Wow, life gets busy so freaking fast. I'm unemployed or have been for a week and change, and I'm busier than i have been in a year or more. I actually just got offered a part time job at Dicks, and I expect to get offered a part time job at Ellwood Thompsons new coffee shop. I've been putting out thirty or so resume's a day and I'm working on the pre-production stuff for the movie a little bit each day, and people are coming out of the woodwork to talk or hang out. Weird stuff. I'm exhausted though. I think if I don't get a good nights sleep tonight and the next few nights I'm going to get sick, which sucks. I want to avoid that.

It's pretty fun right now though, even though I keep getting a little bit of anxiety around the money thing with being unemployed. I think something positive is on the horizon though. I've actually applied for college and done everything necessary for the application, so I hope I get in. I really don't want to be doing this kind of stuff forever, but it is what it is. I'll find out soon.

I'm posting here in order to get the old juices flowing. I should be working on a writing project, but I've got nothing at the moment. I'm staring at it, and wondering, where do we go from here. This is nothing new, but sometimes it's good for me to start and get going so that the old brain muscle gets a little flexing. There's a very good chance of something fun lurking in the back of my subconscious, and it doesn't always want to come out. I can't say I know what it is all the time, but it does seem to be there every time I can actually get things flowing.

That's boring, nothing interesting about it to anyone else I'm sure. What is interesting to everyone else? I have the feeling I should have some idea what that is, considering I seem to be completely unable to give up on this writing thing. I guess it doesn't really matter, since I've more or less decided I'm doing it for my own entertainment and enjoyment right now anyway. There is also the idea of just writing about the things I find interesting, since no matter how much I have wanted to believe otherwise over the course of my life, I'm seriously average in more ways than not. If it's interesting to me, it's probably interesting to some other people.

It's almost seventy degrees today, and in the beginning of February, you take that and run with it as best you can. It's been pretty cold for the last months (extremely cold by Virginia standards), so the break is both welcome and extremely enjoyable. I'm down at Crossroads right now. One of the many Richmond coffee house hang outs. Luckily for me, free wireless is abundant here in Richmond, and this new notebook computer from DJ for Christmas has given me the freedom to get out and do some writing anywhere I want. In the past, writing by hand has been absolutely fine, but it's the transposing, rewriting into with some kind of word processor which has caused me lots of lost time and lots of excuses for not finishing projects or trying to further my writing ideas beyond my own hand written notebooks. There aren't better days to be scooting around town on my two wheeled anxiety/stress treatment (a Genuine Roughouse, 50cc scooter). Scooters, are not only completely awesome, but have become a new obsession. I dream of a Kymco, HD250. It's capable of seventy to eighty miles per hour (depending on the weight of the rider and the riding conditions), has a comfortable passenger seat, and would be awesome for long trips sucking up all the two wheeled freedom I can stand. Motorcycles are pretty fucking cool too, but I'm a geek these days, not a bad ass, so there's something more interesting in scooters to me. You're only so cool on a scooter, and you're pretty obviously not trying to look cool if you're riding a scooter, but you still get all the fun of open road and no cage keeping you from the world around you. You also get much cheaper repair costs and better gas mileage. This is a trade off I make with joy. Seventy miles per gallon on my scooter, beats the twenty-seven to thirty miles per gallon in the used Honda Prelude I bought earlier this month. I love the Prelude, more practical on those twenty degree days, and I'm not bound by geography or distance by having it, but for sheer grin inducing awesomeness, the scooter is king.

Crossroads is packed right now. You wouldn't know by looking around here that we're in the midst of a recession which is teetering toward a serious, depression level economic downturn. This is a good thing. Plenty of college kids, which means the future of the nation isn't completely dependent on a service and manufacturing workforce. Let's hope it doesn't mean we're just developing another generation of corporate automatons bent completely on self indulgence and the accumulation of personal wealth no matter the cost.

That's cheery, isn't it? Cynicism may not be my default anymore, but it's still there. I wouldn't have it any other way actually. I can hear a variety of conversations while I'm sitting here, and a few of those don't really help much. I can hear the privileged, complaining of the cost of privilege, and not all students either. I can here a conversation which is infinitely more interesting concerning a trip over seas over a long period of time, through Europe, I think. Young couples are walking and biking up, the hipsters litter the dining area (figuratively and literally), and a few solitudinous souls sit reading books. It's interesting to hear a guy who spends an incredible amount of time doing little other than sitting around a coffee shop, complaining of the horrific quality of a good deal of music, film and literature, and extolling a indignant, self righteous hate in reaction to a hatred he feels for another section of society. He's an asshat of the first degree. I used to come here often, and he was here every single time I showed up. I don't come as often anymore, and he's here every single time. Coffee shop coutre. Isn't it lovely to be liberal and privileged?

Recently, I've been reading more. It's good to get back to. I've read the Obama book "The Audacity of Hope", which was a good read, just as a book, and also good to get a little better grasp on the values of  the man we just elected president. I hadn't read it before because I wanted to make my decisions based more specifically on policy suggestions. I'm happier now for the decision having read the book. I agree with much of what the book has to say and am happy to have someone in power to express so many of those things which for me have so long left me feeling both alien to and powerless at the feet of the political realm of our society. It's helpful to me to see someone with those particular values and ideas achieving success. The idea that as a nation and culture we're more open to some different ideas and the economic situation is only increasing that open mindedness has helped me to make the decision that something like political science as a degree is something which could both afford me a career which is more financially viable than the service industry jobs I've had for so long, and it will allow me to try and work toward helping to make a positive difference in the world and nation in which I live. Even if I were to end up never going beyond VA politics, I'd feel very satisfied with a life and career trying to help the working class, middle class people of VA achieve more of a voice in their politics and as a result, a better standard of living.

I read "The Watchmen" last week, and it's too much to even attempt to comment on here. It's thematically and conceptually huge, and I have to read it again. The most obvious thing to me was the underlying theme of the vague nature of right and wrong on the cultural scale, and that the worst of events may produce the best of results.

I'm reading Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" right now, and it's amazing how much the material intersects with the themes and concepts presented in "The Watchmen". As harrowing, terrifying, controversial and ocassionally reaching as Klein's book is, when combined with the conceptual and thematic aspects of "The Watchmen", it makes me feel I'm not the only one who's spent a good amount of time in the last decade or so looking around and saying, "Uh, something here is very much not right. There really can't be any way we can keep going like this indefinitely."

The current economic situation, combined with the social and political situation of the last ten or so years, at least makes me feel like my personal revulsion to so much of what has been accepted as both normal and necessary hasn't been as misplaced as I had felt for so long. I often questioned my own sanity in relation to the fact that I felt as if I was one of the only people who was as horrifically disturbed by corporatist fundamenalism we've been steeped in. I'm also glad I am not the only one who's felt it has had the same kind of zeal as that of fundamentalist theology, and is suspicious of it specifically for that reason. "The Shock Doctrine" at least presents these ideas in a well founded, well researched, cohesive way that my combination of lack of education and lack of time to research has been unable to. I've expressed these things in specific experiences, over arching values, and questions about how we value human beings, material wealth, and power.

In a way, the idea put forth in the book, that there has been a school of capitalist economists who've built an entire world view around taking advantage of disasters of every variety, is now in a place where it can be turned against the very people who have advanced it, both philosophically and in policy. The combined economic crisis and the continued destabilization of world political and economic situations is producing a groundswell of sentiment in favor of policy and philosophy which not only places "free market" ideals under question, but also has given rise to a matter of making possible decisions based on principles and value systems more pluralistic and more real world, practical results oriented. In short, the philosophy or theory is becoming less important than the results the actions and policies produce. Some of this may be due to a societies ability to entertain things like philosophies and theories in times of prosperity, but when faced with the possibility of both collapse and irrelevance as a result, practicality wins the day. Values, ideals, and philosophies are the basis of decisions, but now, the success isn't being measured in how true the results prove the preconceptions. It's being measured in a larger, further reaching spectrum.

It's extremely comforting to see that I'm not the only one to be deeply uncomfortable with the pervasiveness of corporate culture and corporate influence in every facet of our lives.

You know, growing up, I heard people talking about certain events of the cultural nature. There was always that question the older generations had. Where were you when Kennedy was killed? Where were you when Pearl Harbor was bombed? For us, there was the Challenger Shuttle in elementary school. It was the first. Most people my age or close, remember where they were and what they were doing. I'd be willing to bet that like John Lennon, some of my generation knows where they were when Kurt Cobain died. I don't. This is not to say I'm a heartless bastard, I just don't remember. I was a drunken, drug addled mess at that point, so there's a good deal I don't remember.

But, the first real one, the first big one wasn't until I was twenty-three. 9/11, changed it all though. It's a little strange, isn't it? Can you think of any other event whose entire significance is expressed simply with three numbers? 9/11. We don't even really tend to connect it with emergency contact anymore. It is all about that day now. It's become one of those strange things.

