Mr. SponsorPants

Happy Halloween

 

 

Young girl at work:  Are you getting dressed up for Halloween, Mr. SponsorPants?

Mr. SponsorPants:  Me?  No, not this year.

YG: Why not?

Mr. SP:  Oh, I dunno.  Years ago I used to put a lot into my costumes.

YG:  Really?

Mr. SP:  Yeah, I planned the whole thing around...

 

Around being able to hide bottles on my person and drink everywhere I went.  Seriously.

Mr. SP: ... the, um, the theme of wherever I was going.

YG:  Oh.  Did you make them from scratch?

Mr. SP: Mostly.  I started planning really early for it.  Like I said, it was a big deal to me.

YG: I'm making my costume this year, it's...

She goes on to describe all the planning it took, how she started working on it two weeks ago and what she did to make it.

YG:  When did you used to start working on your costumes?

Mr. SP (not thinking before he speaks):  Oh, usually about June, I guess.  I had to figure out all the pockets, and then practice walking in...

 

Mr. SponsorPants suddenly looks up, aware of the Young Girl's puzzled expression.  There is an awkward silence.

YG:  Right.  Well... I better...

 

she makes a vague gesture towards the front of the restaurant

Mr. SP:  Sure. Yes.  Right.  Carry on.

 

An alcoholic's biography in 40 words

 

An Alcoholic Biography

 

I was born.

I was irritated that things were not the way I thought they should be,

so I did whatever I wanted to do.

But it's not my fault.

Ever.

And that pretty much brings us up to today.

 

The End

5 Quotes on Humility

 

 

Humility is nothing else but a right judgement of ourselves.

-- William Law

 

Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.

-- Thomas Merton

 

There is something in humility which strangely exalts the heart.

-- Saint Augustine

 

True humility is contentment.

-- Henri Frederic Amiel

 

Life is a long lesson in humility.

-- James M. Barrie

 

regarding the world: some perspective towards gratitude

 

I've written before (here) about my problem with the "should" that so often lurks around the idea of Gratitude -- and yet, though there's a fair amount of shouldism inferred below, it's also undeniably true, and an important perspective for me to have.

 

 

One of the nicest things about the 10th Step

 

 

One of the nicest things about the 10th Step for me (Step 10: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it) is that after I learned how to promptly admit when I am, I learned how to not admit when in fact I'm not.

In other words, I used to admit I was wrong to diffuse a situation, or to avoid confrontation, or to placate, or in a passive-aggressive feint to try and manipulate the other person into admitting they're wrong. (twisted!)

But once I began admitting when I was really wrong, the not-reallly-wrong's admission didn't fit me anymore.  Various stressers would occur and the coping mechanism would kick in and I would have the impulse to admit/apologize, but a little voice (that infamous, ubiquitous little voice) would sort of pipe up and go, "Hey! Waitaminute!"

There were -- there are -- plenty of times when I was/still am wrong.

Yet I find that after practicing these principles in all my affairs to the best of my ability, there are now a good number of occasions when I'm not.  At one time it was the easiest thing in the world to take blame and apologize for things I didn't do -- but the funny thing is, after you experience how clean it feels to admit when you're truly in the wrong it actually feels dirty to admit you're wrong when it looks like you're not.

Thanks to inventory work I'm healthier than that today.

(Well, most days.)

We say "work the Steps" and it can sound daunting -- but the experience of many, many people in recovery is that if you stay the course it is worth it in ways you can't see from wherever you're currently standing.

 

Cheers!

lintiful

 

One of my regular AA Meetings couldn't meet this past week since there was a function at the building where we rent our room.  With some of the work challenges of late I haven't had as much flexibility with my time to add a "substitute" meeting to my routine if one I've planned my work around doesn't happen. 

Rushing a load of work clothes through the wash to go back in unexpectedly (long story) I was grousing in my head about ... oh, all of it.  The usual.  The result of course was that I was starting to be not-right-sized for my life...

Shoving socks and undershirts into the dryer I pulled out the lint trap and it was so lintiful (that's plentiful with lint, thankyouverymuch) it was like removing a washcloth from the trap rather than the usual slender layer.

It occurred to me then; I think my alcoholic mind is like the lint trap in a clothes dryer.

The more Meetings I go to, the more it's cleaned out.

The fewer I get... stuff builds up.

And when that happens, well... let's just say performance is impaired for both units.

Things I learned (or was reminded of) this week. An ongoing series.

 

There's nothing like contrary action to change... well, everything.

 

Just because you can't articulate the solution right away doesn't mean you still have to live in the problem.

 

A meeting is a meeting -- the more I go to, generally the better I feel.  Conversely, once out of the habit, those "go-to-meeting-muscles" can atrophy pretty quick.  That's why having a regular schedule of meetings has been key, for me.  It takes the "I don't feel like it" option off the table.

