Blog entry for:

if i keep showing up at meetings and staying clean, life gets...
well, different.
i like that, no promises of better, although looking through the lens of recovery, different feels better to me. i did not arrive at the trail-head of recovery with anything close to a perfect life, although had you asked me the day before the cops knocked on my door, i would have told that my life was nearly perfect and the only thing i would have changed would have been more money for less work. i had enough of everything else, except the materials with which to get high,m but more money would take care of that issue.
today, i could still use more money, although i no longer NEED more money, it is just something i want. the amazing part is, that i know that MORE of anything external like money, will not make me any happier nor will it make my life any better, more comfortable, yes, and perhaps more comfort may be better, but that is a value judgment that i do not necessarily believe is valid for me anymore.
i have gone down a tangent, and i need to get back on to point, that viewing my life and its problems through the lens of my recovery journey is a gift of that journey, and will always show me that recovery has made my life different and BETTER. these days i am not plotting, scheming and obsessing on finding the ways and means. with all of the energy i used to do so back in the day, i have new and different channels to pursue, and as i redirect that energy my life does get better. i get the single reward of staying clean that i have come to NEED, i GET to choose whether or not i wish to stay clean yet another day. i really do like that choice, and as a result i have come to the conclusion, that if i want to keep getting that choice to make, than i NEED to continue my uphill spiritual journey through recovery. all the problems that i have in my life these days, as intractable as they may appear in the here and now, can be resolved, IF i keep choosing to stay clean and DO WHAT I NEED TO DO, to allow me to make that decision again tomorrow.
even though there have been miserable times in my recovery. even though i did not want to feel whatever i was feeling. even though there were times that i wanted to run away in the physical as well as the mental and emotional sense. i persevered. i did so, because i like who i am today, i believe i am worth the effort to keep that man alive and i am worthy of success, at least succeeding another day by staying clean. this is where my journey has brought me, and i may not know where the journey will take me tomorrow, but i have FAITH that it will not be more than i can handle within the context of my active recovery.
so it is off to hit the streets and pound out a few miles, as my physical recovery is just as important these days as my spiritual recovery. that is also a gift of my ongoing journey through recovery.

∞ DT ∞