Get Away From Me

"We want the solitary hours as long as it has a spirit and aliveness.  It is in the quiet times that we build our strengths and know we have something to rely on.  Solitude is not withdrawal into a place where no one and no sound can penetrate.  It is a sweet moment of peace with or without other people that lets us recenter and reset the rhythm of the mind, body, and spirit."

Isolation:  The near or complete lack of social contact by an individual; the condition of being alone, especially when this makes you unhappy (evidence links social isolation with unhappiness, depression, poor sleep quality, and accelerated cognitive decline.)

Solitude:  The situation of being alone, often by choice; the state of being alone without being lonely.

Today I've been clean and sober for thirty-seven years, more or less, since it was so fuzzy at the end I'm not exactly sure when I quit the drug use.  So let's say it's today.  Today is as good as any day.  Here's the math: I spend about two hours a day on my recovery, including a Quiet Time, social interaction like phone calls and coffees and walk, and the whole meeting process which involves getting there and getting home and the meeting and the meeting before the meeting and the meeting after the meeting.  Let's say fifteen hours a week.  Times fifty-two makes about eight hundred hours a year.  Times thirty-seven years and we're at around 29,600 hours. That's a shit-ton of recovery effort, shit-ass.  Whew.  But know what?  It's nothing given the life I've lived.  And one of the biggest benefits is the end of isolation and the beginning of a true companionship with my fellow man.

Peace!

Bits and Pieces . . .

How about you do the work today?  How about that concept?  How about you quit casting about for something or someone to blame and do the work?  I have an anniversary coming up and I usually make some comment along the lines of "I'm here mostly because I do the work."  I needed the flash of inspiration that came from an awakened knowledge of a Higher Power and I needed The Fellowship to help me make sense of things but, mostly, I needed to take action.

Be impeccable in your words.  Impeccable comes from the Latin root pecatus which means sin and the im means without so impeccable is "without sin."  It's helpful to me to think of a sin as anything which goes against myself.  Everything I say or do that goes against myself is a sin.  When I'm impeccable I take responsibility for my actions but I don't judge or blame myself.

"Over the years we may learn how to make friends and how to keep them - and most of it is down by controlling our tongues.  No matter how close we are to someone, it does not give us the right to say anything we choose.  Time and space mean nothing to friends.  They find each other again and again, to share the things that are important.  Friends forgive us whether we deserve it or not.  They know how easy it is to get off center."

I don't believe that there is a section in The Twelve and Twelve that means more to me than this one, and there's a lot of great sections: "The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear - primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded.  Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration."

Step Seven, baby, reminds me that if I got it I'm afraid I'ma gonna lose it and if I don't got it, well, then I'm pissed that I don't got it.  That's all that there is.  There is no time for anything else if my life philosophy boils down to this.

More Promises: "Each of us would like to live at peace with himself and with his fellows.  We would like to be assured that the grace of God can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves." 

Peace:  Freedom from disturbance; tranquility.

 Peace!

Coffee For Three, Please

I was finishing up my walk on the beach today - it makes me smile every single time I repeat the phrase "walk on the beach" - and preparing for lunch with a sponsee who is mostly crazy when I decided to get in line at this little coffee kiosk for a jolt of caffeine.  A woman and her adult daughter got in line behind me and asked what I liked best at this kiosk.  We chatted amiably about nothing for a minute and I ordered and pointed at the two women: "And whatever they're having."  They had already told me what they were having so I had come to terms with how much of my cash I was going to be devoting to the well-being of someone else (shudder . . .) with a 100% certainty that it would never be reciprocated.  They demurred and deferred and deflected before letting me pony up for their drinks.

I like doing this.  People respond as if I'm passing out Maseratiis or something.  I like surprising people.  I like doing something unexpected.  I like to believe this will stand out in their day.  The college-aged daughter deferred even more, even after Mom had ordered her drink.  I think people are trying to be nice when they do that but - no shit, here - a lot of the fun on my end is in the giving (shudder shudder) of something, anything.  I do make a big effort to be androgynous as I do this where women are involved so they don't think I'm making a slick move or anything . . . as if I have any idea what a slick move would even look like.

 

This giving bullshit has really gotten under my skin . . . 

The Period of Death

I'm reflecting on how life seems to be a combination of longer steady-state periods where things are going well - or at least pretty well - with the occasional frantic growth period tossed in to spice things up.  The growth periods are usually unwelcome and unannounced.  I know that they're coming at some point but they usually seem sudden, jarring, cacophonous.  I don't enjoy growth periods - AFGO, another fucking growth opportunity, after all - even though I realize that most of my growing comes during the hard times.  I don't normally grow very much when shit's going my way.  I coast.  I wallow.  I doze in the sun.  I ooze.

