Blog entry for:

sort through the confusion and the contradiction of my life so that i can find out who i really am. a bit of a fine whine before i get rolling, so cut your cheese and savor this little bit of heaven.
man, what a messed up start to this morning, nothing has been quite right with anything i touched over the past 16 hours and after a quick run to town, some reorganization of my service commitment records and a brief dip into the well of meditation, i think i am finally ready to restart this day and stop worrying about when the other shoe will drop.
which brings me to what i heard in the few moments i was capable of actually letting go, shutting down and listening to what the POWER THAT FUELS my recovery was telling me. which is that although i may not have sorted through all the contradictions and intricacies of who i am, i am certainly further down that path than i was the first time i read this entry, which was not 14 years ago. in fact, 14 years ago, i was a reluctant guest of the Boulder County Sheriff, in their fine and oh so luxurious bed and breakfast at 3200 airport rd. of course, looking back, it was not my fault, i had no problems except that i was in jail, and if everyone would leave me the fVck alone, life would be grand.
what this particular trip down memory lane reminds me of is that i have come so far from those days, and that can only be the result of the POWER that fuels my recovery, even though being in jail was not what i wanted, it certainly was what needed, as it became the seed for my ongoing recovery. you know, like Scarlett in Gone With The Wind, i vowed with God as my witness, to never be in jail again. she of course was much better looking and was talking about never being poor, but the sentiment i had was the same. much to my dismay, 8 months later i was doing weekend time for not being able to stay clean. not really jail, but in my mind so much worse, and i was on my last notice about county time, the next time i slipped, and yes i used to love that expression, i would be headed to the Colorado Department of Corrections, to be their guest for 3 to 6 years.
ironically, i will be going to jail today, voluntarily, as part of my commitment to carry the message of recovery
the reading, however, suggested more than a trip through my checkered past. what it said to me, is that i no longer need to be afraid of incarceration, as i have found a new way to live, without using mind and mood altering substances. something in that process, has changed me into a different man, and thorough and searching inventories are part of that something. i know today, that i was in jail, because i made bad choices. had i white-knuckled it, instead of trying to put one past the man, as it were, i would have never ended up in jail, in fact in a few more months i would have had that part of my sentence completed and moved into a life of only probation left to complete. so it goes…
as i reflect on the gifts that recovery has given me, self-knowledge and putting all that past sh!t into context, is one of those i am most grateful for. life without using, led to life in recovery and finally life in active recovery. only in active recovery can i use what i have learned about myself, to become a better person today. those inventories, and yes the plural is appropriate in my case, have allowed me to see who i was and glimpse at who i want to be. i may not have found my personal legend, but i am certainly on the right path and today, i am proud of the man i have become and excited about the man i will become, IF i keep doing this gig. the worst part of thinking about my inventories and my past, is that i realize i HAD to go through all of that to arrive at this point. as much as this sucked, it was necessary, and realizing that, i do believe i will go out and run off some of the excess calories i consumed yesterday, so i can be a little less of the man i was when i woke up this morning. it is a good day to be clean, and i can move forward with confidence that if i allow it, everything will be okay.

∞ DT ∞