I wonder now if we're not heading toward another one of those generation defining experiences, but I don't think it's going to be as sudden. Maybe I'm wrong, and I hope I am wrong. I wonder if we're not headed toward a kind of experience akin to the great depression. I can't tell you the number of people I know who've lost jobs in the last few months, myself included. I know people who've lost jobs, their entire savings, everything. I hope I'm wrong, but I think this is going to be another one of those things. It's not going to be a "where were you when...", but a "what happened to you when....."

9/11 did it. I'm not going to go into some maudlin exploration of how 9/11 has effected the American psyche. There are people better qualified for those things, and at this point, it's almost exploitation. Maybe it just is exploitation, no almost involved. I can't say. I'm just looking around and maybe it seems maudlin, but there's been so much going on, I really can't help but think there's an eerie similarity between the times we're living through and the sixties. In some ways, we're pushing it even further. They had Vietnam, we've got Iraq and Afghanistan. We've got a rather seriously divided populace, same as it was then. Maybe 9/11 is for us, what the assassinations were for them. I didn't live through those times,, so I guess I can't really say. What about those people who have been around long enough to have lived through all of it? The sixties, and the insanity they were, the bombing of Pearl Harbor and World War II, the Red Scare and all of that. I mean, I remember the eighties when the communists were the bogey men. We wrote stories about them, made movies about them hiding behind every corner, and nefarious commie plots to destroy the American way of life, just because they were evil commies who hated everything American. Maybe I'm just searching for some connection between today and our past history in order to be able to put some of this in perspective to make myself feel better, to give myself some kind of feeling that I can see how it's all going to turn out for the best and we'll be stronger for it. I can't really say for sure.

I know though, we have done one thing, which is both positive and transformational. We elected our first African American president, and I can't believe my generation didn't have a good deal to do with that. We've come of age with an entirely different paradigm so far as race is concerned. It's not something I can fully express, but VA Commonwealth Senator Melvin did very eloquently, and with what to me is an admirable sincerity.


I certainly can't say that's a bad thing. Maybe so much of this seems like it's a replay of the sixties because it's time we finally start resolving some of the things left over from the sixties. I think electing not just a black president, but also a president who recognizes we've been having the same discussions and the same differences essentially since the sixties, is a great step.

I do wonder though, if we're going to come away from these times with the same twists of thought and political character as the baby boomer generation. I wonder what it's going to do to our nature as a people, and it's something which is both troubling and which is sad and painful. I think the eighties made us naive, too much prosperity with too little labor. I think there's also a good chance the baby boomer generation was trying to use the eighties to erase the past, as if all the consumption, the wealth, the ease of things for so much of the country was going to mean it was all behind them and that things were safe and secure and stable. I don't think that until the eighties and nineties, the baby boomer generation got much stability. We were lucky enough to have some relative stability, but maybe even that is a revisionist kind of history. There was The War On Drugs, MTV, the Iran Contra scandal, John Lennon's assassination, Jeffrey Dahmer, Hip Hop, Tiananmen Square, the savings and loan scandal, the government rescue which resulted from the scandal, and let's not forget, the fiscal policies leading to the proliferation to multinationals which were the foundation for where we are now. The prosperity of the eighties in more ways than not, paved the way for the troubles we've had today.

The nineties, well, those were less rocky, but still had their own ups and downs. The Monica Lewinsky/Bill Clinton scandal is the first thing which jumps to mind, and Columbine, the beginning of a bizarre pattern which continues into the present. The birth of The World Trade Organization, with the accompanying protests, Mandela's release, the first Gulf War, the Web became available, Rwanda, the first terrorist attack on The World Trade Center, Dolly the sheep was cloned, the human genome project began, the Hubble telescope was launched, cell phones and DVD are introduced, reality TV makes it's first appearance (God help us all), the deaths of Kurt Cobain, Tupac, Notorious BIG. Tiger Woods wins the Masters. and we can't forget the Oklahoma City bombing, committed by Americans we should remember, the incident at Wacco, the LA riots following the Rodney King trial.

In the end, I guess we're just this strange crazy race of hyper intelligent animals stumbling our way through the history of our lives, a history we have no choice in sharing. I wonder if sometimes we use the kitsch and the camp we tend to use in looking into our pasts to be able to keep some kind of distance, some kind of separation from each other to try and make sense of it. We reach further back into a history which we never actually experienced and we mythologize it. The myths hold us together because recent history nearly tore us apart.

Another new year rolls around. Things in the year past were pretty good, on the scale of years I've had in the thirty-two I've lived and the twenty-seven or so I can remember. In fact, it was a good year all around. Good, because essentially nothing happened. I have the same job I started the year with, the same room mate, the same girlfriend. My address changed, but that's a relatively small thing in my world, something that has happened pretty often and it didn't involve a change in cities and an upheaval of my entire life. My mode of transport changed, first from bike and bus to scooter (an absolutely wonderful mode of transport, and I might add that I've begun a love affair with two wheeled transport which I hope doesn't end until I'm too old and hindered by physical inability to ride), and the process of getting my license back has made leaps and bounds, hopefully coming to full circle tomorrow when I go to take the written knowledge and the actual road skills exams. 2008 was a year for the record books in my life, simply because very little happened. It seems the boring and unassuming life I was so terrified of as a teenager and younger adult is nothing to be afraid of after all, in fact, it's much more satisfying and contentment inducing than I could have possibly thought. It's good to be wrong sometimes.

So, most things have remained the same. Along with the list of things which has remained the same are some of the more intangible things, the things which in so many ways, are major parts of the whole of living for me. I still have questions, dozens, probably hundreds, and most of those remain either unanswered or quietly twittering in the background of my consciousness, asking to be re-examined. To a degree, this has resulted in my creating a greater distance between myself and the 12 Step recovery community I had made a home of for four or five years. Certainty seems to be a commodity and a currency there, and I have little of it in more ways than not. My only real  certainty lies in my own moral framework, which seems to be very different from the majority of people I have come into contact with there, and those whom I have found that common ground with seem to be moving away, in the literal or metaphorical sense. The past year has brought one rather significant change. I find myself more comfortable and more at ease with people who have no experience with the recovery community and who don't have so many of the assumptions about other people which are a part of that community. Which is to say when I meet people who are not members of the recovery community, they don't immediately assume they know anything about me, which has come to be the way I tend to approach most other people. I don't really tend to assume I know much of anything about people I meet, and it's a pretty cool process in getting to know other people and finding out what kind of interesting facets they have to their personalities, perspectives and general approach to living. It seems the recovery community skips a good deal of that by assuming what might actually be or might not actually be true. See my past  blogs concerning romantic relationships within the recovery community for examples of this.

