Bit of a Chat

I had a bit of a chat yesterday with Spandex who's upset about a large societal issue over which he has no control.  I feel his pain - this large societal issue is sticking in my craw, too.  I spent some time afterwards composing an email that I forwarded to him, emphasizing the usual and time-tested coping techniques of The Program: don't try to predict the future, manage what is in your ability to manage, dwell on the positive and not the negative.  For some odd reason I have been able to take this stuff to heart more quickly than he has in the present circumstances.  I don't know why this is - god knows there are all kinds of weird, small things, much smaller than this episode, that I can't get past without a mighty effort.

So I've been pondering the balance thing again.  I want to use these coping techniques while simultaneously not being an idiot about the facts of life, either.  I can "accept" things a lot better and a lot faster when I'm getting my way.  If I break my leg I'm not quite as accepting.   And if you break your leg I'm a whole lot more willing to accept the event.  Most people don't want to hear my tired crap about acceptance when they're the ones struggling to accept something.

The point is to try to be positive without sticking your head in the sand.  It's OK to be upset about things especially if they're upsetting things.

I recall vividly a story this sales manager guy shared in a meeting when I was trying to get sober. Proactive to a fault, he was always studying and reading and trying to do what he could to be more successful.  He starts reading all of these books about assertiveness.  He's just going to get you do to what he wants by being enthusiastic and in charge.  Then he moved on to books about positive thinking whereby he began slaughtering people with cheery good will.  He's on the golf course one day, playing abominably, and projecting an air of assertive positivity.  After several holes of this tiring routine, one of his business colleagues says: "What's the matter with you?  You do know you're in the sand trap, right?"

Big Disasters, Little Miracles

So I'm at my 7AM meeting today.  It was a very good meeting - a feisty friend of mine kicked things and then called on people who don't often talk instead of letting the aggressive loudmouths who think their message just HAS to be heard fall all over each other clamoring to be heard and I'm looking at YOU, Seaweed.

I'm slightly distracted by the fact that I have an appointment to have a tire repaired on my Very Expensive Car.  I ran over a screw.  I don't know where all of these screws are coming from.  I'm starting to think that some shadowy character knows my routine and is scattering construction debris on the roads that I normally use.  I'm slightly miffed by the fact that I recently replaced all of my Very Expensive Tires due to normal wear and tear, ran over a screw almost immediately and had to re-replace one of the tires which survived a few months before I ran over another screw - or maybe it was the same screw, what do I know?  I suspected this event would result in a re-re-replacement of the tire.  My car has Run Flat tires or what we in the business call Tires That Can't Be Repaired.  Personally I'd rather have tires that go flat when they ingest screws but then can be repaired.

The meeting finishes up and I head down to take a walk on the beach before my mid-morning car appointment.  I get a hundred yards or so before popping into a public restroom that mostly serves as sleeping pod for our local homeless population.  My timing is good - the stall has just been cleaned.  I put down the lid , unfasten my trousers, and sit down . . . on a nice, warm seat.  I mean, it was nice.  It was luxurious.  I felt pampered.

"WTF?" I thought.  "Have they installed some of those new hi-tech toilets that vibrate and massage your rear and cleanse any unpleasantness with a stream of soothing water before gently swapping your posterior with gardenia-scented toilet water?"  It seemed an extravagance for a beach toilet but I wouldn't put it past the public works folks here in Vacation City.  We know how to party.

Turns out, after some sleuthing, that the source of the toasty toilet seat was the morning sun, pouring through the open door and right onto the future throne of one Little Stevie Seaweed.  I took it.  Oh, yes, I did.

Tire was ruined.  Still enjoyed the pooping.

I'm Working on Intolerance . . . And Impatience. . . And Anger . . . And . . . And . . . And . . .

Recover: To get back; regain; to restore to good health.

Here's a phrase from our literature, written by a physician who was a great friend and supporter to our Fellowship,  describing our founder and some of the other early members: "This man and over a hundred others appear to have recovered."  The word "recovered" pops up in the literature from time to time in what I have always perceived as a pretty innocuous, non-controversial context.

I personally haven't analyzed the shit out of this particular concept.  In fact, I never really paid any attention to the word.  I personally believe that I'm an alcoholic and that if I drink again I'm going to have some problems, some serious problems.  I don't get too wrapped up in the semantics of what I was or what I am now, preferring to believe that me and alcohol are not cool together, no matter what label I put on anything.

 Here in Vacation City there's this weird little clique of people who make a big deal out of being "recovered."  They seem to imply that they're fixed or something.  They say: "I'm Seaweed and I'm a recovered alcoholic."  I never like people who add window dressing to their "I'm an alcoholic" statement.  It seems like a self-centered call for attention, an attempt to make their disease a little more serious or their recovery a little more remarkable.

Their very vocal ringleader spends a lot of time suggesting - in meetings, for god's sake - that a regular meeting-attenders simply substitute one type of addiction - drugs, alcohol - for another type of addiction - The Fellowship.  He tells us all that he's going to take a year off from attending meetings which he does every so often but not nearly often enough for my tastes.  I'd be remiss if I didn't admit I'd be happy if he took a decade or a century off from time to time.  I bet we'd get along just fine without his judgmental point of view.

Don't get me wrong - I'm glad he's sober and I frankly don't care what he believes about alcoholism.  We are, after all, a group of people who wouldn't ordinarily mix, and a lot of the strength of The Program comes from all of this diversity mixing it up and trying to get along.  Still, I wish he'd shut the fuck up.  To me it's like a guy who doesn't enjoy football going to a football game with a lot of guys who love football and bitching about football the whole time.  Don't go to the game or shut up already about it's not a baseball game.  It's a football game!

