try a little tenderness

It's amazing what a little acceptance will do. 

My relationship of nine years is in flux.  My father is in poor health.  I'm gaining weight.  My house is a wreck.  I can't seem to finish my laundry.  I haven't gotten laid in months.

Incredibly, I've never felt more peaceful...

The tremendous anxiety and pressure, which has been a hallmark of my waking hours for so many years, is actually starting to die down a little.

I'm learning to resist the urge to fix, manage, and control every little unplanned event or encounter that occurs in my life. 

I'm learning to be responsible for my own behaviors and attitudes and leave the rest alone.

It ain't easy.  I love to pretend that I'm in control.  I have to make myself take a deep breath and  just let it all go...

Another thing I've noticed--now that I'm starting to take care of myself a bit, now that I'm taking conscious steps to relax, to avoid crazy-making activities and people, to nurture my newfound sobriety--a great deal of my constant internal self-criticism and self-persecution has lightened up.  In turn, I'm not so hypercritical of the world around me.  I find I enjoy being around people rather than being terrorized by them.

Instead of worry, anxiety, and frustration, I feel this beautiful sense of tenderness towards life.  It's a soft, warm sensation that has sepia tinges of nostalgia.  It's a sensation, I must concede, of love, of compassion.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not in some constantly blissed-out state.  I get bothered and obsessed several times daily.  It's just I've figured out I don't have to buy into the craziness. 

Life happens.  Most often with little regard for my personal agenda. 

I am not the Universe's designated back-seat driver.

Most of what happens in the world on any given day is out of my control.

Believe it or not, I'm actually beginning to be thankful for that!

It gives me so much time to do other things.  Important things.  Like nothing.  Or reading a book.  Or folding socks.

The extra time I have now, I don't rush to fill with busy-ness.  I rest.  I relax.

It sort of feels like a vacation, but it's just everyday life!

Paradoxically, as I nurture myself, focus on taking care of my needs and even some of my wants, I become more generous and open.  Ready to take time to be with people, do constructive things.

It's so very bizarre.

Today marks sixty days without a drink.  That feels really good.

I know there's a long road ahead with lots of work to do, but I want to take a moment and really absorb how far I've come in the past few weeks. 

I have to offer great big bucketfuls of gratitude to my friends, my sponsor, and my Higher Power.  You see, all I'm doing is trying to stay open, not shut down, be willing to take the next step.  Everything else has been a series of lovely suprises, tokens of realization and serenity hidden in unexpected places.

There's an AA slogan I read recently that seems especially apropos:

"Today is a gift.  That's why they call it the Present."

Honesty, serenity, and hope, folks--24 hours at a time...

a glimpse of authenticity

Over the weekend, I faced my biggest challenge yet since I put down the bottle.

It was an employment offer that would have offered a quick fix to my current financial situation, which in turn would have helped me facilitate movement in other areas of my life.  The deal was almost too good to be true.

I spent four full days actually thinking about the offer.  I didn't panic.  I didn't obsess.  I didn't worry myself to death over it.  I just asked for guidance and then let go.

You see, part of my craziness involves working myself up into a frenzy completely disproportionate to the crisis at hand (which more often than not isn't a crisis anyway) and then making snap decisions, usually based on fear.

This time, though, I sensed the stakes were high.  The universe, it seems, delivers situations to your door that offer you an opportunity to learn--if you're paying attention.  If you're not paying attention, you obviously don't sense the lesson, don't learn anything, and keep spinning your crazy wheel.

By letting myself sit with the situation, by asking for guidance and thereby taking the pressure off myself, I found realizations and insights floating effortlessly like bubbles to the surface of my consciousness. 

I understood immediately that the offer was a glamour--shiny, mesmerizing.  I knew that to accept would be to put myself on a path which would probably quickly consume what little peace of mind I have and derail my sobriety.

And yet, I was still feeling all this emotional energy around the decision.  I was anxious, restless, trapped.  But I was very clear about what to do.  What was going on?

As I was on my knees (irony I'm sure poetically intended by the ol' HP) weeding in my garden, an irrefutable understanding settled over me.  Gently.  Like breath.

I understood that it was not the offer or the decision that was generating all the emotional storminess.  It was the fact that I had to say 'no' to a person I care about and admire.  It would be a crack in my veneer.  I would have to admit publicly to another human being that I am not omnipotent.  (Something, no doubt, they surely believed me to be...ahem).

Silly, when you think about it, that I wasn't worried or anxious about making a wrong decision that could affect my life dramatically over the course of the next several years.  Oh no, I got worked up and spent all my energy on trying to control in advance the reaction of the person to whom I would have to relate this decision.