One of the other things is the God issue. Possibly lucky for me or possibly not (we have yet to see), this is a question which is now being considered on a much larger scale, within society the whole of society which we live in, and isn't relegated to the varieties of religious and spiritual organizations within that society. I've come to realize I'm an agnostic by comparison. I have a pretty profound faith that something else seems to be going on here, but very little confidence or certainty in either my ability to comprehend much of it or that any assumptions or beliefs I have related to this are any more correct than anyone else. It's kind of like asking someone how hot their Thai food is. To me, it might not be so hot (considering my penchant for spicy foods, my wop ancestry makes for a high tolerance), but to someone else, my girlfriend for example (pot roasts and meatloaf growing up, didn't get her accustomed to it), it might seem more like an exercise in self punishment. Experience has taught me that in this particular aspect of my life, the less I claim to know, the better off I am. Particularly in the God arena, when I'm saddled with much certainty, I'm also usually engaged in active and rampaging assholism. It's a case of the difference between "I know" and "I think". There's also a certain language to all of it which is portends things I can't really find my way to either believing or even making much sense of. A deity, which is somehow inherently interested in my personal growth and well being, seems to make little to no sense, at all. I just can't wrap my head around this. Something, which seems to be an inextrcable part of harmony, peace, altruism and an interest in the well being of the whole and which human beings seem to instinctually respond to, this makes some sense to me, but that's about as far as I get. And for me, because it seems to make sense, doesn't mean I'm willing to defend the idea or try to convince anyone else of it either. It means with the experience and information I have, this is what seems to stick out. I could very well be wrong. Maybe this is something which I tell myself to make myself feel better. Maybe this is something which helps to suggest there could actually be some order in a world which is actually nothing more than a chaotic string of random moments and events. These things are as possible to me as there being something more here. It just seems that the something more idea has been gained a good deal more experiential evidence. On the other hand, the idea of a Giant Omniscient Omnipotus in the Sky Evermore, meeting out jugment, justice, love, compassion, understanding or much of anything else, seems entirely ludicrous to me. Should that be true, I just can't see how humanity has made it this far without being smited with some flood or rain of fire or plague or some other really nasty thing the Omniputus has seen fit to bolt down on us due to the rampant and indefatigable asshattery we've demonstrated over the course of our existence. That thing would have summarily removed us thousands of years ago, and probably started again with some new species or idea of it's own making and creation. For me, that GOOSE is cooked, and it seems a good deal of the recovery community seems pretty deeply inurred to these ideas. I'm not throwing stones here, I'm not saying anyone who believes this is wrong or bad or stupid. I'm just saying it's something I don't agree with, and there's something to the language of the twelve step recovery community which comes across in terms of US and THEM in terms of this stuff. There's a certain fundamentalist wing of the recovery community which is particularly useless, and for which I've lost basically all respect, and therefore, patience. It's not the recovery community specifically, but fundamentalism in just about all it's forms. Politically, spiritually, morally, all of them, fundamentalists are just not people I play well with. There are some things I believe to be fundamentally true, but I'm aware these things are fundamentally true for or to me, and I've lost all desire to impinge those things on anyone else. In fact, I'm more than willing to admit, those things may not be fundamentally true to anyone else. I actually like the fact that this is true. Some of the most important and FUNDAMENTALLY LIFE CHANGING experiences I've had have been as a result of this. It's fucking good thing we don't all agree. When too large a group of people agree on something, with little to no resistance or dissent from within their own community, bad shit happens. Holocausts, slavery, internment camps, genocides, that kind of bad shit. And I think at the end of the day, that's what tends to irk me most about the fundamentalist wing of the recovery community, a desire to stomp out or completely disenfranchise and disengage from anyone or anything which does show any degree of resistance or dissent to their particular perspective and suggestions. I'm a big believer, among the biggest of believers, in the idea that everyone has the right to make their own decisions, and choose their own actions, the fundamentalists included. I'm not however very comfortable with rubbing elbows with people who really just want to see me miserable, and drunk, probably dead or dying simply so they can sit on the throne of their own righteousness and pat themselves on the back for just how right they were. Me, personally, I'd rather be wrong and see someone live happily and contentedly. I speak very much from experience when describing this, something I am truly not proud of, and one of the few things I would do differently should I somehow be able to go back in time and change things. I think the best I can do to make those things right is to not take part in them any further, and to be a much more moderated voice in the world I live in. I do have some guilt on that one. 

Life goes on though, interestingly enough. I go to very few meetings, except to see old friends who've returned home for the holidays, and I am grateful for this. For the first time in my life, I actually look forward to the holidays, because of this reason exactly. I'm happy they're over. The added running about is taxing, but I have enjoyed them while they are here the last two years. I don't spend days worrying over the state of my spiritual well being. I think about whether I'm being an asshat, and if I am, I try to correct that behavior to fit more with both my own moral framework and the good of the people around me, and then I move on. It's no longer a symptom of some great, deeply seated spiritual or psychological problem which can only be addressed through the magical powers of a room full of one specific set of people who are more able to provide me some connection to whatever more it is that seems to be going on here. I have no doubt that was true when I first stumbled into the twelve step community, many deep seated spiritual and psychological issues were at work, and making life pretty fucking hard. At some point though, I think the eminent search for and assumption of those issues at work in all things in my life became it's own deap seated spiritual and psychological issue. Not to mention my own experience rubbing elbows with and trying on some of that exact fundamentalism, the result of which has become my distaste for it in all of it's forms.

I'm just another guy now. I'm just some schmuck who shows up for work, does his best, has troubles, gets frustrated, looks for more out of life, finds it sometimes, and sometimes finds I'm looking for more or trying to get more in some really ludicrous fashion. I'm just another nobody these days, not really special in much of any way. I don't drink, which in some situations presents itself as a bit of difference, but on the whole, is no big deal either. Most people tend to be perfectly willing to let me be on the question once I suggest it's been a problem for me in the past. I have different problems now. I have learning problems. There's a whole slew of shit I have to learn. More often than not, I'm pretty into the learning thing, but sometimes, not really. Sometimes I  just want a Cherry Coke, peanuts, ice cream, Thai food and really good escapist entertainment. But for more hours of the day than not these days, I tend to be pretty up for the whole learning thing. There's a whole new set of things for me to learn in the coming year. How do I meet deadlines for stuff? What does that mean on a day to day basis? How do I figure out how to do the small, less fun things, which are an essential part of reaching the dreams which this second chance at life have made available? How do I become more disciplined in these terms and still enjoy the life I have? I know how to get up and go to work, every day now. I know how to fulfill commitments. I know how to take the greater whole of the community I'm existing in as part of my decision making process, be that the people I work with, the place I live or otherwise. These things have led to me feeling better about myself than I probably ever have and they've given me more confidence than I've probably ever had. I actually like them, even though I don't always like doing them. I'm getting pretty good at keeping the assholism in check these days. It certainly still pipes up in my head, but I tend to laugh at it more often than not. It's inherently ridiculous, and laughing at it really seems to be the best thing I can do about it. The laughter keeps me going. It keeps me walking toward the things I want my life to be about. It keeps the cynicism from becoming too hard and too strong. I get to keep believing there are things in life worth doing and there are things in life worth trying to work toward, and for me, this is an extremely essential component.

Life is so much more simple these days, and this, I really, really, really, fucking like. I do miss some things about the twelve step community on ocassion. I miss being right there in the front row, trying to help someone find their way out of the lunacy they're struggling with, and seeing them start to emerge. You don't find that in many places in life. I've got some things to do, taking care of myself and the people I love, in a much more practical sense, for a little while, but if for no other reason, I do see myself taking more time for that at some point in the future. In the past year, it just became a question of trying to really do some things to better myself and my own life or continuing to follow the suggested path of the recovery community and hating them because I was doing it, because I was essentially afraid. I miss hanging out and laughing at the totally ridiculous and innapropriate nature of who some of those people were, because I am so much the same kind of ridiculous and innapropriate. I like words like asshat, fuckoffery and smegma. I like to hear people say them in a room full of other people who may or may not like them just as much. I like to say them in those same context. I like bad movies, good people and strange shit altogether. Gentrification sucks. And to some degree, I think that's part of what's happened to the community I entered. It's not the same community I entered anymore. These are people who neither need nor want my help or input, and rightfully so. It has just seemed over the last year that it was time to get about living life and putting to use the things I've learned instead of monkeying around and waiting for the next big epiphany or the next pedestal to try and ascend. I kind of like life in the trenches of normalcy, amazing as it is to even me when I admit it.

I spent the day working today, and it wasn't a particularly good day. It was extra special stressful. We were running out of things, it was busy, and morale in general has been very bad. Not the best of situations.

Luckily for me, my girlfriend picked me up from work and we went to get some Mexican food. I'm a fan of Mexican food. It tastes good.

Anyway, we'd finished our meal and were talking frivolously about not much of anything important. This is some of my favorite talk. We laugh, and we make jokes and I get to be silly with no fear about how she's going to think of me. She actually likes the fact that I'm pretty silly. I like the fact that she's silly too. I'm lucky to have her in my life. She's a light in the world, and she realizes that's a choice, which is what's the luckiest part of it all for me.

About that time, my phone rang, and it was a guy I've been working with for the last eight months or so. I don't generally pick up my phone when we're together, unless it's one of the guys I work with.

To make a long story short, a girl who's kind of become one of the gang in my little corner of the world of recovery comitted suicide last night. She's been like everyone's little sister, or that's how I've felt anyway. I just really thought she was going to make. She's been struggling, but I just thought she'd make it. She was just inherently good, and I figured that was going to save her. She was a young girl, and I'm not saying this because she's gone now, but such a caring and compassionate person. She had a very natural and genuine warmth that someone like me who struggles with that really respects, enjoys and is buoyed by. In many ways, she was the perfect example of the reason I've stayed in the fellowship and continued to come back. She was the kind of person it's such a joy to see get better because of how much joy and caring they bring to the lives of others.

It's a sad thing. I'm not going to be some kind of nihilistic opportunist and go into all the old saw responses about how this is life or death and all that. I just don't have it in me.

I can say that I've already learned or at least thought of one thing. I've been there. At two years sober, I was very seriously contemplating suicide. At times, I wanted to live and didn't want to hurt myself. But at other times, it was overwhelming. I really just didn't want to hurt anymore. Sure, people can say whatever they want to the tune of "if you work a good program, that doesn't happen", but I was pretty damned broken when I came in, and though I was doing everything I could to learn to practice the principles, it was just not at all easy for me. I was going to meetings, and I had a sponsor and I was working with people (which more than anything was responsible for keeping me from hurting myself), but that darkness inside, that thing that would pop up and just always say, "it's not worth it to keep going like this" wouldn't go away.

