+ or - ?

Positive:  Favorable, desirable by those interested or invested in that which is being judged.
Negative: Damaging; undesirable; unfavorable; pessimistic; not tending to see the bright side of things.

Hmm.  I wonder which of those two definitions best describe me?  Some of this we can all chalk up to human nature - there is bad stuff out there that can kill us dead quicker than good stuff can ease our woes.  We're naturally hyper-aware of threat, real or imagined.

My tendency is to look at quarantine or self-isolation or whatever you want to call this state of affairs as a negative thing.  I miss attending meetings and seeing people face to face so that line of thinking is firmly in the Negative category.  However, when I'm on a virtual Zoom meeting and someone who irritates me is talking I can simply mute that individual.  It can be very peaceful watching the lips of an objectionable person flap around without having to hear the irritating thoughts coming out.  I stare into the camera with an intense, interested, engaged look on my face - if the person sees me they probably assume I'm fascinated by the thoughts they're sharing when in reality I'm fascinated by the weird facial expressions people make when they're talking.  I try to lip read.   One guy this morning appeared to keep repeating the phrase "back fat."  I wonder what that was all about.

I don't have to get up as early to get to a meeting and I can get to more meetings than normal because all I have to do is wander over to my computer.  Positive things.  I don't have to pretend to like someone I don't like.  Positive thing.  My coffee is a hell of a lot better.

Mostly, I am trying to enjoy the slowness, the quiet, the lack of urgency that is the result of having nothing to do.  The Type A, competitive, ants-in-the-pants nature of my personality is trying to relax into the stillness.  Not all that successfully but a lot more successfully than I would have imagined.  When we were on our last cruise - a long three week affair that touched on seven countries - we would occasionally have sea days when the ship was moving between ports.  There wasn't much to do besides read and eat and hop onto the exercise bike for an hour.  At first I chafed at these restrictions but sometimes I was worn out and it felt good to not even have the option of doing something "productive."

Terrible Things Are Going to Happen . . . To YOU!

The good news about sobriety is that you get to feel everything again but the bad news is that you get to feel everything again.

I have been struck recently by how many people seem to express some frustration at feeling upset and anxious during this apprehensive time fraught with anxious disquietude.  (Ed. Note: I wanted to see how many synonyms for anxiety I could cram into one sentence).  They seem to feel that they should be handling the pandemic better if by "better" you mean "perfectly."  

"I'm not doing a very good job of staying in the moment, in not projecting gloom and doom," they moan.

Yes, well, One Day at a Time is a brilliant, wonderful concept that can be extraordinarily hard to put into action.  I can't always simply hew to the concept by force of will.  No shit, one day at a time, mister.  If I wake up and the rear tire on my car is flat the easiest thing would be to pick my car up and carry it to the gas station to save myself the service charge.  t

Anxiety!  I have been struck in the middle of my back by this high, hard fastball many times in my sobriety - so many times you'd think I would see it coming and hit the dirt face-first - but I'm frozen in place.  I don't even move.  I just stand there, transfixed, and watch the ball sizzle right into my backside.  Why I hang onto this belief that I am above normal human emotion is a puzzle I have never been able to completely solve.  I'm better at not letting negative thoughts run rampant but I'm not cured.

This is as it should be.  Progress, not perfection.  Shoot for a perfect ideal and accept the fact that you will fall short.

I was sober about ten years when 9/11 happened.  I had recently started my own business - straight commission selling quite expensive monitoring systems into heavy manufacturing facilities.  The economy freaked out and so did I.  SuperK wasn't working and we had no other source of income.  One of my friends in The Program tapped me on the forehead after listening to me speculate on Impending Doom in a meeting and said: "Look - all of us have our emotions close to the surface right now."  I calmed down.  It give me the permission to be upset about something that was pretty upsetting

It's not all about my alcoholism.  Sometimes it's about my normal reaction to abnormal events.  I handle things - I don't surmount them.

In the course of one year my mother, my father, and my AA sponsor of 25 years - a second father to me - all died.  I was OK until I wasn't and when I wasn't the wheels came off emotionally.  I saw a psychologist for awhile - I'm a big, big fan of making use of all of the outside professionals and resources available to us - and was constantly struck by how often she said things like: "Yeah, that makes sense to me" or "I bet you're still upset about that."  She never brushed off my feelings as abnormal or inappropriate.  She validated them as human.

