Dude Said

 I was talking to an old timer outside a meeting when I was new and struggling to stay sober.  I told him I was a partier, that I just liked to party.  "Dude, you weren't partying," he said.  "You were drinking."

Dude nailed it.

The story we read this morning from the Big Book concluded with the writer being reunited with his long-estranged family.  I like the happy endings.  The happy endings are more fun.  Our experience is that most of the wreckage we created when we were running and gunning can be repaired, and this is great news.  We don't have a tremendous success rate sobering up damaged alcoholics as it is so if we had to say to most of them at the start: "We know it's bad now but this is as good as it gets" our success rate would crater.

Resentment:  Bitter indignation at having been treated unfairly; a feeling of anger because you have been forced to accept something that you do not like; a feeling of anger or displeasure stemming from the belief that one has been wronged by others or betrayed.

I like the implication that we don't even have to be treated poorly or unfairly, only that we believe or perceive that we've been treated so.

Rictus Steve

Rictus:  An expression where someone shows their teeth in a smile, but looks strange or in pain rather than looking happy or relaxed.

This is how I know that there is no God or - if there is a God - he has a tremendous sense of humor: the meeting today was on Joy and Happiness again.  Two days in a row.  That would try anyone's patience . . . talking about being happy one day and then having to talk about it again the very next day.  I could possibly deal with it if there was a one day break in between but two days running?  It was a left hook followed by an uppercut.

Happy people make me nervous.  My favorite T-shirt reads: "Get Away From Me" and in case the shirt isn't arresting enough to make you look it's bright purple with bright red lettering.  I once saw a coffee cup that read: "Have A Nice Day Elsewhere."  I was seeing a counselor early in my sobriety - and I cannot speak highly enough of these mental health professionals because I was fucking nuts at that point - when she asked me if I was happy.   When I replied in the affirmative she mentioned that she had never seen me smile.  Taken aback, I went home and practiced in front of a mirror.  It was not a familiar look.  It was not natural in appearance.  The word rictus comes to mind.

Today I was called on to share, of course, further evidence that God has a twisted sense of humor.  When the topic of Gratitude comes up I usually start by remarking that nothing pisses me off more than having to talk about being grateful.  It still feels like an alien state of mind to me, something I'm not especially good at.  I still see the flaw more quickly than I see the attribute.  What's wrong and not what's right.

My comments are mostly tongue-in-cheek I'm happy and grateful to report.  But I do know that it isn't my default position.  I was brought up in a fearful household, I am wired in a fearful fashion, and I think that trying to anticipate problems is pretty much the human condition but . . . c'mon . . . after a while, after being showered with blessings . . . you'd think I'd be better at it.

This and That

Happy:  Having a feeling arising from a consciousness of well-being or of enjoyment; enjoying good of any kind, such as comfort, peace, or tranquility; blissful, contented. 

Content:  Satisfied; happiness in one's situation.

From The Daily Reflections: "Happiness is not the point."  This is the kind of shit that drove me to distraction when I was first attending meetings.  In my world of broken toys and deranged clowns happiness was the entire point.  The only two things worth achieving were getting what I wanted and avoiding what I did not.

From one of our members this morning: "I was always pursuing my mistaken idea of what I thought was going to make me happy."  How about I divorce myself from self-pity?

Willingly: Of one's own free will; freely and spontaneously.

From the musings of Bill W: "When pain comes we're expected to learn from it willingly."  Also, an infuriating concept.  First of all, I'd like to pass on the pain.  And then I'm going to pass on learning from it, preferring to bitch and moan loudly, pausing only to plan on how to avoid it at all costs.  Learn from it?  Willingly?  Who are these people?

From a friend: "You are confusing boredom with serenity."

Me, talking to the select group of friends who won't take a swing at me, after listening to them share the details of a particularly painful experience which I have absolutely no idea how to ameliorate: "Boy, you're really going to be able to help someone at some point."  I'm not trying to be snarky when I say this, either, but I'm just speaking from my experience that sometimes when I'm going through something difficult and unwanted I'm gaining the knowledge that might help someone else down the road..

Keep It Complicated

"Try saying: "God bless her (or him)" of anyone who is in disharmony with you.  You should only desire blessing for them.  Leave God's work to God.  Occupy yourself with the task that He gives you to do."

Boy, the bullshit is thick this morning.  I'm planning on occupying myself with myself today.  It's Sunday - the day set aside for total self-absorption.

Next Saturday is the big Business Meeting for the Keep It Complicated group when we'll be discussing how and when the group should start meeting in person - the church has given us a tentative go-ahead - and how and if we should try to engage the malcontents in the breakaway group.  As you might imagine I have a lot of definite ideas as to how this should go.  I'm suppressing the fact that it won't go this way.  I'm really suppressing the fact that when it doesn't go this way I'll be somewhat ticked off.  I spoke briefly yesterday to my wife's sponsor who is also the moderator for the Business Meeting and a member of the Steering Committee that met recently to discuss how and what should what should be brought up at the Business Meeting, a meeting which will be poorly attended by the group members, who are apparently a lot smarter than I am as I plan to attend.  Yeah, sounds complicated, don't it?

First of all, my wife's sponsor is great woman.  The only flaw in her participation - and the participation of most of the other non-Eastern U.S. members of the group - is that she will bend over backwards to make sure every fucking last scrap of minutiae is flogged to death with a cat-o'-nine-tails.  People are so nice out here they make me sick.  Everyone should be flogged with the cat-o' before we start just to make sure they're paying attention to what I want to have happen.