It was a good six or seven months of decline for me. It didn't all happen overnight. Some of it, I couldn't even really see as part of the decline until later when things had already gotten really bad. I just didn't want to hurt anymore, and really didn't want to hurt other people anymore.

But, when it got to the point where I wasn't sure if I could trust myself, when I wasn't sure that the next time that thing came to say, "you should just end all of this", I reached out for some help. I ended up spending a week in the psych ward, which at two years sober, was humiliating. In it's own very strange way, it was what I needed though. There were some people who were a part of my life who came to see me while I was there. I had visitors everyday. The members of the program who had become my family showed up, and none of them were recriminating or angry. They didn't hold anything against me or treat me like I'd done something wrong. They just came to see me and asked me if I was doing better and told me they were worried and a little bit scared.

I felt very much like I'd let them down. But, they never said or did anything which would indicate that. In fact, they did quite the opposite. They stuck with me. I felt like all the things they'd taught me and given me were wasted and they'd be dissapointed in me because I somehow wasn't living up to the standards of a "sober person." They just hung with me, even when I got out and they gave me the love I needed in the ways they each knew how.

Honestly, it wasn't when I stopped drinking that things really began to change in my life. It was after all of that. It was the result of finding out that there were people who just loved me. They didn't expect anything at all from me. Their interests weren't in my life and success because it would prove how well they had helped me, it was just that they loved me for no reason other than they did. It was the first time in my life I felt like I had some value just because I'm a human being and just because I matter to some people. It was the first time I started to be able to believe unconditional love could possibly exist. All they wanted was to see me get better and have a life I could be content with. There was nothing in it for them. All that because I was just their friend. It was also the thought that possibly, if I was lucky, I could do that for some other people too. I can't really describe the degree of relief and freedom which came with that realization, but I knew I wanted other people to feel that and to know that, and I wanted to help them find it. I wanted that, because I wanted to be the kind of person my friends had been for me. I felt like, and still do in more ways than not, as if that is the greatest ambition I could possibly have.

But I learned all of that by going through that pain, and by having to be left in a position where I had no other choice but to ask for some help. It was humiliating, I can't lie, but it was worth it.

I don't talk about that very often, for the reason that I'm still kind of sensitive about it. I just don't want to hear people waxing superior about how working a program would have stopped that from happening or being more spiritually fit would have stopped that from happening. In my case, that's certainly bullshit. I also feel like in some ways it's not so hopeful to tell people "hey, I was two years sober and wanted to blow my brains out, but hey, the Twelve Steps do work and being sober really is great." What I can say though, and what was remarkable to me, even during that whole period, is that I never wanted to drink or use. Getting loaded was just not an option. For me, it was pretty amazing to learn I could feel that way and not even want to get loaded much less end up loaded.

I guess though, maybe from now on I'll be more open about that. I don't know I could have changed anything she would have done, but if I am more open about it, maybe it will either give someone the idea that they can get through that sober or even better, they'll come talk to me about it. It doesn't even matter so much if it's me, just that they reach out to someone.

I keep thinking that if she would have just held on until it passed, she would have been able to learn some of the same things from it that I did. I keep thinking that if she would have held on a little longer she would have given us the chance to do for her what was done for me. Those were actually my first thoughts when I found out. I'm not angry, but I am sad. I'm sad for her, her family, and all of the people who could possibly have benefitted from just how warm and caring she really was. They're all going to miss out now. The world needs more people like her as far as I'm concerned.

I guess there are many people who would say that suicide is cowardly and all of that. They'd say that it's the easy choice and so on. I don't blame them. I just don't really agree. I don't think it's right by any means, but I know how much it hurts to just wake up in the morning or to open your eyes and know another day is coming for you to even have to consider it seriously. I can't bring myself go placing blame on someone who was suffering to that degree. I can't point fingers at them. I just can't. I know what it's like to be that sick inside, want to get better and to just be unable to make your way through to how you're going to get better or what you have to do. I know what it's like to feel like no matter what, it's the same mistakes over and over and over and over and to just be so sick and tired of yourself and your own bullshit that you just feel like you can't do it anymore. I know what it's like to feel like it's always going to be that way. It may be completely illogical, but when you're there and it's you, it seems completely true. That dark thing is so incredibly convincing.

But, it's a liar. And I hate it. I can't bring myself to be angry with her, because I know how that feels, but I can be angry with that. I can be angry with that cynical, angry, frightened, hateful, sick thing that tells people like me or her that dying is the only way to stop the pain and that life will always be like that. I can be angry with that. I can hate that, and I do.

And so, again, I'm here, and once again, I know why. No matter how much other members of the fellowship may piss me off or may bother me or may be mean spirited and sick themselves, I hate alcoholism and addiction even more. I hate that thing inside me and her even more, and the only way I know how to keep fighting it and how to keep being able to prove it's a liar and a thief of lives is to keep trying to help people who are being assaulted by it. I hate that it robs the world of people like her, by numbers in the thousands. I hate that it makes the world so dark for people who can bring so much light into the lives of others. I hate it more today than I possibly ever have.

I don't care what it takes, fight it. If it takes more meetings, go. If it takes going to a counselor or whatever kind of outside help you might need, do it. If it takes going to church, go. If it takes going to Maui every three weeks, go. No matter what it takes, fight on. Keep trying to find something that works until you do. Something will. I can't tell you what it will be for you, but I can tell you that the people who keep searching find their solutions for it. Keep fighting. We need you. There are people out here like me who need you to come fight with us and to try and beat this thing back off of others so they can come fight it back too. DO NOT GIVE UP. No matter how hard it seems, it's worth it. You can keep going, and if you do and you keep searching, one day, you're going to wake up and find it's been a few years since you've thought about suicide. You're going to wake up one day and realize you're in a funk, and you've been in a funk for a few weeks, and it hasn't become a full blown deppressive episode, because you're getting better and you're getting better because you've found something that works and you're still fighting.

The Steps and the program, they kept me from drinking or using, I'm sure of that. It was the love of other people which got me to start living. It's wasn't threats or blame, guilt or fear, it was their love which gave me the ability to decided I might matter and I might be able to do the same kind of good in this crazy world.

Life is for the living, and I don't mean the people who are living, I mean it's meant to be lived. Live it, all of it, the good and the bad and the nothing in between and find out what you need to do in order to value all of it.

If nothing else, she's convinced me it's time for me to stop wasting my time and get to living more and surviving less. I hope there really is a better place beyond this life, because she deserves to be there

I was thinking about something last night that I wanted to get down somewhere.

A friend has asked me to come give a lead at his anniversary celebration in March. I'm honored to have been asked, especially because he's been sober a good long time, and though most people in the program might look askance at the particular way he "works the program", he's my friend, was good to me when I was in early sobriety, and I like him. He's not perfect, and he doesn't try to put on a facade as if he were or has aspirations to be. That in particular is helpful to me.

It's been a while though since I've given a talk anywhere. It's probably a relatively good thing though. I don't think I could have formulated my thoughts, feelings or understanding into anything sensible for a while. Not that I was out of touch with my facilities or anything, but I was definitely in the middle part of the journey between two destinations. Now, I feel like I've gotten somewhere, and what I have to say can do some good.

Some people would probably say I'm thinking too much about it, but I'm not just thinking about giving a lead. A big part of what AA is about, for me at least, is being able to make myself clear in order to provide an opportunity for anyone who might want it to make use of what I've found. I've gotten away from being evangelical about it. I'm not trying to convince anyone to try AA or convert anyone to my way of thinking about AA, and that's something I think I really should make clear, if only because there are lots of folks running around the fellowship making statements in the vein of "we need to", and I'm just not in that boat. I'm not in the game of telling anyone else what they need to do anymore. I'm much more along the lines, at this point, of trying to let people take the journey to finding out what they need and need to do without my interference. I'm willing to walk with them, but I'm not telling them what they need to do. If they want to know what I do or have done, I'll tell, and tell them how well any of it did or didn't work for me, but I'm not trying to cajole anyone into anything. That's frankly insane, given the nature of human will, meaning free.

One of the things which has come clear to me in the last year or so is the degree to which it is true for me that if I believe something or believe in something, me saying it or saying I believe in it isn't nearly as important as my actions being in keeping with those beliefs. And as AA goes, I think it's kind of important that I make clear in the way I deal with people and in the way I speak in a meeting, any meeting, that I'm not trying to impress upon or convince anyone of anything.

Something else has come clear to me. We talk about "practicing these principles in all of our affairs". If the lessons of the last few years have told me anything, it's that for me this means giving myself, fully and without deceit, dishonesty, without hesitation to anyone or anything which I can.

More later.

