Blog entry for:

an emotional and spiritual bottom, i am finally ready and willing to admit that i might be powerless. i certainly have very little power over my feelings, they just come as they will. i used to change those i found unpleasant, with chemistry, behaviors and JEDI mind tricks, but they always came back, requiring even more effort and often with a greater material and spiritual cost.
coming back after my shower, i have a clue or two about i am powerless over today. yes my feelings are certainly part of that equation. it is true that i have NOT been feeling the passion fro the program recently and allowed my resentments and petty grievances to pile up. mas a result, there is a local meeting that i find less than satisfactory to me and my recovery journey. over the past few months i have been struggling about what to do. as i have often said, i am a lazy slob and driving out of town to a meeting messes with my leisure activity with my friends. finally i came to a place in my heart where i had decided that i did NOT need to go to any meeting that night of the week, and if i started to get more insane, i could traipse the 12 miles or so, to seek out a different one. ironically, at this time, it is one of the largest meetings in town and yet when i go there i get nothing ⇝ no new ideas, no relief from addiction and no hope or passion. IMHO, what i feel is wrong with that meeting could be addressed by the home group members, but it is not my place to criticize or critique how any group chooses to structure their atmosphere of recovery, i just vote with my feet and find another meeting that suites me more. that is part and parcel of being an addict in active recovery, i GET to make choices, and today i CHOOSE not to go into the litany of sins of any particular group, i can live without any particular meeting, i cannot live without a fellowship that supports my efforts to live a program of active recovery. i have reached the spot where i see this is not the meeting i seek, so i move along.
just as my job is starting to grate on me, yes i said job and not career, today i can choose to further my career by seeking a new job, which i am doing as well. part of being in ACTIVE recovery, means CHOOSING how i live my life. i used for far too long and settled for being second best for even longer. i may not be the best at anything else in the world, but settling for being the second best Don, is no longer part of what i choose to be. sitting on my powerless list, is certainly a symptom of settling for being less than i COULD be today. i do know the difference between COULD, WOULD and SHOULD and yes i have the ability to be the best man i can be, when i CHOOSE to do so. as i am grounded, so to speak all weekend, i will have some time, and perhaps some desire to write the list out and move along. i know that denying i am powerless or that i find something not to my liking, does not further my cause. no amount of waving my hands, pretending it does not exists, or acting “as if,” is going to change what i feel. what will change the feelings is a bit of step work and putting some effort into living my program today.
i am off to my home group, at least that is the plan, sneaking out while be grounded has it consequences as well, but being aware of them and being willing to accept them makes them a CHOICE rather than a heinous event. BTW if you want to know why i do something, just ask. there is very little i am unwilling to tell my friends, my peers, and my acquaintances, especially when it come to my opinions.

∞ DT ∞