One of the most significant fragments of my life came about during the great Period of Death when I was separated from both parents and Ken H, my most beloved sponsor.  It didn't help that I was aging and no longer felt like I was ten feet tall and bullet proof.  I have always been overly concerned about my health and this preoccupation was jarred into reality by seeing people close to me die.  Death is pretty final and it's a thing, man.  Dead is dead.  Dead is gone.  I struggled mightily for six or seven months - maybe more - before I was able to right the emotional ship.  I did NOT enjoy the stuggling.  It was uncomfortable and I do NOT like being uncomfortable.  But I did come through that as a much tougher son of a bitch.  I brush stuff off more easily than I used to.  I have a solid temper and I can't remember the last time that someone or something did something that pissed me off for more than a couple of beats.  I think somewhere part of my brain listens to something that would have angered me in the past and shrugs: "Meh, both of my parents are dead.  I'm not upset that you laughed at my pork pie hat."  Life is easier.  Less frantic.  I'm more present.  I needed the pain to funnel me into this goodness.

Homer, Again

The Twelve and Twelve, Step Seven . . . 

"Until now, our lives have been largely devoted to running from pain and problems.  We fled from them as from a plague.  We never wanted to deal with the fact of suffering.  Escape via the bottle was always our solution.  Character-building through suffering might be all right for saints, but it certainly didn't appeal to us.  But we may still have no very high opinion of humility as a desirable personal virtue.  A great turning point in our lives came when we sought for humility as something we really wanted, as opposed to something we must have."

Humility:  A modest or low view of one's own importance;  the feeling or attitude that you have no special importance that makes you better than others; it is based on a fundamentally caring and compassionate toward others.

Whew, whew, and whew.  This was not how anyone would have described me post-recovery.  I was always trying to climb to the top of the heap, often on the backs of others.  Your worth to me was based on your utility to me.  If you provided nothing to me you were nothing to me.  If I perceived that I was better than you, I disregarded you as an irrelevance.  If I perceived that you were better than me, I resented you, venomously, and did what I could to climb higher on the pile than you . . . or at least knock your ass off the pile completely.

I mention frequently that much of my life philosophy, my character, my moral fiber, my sense of right and wrong, was born in the mind of Homer Simpson, and whatever pieces didn't originate there come from George Costanza.  One beloved Simpson's episode centers around Homer running for garbage commissioner.  The reason he wanted the job was to change the system so he didn't have to take the garbage out every week.  His defense was that he had just taken the garbage out the previous week so . . . again with the garbage?  He thought this chore was excessive, and I'm inclined to agree with him.  Every time I brush my teeth, for instance, I think: "This is bullshit.  This is unfair."  So Homer promised that his employees would do everything and I mean everything: wash diapers, air out your stinkables, clean your house, the list went on and on.  He was, as you might imagine, immensely popular with his customers.  He was, as you might imagine as well, able to run through the entire years' budget for the sanitation department in a couple of weeks, earning the ire of his superiors and the extremely angry union of large men who worked for the department.  

Be Careful What You Pray For

We owe it to ourselves to preserve the old ways of life, the traditions.  But we owe it to ourselves not to be so conditioned to doing something the same way for so long that we stagnate for the sake of it.

Life is one long courtship of things we want and fear.  When something is to be avoided at all costs, we tend to vision it so vividly that it has no choice but to come our way.  The same mental law turns back what we want as well.  We have to be careful about what we want because we are apt to get it.

Step Six

When I face a challenging situation in my life I either try to ignore it, pretend it doesn't exist, or I attack it ferociously, try to bend it to my will.  This is the anti-definition of mindfulness.  This is not what brings me peace in the long run.  Calmness arrives in my life when I just look at something as some thing and don't attach a label to it.  It's a thing, that's all.  It isn't good and it isn't bad, it just is.  It won't last forever and it won't define me or kill me or ruin everything and it won't last forever - did I mention it won't last forever? -  and in all likelihood I won't remember a thing about it in a week.  In a year?  Forget about it.  It's gone.  Getting rid of my three favorite words - never, forever, always - isn't an easy task.

Step Six nuggets and tidbits and gems and flotsam and jetsam concerning willingness and how it differs from the action we actually take . . .  

"Therefore, it seems plain that few of us can quickly or easily become ready to aim at spiritual and moral perfection; we want to settle for only as much  perfection as will get us by in life, according, of course, to our various and sundry ideas of what will get us by.  This is the difference between striving for a self-determined objective and for the perfect objective which is of God."

My tendency is to avoid anything that I can't master completely.  If I'm not sure I'll succeed in this implausible way then I don't even get started.  Perfection?  Who can attain perfection at anything?  Perfection is a curse.  I try to get better, not perfect.

There are answers, of course: 

"The only urgent thing is that we make a beginning, and keep trying.  Open-mindedness!  It will seldom matter how haltingly we walk.  The only question will be 'Are we ready? Delay is dangerous, and rebellion may be fatal.  This is the exact point at which we abandon limited objectives, and move towards God's will for us."

The phrase "another pleasant rationalization" pops in, makes an appearance.  Nobody knows I'm an alcoholic!  Sure.  Sure, they don't.