Anyway, it's been becoming increasingly clear that if I learn all of these things, and I get all of this new information, get all of this new understanding, I have to get out there and put myself in a position to actually practice it. Not only is being open to other people essential in the program and in working with others, it's something which can make life a very different thing from the one I lived and the one which I've seen and heard from other alcoholics before they begin recovery. I happen to be the kind of guy who did spend a few years doing not much other than trying to get sober, and spending all of my time with other people in recovery. Getting out and into the world and interfacing with people who aren't in recovery hasn't done anything but really push my faith in the principles of love, tolerance, compassion and kindness to new heights. It's something I wouldn't want anyone to miss, and maybe I did it later than some, but it's been amazing.

I think what the Steps and being a member of the fellowship has to teach has an extremely wide area of use, and that it's not just helpful to other alcoholics. It really seems, at this point anyway, that these principles, though couched in different terms with people who aren't in a fellowship have their ability to be helpful to and to bring healing to many different people and the real use to the alcoholic or person in recovery becomes the way in which they can do that and learn what the rewards of doing it are. In becoming open to other people, being willing to accept them and to have them as a part of my life, I have the ability to use all of the things I've learned in AA to help them also. They are exactly the same principles at work, there is just a different vocabulary to them.

I think that's something which has been and will continue to be useful to me. I have been able to express myself without the fall back of the vocabulary of the twelve step fellowships and the big book and all of that. I can talk to the new guy and not sound like I'm speaking some kind of foreign language, and I can talk to people who aren't at all involved with twelve step fellowships or recovery and be clear and succinct in what I say. That's something I think I want to be able to hold onto and is something I hope I can develop even further.

Because of my particular affinity for the written word, and linguistic communication in general, there is for me some sense of the vocabulary and language I use being an extension of the person I am. The more I have been able to express myself in terms anyone can understand, twelve stepper or not, I feel more integrated, whole and fulfilled as a human being. In a weird way, I'm still a proponent of the idea that I should always speak to people in a language they will understand and that they are familiar with, but that's really in a way what it's about for me. I'm not singling myself out any longer as being different because I'm a drunk or a member of a twelve step fellowship. It's more that I've actually been able to become just like everyone else because of those things and that there's no reason anymore to use any of that as a barrier between myself and anyone else. If I've learned nothing else, it's that my time in AA has taught me how to be able to interface and interact with damn near anyone. There are of course some people I wouldn't choose to interact with, I mean, you won't see me at any Klan rallies anytime soon, but the opportunity is there to be able to get to know and allow into my life and be willing to become part of the life anyone who is pretty normal. By normal I'm saying the Klan and such are an example of the pretty far into crazy land kind of folks. I know normal is a setting on a washing machine. We're all a little off, at least. I don't have to invite complete psycho's into my life, but people with everyday, normal problems like I have now, are welcome and invited no matter what else is up. Even the financial stuff has gone away. I'm not terrified of rich folks anymore, and I was for most of my life.

I haven't been keeping up with this journal very much at all. I've actually been working on some fiction, which is really good for me, but takes time to do. That time is what I used to use to keep journals online. I'm still keeping a private journal, the hand written kind, in a notebook. Old fashioned as it is, nothing seems to be able to substitute for it in my life. There seems to be some truth for me in the idea that something spiritual happens when I put pen to paper (a tidbit of wisdom passed on from a friend who has some experience with NA, the idea apparently coming from it's Basic Text). I'm figuring I'm going to start using this journal for the things in my life which are specifically recovery related. My personal journal gets some of that, but these days there's a good deal more in it than just things related to recovery. As I've become progressively more comfortable with myself, the journal has become more and more honest. I'm hiding less and less from myself in terms of that journal, and it's a good thing. I've finally figured out that there's nothing unusual or wrong about not wanting to make my most personal of thoughts, feelings and ideas to the whole of the world. Some things are and should be personal. 

Anyway, the last few months have been chock full of goodness. It's been weird in it's own way, but good at the same time. Some of it has been uncomfortable in the going through it category, but good to have gone through all the same. I seem to have gone through or am going through one of those periods which have come along at different points in sobriety where I learn a whole slew of things in a short period of time. It's like the period of time proceeding them is the collection of the pieces which form the picture the puzzle finally makes after I've got them. I don't know if recovery seems somewhat cyclic for other people, but in more ways than not, it certainly has for me. Maybe it's just the human capacity for attempting to assign some kind of form or system to everything. I'm not sure, but it seems like there are certainly cycles, and at this point, I recognize at least two or three parts of it. I like the part of the cycle where a whole bunch of new things become clear in a relatively short period of time. It feels less like actually trudging during that period, but I'm at least recognizing now that the trudging period is what necessarily precedes the "A-HA!" period (as I like to call it). 

I've been at the same job for a little over a year now. Which in some ways, just because of what the job actually is (Starbucks), is revolting to me. I mean, shit, are things so bad I'd be stuck in a Starbucks for over a year? Actually no, they're not, but at certain times when I'm feeling a little under the weather in the attitude department, I think that. What I can actually say is that I've been learning a damn ton as a result of working there. I don't think a better job could have come along for me, in this particular point of my life. Sure, I could have a better job in terms of how much money I make, and something a little better in the whole status department (we all think about it that way sometimes, I'm coming to realize this is normal also), but in terms of giving me the ability to put to use what I've learned in recovery, and to learn the results of it, and how to better practice it, I'm really pretty sure nothing else could have been as perfect for me at this point. 

The positive results of persistent patience have definitely started to show, in a way I never really understood possible before. Having been at this job for a little over a year, there's been a degree of persistent patience with the people I work with, the customers, and myself. Everyday, I get up and I go to work. The big thing for me has been to put in the whole effort I'm capable of on any given day. I've been under the weather physically on one or two occasions, and if not too ill, shown up at work and done my best. It's probably not as good as I can do when I'm physically well, but it's the best I've got. I've been able to be both content and patient with that. The whole effort thing has paid off in terms of mistakes too. I make them. I don't give up entirely though after I do. I keep getting up and showing up the next day and putting in the effort the next day, instead of letting the thought which suggests that mistake means my job is now on the chopping block or that advancement is now impossible rule me. I just kept getting up, going in and doing what I was supposed to do. Guess what? They gave me a promotion. 

The thing which is good beyond measure though is a really simple one. There's something I really love about this job. I get up everyday and even if the rest of the day looks like it's going to suck and it's going to be a royal pain in the ass, this one thing is always really fucking awesome. In a real, practical way, I get paid to show people as much kindness, compassion and tolerance as I can possibly find within myself in any given moment. My job, more than anything else is to be friendly to people, get to know them if they give me the opportunity and to give them the opportunity to get to know me. It's pretty fucking awesome really. It's taught me how easy it actually is to be good to people, no matter how I feel or what else is going on, and it's taught me the results of doing that, everyday over an extended period of time. By nature, I'm much more closed off to the world than that, but I only really know one way to be friendly and warm to people, which I learned in AA, and seeing it in action and working with people who aren't members of AA has really been good for me. I'm learning that kindness and tolerance produce really good results, no matter the situation, and that the overwhelming majority of people, no matter their background, their political ideology, the religious beliefs, their economic situation or otherwise, really respond to simple kindness and an open, friendly attitude. 

There are two women who come into the store Monday through Friday, everyday around the same time. For the first few months I was there, they were cordial, but chilly everytime they came in. I figured screw it, it's my job to be friendly, so I'm going to keep being friendly. Part of me had been thinking, "damn it, I'm being friendly and nice. If you're going to keep being that way, I might as well not be friendly to you." But, I did the friendly thing, more because it's just my job than anything else. After a little while though, they started to respond more and when they'd both gotten pretty friendly and nice when they came in I asked them what they did that brought them in everyday. They apparently both work for Child Protective Services, investigating child sexual abuse and child pornography. It immediately made sense as to why they were a little bit chilly for so long. I don't know I'd be able to do that day in and day out and still be able to be friendly and warm with people all the time. It's just got to take some kind of psychological and emotional toll after a while. But it also kind of brought front and center that there are people out there everyday, fighting the good fight, helping others and doing what's right because they believe in it. Either of them could find a job doing something else, which would probably pay better, but they're doing what they're doing because they believe in it, and believe it needs to be done. It was kind of like getting an even better reason for just trying to be as kind to them as I can be, no matter where they're at on any given day. The two of them gave me a fifty dollar gift certificate to Borders Books for Christmas. I was really touched. Beyond the gift certificate, it was really touching that they went out of their way to go get something for the guy who makes their coffee everyday, just because I've been nice to them since I started working there. It felt really good. I didn't even really do anything special. The coolest thing has really been that I've been able to just be myself and treat people the way I think I should, and that's been the kind of result I'm getting. 