I like my crazy wheel analogy from the previous post.  Probably because I seem to be so good at spinning it.

Anyway, after I had this realization, this understanding, this epiphany or whatever you'd like to call it, I suddenly got some peace.  I found some serenity.  I knew I would be able to handle the situation from an authentic place in myself and have the strength by grace to handle whatever the outcome might be.

That feeling, for a few hours, bled out in a shimmering aura onto the rest of my life.  I caught glimpses of how I could act authentically in other situations in my life to which I usually apply a more insane approach. 

I heard the one hand clapping.

This euphoric feeling faded after a while, about the time the sun went down last night.  But I still had a serene understanding of the situation at hand.

I wrote an honest email.  I didn't placate, sugar coat, or sidewind.  I just explained that while I appreciated such an amazing offer, I would not be accepting it.

I woke up this morning, and suprisingly my stomach was not twisted, waiting like a 50s family in a fallout shelter for the sky to fall.  The person called.  They'd received my email.  They appreciated my response, and agreed given my situation, I probably had made a wise decision.

Wow.

From the second my cell phone clicked shut and for several minutes thereafter, I offered up some serious gratitude to the universe for giving me the opportunity to learn, and then teaching me what I needed to know.

Honesty, serenity, and joy, folks--24 hours at a time...

417

417 is a significant number in AA circles. 

It's almost as ubiquitous and cryptic as the biblical reference "John 3:16" that's forever held up at sporting events. 

417 is a page.  A page in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.  It sets forth a truth by which all the old timers swear and which I have a hard time even wrapping my mind around.  For the uninitiated, here is the oft quoted excerpt:

"And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today.  When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation--some fact of my life--unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.  Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God's world by mistake.  Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life's terms, I cannot be happy.  I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes."

I am a great fixer.  I try to fix all sorts of thing, most of which are none of my business or concern.  Usually my motives are good, helpful, well-intentioned.  But the result is always craziness.

In Buddhism, there is the concept of karma.  In my limited understanding, this is not the pop-culture, boomerang version of karma, where if you do something bad it'll come back and bite you in the ass.  It's more about spinning the wheel of craziness.  When you try to fix the world, when you try to control people or things that are uncontrollable, when you assume responsibility for general management of the universe, everything you do just ends up spinning the wheel of craziness.  The problem is, though, this spinning wheel is a generator, and it perpetuates more craziness.  For all the craziness you pump in, even more craziness comes out.

I think that's sort of what 417 is all about.  Only when you accept life on life's terms--accept reality with all the honesty and candor you can muster--only then can you start acting in ways that don't spin the crazy wheel...

I'm starting to catch myself trying to run the world.  I do it a lot.  A lot of times I try to help people, by fixing their problems, even if those problems exist in my mind and not theirs.  I try to make any situation where there is discomfort or even mild confrontation disappear immediately.  If someone is stressed out, I freak out.  If someone feels bad, I'm afraid bad things will happen.  If I'm uncomfortable in a situation or with a person, I run, and if I can't run I get angry and growl like a trapped animal.

Lord how I love to spin the crazy wheel!

I have been dry now for 40 days and 40 nights--a nice, poetic antithesis to the Flood.  Every day I'm learning a little more about accepting myself...the reality of myself.  I'm not so put together and on top of it all as I used to think.

I'm learning how to feel things for real, not drunk funhouse mirror versions of feelings.

I'm learning that feelings come and go.  No matter how intense, they always pass.  Like weather.  I really have to remind myself of that one.

I'm also learning to reach out.  To ask people for help.  To share my feelings and my experiences.

I also know that I'm like a little snow mouse nibbling on the tip of a great big iceberg.  Biting off just what I can chew and no more.  There are feelings and situations waiting in the wings that I can't even pretend to think about right now.

But I also know I don't have to. 

All I have to do is get through today.  I wake up in the morning and ask the universe to guide my path, and at night I make a list of all the things I am grateful for.

I can feel little transformations happening already.  I'm also shocked at how vulnerable and raw I feel.  For once, intellect can't protect me.  I'm in the realm of emotions now, and they have their own rules, which I don't understand very well at all.  I'm also in the realm of spirit, which is a place I've always been drawn to as a "tourist", but am now beginning to experience as a native.

I really don't know why I'm writing all this.  I think sometimes I have to explain things to myself so I can understand them.  Self-didactic, I suppose. 