I got through 9/11 and the deaths and I'll get through this virus scare, too.  So will you.

Acceptance V Power

I think I could write every day about the great existential struggle between Acceptance and Power.  Boy, it's like Good v Evil or Darkness v Light in the respect that it's hard to tease out the subtleties, to see any gray areas.  Sometimes it seems cut and dried: I'm accepting my powerlessness over something or I'm not, that a thought or theory or idea or action is either right or wrong, or there's some nuance.  Clearly, if I step back to gain some perspective, there are examples of terrific evil in the world that make minor evil pale in comparison so is it in my best interest to parse this evil?  Or should I reject it outright?  Is it ever understandable to lie or denigrate?  Or should I set up that perfect ideal and strive to reach it at all times?

I spoke on the phone yesterday with a couple of problematic people in my life.  One is a relative and one a long time AA buddy, a dude who came up through the sobriety ranks with me.  These are both kind, decent, loving people whose good qualities far outweigh their liabilities.  You'd like them, I think.

(Ed. Note:  In one of my favorite Seinfeld episodes one of the characters is describing a friend that Jerry doesn't know.  "You'd like her - she's nice," to which Jerry replies: "Why do people always say that to me?  I don't like anyone - why would I like her?")

Consciously I brought up politics and morality with these two people.  I knew I was doing it and I knew it was a minefield but I did it anyway.  I wasn't trying to provoke a confrontation but I can't recall why I thought I would avoid one.  Sometimes I really do want to know why people think a certain way, especially when their line of thinking is fucking absurd.  I feel like I'm missing something, some obvious, glaring fact that would cause me to say: "Oh, that's why you think that.  Here I just assumed you were a fucking idiot." Often I'll remain silent when someone is being patently absurd, preferring to move on to another topic to armed confrontation, but yesterday I pressed my point a bit, gently I hope.  True believers that these two are, they chose to just dig in, ceding not an inch of ground, even when they could provide no evidence to back up their illusory facts.

I'm a little rattled this morning.  Part of this is the isolation and anxiety of a worldwide pandemic, I know, but how big a part?  Did I bring this on myself (Ed. Note: Yes) or am I swallowing some brackish backwash of a bigger situation?

Me and Us

I've found the dynamics of social distancing to be fascinating and a kind of analogue to what we do in AA.  On the one hand it really IS all about me: I have to make the decision to stop drinking and then to do the things I need to do to stay sober.  No one gets to tell me how to do it.  What works for you may not work for me.  Someone shares their own personal experience with me and then I decide if it's applicable or not.  This is one of the reasons AA works so well: nobody is in charge, nobody has a rule book, no one has all the answers . . . other than me, of course.  I'm the Answer Man.

Conversely our first Tradition reminds us that the unity of the group is paramount - indeed, necessary for our very survival: Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends on A.A. unity.  I can't come into the rooms and do whatever I want to do.  I have to consider how my behavior impacts everyone even though I may not like it.  With my own personal self I get to do whatever I want - with my groups I have to adhere to guidelines that the majority thinks are in everyone's best interest.

Yes, frustrating sometimes.  But when something happens in society or at work or inside organizations that I belong to that I don't like that may mean that I need to buckle down and try to think of everyone's welfare, not just mine.  I don't want to be a prisoner in my own home right now and I'm not always completely convinced that this is the best thing to be doing.  Yet, it seems to be working.   

Yet I don't want to be doing it.

Zooming

Two months ago I had never heard of a video conferencing app called Zoom.  I wish that I had bought a whole shitload of Zoom stock because that is one popular app now.  I have been attending at least one Zoom meeting a day - most of our meetings are now online - since I was hurled into self-isolation, including some meetings three time zones away that were regulars for me in a previous recovery iteration.  It has been wild seeing faces that were a big part of my recovery lo these many years ago.

