Regretful Karma, Kramer

Regret:  To feel sorry about (a thing that has or has not happened); to wish that a thing had not happened, that something else had happened instead.

So many of us in The Fellowship have similar defects and strengths and attitudes about life that I can get swept up into over-simplified generalizations or a narrow, one-sided view of myself.  In a way - in a much better way - it reminds me of the old days, sitting around in a bar with a bunch of other drunks, slapping each other on the back and trying to convince ourselves that we were doing great, that it was the world that was messed up.  This is a huge drawback of  considering things from a single point of view.  Even after some time in The Program I still get irritated when it's suggested that I'm not doing a thing right but the difference today is that I'm stimulated to approach the thing with an open-ish mind.

The series of conversations that I have with my previously mentioned, distinctly non-alcoholic old friend are more important to me than I realize.  In many ways he and I are similar men facing life with a similar set of tools and attitudes.  More importantly - and germane to this flight of fancy -  we have some significant personality differences that cause us to approach situations with a very different mindset.  He has an extroverted personality and relies a lot on feelings and hunches while I'm more the introvert and a true, dispassionate, cold-hearted realist with an absolute faith in facts and figures.  He'll face a problem, think deeply on it, consider the pros and cons, then, more often than not, make an a gut decision based on his feel of the situation, often tormented as to whether or not he has made the right decision.  He regrets and second-guesses if he doesn't get the result he thinks he should get.

I, on the other hand, read and study and ponder and bounce ideas off of people, put together spread sheets and documents with neat columns listing the pros and cons of the situation, then I make a decision.  I rarely regret these decisions.  I'm not suggesting that - in hindsight - I wouldn't have made a different decision, just that I did the best I could with the tools I had at the time.  I guess I don't regret my actions very often, a word that implies that I wish something else had happened instead.  While this allows me a freedom to make a decision - not overly concerned that a different choice may have led to an outcome more to my liking - with a relaxed attitude and a clear conscience, it also can force me to stand on the deck of a swamped and sinking ship overly long.

"Look," I'll say.  "I'm not changing.  I've done the research.  I don't care if my ass is on fire - I'm sticking to my guns here so you can put that bucket of water away."

I am grateful for The Fellowship with its emphasis on keeping an open mind.  It has made me   . . . well, more peaceful, this open minded thing.  I don't believe that it's possible to call life's bluffs all of the time.  Sometimes I just don't get what I want or - even worse - I get what I don't want.  I'm afflicted with a boil or head lice.  Both of these outcomes are both distressing but inevitable.  It has led to a belief that life is kind of a compromise.  I get a lot of good stuff and I avoid a lot of bad stuff, just not all of it and not all of the time.

" . . . for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust."

Well, that hardly seems fair.  That is a bullshit rule.

Karma:  A force or law of nature which causes one to reap what one sows.

Yeah, that seems more like it.  Punish the evil bastards.

I am grateful for my religious upbringing and my ongoing constant application of prayer and meditation to the trials of life.  This also helps me maintain a nice perspective.  I don't agonize overly much on things because I believe mistakes are inevitable and that all will work out in the long run.

It is what it is.  This is great advice except when it makes me want to . . . totally . . . lose . . . my shit.

Wear The World Like A Loose Garment

And back to my buddy . . . . 

One of the biggest emotional connections I have with him revolves around our shared tendency to drive hard to the hoop, so to speak.  This is often a good thing until it's not.  When there's a 280 pound, 6 foot 11 inch center camped in the vicinity of the rim one could make the case to pull it out and throw up a wild three.  The driving fool can score a lot of points.  He can eat some basketballs, too.  

This rarely stops either of us.  We score a lot.  I'm also missing most of my front teeth.

It's easy to sit on the bench and wonder what the hell is going through the mind of the guy challenging the monster in the middle.  When he snakes through the defense and scores I'm filled with admiration.  When he's picking pieces of leather out of his scalp I'm a little more dismissive.

I am grateful for my spiritual upbringing.  I'm also grateful for the sense of proportion that has come out of my time in The Fellowship.  I still go like a bat outta hell, just not all of the time.  Prayer and meditation has provided me with some perspective on life, the knowledge that I'm not going to get what I want all of the time and that I'm not going to avoid some shit that I'd rather avoid.

Today I make a list of what I want and I'm thrilled no end when I get half of it.  I don't make ridiculous lists any more.  It is not realistic to expect to get everything that I want.  I don't punish myself like that.

Wear the world like a loose garment.

SMP

Guilt:  Awareness, feeling of having done wrong; remorse.

My mind wandered back through my pre-recovery life during my Quiet Time this morning.  Sometimes I feel weirdly uncomfortable with all of the blessings I have in my life, especially in post-fire and post-mudslide SoCal.  A lot of people lost a lot of stuff and too many people lost their lives.

I did have a couple of things on my mind that I thought I could bring up to fill any dead air time during my last therapy session.  Being on a smooth path is a nice problem to have when dealing with a mental health professional.  I wanted to talk a little bit about money, ironically while I was mentally calculating my per minute charges to sit in a room without anything pressing to talk about.

I have a group of close friends who know in a general sense how I'm doing financially.  This is important to a guy raised in a household where money talk was strictly verboten.  It's no wonder I made a mess of my finances - it was as welcome a topic around the dinner table as head lice or projectile vomiting.  In some ways this is OK - I'd rather be low-key about what I do or don't have in the Sex! Money!! Power!!! department than the other way around.  Nothing worse than listening to a humble-brag from someone dying to let you know how much Sex! Money!!  Power!!! they're enjoying.