I think if you want a pass along a terrible message to the newcomer it would be "you're weak if you come to meetings."  That's a terrible message.  And the terrible action following up this terrible message is to disappear for a while with all of your experience, strength, and hope, such as it is, to let the rest of us mortals go it alone.  What if all of us with some time decided, very selfishly, to go off on our own for a while?  I'd hate to think what my recovery would have been like if everyone with some time decided that meetings were a waste of time.

But why listen to me.  Here's what one of our founders said concerning his regular attendance at meetings: "Because in so doing I'm paying my debt to the man who took time to pass it along to me."

Post-Recovery

I have a friend in The Fellowship who has been making some steady progress in his attempts to stay sober and not be an asshole all of the time.  Believe me - I'm sympathetic.  While I have been off the booze for a while the not-being-an-asshole part is a little trickier.  I can often spot someone who I think is making the progression through The Steps.  I think I can see growth spurts in people who are really giving The Steps a whirl.

The anecdote is that he struggled to find steady employment, apparently preferring getting fired to getting a paycheck.  Finally, he got a good job in a field where he has some expertise, only to be promptly transferred to a new store that was a long drive from his home.

What do we do in those cases, post-recovery?  We bitch.  We complain.  We make a not-that-bad situation worse.  We make ourselves miserable and poison our environment.  Or we figure out that our job is to suit up and show up and do the best we can, confident that we can't see the future with any clarity.  My buddy would give me wistful updates about making the best of it whenever I brought up the situation.  Go to work, work cheerfully while at work, stay at work until quitting time, don't try to run the universe, not necessarily in that order.

Of course after a few months he got transferred to a store close to his home.  The transfer was effected because he was doing such a good job that he was promoted.  It is not, apparently, that hard.

A Metaphorical Slog

Trajectory:  Metaphorically, a course of development, such as a war or career.

I find it comforting to recall that the overall trajectory of my life has taken an upward course.  I find this especially comforting when things aren't going the way that I want them to go, when I'm having problems of money, power, and sex, the inevitable problems of money, power, and sex, the ones I've had for years and the ones that I'll continue to have, and also when events in the outside world aren't to my liking, when I'm failing to control everyone and everything to my liking.

Things have gone up.  Relentlessly up.  There are always dips and bumps in the upward trajectory but the overall track has been up and up, steadily up, like a line drive home run still climbing as it clears the center-field fence, lost in the bugs and humidity and gloaming of a July evening.  I need to be careful not to stare at my feet as I hike, looking at all the rocks and sticker bushes, transforming a wonderful experience into a painful slog.  I need to look up at the magnificent vista ahead or around at the magnificent views over the landscape below.

It's going to be OK.  It's always going to be OK.

The Big Lie

Some observations gleaned from powerful people in the public eye.

If a person lies and lies and lies then I'm a fool to believe the validity of anything that person has said.  That person is not going to be inconvenienced by a promise that they've made.  I really try to speak truthfully at all times.  Sure, sometimes I exaggerate and embellish and pretend that I know something with great certainty when I'm sort of winging it, but as a general rule you can take anything I say as the gospel truth.  I cannot stand the feeling that someone doesn't trust my words and I loathe getting caught in a lie.

Unfortunately, I have a natural ability to lie and I enjoy lying and I have a long, storied history of telling lies, all facts which hinder my truth-telling abilities.  Nonetheless, when I slip and when I'm caught I 'fess up.  I don't shrug my shoulders and say: "Tough shit."

If a person has a lot of good qualities and a few bad ones, or conversely, a lot of bad ones and a few good ones, I try to evaluate the overall body of work. I try not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak.



Sometimes I see people who are so enamored with a single thing that they can put up with a whole lot of bad things, which is a bad thing.

To Consterne

Consternation: Amazement or horror that confounds the faculties, and incapacitates for reflection; terror, combined with amazement.

From time to time there are events in my life that cause me great consternation.  This is as it should be and as it will undoubtedly continue to be.  I no longer expect life to deliver nothing but good news to my inbox.  I'm going to be have problems of money, power, and sex, and the world will affect me in ways that I find unpleasant.

The amazingly horrible fact here is that some part of me continues to cling to the illusion that this is preventable, controllable.  I am, after all, two years old emotionally.

When I was getting sober I frequently stopped by the Program coffee shop after my evening meetings.  There was a rotating group of men there, sitting around drinking coffee and bullshitting about everything.  These guys had jobs and wives and kids and houses and money in the bank and cars that always started when they turned the key in the ignition, things that I could only wonder about.  I sat on the periphery of the conclave and tried to soak the wisdom in. Ironically, I can't recall a single instance of getting specific advice about working The Steps but I do remember clearly the sense emanating from these guys that everything was going to be OK in the long run, that things were going to work out for the best.  I needed this sense of hope, consumed as I was by wave after wave of impending doom.

Doom:  Destiny, especially terrible.  (Ed. Note: This is an excellent definition).

I try to remember today that the trajectory of my life has been relentlessly upward.  There have indeed been ups and downs and starts and stops, but the curve has curved higher and higher.  I am far better off today than I was a while ago.  I'm not always better today than I was yesterday but I'm always heading in the right direction.

So whatever great tragedy has darkened my doorstep today won't mean shit at some point.