Blog entry for:

to sit quietly and check out my feelings. it seems that many of my peers, seem to think STEP ELEVEN is the forgotten step. i can certainly see their point, due to the nature of spirituality and the intense feelings talking about the various routes to finding a POWER that is greater than addiction can and does create, it is often a subject that is avoided in meetings. on the other hand, lots of my peers talk about STEP TEN and inventories, and say, stuff like:“maybe i will start doing that again, after all, when i was doing it regularly, i felt better.”
for me, i know what it was like when i “worked” the TENTH STEP and slowly but surely let it drift into the background. the daily inventory became, three times a week, then once a week, then once a month and finally only occasionally when i had something going on. it is true that in those days, i had already started my drift away from the program of recovery, but sitting here today, i wonder if the process of transition from where i was, to where i ended up would have been quicker and facilitated, had i done more than pay lip service to STEPS, TEN and ELEVEN. my history, makes me wonder how many of my peers, are doing the slow drift away from a program of recovery through a similar chain of events, or in this case non-events.
things worked out very strangely for me, when i started that second TENTH STEP, i started writing, and my sponsor disappeared into the ether. so i kept writing, and writing and writing and waiting for him to return, so i could move on. i wrote, and wrote and wrote it out for so long, that it became automatic, and when i was grinding my recovery writings, a story for another day, i must have ground up at least five notebooks full of TENTH STEP inventories. when i finally got the nerve and the ability to say enough, and asked my grand sponsor to take me through the remaining steps, i had become habituated to writing a daily inventory. so when we got back to STEP TEN, on my next round, he asked me how i was working STEP TEN, in my life and i told him i was writing the inventory, nearly without fail, that i started a few years back, every single night.
we spoke of the necessity of writing one, he had me look over what it was i was asking and finally gently suggested that i sit and feel, instead of write by rote. all those years of writing have paid off, because today, i cannot sleep, if i have not sat and listened to what i am feeling. my inventory is quite simple these days, did i act my way into becoming the man i have always wanted to be, or not? the judgement part, negative and positive is gone, as well as the emotional attachment to how good i am doing, or not. everything i did, is measured against that standard and evaluated as to whether or not i want to continue doing that particular action or not. the nice part of my daily inventory, is that i truly do it on a daily basis, because of the glitch in my program, way back when.
i have never regretted what i did in those days, and today i am grateful for what it set up, the habit of getting in touch with myself and looking over what i did and did not do, in the course of my waking hours. i firmly believe that is one the reasons that i have not left the “NO MATTER WHAT” club and hope to remain a member today.time to get moving on, so i really have something to inventory tonight, instead of just saying i sat at my computer all day and did not accomplish one whit of what i wanted to do.

∞ DT ∞