I talked in specific numbers.  I include my nice house - fixed-up, my adequate bank account, and our Very Expensive Cars in the Gratitude List part of my morning meditation.  I voice this gratitude at the end of my Gratitude List, rightly recognizing that my relationships with people are what really counts.  Nonetheless, I wanted to make sure I wasn't hiding any sneakiness or heaping any unwarranted guilt on my own shoulders.

I think in a general sense a financial buffer is a security blanket.  I know it was for my parents - they were happy enough with the stuff they had so they viewed their savings as a hedge against a future calamity, one that never came if you want to dip a toe into the irony pool.  I think they were unconcerned that there was money left over when they died.  I don't sense that they felt deprived of any stuff.  I laugh at myself pondering various selections in the day-old baked goods bin or the slightly rotten vegetable section.  I can afford top shelf stuff but I've been making due with the edgier shit for so long it just feels natural to stay that course.

I also ponder how miserable I was for much of my life before I got sober.  I was drunk, I was stoned, or I was anxious.  No matter what I got accomplished each day I felt the burden of the next day weighing me down.  I was never relaxed.

I'm goddam relaxed now.  Most of the time.  Some of the time.  Every now and then.

Bank Shot

Stubborn:  Refusing to move or change one's opinion; obstinate; firmly resisting.

I have this very close, sometimes contentious relationship with the guy who is in from out of town.  I spoke about him at some length with My Therapist yesterday.  It made me realize how important this relationship is to me - just how important.  He's a lot like me - competitive, somewhat arrogant, definitely pedantic, stubborn as shit - while differing in important ways.  He makes his decisions on the feel of things while I relentlessly investigate the facts as I understand them, then decide dispassionately.  It's helpful to have a friend who looks at things differently.  I still want to tell him why he's doing it wrong.

My Therapist was surprised that I made a second appointment and that I kept that appointment.  She was convinced I wouldn't come back.  Sound like an arrogant, pedantic, stubborn know-it-all?  The last few visits have been along the lines of shooting the shit, poking around, digging a little deeper.  I'm getting something out of it and I often don't see the it coming.  At the beginning I was in a deep hole so it wasn't too tough to figure out that I needed to dig furiously.  Now I'm shaping the contours of the rut that I've furnished and occupied.

Deal With It, Seaweed

Problem:  A difficulty that has to be resolved or dealt with.

See, that right there is interesting, the idea that a problem is a difficulty that has to be addressed.  There is solution shit in the definition of the word problem.  I thought that a problem was something to be avoided or repressed, buried under a mountain of self-denial, drowned in a sea of alcohol, obscured by a bank of dope smoke.

When I was really struggling with all of the death my Program buddies would bounce ideas off me, throw queries my way, make me look at my actions in a different light or at an odd angle, often ending the session with "Well, sounds like you're taking a lot of good action."  

Sheesh.  I was hoping for an answer, not a bromide.

Sometimes all I have to say in a similar instance is: "Man.  You're really going to be able to help someone some day."  This is a long way from believing that a problem is something to vanquish.  I want problems to go away.  I don't want to grow from them or learn something new or put on some emotional muscle mass.  I want to blow right by them in my Very Expensive Car.

Zoom Zoom.

Problem Seaweed

Solution:  An act, plan, or other means, used or proposed, to solve a problem.

I have scaled back my therapist activity to once a month.  I'm struggling a bit to hork up anything to talk about but have decided that a regular visit is probably in my best interest.  It's like The Program that way - if I didn't go to a meeting today I'm confident that it wouldn't have led to a relapse, but I know that sanity maintenance requires some time and effort.  I don't know what happens when I change the oil in my car.  I don't know where the oil goes or what it does.  I do it anyway.  Sometimes a tidbit will be unearthed as the conversation meanders this way and that.  Plus, I like paying for pretty obvious advice that I normally get for free in The Program.

Yesterday I was musing about my tendency to bemoan something left undone at the end of each day.  I'm a problem guy.  I can spot a problem at a hundred paces, at night, in a sandstorm, wearing a blindfold.  Just to be clear - I'm wearing the blindfold, not the sandstorm.  This tendency includes undone tasks du jour and old, familiar tasks of long-standing.  Someone should point out that if you haven't done it yet maybe you're never going to do it.  My therapist made this comment yesterday: "So you didn't do that.  So what?"

Ah, solution shit.  I forget about that stuff.

"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."

Thinking Man

I've got a friend who's visiting the area for a couple of weeks.  Dude cracks me up.  Dude is so like me with his belief in his own World Manipulation skills.  I have this habit of blowing into town with my address book and my cell phone and my PC and my impossibly large list of events to attend and sites to see and experiences to experience, and then I start to wheel and deal.  As a general rule I couldn't get everything on my list completed if the time I had to accomplish them was increased by a factor of three or four.  I'm not even going to pretend that twice as much time would be sufficient.  I'm so overextended it's not even plausible.  It's Fake Seaweed is what it is.

I believe that every action we take satisfies some need or drive that we have.  I believe that this is the case even when we are doing things that are clearly not in our best interests.  For some reason I dig feeling frustrated that I rarely get everything done.  Intellectually I know I'm doing this but I do it anyway.  I've got shit on my To Do List that has been on there forever.  You'd think that at some point I'd say "not going to happen."  

You would think.