God Bless Us, Every One

I can't help it. I just keep thinking about Scrooge on Christmas morning. How he was incredulous that he still had hope, that Tiny Tim was still alive, that the spirits did it all in one night. My sobriety can be like that. After I screw it up for long enough and come to realize what a dipshit I have been, I also realize that I am still sober, despite it all, and still married, and still a dad, and still employed, and still....

As long as I breathe, there is hope, and as long as I take sober breaths, there is plenty of hope. Not just hope for what I can avoid, but hope for what I can do. Do you imagine that after 16 years, the spirits had to come back and kick Scrooge around for another night? Probably, if he was anything like me. Maybe the second time around, he knew it was just what he needed.

No Hangover

Just thank God I'm not hung over today. There's a lot more to feel grateful about, but it all starts right here.

No hang over.

Can party with that!

Happy Holidays

They ain't easy, but I'm grateful for these holidays. Good to catch up with family. Have to go pack right now, but I sure am happy to have stayed sober through the celebrations (we had an early Christmas.) Nine years sober is just one day.

Gotta hit a meeting soon--tomorrow maybe.

Feeling ill from binge-eating, but this, too, shall pass. Heading to parents' house--no more sweet potato pie and chocolate yule log!

Cheers.

Slumping towards the light

Here's what I'm grateful for: December 21st has come and gone and every day now is longer than the one before. This is serious business for me. I don't know why it took so many decades to connect my mood to the cycle of the seasons. Before I got sober, I would just slip slowly into depression every fall... sleeping too much, overeating, and by November... sealing myself into a state of pickled hibernation that lasted for months. The lack of understanding could have killed me so many times it still makes the back of my neck crinkle when I think about it.
Of course, this was only one of the reasons I drank. but it's the one that's on my mind right now that it's completely dark at 5:30pm. The insight has changed the way I do a few things. I spend a lot on good quality running gear and I run even if I only have time for twenty minutes because I really do believe my life could depend on it.
What I'm REALLY grateful for is that being in recovery is like pushing away from December 21st and being confident life will keep getting better beyond June 21st.

I'm grateful... I'm grateful...I'm grateful....

I figure if I keep saying it I'll start to feel it. Maybe I should pray from some.

Remember when you first went to AA and you heard people talking about how grateful they are and how awesome everything is and etc. And you'd stew in your own juices and be like "what do I have to be grateful for? My life has imploded, I'm living with Mom, got no car, no money, no girlfriend. I owe money and have a court date and I'm unemployed and the cherry on top of it all....I have to stop drinking and doing drugs for the rest of my life. What the *&^@ do I have to be grateful for?" Turns out that kind of thinking is a prime symptom of alcoholism (and early days of sobriety). But the old guy in the back of the room looks at you with a knowing smile that's part kindness and part drill Sargent and says, "Hey kid. We all have something to be grateful for. Did you piss yourself today? Did you wake up with a hangover? Did you need to get bailed out of jail today? Do you have a warm bed to go home to?"

And then it happens. Slowly. Slowly. You start to look at things just a bit differently. "Oh yeah, I am grateful that I've got a roof over my head and I've got a shot at finally stopping running. I don't really think this AA stuff can work for me, but it seems to be working for other people and I don't have anywhere else to turn. And no, I didn't piss myself today and I'm not as ashamed as I was when I'd wake up after a bender. I'm starting to pick my head up and every once in a while I feel like maybe things will turn out okay in spite of all the crap that's going down" And then that little spark of gratitude goes away.

But it's these little blessings that help form the foundation. Gratitude bricks in the mortar of one day at a time.

I've been sober since 1993. I need this program now more than ever. And my co-workers are driving me crazy. I'm grateful for the spiritual tool kit.

facebook

i have spent far too much time looking at pictures of people i think i used to know and assuming that, because they are smiling in the pictures they have posted on facebook, that their life is better than mine. now, i don't need facebook to make this assumption, but it does make it possible without leaving the house. its classic judging my insides by another person's outsides. and it gets me focused on all the things i am not.

the problem is, of course, that there is nothing wrong with not being something. i have never really felt bad about not being a doctor, and even tv shows like house can bring me to the point of fainting. why is it harder to accept that i am not a rich lawyer? maybe because it seems like something i could do, if i had the ambition. the truth is that the only real ambition i have had in my own life is to drink myself into a stupor somewhere warm enough to be outside year round.

so, i have discovered somethings better than that. a fellowship, a family, worthwhile employment. these things don't make for great content on facebook all the time. paul theroux laments that virtuous people are not very interesting to write about. not that i am virtuous, but i'm trying. the last time i was with one of those interesting facebook people, she missed the whole party passed out on the bed. that picture has not made it onto her profile yet.

The Artist's Way

Sometimes I forget, but one reason I got into AA was The Artist's Way, a 12-step program for stagnating/frustrated artists by Julia Cameron.

The basic premise is that our nature inclination is to create, and that to be one with God we have to get off our asses and do the art.

I think that's a bit of what this site is about. It's gratitude; it's sharing; but by writing, it becomes an act of art. The blog lives, and it's helping me to live a bit easier.

I'm grateful for anything that can do that.

Like...I'm grateful for....

It's a Wonderful Life. I really love that movie. Donna Reed is hot and the sappy sentementality complete with morals and an angel who gets his wings moves me. It just does. I'm not ashamed of being moved. I'm not ashamed that the more corny things get the better I feel. I'm a cornball myself. I'd like to think I'm cool and all that but I'll watch "Rudy" --the movie about the dorkie kid who walks on to the Notre Dame football team in the 1970's and only get to play for like.. one play (but he sacks the quarterback) and get a little choked up at the end. So if being a little sapy is wrong...I don't want to be right. I'm serious.

I drank because I wanted to be cool or fit in (as well as having the allergy) but I also drank because I though it could give me something. A feeling of connectedness. Or being wanted. Or belonging. The crazy thing is it never really worked. The more I drank and did drugs, the more lonlely and isolated I became. What a crazy disease. I was compelled to the the exact thing that brought me further and further away from what I really wanted while thinking that "this time will be different". I know I'm not the only one. And I'm really grateful to know that I'm not the only one, who lived that way. So, I tell my wife I love her a lot. Because I do. I even tell the cats that I love them. It's so not cool. But it's the truth and there's a warmness there. I try and stop and remember the simple (some say corny) things in this toxic morass of fear that my workplace has devolved into. It takes a bit of effort these days. But it works. The hate and loneliness that seemed to be my constant companions fade into the ether to be replaced by a much more sturdy feeling of...ok-ness.