Angry Seaweed

Angry:  Furious; irate; seething; infuriated; incensed; livid; apoplectic; murderous; incandescent; steaming; at the end of your rope; hoping mad; splenetic; wrathful. (Ed. Note: Man, that's a lot of synonyms.  Kind of like the Eskimoes having 418 names for snow and 1 word for hot.)

Some people like to be told what to do so they're drawn to strong personalities.  I'm not that person.  I can't work The Program that way.  No interest in being in charge of your recovery.  I don't want the credit if it works out and I don't want the blame if it doesn't.  Pick up the toolbox and get to work.  Not only is it uncomplicated there's a very detailed set of instructions in our literature.

I was talking to a friend yesterday who doesn't always respond immediately to everything I say.  I like this character trait.  I don't think she isn't listening - I think the information is being processed.  I don't need immediate feedback all of the time because immediate feedback is often wrong.  Again I say - fast is always fast but frequently incorrect.  I do this all the time and sometimes I'm accused of being bored by the conversation or even of not listening.  I wish I had a small neon crawler sign on my forehead that would - when appropriate - say: "Buffering . . . Buffering . . . Buffering."  That way people would know I'm engaged - I'm just processing.

Reminds me of the time I was listening intently to a bookstore owner who interpreted my intensity as incipient deafness.  "Can you hear me, sir!?" she shouted at me.

"I can hear you fine," I chuckled.

More pandemic musings . . . 
I'm always amazed at how angry people can be about everything.  Especially people who live out on the ends of the spectrum.  Some of my friends are furious that they aren't getting to do exactly what they want to do all of the time and some of them are furious that other people are doing exactly what they want to do with seemingly little regard for the welfare of others.

Hey, if you want to be pissed off you can find something annoying to obsess over.   

Possibly, Plausibly, Probably

If I want to look on the bright side - a dicey proposition, that - I propose that negativity can be an asset, surely a good motivator.  The idea that what I've accomplished isn't quite enough, that I could have done more.  I shake my head, chuckling sadly, remembering sitting in my car after a sales call where I sold something and feeling dissatisfied that I didn't sell more.  This kind of thinking can be a burden but it can also drive accomplishment.

Possible: Able but not certain to happen; neither inevitable nor impossible.
Plausible: Conceivably true or likely.
Probable: Likely or most likely to be true; likely to happen.

I do run over, in my mind, a gratitude list and then intone a series of positive affirmations every morning in my Quiet Time and by "every morning" I mean "some of the time."  Every morning sounds better.  I try to think through what is possible and what is plausible and what is probable.  Everything is possible; some things are plausible; and fewer things yet are probable.  When I drift mentally into some future catastrophe it's helpful to step through these categories: can it happen?  how likely is it to happen? is it going to happen often?

I spend a lot of time in possible.  When I'm imagining catastrophe it's not the best place to reside.  There is a lot of wild, stupid stuff in possible.

Thought for a gravestone: "NOW I'm socially distanced."

Unique: Being the only one of its kind. (Ed. Note:  You cannot be very unique or a little unique or extremely unique.  You are unique . . . or you are not.)

I'm the Temporary Zoom Meeting Secretary for the Friday 12&12.  I can say with great certainty that I'm the only person in the world currently holding that position.  I am truly unique.

My friend Willie ran the meeting for me this week.  At the end of the meeting we pause for a moment for secretary announcements: who had anniversaries, were there any visitors, how to get a Big Book, that sort of stuff.  I never miss the opportunity to abuse people in front of other people.  If it's just you and me you've got a prayer to get out with fewer wounds but if there's an audience I let 'er rip.

"Willie is one of my oldest AA friends," I said.  "His technique is to call, talk about himself for 15 minutes, then tell me 'he's going to let me go.' "

SuperK said: "You shouldn't make up stuff like that."

Make up?

Pick Up The Phone

I was having a day yesterday.  Not a good day and not a bad day, just a day.  It could have gone either way.  I didn't have a lot of tolerance for anything and I could feel the slipperiness of my mood, like I was standing on an icy sidewalk.  I had an attitude teed up and ready to go and for no good reason, actually.  Everything was fine except for the usual general free-floating anxiety that is often around, exacerbated by social isolation and the fact that I'm not getting to do exactly what I want to do exactly when I want to do it.  As I've droned on and on about I'm a dude with a nature and a nurture that tends toward negativity and pessimism.

I took a call from one of my buddies in AA and we shot the shit about nothing in particular.  I could tell he was in a good mood as we kicked around ideas, talked about our spouses and friends and like, topics that, if we chose, could have devolved into a bitching session.  My friend had a good attitude about everything and it buoyed me up, allowed me to step off the icy sidewalk and into a warm house.

