Need:  An urgent requirement of something essential or desirable that is lacking.

I watched a documentary on The Television that followed the lives of 5 different people who won unconscionable amounts of money in the lottery.  I assumed that most people who go from having no money to having a lot of money make a mess of things.  Predictably, a couple of them blew through their money quickly, wasting it extravagantly, foolishly.  One guy was homeless; he took a room in a cheap hotel and seemed content to live quietly, not really spending money on much of anything.

The family who won the most obscene amount of cash was an interesting case.  They had convinced themselves that money wasn't important to them and wasn't going to change the way they lived their lives.  But they bought Ferraris and mansions and an 80 foot yacht, and they donated money regularly.  They didn't donate anything anonymously, curiously enough, preferring the face to face donation.  They seemed to be a little smug.  They seemed to be a little more humble than everyone else, always a bad sign. "Who are their friends now?" I wondered.  "The other people living in big mansions?"  I didn't see how.  The people in the big mansions probably weren't looking to make friends with lottery winners.

I'm probably a little jealous of this family.  They didn't snort everything up their nose or try to get to know some rappers, but it still seemed a little off to me.  They seemed proud of their good fortune, not grateful.  Stuff didn't seem to change them appreciably but they became defined by it.

One of the winners was a Vietnamese refugee who was working in some godawful food processing plant.  This man spent a lot of money building houses for his kids and relatives so they could all live near each other.  Then he went back to Vietnam and built a huge housing complex for like 50 or 60 of his extended family, people who had been living in poverty.  He looked to be pretty happy, but he looked like he was living in some other person's house.  Kind of how I would look hanging out with rock stars.  Out of place.

I thought the most interesting case was a mathematics professor who thought he wanted to buy a Bugatti and a villa in the south of France.  His wife left him almost immediately, taking half the fortune, I'm sure.  He ended up buying a new car -- a Cadillac -- and fixing up his house a little bit but that was about it.  He did nice things with his money for his friends.  He did quit his job, thank god, but wasn't an idiotic rich guy or a splashy rich guy or a miserly one.  He did some things he always wanted to do but never had the time for like taking singing lessons.  He really seemed to enjoy singing despite the fact that he was terrible.  I don't think he cared.  He liked to sing and now he had the time to do it.

"I realized," he said, "that I was buying a lottery ticket so I could dream.  Once I had the money I realized that it wasn't anything that was going to make me happy."  He would have looked ridiculous in his villa in the south of France, with his red Bugatti.

Sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you don't.  Sometimes you get what you want and you say: "WTF!?"  It doesn't work out like you think it should.  It goes all weird and sideways on you.

Mostly, you get what you need.  Hey, if the Rolling Stones can put those lyrics into a song then it can't be that profound.

Bend To My Iron Will

Expectation:  A looking forward to as due, proper, or necessary; anticipation.

I think that my understanding of the concept of expectation tends to be a little harsh.  I have a tendency to warp most things until they no longer resemble their original state.  Often I confuse expectation with something that is more like demanding.  If I think something is due me or I must have it or it's my birthright then I get in trouble.  That's insistent.  There's no play in that attitude.

"Things will happen like this," I think, rigidly.  I get on my bulldozer and fire up the diesel.  But when I step back and try to analyze what's really going on I find that half the time I don't even know what I want.  And god forbid I get what I think I want.

That's usually a total disaster.

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.