These meetings are somewhat satisfying.  They're more robust than talking on the phone but not as real as seeing someone in person.  And there is no auditory feedback which can be disorienting - no one is laughing at my hilarious jokes or giving me a robust Amen! at my piercing insights.   My technique over the years is to satisfy a lot of my socializing in the meeting-before-the-meeting and the meeting-after-the-meeting.  I like the easy familiarity, the comfortable back and forth in a one on one conversation.  Often it's more important to me than the meeting itself.  My home group is big and this tends to favor those who like to hold forth in front of a lot of people.  Sometimes these people are interesting and sometimes they're not.  I try to remember this: You are never as interesting to other people as you are to yourself.

I think that I may have some rats living in the crawl space under my house.  I don't want any rats living under my house.  I don't care how many are there.  One is too many.  Zero is the desired number.  I'm dealing with it to the best of my ability which means at this point that I've heaped mountains of rat poison in a lot of places that may offer egress.  We'll see what happens.  Probably I'll rub some rat poison in my eyes and go blind.  The last thing I'll hear before my vision blinks off is the sound of a bunch of rats laughing uproariously.  

This would make a great meeting topic is my point.

Buzzing Brain

I love how easily recovery phrases and concepts and quotes from our literature roll off my silky-smooth lying lips when things are going my way.  A spiritual giant when I'm getting what I want and avoiding what I'd like to avoid.  I sweep emotional messes under the Rug of Denial.

Ed Note:  I have been on the Nile River in Egypt and found it to be a perfectly lovely river, very undeserving of being lumped in with some toss-off recovery shit-phrase.  De Nile isn't a river in Egypt, my ass.

Anyway, I'm powerless over the Corona Virus.  I've been in self-isolation for about three weeks and I don't want to be in self-isolation except when I don't want anyone else around me.  As that's most of the time one would think that this isn't as hard on me and one would be more right than wrong. Nonetheless, if I want to go out then I want to go out.  I should be able to go out.  This virus is not very considerate.  This virus is not saying: "Hmmm.  Wonder what Seaweed wants to do?"

I wish I had thought of the concept of self-isolation before I had to self-isolate against my will.  It would be great to be sitting on my patio when some annoying, unwelcome person strolls by and opens his mouth to say something and I could yell: "Self-isolating!  Self-isolating!"  How cool would that be?  Maybe I could pretend I'm the Corona Virus and how long before some prog-rock hipster band calls itself The Corona Virus.  Posers.

Very weird to have an invisible enemy lurking in the bushes.  I find myself looking at other early morning walkers with suspicion as I ease out into the street, giving them a wide berth, wondering if they're a carrier.  When this is over I'm going to be curious to see what the new normal is going to be.  How quickly will people shake hands and congregate in restaurants?

I feel a low-grade buzz of anxiety humming up in a dark corner of my mind.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Anxiety and Worry and Stress, Oh, my!

So a bit of a hiatus comes to an end.  A global pandemic has seemed to loosen my tongue.

I thought this characterization of some of the mental agonies that so many of us experience was pretty informative.  I would credit the medical professional who wrote it but I've long forgotten who that was.  Nonetheless . . . 

"Worry happens in your mind, stress happens in your body, and anxiety happens in your mind and your body.  In small doses, worry, stress and anxiety can be positive forces in our lives.  But research shows that most of us are too worried, too stressed, and too anxious.  The good news is that there are simple (not easy) steps to help regulate your symptoms: Get enough sleep; eat regular, nutritious meals; and move your body."

And I wouldn't feel good about myself without digging up some definitions.

Worry:  A strong feeling of anxiety.
Anxiety:  An unpleasant state of mental uneasiness, nervousness, apprehension and obsession or concern about about some uncertain event.
Stress: Emotional pressure suffered by a human being or other animal.  

First of all, the anxiety definition totally kicks the ass of the other two.  The worry definition seems to me to be kind of lazy as it uses anxiety as its main modifier.  Maybe it's a chickenshit syndrome, totally intimidated by anxiety.  Then again anxiety is really overdoing it.  Reminds me of those people at meetings who talk too often and too long even though they don't seem to know what they're talking about.  And how patronizing is stress?  A human being or other animal.  Let's clump all the other billions of animals in one of two categories, the other being - of course - the magnificent Genus Human who is being schooled right now by an invisible virus.

See what all of this isolating is doing to me?  I'm even less coherent than normal.