Weeds and Termites and Monsters, O My.

Here are some concepts that you may find helpful when they're after you.  You know who "they" are.  Not the concepts.  The concepts aren't after you although my clumsy sentence structure in the lead sentence might have thrown you off.  The "theys" that I'm referring to are The Ones who want to do you harm.  Often they are nowhere to be found when I wake up in the morning, off tormenting someone else, no doubt.  Some times, though, there's a whole crowd of them lurking in the shadows, mumbling with malevolent intent.

This sounds a little spooky.  Really they are more irritating than dangerous.

Monsters have always been a good characterization and pretty self-explanatory.  I also like the visualization found in out of control vegetation, weeds, brambles, climbing vines.  Sometimes I'm standing on a freshly mowed lawn and sometimes I'm chest deep in weeds.

"How ya doin' today?" Sponsor Ken will ask.
"The weeds are about chest high," I reply.
"Roger that," he says.

I use termite infestation as well.  The Book has a great sentence about fear termites ceaselessly devouring the foundation of the new life we're trying to build.  We can't see them, but we can feel the destruction. 

Satchel Paige once famously said: "Don't look back -- something might be gaining on you."

Plan:       To devise a scheme for doing, making or arranging.
Scheme:  A less definite term that plan, often connoting either an impractical, visionary plan  or an underhand intrigue.

If you want to god to laugh, make plans.

It's not the plans per se that get me in trouble; it's the outcomes that I insist on that's the problem.  I can sketch out any plan that I want as long as I stay loose on how they work out.
I spend too much time saying: "This is how it's gonna be."  I need to do a little more work on the "Let's see what happens" attitude.

I used to be depressed and miserable and then I decided to turn my life upside down.  Now I'm miserable and depressed, which would be a great name for a rock band.

Walk All Over You

More thoughts about living a life of service, a phrase that does not now roll easily off my tongue and will never roll easily off my tongue even if I live to be as old as Abraham or my sponsor, both of whom are quite old.  I'll never be able to fully grasp the concept of doing something for someone else with no expectation of getting something in return, which is my understanding of the main reason that you would do something for someone else.  Otherwise, why do it?  It's a loser's game.  It's win-win.  I want I win-you lose.  That's my game.

"What's in this for me?" I mutter.

Every day I pray that my higher power will show me how I can be of service.  I really do this.  I should add that I do it while I stick my fingers in my ears and sing AC/DCs "Walk All Over You" as loud as I can.  My motives might be a little muddled.  Nonetheless, I think HP gives me lots of opportunities, most of which I miss or ignore.  In my defense I'm keeping my eyes open for the big, splashy opportunities where I help a lot of people to great public acclaim and heavy media coverage, hopefully making a lot of money in the process.  I don't see the point of quietly talking to another drunk in a corner of a ratty clubhouse.  Who's going to see that?  What's my reward?  If nobody knows that I did something selfless did I do anything at all?

I was in my seat a Lookout Joe's, in my black pork-pie hat, which I think makes me look very cool - I'm too humble to admit that openly - when a buddy from The Program swings by.  Spandex thinks I have a great plan: just keep showing up in the same place over and over, until people know where to find you, then wait for them to stop and chat.  That's assuming they want to stop when they see you, quite a leap of faith in my case.

My buddy tells me that he is giving a lead on Saturday night.  Normally, I don't go to lead or speaker meetings to hear people qualify their membership.  I can't pay attention for more than 10 minutes or so and frankly, most people aren't nearly as interesting to others as they are to themselves.  Trust me, I know what I'm talking about here.   We exaggerate and embellish and create.  We have lived in a fantasy world for so long that we don't have a great grasp on the real world.  We don't mean to do it, it just happens.

I went anyhow.  I think my friend appreciated it.  I think he appreciated the fact that I made an effort to stop by. 

It was not the kind of service I had envisioned for myself.

There's a fine line between genius and insanity.  I have crossed that line.

Grat ... choke . . . grate ... gasp ... Grateful!

Grateful:  Feeling or expressing gratitude; thankful; appreciative.

I think that I have been drifting into the Ungrateful Zone recently.  Trust me, it's not my first time there.  I am very familiar with this Zone.  I have visited it many, many times.  Apparently, it's easier to be ungrateful than the other way around.  I can't even say the word that deals with the other side of ungrateful. 

It's not that I get furiously ungrateful anymore, or all the time, I guess I should say.  I get mildly discontented.  I start noticing what I don't have (stuff) or what I do have (ahem) or what I haven't been getting to do or . . . you get the picture.  When I'm in this zone you could give me a Porsche and I'd wonder what happened to the Ferrari.  "Sure, a shitty old German super car," I'd grouse.

Where's that narrow path again?

Gossip: Not the Bad Kind, The Good, Helpful Kind

Gossip:  A person who chatters or repeats idle talk and rumors about others.