Today was a pretty good day.  I have a lot on my mind, but I managed not to obsess about it nearly as much today as I did yesterday.  So that's a little progress.  And progress, not perfection, is the goal.

Honesty, serenity, and joy, folks--24 hours at a time...

serenity now

I have a lot of simultaneous stress going on in my life right now:

• My personal and home life is in disarray.  There's a complicated situation there that's not working itself out as fast as I would like.  My house hasn't been properly cleaned in weeks.  I have piles of laundry.  My flowerbeds need some serious weeding...


• My work life is in transition.  My freelance career is picking up, but at the same time the administration is changing at my day job.


• Finances, thankfully, seem to be more or less under control for now, but I have a lot of bills to pay.


• I'm 38 days into sobriety.

Some days I'm okay.  I can roll with the punches and navigate my day from waking to sleeping without much difficulty.

There are other days, though, like today, when the weight of all the stress comes crashing in.  My brain starts racing and panicking, looking for escape.

On days like today, I have to amend the serenity prayer in the spirit of "one day at a time".  I find myself, seemingly constantly, murmuring:

"Grant me serenity--for the moment--to accept the things I cannot change.  The courage--in this moment--to change the things I can.  And the wisdom--for this moment--to know the difference."

It's tough for me to trust that things are the way they should be.  I try to take comfort (sometimes begrudgingly) in the fact that it's not my responsibility to manage the universe.  I do my best to remain focused on what I need to do to make it through today without getting wrapped up in a lot of anxiety about the future.  I make a concerted effort to meet life on life's terms.

This is an amazingly humbling journey .  I am grateful to have the support of friends and a higher power to guide me on my way.

I'm also grateful for this blog.  This little, insignificant piece of cyberspace where I can write down all that's in my head and heart.  For those of you who have been reading and commenting--thanks.  Your words of encouragement, your insights, and your own stories make days like today a little easier.

Honesty, serenity, and truth, folks--24 hours at a time...

three stepping

This past weekend, I noticed something was missing.  Something so familiar and constant, it was only silence that made me notice its absence.  I was missing my busy-ness.

I have always been a devoted keeper of to-do lists.  All the little tasks, chores, jobs, and assignments I can think of, I write down and then cross off when complete.

Now the funny thing is, my to do list is still there.  The same things are still on it.  What isn't there, though, is my perpetual buzz of anxiety about each item.

Before I stopped drinking, a to-do list was an invitation to obsession. 

First I would procrastinate, then I'd beat my self up about procrastinating.  I would analyze and reorder every item on my list, trying to determine what I should do first.  Which progression or sequence would be most logical, most efficient, most in keeping with the astrological forecast for the day...  The little tasks were the worst.  I could fully expend two to three hours of crazed brain energy on something as simple as returning movies to the video store or making a phone call.

On top of endless strategic planning about how to tackle my list, I would also easily get distracted by tangential fantasies. 