I've gotten to know a number of the customers and it's been really great to have them be happy to see me when they come in. I'm not trying to blow my own horn like I'm really great or anything. I've just really not trusted myself in that way for a long time. I've been so afraid of people in the real world and had so many ideas about how they look at things which have really amounted to nothing more than feeling like no one would want to have very much to do with me or wouldn't want to get to know me because of this or that or this or that. Now I'm really finding out that when I'm just the kind person and compassionate person I can be, any reason people might have for not wanting to know me is really there own thing. It's kind of like finding out there are enough people in the world who do value kindness that they ones who don't, just don't matter very much. I don't mean to say so much that they don't matter, but they aren't taking up any space in my head these days. I spent a good deal of my life being afraid of them, and I actually think, to some degree, that's a relatively sane thing. I think I took it to an insanely obsessive level, but at it's base, it's sane and rational to be somewhat afraid of people who have no value for kindness and compassion. They're probably somewhat dangerous in one way or another. I was. 

I've been dating someone for a few months also. She's been a customer in the store since I started working there. I was dating someone when I started there, and for the first three or four months I was working there. DJ, the woman I'm dating now, has also been coming into the store, just about every morning, Monday through Friday, since I started working there. When I started working there, she always looked really sad. She just looked like someone who was suffering. I had a girlfriend whom I was happy with at the time, so I wasn't trying to pick anyone else up, so I was just nice to her and friendly because it's become second nature to treat people with a little extra care when they seem like they're suffering. That's a result of being a member of AA. Seeing the new people who come in all beaten up and suffering and seeing what some kindness and compassion can do for them has turned into an automatic repsonse that when I see people who look like things are really hard for them right then, I try to just be kind. At one point, a few months after I started working there, I asked her what was going on, and she told me she'd gotten a divorce a few months before and was trying to sell the house and having trouble selling it and all that. I was kind of shocked. I wasn't really prepared for that response. I just pretty much said I was sorry to hear she was having a hard time, and kept being friendly to her when she came in. I didn't know much of anything about her, but four or five months ago, she started to come in and was looking much different. She just looked like she'd gotten to the other side of things really. The kind of darkness that hangs on people had passed, and I was just genuinely happy to see it. I didn't have any kind of designs on dating her or anything. Sure, she's attractive, but she always comes in dressed in a business suit and all, and it just really seriously crossed my mind someone like her would be at all interested in a guy like me. Me, I have thought of myself as a drunk who screwed his life up for so long that I forget other people don't automatically know that. She just looked like someone who was having a hard time, but had her life together otherwise. We ended up chatting a few times while I was sitting in the store on my break or reading while I was waiting for the bus. I found out she was really nice, and funny. Then I found out she was a lawyer and worked for the state in a kind of big deal job. She also kind of brought to my attention that there are people out there doing the right thing and fighting the good fight because they think they should. She apparently left a more lucrative, higher status position to take the one she has now because she wanted to do something more helpful to people. I was impressed, but never even really thought she might be interested in me. One day, while I was waiting for the bus, she offered me a ride home, and I kind of started thinking she might be. Then when I was telling everyone about my room mates band playing and she actually showed up, I was faced dead on with the fact that she was interested. Since we've started dating she told me the thing which really got her interested in me was that I was just kind to her when she was having a hard time and wasn't as friendly as she usually is. She said she looked forward to coming into the store because I was always really nice to her. It was a revelation to me. I pretty much just figured I was doing my job and doing what I thought was right by being nice to someone who seemed down. I never really thought I was going to get a date out of it, much less a girlfriend who values kindness and compassion as much as I do. That's pretty fucking cool, no matter how you slice it and no matter how the relationship turns out in the long run. It's a good lesson to have learned. 

I was at a meeting a few weeks ago, which I was asked to come and talk for ten minutes about the 7th Step. I went, and wasn't really sure what I was going to say. I went through what I had to say about the whole thing and as I was sitting there, listening to everyone else, I realized I had really just talked more about what the 6th Step actually means to me in the practical application. In listening to what everyone was saying, I also realized that to me the 6th Step is really the willingness to stop doing whatever it is I'm defining as a character defect. I also realized how the 6th and 7th Steps have come to fruition in my life. Six has been that process of becoming unwilling to keep doing whatever it is I find is somehow out of whack with what I think is right. It's been kind of a realization that I'm not cool with it, for whatever reason, first. Then it's been a slow process of denying the tempation to do whatever it is, with progressively more success over time. For me, the 7th Step has come to fruition when I've done that to a degree or length of time in which the temptation is no longer present. I joke around sometimes about hitting people in the mouth, but I don't really have any temptation to actually do it anymore. In the moment I'm upset or angry or whatever, I'm more often thinking that I just want the person or the feeling to go away, now. It's kind of a "I know I'm going to get to the other side of this, let's move it along here already so I can stop feeling all messed up." There's little stuff though which has happened which I think for me is more important than the really big things, though I couldn't have gotten to the little stuff if I didn't start with the big stuff first I don't think. 

It's things like being on time when I say I'm going to be somewhere. At some point it became unacceptable to me to waste other people's time. Over time, I've become less and less willing to do the little bullshit that always ends up with me being late to places. A good example is making an appointment to meet with someone at noon, then at ten or ten - forty five, I want to do something on the computer, write, check my e-mail, the various internet groups and forums I belong to etc. I know when I sit down and start doing that stuff that I always end up being late. I end up being late because I then put off to the absolute last minute the things I have to do in order to make the appointment on time, be shower, put books together in a bag, whatever, I just put it off to the last possible second, and then when things aren't exactly as I think they should be, I'm late. So, over time I became less and less willing to sit down and do that thing I wanted to do that minute until after I've done the things to prepare for the appointment. I shower first. I put the books together first, etc. If I sit down in front of the computer, television, with a book, whatever it is, I then have everything done already. 

Going to bed early enough to be able to get up and be rested at work is another one. At first, being late to work just became completely unacceptable. So, I'd get up and be at work on time, no matter what time I went to bed. Then, the constant being exhausted at work because I was staying up too late got to be too painful. I realized I was making my life much harder because it's just harder to go through any day when you're exhausted. So, over time, I was getting to bed at a decent hour, more and more often. I'm really never late to work now, I'm well rested almost all of the time and the desire or temptation to stay up farting around watching movies or messing around on the internet or whatever has gotten to be almost non-existent. 

It's like first I get tired of the results of whatever I'm doing, so I stop doing it. Then I get tired of having to fight with the desire to do whatever it is, and that's when, because I'm really willing to let that thing go in total, it fades into the background. 

To some degree the 6th Step is about being able to make the conscious decision about whatever it is. The 4th and 5th Steps give me clarity on what's actually going on that is causing me to do this thing repeatedly, so the 6th Step is about the decision. Do I do that thing, because I really want to or do I not do it because now I know this thing is running my ass and I don't want to give it more ammunition? Sometimes, honestly the answer is fuck it. I don't give a shit, I'm going to do it anyway. But that never lasts long these days. It gets tired and old much faster than it used to. The price gets too high. The 6th Step is like the persistent decision to do the right thing, in spite of whatever little desires I have which suggest otherwise. 

The 7th Step happens when it's no longer a fight at all, when that thing I was struggling with just doesn't even come up, and in the natural course of what I'm doing, I just do the right thing, without much thought about it. I do, not because I'm such a good person, but because it has become practiced in the 6th Step. 

Anyway, I have to go get in the shower in order to leave for work. So, no putting that off, since I just wrote about that. 

Happy New Year to everyone.

 I'm not exactly sure what's going on. 

But, I know something is going on. It's not a very fun thing either. 

Let's consider the fact that I'm sick. Yes, I'm sick. I've been sick for a week, possibly two or three, I've lost count. I know I was sick at one point, there seemed to be a break for a few days, then it came back with a vengeance. 

I have not had a cigarette in three weeks though, this is a good thing. I am satisfied with this. It is good. 

This is not the only sickness I am dealing with though. I think I could possibly be ready to just admit that I am dealing with and probably have been dealing with, for the better part of my life, some kind of mental illness. I'm not completely convinced it's major depression as has been most recently (2 yrs ago) diagnosed, but I'm at least believing at this point there is something. 

I realized something in the last few days which I really can't refute. The most productive, healthy and happy I've been since quitting drinking have been the two periods of time during which I was medicated. Now, for a twenty-six, then twenty-eight year old man(boy), there is one terrible side effect. It's of the sexual nature. And I'm not going to try and blow my own horn here, but when I'm feeling well, and I'm out and about living life, I do pretty well with women, meeting them or attracting them anyway. It's a double edged sword. I get on medication, I come out of myself near fully, I meet a girl, I want to stop taking the medication. This is not good. 

I also know at this point, that sitting here right now, I can say I don't care about that, and that feeling better and geting myself on my feet again is more important than anything else and absolutely mean it. Come some three or four months, six months from now when I've been on it for a while and things are looking up and I meet a girl, the tune will change. I know this too. 