I've been to a few meetings recently where the discussion has centered around the slow improvement we make on our defects.  At least we're supposed to make slow progress, or try to make slow progress, or pay lip service to making slow progress while actually doing nothing at all.  The idea is to get rid of some of our defects, I guess.

The 6th Step talks a lot about the fact that most of us are going to have to be content with steady progress.  We don't do "steady" very well.  We look wistfully at the 1st Step and recall how the desire to drink was lifted from us completely, as soon as we asked, with seemingly little effort on our part.  The power of god, or some such nonsense.  We wonder why this shadowy Higher Power won't lift the rest of our defects out of us, too.  One day we're impatient; the next day we have the patience of Job, boom! just like that.  Gone, bye-bye.  Perfectionism, delivered by express mail right from Olympus towering top.

Usually what we see is improvement, assuming we keep doing the work.  Gossip seems to be a popular defect that resonates with a lot of alcoholics.  We start out awash in malicious, vindictive, venomous gossip (aren't those great adjectives?); we begin to move into idle telling of tales behind another's back, and justify it by our lack of venom or our belief that the talk is more along the lines of constructive criticism, despite the fact the person is no where to be seen and can't benefit from something he is unaware of.  The people we gossip with gets smaller and smaller.  "After all," we think.  "I have to get my frustration with this dude off my chest somehow."  This way we can keep gossiping and pretend that it really isn't gossiping.

I guess Nirvana would be not even thinking poorly of others.  Yeah.  Oh, yeah.

The Future of Circumstances

I am definitely one of those guys who spends way too much time engaged in the losing proposition of imagining future happiness . . . as soon as circumstances change.  "I'll be happy when," I say to myself.  At least I'm sure I'll be happier than I am now.  And the point isn't whether I'll be happier or not, or whether I'm relatively happy right today.  The point is that I crap all over the present, which is the only time that I have available to me.  Sometimes the future ends up being worse.  "Shit," I say.  "I wasted a whole nice day trying to get into the future and it ended up being crappier."

I need to position myself in the here & now, and not in the what ifs.  Get with The Program.  Today is the day.  Tomorrow may never come.  I could get hit by a bus today.  I could get hit by a much smaller car, too, like a Toyota Yaris, which would be just as deadly as a bus given its much larger mass and velocity vis-a-vis my 180 pounds.  Why is everyone so obsessed with getting hit by buses, anyway?  Maybe they're not; maybe it's me.  Anyway, it's foolish to think that my life could be snuffed out by a bus or a falling anvil or a runaway grand piano which has gotten away from some cartoonish movers and crushes me after it rolls down a steep hill, which I do not live on.  I guess with the piano scenario I'd have to be out running some errands in a hilly area.

I get restless and bored and start imagining the circumstances of a pleasant future where everything is set up to provide me with maximum pleasure, maximum happiness, Max Power.  Meanwhile perfectly fine todays march off into an endless distance, alone and unloved.

Max Power would be a better nickname than Horseface Steve.

Apology:  An acknowledging and expressing regret for a fault, injury, insult, etc.; asking a person's pardon.

Apology Incoming.

I also believe that a very important benefit of the apology process is that we learn how to accept an apology.  We learn how to forgive someone else.  On the rare occasions that one of my drunken, drug-addled friends apologized for something the general tone of my response was "Goddam right, you're sorry."  I felt like I had won a contest.  It made no difference to me whether or not I was owed an apology in the first place.  Mostly, I wanted to feel superior.  YOU wronged ME.

I was so disarmed by the fact that many, many people were gracious and forgiving to me when I was making my amends.  For these good souls, that was the end of it.  I thought I was going to be slaughtered, especially when I was revealing an action that might have gone unnoticed.  There was never an end to it with me.  I was a master of the Eternal Grudge.  The Hatfields and the McCoys and the Horsefaces.  Maybe the Hatfields and McCoys could no longer remember what they were feuding about, but I sure could.  I never forgot a slight, real or imagined.

It feels good to forgive someone.  It takes all of the power out of the grudge.  The anger and frustration and resentment that used to rule my life has waned to a dull roar.  It's not gone but it's no longer my master.  I start to understand that sometimes people just make mistakes.  And everybody is bedeviled by a spiritual malady or two, not just me.

Finally, I believe that we owe people the opportunity to forgive us.  I think it's an important part of the process.  If they want to get mad, that's fine.  But a lot of people want to be magnanimous.  It's like not beeping your car horn when someone irritates you with their driving expertise.  Maybe someone made a mistake or is lost. 

I have started to accept compliments in my life, on the rare occasions that I receive them.  I used to wave them off, believe that the giver of the compliment was lying or being insincere.  Now I say: "Thanks."  It's not right to deny someone the pleasure of handing out a compliment.

Sheesh.