case a potential 5 day trial - and then figure out how to deal with it. I decided that I had already made it through Day 1 and that the remaining days hewed to a schedule of 10-12 and then 1:30-4. I mean, not exactly grueling. I was OK with it. I was ready to serve.
Never got called. I've seriously thought about going over and watching the trial for a day or so. I should be locked up.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)