I do know that right now, I'm going to have to start looking at seeing someone. I'm just not really very well right now. I'm not suicidal at this point, but I've been down this road before and if I don't get some help soon, that's where it's going to end up. I know this. I have walked this path enough times already. I am really just not at all interested in going back to the hospital. I am really just not interested in falling apart again, nor am I interested in putting the people close to me whom I care about through that again. It sucks, all around. 

It was my room mate who actually got me thinking about this in a way. 

I don't think I've been doing very well for some months now, possibly as long as a year now that I think of it. Anyway, my room mate is a nonstop kind of guy, always heading here, always heading there, doing this and that. I was wondering how the hell he does this, and the thought dawned on me that when we met, I was the same way. I was sponsoring twelve different guys (literally), working part time, dating, doing service work and doing it all without much of a problem. I was occassionally tired and would have to get some extra sleep in there, but it wa ok more or less. I was on medication at the time though. Since I've stopped the medication, there has been a steady decline in what I'm doing, where I'm going and any impetus to do any of that. My mind presents me with perfectly plausible reasons for all of this, but in reality, looking at the long term effects, it makes no real sense. 

In fact, these days, I'm dealing with some anxiety and some real trepidation when considering trying to do more than I am now. I'm not doing much and what I'm doing now is overwhelming me. I think that was kind of the first sign, realizing I'm not doing much at all and all of it is completely overwhelming. 

I'm beginning to also be ready to start to look at some other factors as well. One is the possibility of something in the vicinity of relating to PTSD. One thing I can put together is that most of the things which have and are causing me the most debilitating and uncontrolled axiety and plain old terror are all regarding authority. Authority though, doesn't seem to be the problem.  I have people and figures in my life whom I've assigned authority to, and there is no problem with them. I am in fact, very willing and very able to follow instruction, direction, and suggestion in this case. On the other hand, it's the authority or more pointedly, the individual or entity with power which I haven't assigned. It is the loss of power, in a way, but not quite so much as the lack of identity. I can't describe it or am having trouble describing it. There's some combination of there being a lack of identity in the eyes of power, and the power being taken or assigned without me saying so. That might seem strange to some people. To them, this may seem a regular part of life. Rape victims would probably best understand this. 

I can't handle the feeling of being completely at the mercy of someone or something else. It's absolutely terrifying. I can't even bring myself to get near situations which put me in that position. It's just pure terror actually. People have long called it laziness, but I'm starting to figure out that it's not quite that. There's no reason for me to have such a deep, strong and unshakable dislike for the people higher up the ladder where I work. They've always been nice to me, they've always given me compliments on what I do. At the same time, I'm so terriffied of them, I hate them for no rational reason. 

I'm also considering there's some possibility of results of multiple head injury here too. I mean, I've had way too many concussions in my lifetime. I cracked my skull before I started school. I've lost consciousness on more than one occasion from them. I'm not sure. 

What I'm getting at is that I think there's more wrong here than just plain old alcoholism. I think at this point, the alcoholism is well treated. I also have my doubts that whatever else is going on here is just plainly psychological. There seems to me something more organic or physiological going on with me. 

The fact that I start getting like this given any extended amount of time when I'm untreated by psychiatric professionals should probably say something. 

One of my great fears has always been that I've just spent so much time dealing with the psychiatric community that it's somehow normal for me. I've gotten so used to it, I don't feel normal without it in a way. 

At the exact same time, I've always had a very healthy fear of some very severe mental illness presenting itself this late in life. I know some of them don't always show up till later.

What I do know beyond shadow of a doubt is that things aren't right with me, and I can't fix them by myself. 

The only things abundantly clear are that I am not really right somehow, and I am damn near positive I am somehow not quite like everyone else. I'm not saying this as an excuse at all. It's just more a statement of fact. I can't seem to be able to do all of the normal shit other people do, and at this point, it's not for lack of effort or desire. Something's definitely not right with me and I really wish it would be easier to figure out what's going on.

Parker is flanked by a pretty little redhead and one of the guys I have yet to see him separate from. His name is Mike, the other one of Parker's butt buddies is sitting in an armchair to my left. Parker introduces the girl as Charity. Her parents have to be the kind of people who were once hippies and are now rocking the BMW, and naming her Charity is there way of keeping in touch with their "roots". She's got long wavy red hair pulled back lazily. She's wearing a bikini top and board shorts. She's thin, but athletic and as Parker introduces us, I imagine what it would be like to get her legs in the air on the pool table. As we shake hands, I think she realizes I'm thinking about fucking her, because she gives me a sly, flirtacious smile. She wouldn't though, I know this. I'm two steps down her ladder from Parker, and she might not think of it that way consciously, but that's the way it is. Even if the opportunity were to arise, I wouldn't anyway. She likes to know it though. 

Mike and Matt have finished taking their own bong hits when I shake hands with both of them. Mike just nods. Matt makes some comment about the lifeguard stand we set on fire the last time we saw each other, and we both laugh. I laugh because it's the right place to laugh. I'm not particularly amused by the fact that he's talking about it with all of these people around. I don't like anyone to know anything about me or anything I've done which I don't want them to. Knowledge is power out in the world I live in, and what you know about someone tells you something about them. 

Parker is obviously anxious to get down to business. This is a good sign. It's a sign that this will probably be a good night. Even if business is only adequate as the rest of the people here are concerned, these four alone could make it worth the trip out here. I know Parker, Matt and Mike all labor under the delusion that if they just buy what they think will get them through the night, they'll be fine. This never happens. What they think will get them through the night, never gets them through the night. It's either girls they end up being more than willing to shell out some of their stash too in hopes they'll get laid or there are no girls interested, at which point, they resign themselves to getting as high as they can. Either way, we end up doing business on three or four occassions before the sun comes up. This is good. 

Parker gets up and begins to walk up the stairs. We're going to his bedroom on the second floor. Matt and Mike are trailing behind me. Charity is walking in front of me. She is an unknown variable, and I'm wondering how much of a hard time I want to give Parker about this. I don't like doing business in front of anyone I'm not doing business with. As far as I'm concerned, it's private. I'm about forty times more likely to have sex in a public place with people watching than I am to do business in front of someone I'm not doing business with. I'm aware that this is strange to some people. I'm also aware that these are the people who end up having to worry about dropping the soap in the shower if they happen to stray into the business I'm in. These are the details the kind of details they miss. I have no worry that Charity is an undercover police officer. She's too polished to be a cop. It's just a bad practice to get into. 

With this little crew of misguided momma's boys, it's as much about making sure they under stand who's really in control of this situation. 

When we get to the second floor, and Parker opens the door stepping into his bedroom, I let Mike and Matt step past me and into the bedroom first. I stand outside the door, and all of them have found a comfortable place to sit before they realize I'm not intending to come in there behind them. Parker looks at me with expectation on his face. In return, he gets as much of nothing as I can give him. We've been through this before. He still hasn't gotten it yet. He's used to the rules bending some because he's got money, especially out here on the Island, and especially with the locals. He's not doing it on purpose, I'm sure. He's just so used to the privilege of money getting him by that it doesn't even occur to him on a conscious level. 

I grill him a little bit about the girl. She starts to say something, and when I look at her, she's got that smile on her face which is all flirt, fuck me and we've got a secret. She's genuinely shocked when I respond by telling her I wasn't talking to her, I was talking to him, and since he's the one I know and the one who's doing business, he's the only one I want to hear talking right now. I tell her there are probably forty different parties going on tonight, and I'd be welcome at any of them. I'm here tonight because I know Parker, and he asked me to come. Her I don't know. People don't usually talk to her that way, I knew that much already. There's a look of mild shock on her face, it gives me half a hard on and I think about how many more things I'd be able to show her which would make this little exchange seem like just another day in the life. 

Parker actually giggles at this, and when her cheeks redden with embarassment, the low burn of dislike I have for these people flares a little. It's just a little more proof of how little their money really matters. The stand up thing to do would have been to either tell me to leave her alone or to just start talking to me again so that my attention was diverted from her. Parker enjoys seeing people put in their place. He enjoys seeing people hurt. On the reservations out in Mastic or Riverhead, the projects in Brooklyn, Queens or the Bronx this takes the form of ridiculing the person who just lost the fight or got robbed or some such thing. With these people, it's just more subtle. To them, it's about position, power, prestige, the emotional and psychological equivalents of a black eye. They look at the fist fight as the realm of the savage. They wouldn't bring themselves to that level, but Parker's amusement at Charity's hurt feelings is the same in principle as laughing at the guy who just got his nose broken on the playground basketball court. If I'd have talked to a girl who someone on one of the Reservations, in the projects in the city or even in my own neighborhood had brought around, there'd be some static for a second. Who ever it was would have at least made some overture toward me about it. It wouldn't have just slid through, and they wouldn't have laughed about it. I've seen this in Parker and his little cadre of friends on more than one occasion. It never fails to piss me off. 