 

Alcoholism is always trying to get you to be alone.  Excluding drunk driving deaths, almost everyone I ever heard of that died of alcoholism was alone with a bottle.

 

 

sometimes (redux)

 

sometimes

I get tired

of thinking about all the things

I don't want to think about.

 

okay, let's try this again

technical difficulties yesterday. let's try this again.

 

It meant going back to work, essentially.  You see, the AA meeting was literally downstairs from where I worked, in the Utility Room of the parking garage of the plaza where the restaurant I manage is located.  After yet another in a long series of long days, the idea of basically turning around and heading back... well, let's just say it pushed at the boundaries of my willingness a little. 

I had some pretty good reasons for begging off, too, although ultimately I knew they were all bullshit.  I just wasn't willing to let go of them right away.  So I sat down on my sofa while the new kittens (Evil Old Cat's ghost lingers, but I'm afraid The Universe would not allow the vacancy to last forever) gamboled about the living room, occasionally deciding that toes in socks needed to be stalked and pounced upon and nipped into submission (Ow! Ow! Take the damn socks then! Ow!) and let the Quiet Voice which knows what's right have a chance to get a word in.  With rather less grace than I'd like to admit I made a few calls about getting a ride to the meeting and texted the Secretary back that of course I would be there.

I was mildly curious about what I'd find -- 10:30pm of a Monday night in a parking garage is an interesting set up for a meeting (though God knows I've spoken in stranger places).  The fact that it was literally under my feet at work and I didn't know about it wasn't that strange -- after all, it's a big city, and there are many meetings to choose from now.  Many orbits along which you can travel -- two people in AA, neighbors, can both go to many meetings in a week and never run into each other anywhere but the laundromat or the mailbox.

All of which is to say that I half knew what to expect:  Likely a small-to-medium sized group, populated by a mixed bag of folks -- some with maybe more issues than just alcoholism -- but an AA meeting none-the-less.  And as my dead sponsor used to say between deep dreadful drags on the cigarettes he loved so much, "all your little get togethers with your sponsees, your fellowshipping, your AA birthday parties, your service, etc. is good.  It's important.  But it's not a meeting.  A meeting is a meeting."

(And it is as true today as it was the first time I wrote it:  I miss his wise counsel, his salty humor, his wry wit, his seemingly endless patience with me and his sharp, helpful insight every single god damn day of my life.)

So a meeting is a meeting and there I sat in front of this one, and my guess as to who would be there and what it was like was pretty close to the mark.  The room was no surprise.  I've spoken there before at other meetings in the past few years.  No matter what people try to do to soften it up a (Christmas Lights festooned across the exposed pipes, the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions hung up on the wall) it still feels like you're in the utility room of a parking garage -- a meeting space with all the comfort of a bucket of gravel.  But a meeting really is a meeting, and it's neither the chairs nor the space which make it happen, it's the program and the people that transform it into a place where people who want to stop drinking, but cannot on their own, may find a solution.

So there were a couple of rows of chairs in front of me, and maybe fifteen or so people in those, and then a row towards the back but off to the side, with another eight or ten people sitting there.

I was tired, and had a little bit of a dirty diaper, spiritually speaking, about the whole thing.  Would that I could walk my talk all the time but

wait, that's totally not fair to myself.  I was there, as I said I'd be.  If I didn't feel as willing as I usually do... well, that's just being human.  "No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles.  We are not saints..."

Thus I sat there, feeling less than great or gracious, with maybe just a low grade level of self pity and perhaps a teeny dash of resentment.

"What a fucking waste of time.  I wish I was home.  This won't move anyone much more than an inch towards any kind of solution."  Writing these essays can be a curious blend of striving-for-accurate-recall and trying for worth-reading-story-telling, yet for some strange reason I can tell you clearly that was the exact, strangely-worded thing I thought.

And the Quiet Voice spoke up.

Sometimes that's all it takes.  Just one more inch to get someone to something bigger, or that they needed to reach.  An inch can be all a body needs.

And on the heels of that, in my "own" voice, I thought two things almost at the same time:

"I know that can be true."

and

"Man, my head is a weird place."

So the meeting began, and there were the usual readings to start with, during which I could not help but notice that literally the entire back of the room appeared to be completely engrossed in their cell phone displays, thumbs doing their agile, text-typing dance.

(It just occurred to me that I bet the sport of thumb wrestling has, at the start of the 21st Century, gotten a whole lot more interesting, what with how dexterous everyone is in that regard now.)

And the readings concluded and I started to speak.

