Blog entry for:

accept my living situation and to change what is unacceptable in my life, is how i embrace the reality of living life on its own terms today. embracing reality, ironically as i sat this morning, i kept dropping into an old fantasy and replaying a humiliating scene from my past. neither was very instructive about applying an embrace of reality into the life oi am living today, but both were indicative of who i once was. today, as much as it pains me to admit, there are many nasty bits of my life, that i choose to rail against instead of accepting or changing. yes it is true those “nasty” bits are nowhere as nasty as my life was when i came to recovery and in the grand scheme of things, what one would call “first-world” problems. oddly enough it is my lack of accepting what i cannot change and working on those bits that i can affect change on, that is leading to more than a bit of an unmanageable life.
yes i DESIRE a whole lot more than i have. more often than not, that DESIRE, which is a very human characteristic becomes entitlement. once i believe i am owed something than my expectations mounts and resentments start to fill my world, internally and externally. that is the current set of symptoms of how my life is unmanageable these days, and more than enough material to actually put pen to paper about and move on in my step work. it is illustrative of my spiritual path, that DESIRE and how i warp it out of shape is a theme in this part of my current step journey. it is not as if i am going to adopt asceticism or give away all my material possessions, but i certainly would like to find the means to curb my insatiable DESIRE for more. i guess as i explore my relationship with my spiritual path, more will certainly be revealed.
i can often dwell on the less than perfect and even though it may appear that i accept absolutely nothing in my life, the fact is, i magnify those tiny pieces that are unacceptable way out of proportion. sure, i would like a different job, but the truth is, i am comfortable doing what i am doing, it pays well, has better than average benefits and is moving into a place where i am actually getting to be a bit more creative. i do not live in a house full of gratitude, even though that is my spiritual address. that has been my biggest stumbling block in looking at how my life is unmanageable, everything looks so freaking normal to the rest of the world, i begin to believe that maybe i have been somehow transformed and lifted out of addiction, by pulling myself up by the bootstraps yes , through the step work i have done to date. yes, there it is, the notion that NO ADDICT should ever utter out loud, that my work has transformed me into someone who can use in a “normal” manner.
as harsh as it is, that is pure fantasy, what exactly are the parameters of “normal” using and the fact that i have to define that notion, speaks volumes about my silly fantasy world. the man behind the curtains, has just been revealed once more, and his feet of clay are visible to all, i want to believe that because of my active program of recovery i have gained an ability, a super power as it were, that i never had in the past -- moderation and balance. on that cheerful tidbit of reality, clashing with what i want to believe, ti think i will pack this in, and head on down to the office. it is a good day to be clean and even a better day to not be selling my car to gather the ways and means to get more of anything.

∞ DT ∞