I think for a second about turning the tables on Parker and telling him, Matt and Mike that I'll only deal with her. I could make the three of them leave the room and make her the one who has to come with the money. I could make her the go between. I'm thinking half with my dick and half from the perspective of hating what these people are and I'm thinking about teaching Parker a lesson. She'd like it, and it would embarrass Parker to a much larger degree than I just embarrassed her. It would embarrass Parker even more if that little turn of events gave her just enough lee way to get a little closer with me later on when she gets wasted enough to not be constantly aware of her place in all of this. It's bad business though. Parker's been a cash cow for three summers. He's brought me all of his friends when they're out here. I'm not going to toss that over a sly red head and something which really wasn't disrespectful to me. With people like Parker, it's only a matter of time though, and I'm more than willing to guarantee the time will come when there's a bright shining opportunity to show Parker something new and shocking too. 

We go on with it. By the time business is conducted and everyone's got what they're asking for at this moment, I have six hundred more dollars than I did when I walked into that bedroom. It's all profit right now too. I have already made what I need this month to restock my supplies. This money will go to the new operation I'm putting together above the gas station in town where I live. That's going to be my crowning achievement, and hopefully by this time next summer, I won't have to do any of this. I'll be able to go where I want and do what I want, and won't have to handle any of the actual hand to hand business myself. It'll take a year to set up properly and work out the kinks, but it will certainly be worth it. I'll be going where ever I want, with a pocket full of money, when ever I want. I'll also be on the way to making a name for myself that no one on the island ever has at my age. No more kids games soon enough.

Picture this. I go to a party in the Hamptons. I've been to this house before, so I know more or less what to expect. I walk up the driveway and through the front door. The entryway has vaulted ceilings and hardwood floors. It leads into a large open living room, also with hard wood floors, leather furniture, wrought iron tables with glass tops, a large fireplace, a big screen TV and so on. There's a support wall which separates the kitchen, also with tall ceilings and a very open air feel to it. The countertops and floors are marble, the appliances all stainless steel, and so on. The entire rear wall of the first floor of the house is glass. Outside there is a large inground pool, surrounded by a deck. The pool is heated. I don't always like heated pools. Sometimes, too much alcohol and drugs mixed with the warm water make it hard to get it up. That is a party foul of the first order. There are kids out there, some of them in the pool, others milling around the deck, still others standing steadfastly next to a large rubber tub, a keg standing upright in it. It's probably Brooklyn Lager, this months cute, trendy beer. At least it's good beer though, next to wine, Budweiser is the worst hangover known to man. I didn't bring my own beer here because I'm relatively sure they're not going to be serving that shit. 

I can hear the music thumping through the floor as I come through the house and to the back door. The kids who's throwing this party is downstairs I'm sure. He's one of those east coast faux surfer types, and is really just a geek of the highest order. If it weren't for these parties, the house, the pool and the basement (which I'll get to), none of these kids would hang out with him. As I cross the marble floor next to the kitchens wrap around counter, I realize the baseline I'm hearing belongs to the Wu-Tang's neck breaking classic, "Clan in Da Front'. At least the music is going to be decent. I open the back door and slide onto the deck

Grabbing a tall red Solo cup from the bar on the deck, I step over to the keg, behind some kid wearing the typical Nautica polo shirt and plaid shorts. This is the uniform for upper crust frat kids these days. The plaid shorts are just too much for me. I don't really get it, at all. I'm wearing a pair of Guess jeans, a New York Knicks (John Starks tonight, I have Mason and Ewing at home) jersey, and a pair of black and white Shell toe Adidas. This is what these kids would generally refer to as classic old school. I have a black North Face back pack slung over one shoulder. I couldn't fit all of the things I'm carrying in my pockets, and if by some really crazy turn of events, the cops happen to show up here, all I have to do is put down the back pack and walk away from it. It's got nothing in it to identify me (I checked before I left home), and there are at least ten others which would be idenitical to just about anyone looking, so it would be a fluke if some kid were able to point it out as mine. In this crowd, a pocket full of cash isn't going to make me stand out either. I don't have a "Born To Lose" tattoo on my body.

There's a radio on the deck, blaring the WBLI Friday Night Dance Party, which I have sworn to despise for the rest of my natural life. I smoked a blunt of some pretty good weed on the way over here. My driver tonight was impressed with it, and he's already over at the edge of the pool talking to a bikini clad youngun. I know the weed was pretty good because as I look around the deck and the pool, the conflagration of skin drowns out the horrific sound from the radio. God gave us all the seed bearing plants to use indeed. I smile at a couple of the pretty young things, one or two of whom smile back, but I'm not ready to commit for the night just yet. Surveying the territory before I try and make a choice is a must. Even I know the real truth about this though. The men don't get to choose. The girls do all the choosing. The only reason I ever get any choice at all is that when it gets a little later on, and the crowd thins out a touch, people start to figure out who the hook up is, and some of them will be very interested in how long he's staying and where he's going afterwards. It's better than being the Candy Man. I'm not talking about the horror flick from the eighties either, but the old Sammy Davis Jr. song where's he's very nicely, very poetically, and very unoffensively referring to being the Sugar Dick Daddy. It's The Mac, on fourty or fifty valim. Personally, I like Chuck Berry's My Ding Dong better specifically because it is just this side of completely inappropriate. I'm an NWA fan, so you know, I'm partial to in your fucking face. 

I fill up my cup and head back inside. When I open the basement door, a cloud of smoke wafts up from the basement. It's a thick mixture of weed and cigarettes, and very familiar. It's something which denotes to me, "this area zoned for business." As I descend the stairs the mixture of vioces and music is very much like a kind of ether which sets my mind in a certain place. It's a place in which I know all the rules, where they bend, when to break them and I hold a superb hand. A couple of skimpily clad girls pass me on the narrow stairs, one of whom looks relatively familiar and I hope I shouldn't remember her name when she smiles at me. She keeps going, so I'm going to take that as a no. I've probably seen her at other parties or clubs, it's hard to keep track after a while. Add in the amount of drugs and alcohol I consume in any given summer, and you have a database which would be kind of like looking at the family albums in a trailer park. You can tell everyone looks a little bit different, but the overall similarities are alarming because of the underlying genetic cause. 

Parker (the kids who's throwing this party) is sitting on the couch to my left, in front of a huge, wide screen TV which is set into the wall. There are two speakers set into the wall next to it with sixteen inch woofers, ten inch mids, and tweeters on top. If I remember correctly there are ten of these speakers set in the walls surrounding the furnished basement. Parker has a large glass bong up to his mouth with his back turned to me. To my right are the pool table, the foosball table, the ping pong table, the Pac Man, Space Invaders, Spy Hunter and Dig Dug arcade machines, the Back To The Future pin ball machine and the full size refrigerator, all lining the back wall. There are people sitting everywhere, red Solo cups in hand, some smoking joints, others cigarettes. I can smell a clove cigarette coming from somewhere, and I vow this person will either leave very soon or does not smoke another while they are here. My stomach turns every time I smell those damned things. There's got to be some art school refugee down here, thinking they're too intelectual for a fucking Marlboro or Newport. I want to put that clove out on their forehead when I think of this. 

You might be wondering where Parkers parents are at this point. Parkers mother is either upstairs passed out drunk in her second floor bedroom or out at some bar trying to find a suitor for the night. She's a lush. He doesn't know it, but I ran into her at CPI's last summer and watched her sniff a gram of coke off of some young dumb bells abs in the living room upstairs. Parker was away London for the summer. One of her friends daughters had come back here with us, and as a matter of fact, I had her doggy style pretty much where a little girl who looks like she's Parkers current squeeze is sitting on the couch next to him. That girl's been a good time every time I've seen her since. I wonder if she's here tonight. 

Parker's father has a summer house in Montauk. He either favors the more quiet and peacefull setting out there or he goes all the way out to the end of the island to ensure he never runs into Parkers mother. I went to a Halloween party out there a year or two ago. Parker had apparently decided to come make a weekend of it out on the island instead of doing the Halloween thing in the city. A whole group of his private school friends came out and I brought some of my local crew. It ended up being a huge costume party and we ended up doing coke for two days, swimming in the Atlantic on the first day of November (which you'd have to sniff coke for two days to be able to do), and setting a lifeguard stand on fire at three in the morning. Parkers father, I've never met. 

Parker looks up from the long glass bong which he's just had his mouth shoved into, and waves me over. We shake hands, and he exhales a cloud of smoke. It's an exagerated gesture I've come to expect, not just from Parker, but from most people who are chronic pot smokers. Somehow, there seems to be some connection in their minds that if you exhale all the more grandly, the more high you get.