Blog entry for:

they are called defects and yes i am mostly ready to have them removed. STEP SIX with a caveat, great work when one can get it! for me, willingness to have my character defects removed looks like calculus problem than a Boolean, true/false sort of proposition. writing about how non-binary my desire to have my defects of character removed, might be interesting, but hardly very earth-moving for me. the fact of the matter is, when my defects of character do not make my life unmanageable, i am not quite as willing to have them removed, as when they are crushing my quality of life. with that little bit of inner Captain Obvious revelation completed, i will move along down the road.
what i “heard” this morning was more focused on who i am and the path of becoming who i want to be. as i sat in the meeting yesterday evening, listening to the two “preachers” telling me “what to do,” i was struck by a sense of gratitude in that i do not have all the answers. it was a theme that started internally after one of my peers shared on Sunday night and was reinforced as i sat listening to two of the attendees prattle on and on about what amounted to a whole lot words and very few ideas. one of my most world famous Jedi mins tricks was to baffle everyone with bullsh!t when i lacked any real knowledge or needed to shift the focus off of who i really was. warping reality through a boiling pot of sophistry was a talent i developed in active addiction and it served me well for quite some time in my recovery journey, especially in those days of hanging around the programs, abstinent, but unwilling to give up the notion of using, even “just for today.” i wonder what it is that is so attractive about that dishonest behavior, that keeps me coming back time and again, to regard it so fondly. a lie is a lie, even when i am lying to protect something and in this case it is my image. when my image is involved i have evolved in many ways, but my default stand is to protect it at all costs. that little man behind the curtain, needs to hide, obfuscated by smoke and mirrors, because he FEARS that if discovered, the world will see him as the humbug he feels that he just may be.
the short answer is that i lack self-esteem and i have stumbled across the notion of low self-esteem many times before. sure i would certainly love to have my low self-esteem removed, in fact, in this case i AM entirely ready. the real question for myself today, is why i disregard the evidence that is more than abundant, that i am more secure in who i am, than i have ever been in the past? although that question is rhetorical, i can say i am a better prosecutor that i am a defender, especially when it comes to looking at myself. i can always find the flaws in my arguments and i never allow myself to be “good enough for government work.” i see through the pile of lies that used to protect me from such scrutiny and have yet to find the courage to allow myself to stand before my peers and associates without at least one eminent front. this intermediate point, is certainly a painful place to be, but that pain is more of the nagging chronic type and hardly motivates me to do anything to rid myself of it, even if that “anything” is to simply surrender to the fact that ridding myself is not my job and that job needs to be turned over to a more competent authority. i often get confused about what is mine and what is not.
moving forward, i think mi will set this on the back burner and start my commute to work. today i have a new project on my plate and there is more than a bit of excitement about learning how to do something new. yes, i may fail at this in the here and now, but perseverance may take me to where i have never been before.

∞ DT ∞