Seriously, though, sometimes we take a simple thing and make it complicated.  Currently the members are meeting on Zoom.  Now the church has offered the meeting space again for in-person meetings with plenty of understandable conditions such as wearing PPE and strict attendance limits, in accordance with state and county regulations.  Fine, open the meeting up to whoever wants to attend and let anyone who is still uncomfortable attending in person stay engaged on Zoom.  Boom.  Adjourn the meeting.  The problem, of course, with all of the varied and sundry and deranged personalities in any Alcoholics Anonymous group is that the opinions and desires are going to be all over the place.

Brother Seaweed is going to take a Vow of Silence.

Seaweed: Great Thinker

Think: To communicate to oneself in one's own mind.  (Ed. Note: Pardon my language this morning but that's fucking priceless.  Talking to myself in my own head.  Boy, that sounds productive . . . )

I'm a great thinker.  I think and think and think.  I also talk to myself all of the time which is just a souped-up version of thinking.

You can't think your way into good acting - you have to act your way into good thinking.

If you're having trouble putting this concept into practical use here's a few examples that might by helpful: "I think that guy's an idiot."  See how easy that is?  How about: "I think I'm going to eat that entire bag of cookies" or maybe "I think I'll tell my boss what an idiot he is."  Another couple of excellent examples that you should feel free to use.

I was belaboring some stupid problem to my sponsor early on when he interrupted me to say: "Why don't you just go home and scrub down your kitchen walls?"  He was clearly tired of me thinking and then telling him in great detail what I had been thinking about.  He was ready for me to do something.

Angry Chris

A guy shared at the meeting yesterday who picked up the nickname Angry Chris early in his sobriety.  A dude also shared who calls himself Poor Petey - he gave himself this name.  It's bad enough when your friends stick you with a nickname that is not meant to be complimentary but when you do it to yourself that's another matter altogether.  Sometimes I joke that my nickname should be Half-Measures Seaweed, as in "half-measures availed us nothing."  I do have a tendency to try to get by with as little effort as possible.  As Homer Simpson said in his campaign to become the Garbage Commissioner of Springfield: "Can't someone else do it?"  Unfortunately, it's usually the case that these nicknames have a lot of truth in them that we can learn from.

I get it in a general sense.  Sometimes I do things to keep my shortcomings in the forefront so they're always getting proper attention.  I don't want to obsess over my defects but I'm a guy who lived for many, many years ignoring them, repressing them, minimizing them, suppressing them, and I can't improve if I'm not paying attention to their forceful presence in my life.

That being said I also have to be careful that I'm not taking the message too much to heart.  If you tell a child repeatedly that's she stupid eventually she'll begin to believe that she's stupid, ignoring all evidence to the contrary.

I was at a men's spiritual retreat many years ago, talking with an old, dear friend, one of those guys who doesn't have to tip-toe around with me because he knows that our friendship is so solid that it can handle the occasional upset.  If I piss you off, either by mistake or with malice of forethought, because I'm saying something you need to hear, and that damages the relationship it wasn't much of a relationship to begin with.  I was talking about the fact that I'm not naturally a very grateful person when he interrupted me.  I'm a lot more grateful than I give myself credit for and I'm getting more and more grateful the longer I stay sober and, frankly, I think the human condition tends toward fear and ingratitude because it's a tough, scary world out there, but apparently I was taking it too far.  "I hear you saying that, Seaweed," he said.  "But I see in your actions that it isn't true.  You behave as if you're grateful."

I've remembered this bluntness for many years.  Be hard on yourself but give yourself a break.

Old Yeller

 If I was more of a religious guy I'd say that sometimes shit happens that's so ridiculously transparent that there's no other explanation than that of God or a God acting directly in my life.  Either that or it's a hell of a coincidence that I'm choosing to interpret as the act of God or a God or some God.  I'm always suspicious of people who offer up a fervent prayer to their God because they're late for an appointment and Viola! some asshole in a Porsche pulls out just as they're pulling up.  I dunno.  I'm not sure God has the time to monkey around with parking spaces in my small hometown.  He's got like a billion people in India to keep an eye on, too.

I was talking with SuperK yesterday - instead of my sponsor who, I realize now, would have been a better choice - about whether I owed an amends to the "Fuck you, Reuben!" character from the Break-Away Keep It Complicated meeting who so offended me a few months back.  In fact, I was so offended I de-friended him on Facebook, confirming that I still have the emotional maturity of a middle-school drop-out.  I should have added "Liar! Liar!  Pants on Fire" to my opprobrium as well.  That would have really showed him who was boss.

Anyway and here's the funny thing and this is why I should just keep my mouth shut 95% of the time . . . it wasn't actually this guy who suggested that Reuben do something that is anatomically impossible but which if he could, in fact, do he would be the happiest human on earth.  It sounded like this guy who, by the way, has been given the nickname Angry Bob so it wasn't that unreasonable for me to assume that he was, in fact, the yeller, yet it was not him.  It was another different asshole.

Actually, I've always had a soft spot for this character.  He fights everything . . . like me . . . and you can't tell him shit if it isn't his own idea . . . like me . . . and he's really working hard on getting better . . . like . . . well, like someone.  I enjoy people who can laugh at themselves.  This morning we had a tag meeting and after I shared I called on Bob.  I've been taught that when I find someone offensive I need to draw close to find out exactly why this is because I usually learn something valuable about myself.  Bob talked about being in the situation of having to take over some responsibility for his aging parents.  This gave me the opportunity to text him to share some of my experience on chipping in with my folks when they were failing  and how one of the things I've never been proud of after the fact is how little I did compared to how much I could have done