I realize, of course, that talking about gratitude on Thanksgiving Day is, at best, cliché. Oh well. Today is as good a day as any to set aside a bit of time to discuss the idea of gratitude. It is a mistake, I think, to think of gratitude as a state of being, or a feeling. Of course, it is those things, too, but gratitude is really something more than that. Gratitude is a habit of mind that, if cultivated, becomes a part of one’s character. Practicing gratitude helps us stay sober. Read the rest of this entry »
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I will sometimes, maybe even often, not do something because the idea that I will do it less than perfectly paralyzes me. I’m way better now at allowing myself to make mistakes than I ever have been before. Really, you don’t make the kind of catastrophic mistakes that we serious tweekers make, and not come to terms with them if you want to stay sober. My mistakes are visible from space. I’m thinking about having UNESCO declare them a World Heritage Site. Outfit them with some kind of perceived value that the “normal” world can understand as useful or meaningful or positive. Read the rest of this entry »
First, I want to say how important blogging has been to my recovery. If I hadn’t had a place where I could just bleed and be supported, I don’t know if I would have been able to stay sober. It might have been different if I’d lived in a larger city; somewhere that there was a larger LGBT recovery community. But I don’t. I live in the Great Redneck Desert deep in the heart of Jesusland. So to no longer be able to write–to have something blocking me from doing it–has been an exceptionally painful experience. But it’s been about 10 months now and I think I’m ready to say what happened. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m not only good at it, but I’m actually enjoying it. I think I should have gone back to school a little earlier in my recovery. As it worked out though,the 5 year mark between when I totally flunked out of college because I was high all the time and when I returned, sober, worked to make getting back in a little simpler.
If it hadn’t been clear enough before, it was certainly clear after my cousin died. I’m not where I want to be yet, and the only way to get there is with a degree. Probably at least a masters. Skating on the edge of bankruptcy is just too stressful. Read the rest of this entry »
A long time ago, when I was first getting sober, An Irish Friend of Bill told me she thought I was bright enough to go back to college, even bright enough to study law. So I’m back in college now and so far it would appear that she was right.
After my surgery a couple of years ago, when I really didn’t feel like I could go on, my dad flew up from Las Vegas to take me out for lunch and let me know he loves me. I can never tell him too often how much that helped and how much I love him too.
For two years now I have struggled against the idea of God, against the word God, against the proofs of God and His love that I hear people talk about all the time, and I have struggled against them to the point that in order to give myself some peace of mind I simply dismissed the question entirely and have considered myself to be an atheist. Atheism as an ideology and being an atheist inside a 12 step program is a dicey proposition. One must be very careful what one says at meeting level so as not to belittle the pious and in so doing dismiss the foundation of the very program that, though my convictions run against it, gave me back my life. Read the rest of this entry »
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