I kept saying: "See?  That's solution-based stuff."  I could see that he was talking the optimistic, positive view about everything.  While I often do this - not always.  This is why we pick up the phone.  You don't have to have a big problem or a complicated issue to discuss.  You call and someone gets helped.  Frequently both people get helped so pick up the phone!

At the end I did say: "OK, I've had just about enough of all this happy solution-based shit so I'm going to hang up now."

Destiny!

Negative:  Often used pejoratively; pessimistic; not seeing the bright side of things.
Positive:  Favorable; optimistic.

Hmmmm.  I wonder which one of those definitions is most apt for me?  Hmmmm.

Nature:  The innate characteristics of a thing.  What something will tend by its own constitution to be or do.
Nurture:  The environmental influences that contribute to the development of an individual.

Who am I, anyway?  What is fixed and what is changeable?  What should I accept and what should I assault with my will? 

To Thine Own Self Be True.  This is the only thing on one side of our AA birthday coins (or anniversary coins, depending on your geographical location); the coin you're supposed to fish out of your pocket unexpectedly, surprising yourself,  when you're really trying to fish out some change to pay for a drink and if you're trying to pay for a drink with spare change you've probably already spent your entire paycheck so go home already.

I'm a negative dude.  I'm wired negative.  I think a negative thought initially much more often than I think a positive one.  And I grew up in a family where the mood was fearful and pessimistic.  That's me.  That's who I am.  That, to some extent, is my destiny.

On the other hand I can choose to switch the narrative around.  Pull the old switcheroo.  I know my tendencies and I have tools to move the thoughts from the dark basement into the sunlight of the spirit, should I choose to do so, should I remember to do so, and I'm happy to report that I usually do.

Destiny:  A predetermined state.

I also want to point out that it's a big part of the human experience to protect yourself by imagining a bad outcome.  It's harder to get eaten by a panther if you are on high alert for a panther attack.  So I'm not totally weird and out of line.

I also want to point out that people that are trying to ferret out problems tend to be successful people.  We head off problems by anticipating them.  This can be a good thing.  This can also be a mental and emotional curse for the overachiever and The Rooms are packed with overachievers.

I know I ramble on about this too much.  It's clearly an important topic for me.

Tell Me

I am stuck on this idea of me as an independent, self-reliant individual and me as an individual who is part of something bigger than me.  The Steps and The Traditions usually give me some hints.  The Steps allow me to be the master of my domain, to reference an episode of Seinfeld, to follow my own instincts as long as I'm not hurting other people.  Mostly I can do whatever I want.  I can't bring my boombox into a meeting and listen to Black Sabbath, Volume 4, but I can get sober any which way I choose.  The Traditions allow any particular group to do whatever it chooses as long as it doesn't affect other groups or AA as a whole.

This stuff translates so well into moderating my behavior in the social world I inhabit.

More Midwest V West Coast Program reflections . . . 

In the middle of the country sponsorship was a hands-off proposition.  My sponsor was someone who had to listen when I called to complain about everything and a good source of advice about The Steps and recovery in general but he - all of the hes I had - never positioned himself as an authority or a guru.  These guys told me what they did - implying that they had no idea what I should do - and they encouraged me to talk to lots of other guys.  That way I got a consensus of how people approach recovery  and I learned about The Steps and The Big Book by going to . . . you know . . . Step and Big Book meetings.  Here the sponsor is expected to sit down with the newcomer and read through the Book paragraph by paragraph, stopping to give very specific instructions about the text.

I never liked this technique so I don't do it.  I have trouble remembering to put on clean underwear each morning so I'm going to tell you what to do?  I don't think so.  I spend half my day either looking for my phone or my wallet so I refrain from giving someone relationship advice.  But I can see the benefit - you get to grill someone on how they have worked their way through some pretty confusing things and you get grilled by someone who is sitting right across from you, looking into your lying eyes.

Remember: at some point I'm going to fail you.  I'm too flawed not to.

More Deep Musings

I've been thinking about the difference between what's best for me and what's best for the various communities that I engage with.  As you can imagine I'm awfully interested in the former - so interested that I usually forget there's a latter.  I figure out what's best for me and then the hell with everybody else.  

Some of this inclination is okay, of course, as long as I don't get too carried away with it.  I do have a sense of being a part of something today whether that's a member of The Program, of my neighborhood, of my city, of my country, of the human race.  I calculate how my actions are going to affect others and modulate them accordingly.  I don't just do whatever I want.  I hate being told what to do so much that I never stopped doing anything that I didn't want to stop doing.  You want to get some sleep?  Tough shit - I want to blast some Judas Priest.  Deal with it.