I wrote it before and I think I'm sincere when I say it (I think so...) at this point I don't have a lot of ego left to burn off when it comes to speaking at a meeting -- sure, some still, but not a lot.  I've just done it too much, felt good about it and bad, indulged my ego and had it smashed, felt like I was carrying the message or felt like I had just taken off my pants in front of a room full of strangers and was not well received... now it's just an act of service and I'm usually happy to do it but not too wound up one way or another.  People get what they get, hear what they need to, whether it's what you said or not. 

But as I continued to speak, I started to get angry at the people in the back texting.  I don't know if this will make sense, but I was not angry for me, I was angry for the meeting.  And angry for the texters.  It was just... the healing in an AA meeting happens in a number of ways, but whether its through the process of identification or the process of finally feeling like you're being heard by people who really understand and might actually care, the channel along which this medicine is delivered is the act of listening.  And when someone is texting -- not knitting, not staring off into space or holding their head in their hands or staring at the ground -- it's ... it's just different.  Isolative.  Dismissive.  Very much not listening.

I felt a terrible tug of war happen at the start of virtually every sentence.  Go there, or don't go there.  Say something or don't say something.  I have before, in other meetings.  I spoke at one giant Young People's meeting with a somewhat sassy crowd, and whipped around and asked two girls sitting immediately to my right if they would either choose to be quiet or choose to be outside since I was trying to be as honest as possible in a scary situation and their whispers and titters were really distracting.  I've addressed texting at other meetings before too; once when I was speaking and a guy in the first row pulled out his phone and started and I... barked?  snapped?  scolded? that it was going to be hard to focus on sharing if he was going to text right under my nose like that.  And then I apologized to him and the group since the lectern is not a bully pullpit -- another factor at play in my do-I-or-don't-I dance. (And in that instance, when he then got up to share -- since he raised his hand and I called on him right away, figuring that I'd had my shot from the lectern he deserved his -- it became spooky as all hell, since he confessed he had, at that moment, decided to text his dealer, and being called out let the moment pass)...  And the fact that I have before made the tug-of-war all the more intense.  On the tip of my tongue, with almost every breath, trembled a "Seriously?..."  Consequently, what I did share sounded... well, I don't know and that's none of my business -- it was what it was -- but how it felt was that putting so much energy into not saying something left a strange emptiness around what I did say.

What prevented me from going there -- the tiny bead on the scale that kept me tipped into Let It Go -- was the memory of the Quiet Thought I'd had at the beginning of the meeting.  I just knew that if I Went There I would not come back from it -- the whole tenor of what I was talking about would shift, and a somewhat confrontive and possibly ugly vibe would enter the room.

So it became about ignoring my anger (that smoldering coal in the middle of my chest, ready to ignite a much larger fire) and an exercise in paying attention to the people who were listening.

You don't have to have spent much time at the AA Rodeo to know what is at the heart of all this for me:  Fear.  Fear about the meetings being a safe place.  Fear of a tidal change which feels like it could erode something very important to me.  Fear that people aren't doing things the way I think they should do them.  

And I can recognize the fear and strive for acceptance and still also legitimately feel that sitting in an AA meeting and texting away while the person literally sitting next to you is sharing about going through their cancer treatment (which actually happened that very night during the sharing portion of the meeting I am writing about in this essay) is not just rude, or selfish, or insensitive, but actually bad medicine.

Some meetings (as were pointed out in the Comments yesterday) include a statement about texting during the meeting in their format.  That's a good idea I guess... though I wager it wouldn't have made a dent in those people in this group.

  And I'm no fan of meetings having "cops" to enforce very much.  We are not a glum lot, but we are not a well lot either, and to have the openness and acceptance we must to be as inclusive as we are means that when you get down to it there are some messy, messy meetings out there.  But I also know -- as most of you reading this do, too -- that one person's mess is another person's safety and freedom.

Ultimately what this is about is I walked my talk.  I said yes to an AA request, as I had been taught to do by my first sponsor and which has been echoed by every one since that one.  And I have no idea if I helped anyone move even a fraction of an inch along their spiritual path -- and I don't need to.  That's seriously none of my business.

Because even though it can be messy or uncomfortable, and I can have a spiritual dirty diaper or all the grace of a pig on a pogo stick, by saying yes to AA I continue to inch along mine.

 

Blogging from a phone

Writing this post on my phone, which, given my experience tonight is HIGHLY ironic. Just got back from speaking at a Meeting. 10:30pm AA Meeting. On a Monday night. In the Utility Room of a Parking Garage.

Rarely have I felt so blocked when speaking. It's because I had to keep pulling myself back from starting every sentence with the phrase: "Put the fucking cell phone down." small meeting but the cool kids in the back couldn't be bothered to stop texting -- I'm a long way from the idea that you have to listen to ME in the meeting. But I do believe you have to LISTEN in the meeting.
There's more to this story, but the technology is working against me tonight.
Suffice to saythat by the end of the meeting I was glad I didn't go there...
More tomorrow.