Instead of returning the movies, I'd think about the movies.  What I liked and didn't like about them.  How I would have handled them differently if I were the director.  And of course I could be a film director.  I have a theatrical background.  I should make a movie.  But what would it be about?  I'll write a script.  I need to get online and figure out how to format a script.  It's important to have the right formatting for a script if you want to sell a screenplay.  But I don't want to sell a screenplay, I want to make a movie.  Storyboards!  I need to make storyboards.  But I'll still need a plot.  Oh and I'll have to come up with a story that is simple, because I don't have a budget.  I could raise money though.  I could raise money by getting the local art cinema in town to host a film festival for young filmmakers.  We could recruit celebrities to be on hand for the opening.  There are lots of Kentucky-Hollywood connections: Johnny Depp, George Clooney, Tom Cruise.  Maybe I can get a celebrity to be in my movie for free.  I'll use local actors and locations.  And then I'll enter my movie in the film festival.  Oh, but the film festival is to raise money so I can make my movie in the first place.  And I don't even have a story.  Maybe it would be easier to adapt a script from something already written.  I should go to the library and check out a bunch of books of short stories so that I can get ideas for a script.  But you know, I'm a writer.  I've read tons of great stories.  I should be able to write a script.  But then I only have one video camera.  I'd probably need to get some sort of professional equipment.  I wonder if there's a place in town that rents professional video cameras.  I could upload the footage into my computer and use my editing software to make it look like film.  That would save some money.  It could be an independent sort of thing.  Except I still need a script.  And who will be in the movie?  I probably need to know who the actors will be, so I can write a story based on who will be playing each part.  Because there aren't many professional film actors hanging out here, and since I don't have money, I'll have to get unknowns and amateurs to be in the film.  That will require lots of directing skill.  But if I pull it off, I could probably win a bunch of incredible awards--maybe Sundance or Toronto, or if it goes really well I could go to Cannes, or maybe the Oscars!  Now what would I say if I won an Oscar?  I'd definitely have to thank my Aunt who always took me to the movies every Sunday.  That would be a great thing to say on national television.  It's the right tone--humble, family-oriented.  Then I'd thank my Mom & Dad, and of course, I'll have to thank all the producers and distributor people, and the cast...  But I need a cast.  I also need a budget, and I still don't have a story, so how can I get a story?  That should come first, probably, but since I don't have a budget, I'll have to work on that while I write the story, and then we're already into summer.  If I'm going to film in Kentucky, it really needs to be in the spring or the fall, because that's when it's most pretty here.  Which means I need to hurry.  If I'm going to have a script, find actors, pull together a budget, rent equipment, edit and enter my movie into film competitions, I only have about two months.  This is insane.  Why is everything so hard?  I should make an art movie.  That way I don't have to worry about commercial appeal.  I can do it on my own time frame, and it can be low budget.  So what would I make an art film about?  Something really abstract and cerebral and disturbing.  Something surreal like Bunuel and Dali...  That was a weird movie.  The razor blade in the woman's eye.  It was a cow eye, actually.  Interesting how they did all those special effects.  Special effects are so much easier now that we have computers. I need to get some software so I can learn how to do those effects.  I could get software and learn how to do three-dimensional modeling and animation so I could build virtual sets.  Then I could make my movie take place anywhere I wanted it to.  Then I wouldn't have to worry about budget--just the cost of the software.  Except I don't know how to shoot actors on green screen.  That's important if your doing CGI.  Another book to pick up at the library.  Then I can do an inexpensive movie that feels big budget.  Then I can get mass distribution, and I'll make more money, which I need because I have so many bills to pay.  Why am I thinking about making a movie when I have so many bills to pay?  I need to get another job, or work harder at developing freelancing gigs.  Making a movie is speculative and time consuming.  I really need to focus on getting out of debt.  Once I'm out of debt I can make art.  I need to be responsible now and get focused on my money situation.  I should get books at the library on money management instead.  Maybe then I can figure out how I'm going to pay that stack of bills next to my computer.  Oh, but I need stamps.  I don't want to get into paying the bills until I have stamps.  I like to pay all my bills at once and have a nice neat stack of envelopes to drop in the mailbox.  Of course, if I set my bills up online, I wouldn't need stamps.  Maybe I need to go do that.  Except that's so boring.  I'm not in the mood to sit and type my name and address over and over.  Maybe I should just write a novel.  I don't need money to do that.  Then I can sell the movie rights to the novel, and make my money that way.  Or why go to all the trouble of writing a novel?  That could take months, I'll just write a screenplay and sell that.  But I need to get online and figure out how to format the screenplay.  Formatting is very important.  But I really need a story first.  What kind of story would make the most sellable screenplay?  You know, this is really too much for one person to be expected to handle all by themselves...

I NEED A DRINK!

And so I would have one.  Or two.  Or ten. 

Meanwhile, the movies would sit unreturned on the counter where they would inevitably incur at least two or three days of late fees.

This weekend, however, I managed to do what was on my to-do list.  Quickly. 

I had oceans of space and time left over to relax, hang out, and enjoy the day.

Since I'm trying to keep my focus on one day at a time, I didn't spin out into wild speculation about the vast implications of where what I was doing today might lead.

I didn't procrastinate either.  Rather I told myself, "You have these things to do.  Either do them or not, but you can't spend time thinking about them."

So I did the things on my list.  I didn't think about them. 

I also napped.  I ate ice cream. I sat in my garden.

Last night, as I was headed to bed, it occured to me, that my relaxing (one might even say 'serene') weekend was a result of approaching life through the third step.

Every morning, every evening, and often during the day, I have been trying to surrender myself to the flow of the Universe.  I make a conscious decision to turn my will and life over to the custody and care of a higher power.

The repitition of that surrender, that letting go, that release, has relieved me from the constant whir and buzz of busy-ness.  I've stepped out of the rat race.  That little wheel still has plenty of folks on it to keep it spinning, but I don't have to anymore.

Of course, there will always be items for my to-do list, and I'm sure I'll procrastinate and daydream many times more in the future.  This weekend, though, I realized that things can be different.  I can, as the ol' Tao te Ching says, just do my work and step away.  The Universe will handle the rest.