A lot of this has been fired by the great CoVid-19 pandemic.  Am I overly afraid or am I truly concerned about others as much as I am about myself?

I've also been thinking about confirmation bias, the tendency to seek out information that validates what we already believe and ignore those things with which we disagree.  This sort of goes hand in hand with the backfire effect where individuals hang on to something that they believe ferociously, resisting all attempts to prove them wrong, hanging on despite the fact that they have been proven wrong.

And then there's optimism/pessimism bias where people overestimate the likelihood of positive outcomes (especially if we're in a good humor) and to overestimate the likelihood of a negative outcome (especially if - you guessed it - we're upset or afraid).  There have been brilliant psychological experiments put together that prove these theories, too.  The docs aren't making this stuff up out of thin air.  We like to win but we hate to lose even more.  One study I enjoyed contrasted how conservatively people behave given the possibility that they might lose $100 with how aggressively they act to try to win the same amount even though the odds were exactly the same in both cases.  

Have you ever noticed how the news you are fed on electronic platforms either stokes your sense of well-being or fires your sense of outrage?  I have to remember that social media is being developed and tweaked by brilliant scientists who have advanced degrees in behavioral psychology.  They're smarter than me, they can tap into unlimited amounts of information about me, and they work 80 hours a week.  If I think I'm not being swayed and manipulated by these people I'm Ozzy Osborne.  And the thing that makes all this tweaking and manipulating so insidious is that social media companies have instantaneous access to huge amounts of information every day.  Each time you click on something it's recorded and this information is used to make the next page you look at even more inviting, right down to the size and color of the letters.

Why all this, anyhow?  Because I'm prone to outrage when things are going my way, when they're stable and somewhat predictable.  When things are uncertain and changing day by day I find myself driven to consume more and more, to get the latest and greatest, even when things don't change nearly as much as I think they are.  I'm hungry for facts so I absorb data that hasn't been vetted or proven.  Bullshit data, in other words.

Sometimes fast is good and sometimes fast is just . . . fast.

Doing What I Want To Do

Society:  A long standing group of people sharing cultural aspects such as language, dress, norms of behavior, and artistic forms.

Individual: A person considered alone, rather as belonging to a group of people.

I've learned a lot about these two constructs from my time in AA.  I spent my drinking days in a state of fierce independence.  I was my own group.  I did what I wanted to do.  Although I paid lip service to considering the well-being - mental, emotional, physical - of other people I always defaulted to doing what I wanted to do.  I didn't want to hurt you but if I did?  Oh, well.  Better luck next time and I would have been appalled and offended if you had suggested this to me during that era.  I considered myself thoughtful and caring.  My intentions were to be thoughtful and caring but my actions suggested otherwise.

Then I joined Alcoholics Anonymous.  Here I've found a unique melding of individual freedom and social responsibility.  I'm given the freedom to do whatever I want to do with the unspoken implication that what I want to do probably hasn't been working or I wouldn't be looking for a new way of doing it.  The Steps are suggested.  You don't have to do The Steps.  You're free to do whatever you want and if it doesn't work out - if it continues not to work out - that's not the fault of AA.  AA isn't going to punish you by consigning you to more misery - your ignoring spiritual principles will accomplish that.

That being said we also have The Traditions, a set of suggestions that help us govern the behavior of our individual groups.  Here again AA allows each group to do whatever the fuck it wants to as long as it doesn't hurt other groups or AA as a whole.  From time to time over the years I've contacted our central office to ask a question about some aspect of group behavior I've found troubling or offensive and each time the phrase " . . . of course the actions of your group are only governed by the will of that group as a whole."  In other words do whatever the fuck you want to do.  If it doesn't work out, if the group doesn't thrive or breaks apart into venomous warring factions, it won't be the AA structure dishing out the punishment - it will be a failure to adhere to The Traditions.

Individual AA members come and go and individual AA groups come and go (although the later is less common because we make better decisions as a group of individuals - crazy ideas are tossed out more quickly).

So here we are as a society dealing with the first serious pandemic in 100 years.  There is a ton of discussion about respecting society as a whole, especially our more vulnerable members, and respecting our individual rights.  As with most aspects of my life I can see extreme positions on each end of the spectrum meeting in a big gray area somewhere in the middle - a middle where I usually find a reasonable answer.  On the one hand it's preposterous to suggest I can do whatever I want to do: I can't drive my Very Expensive Car 140MPH on the freeway or discharge a clip of ammunition in the direction of some whiskey bottles I've set up on a wall in my back yard or blast Black Sabbath at volume 11 in the middle of the night.  On the other hand it's preposterous to suggest that some entity can give me minute directions as to how to live my life.

Again, I say - Balance!