Blog entry for:

in my attitudes and my behavior, is how i LIVE in amends PROCESS. making an amends is certainly more than an event. sure it would be nice for me to **soulfully look into the eyes of someone i had harmed and ask for forgiveness** and be done. one and done amends, would be almost as painless as the the halfhearted apologies i made back in my using days. whether i choose to call them **indirect** or **living** amends, it is the same thing, following up the “event” of making reparations, with fundamental shifts in how i walk through this world. nothing mysterious here, nor anything really earth-shattering or out of the official party line. trut6h be told, i prefer the label “living amends” as it is more descriptive of the actual; action.
what i heard in my very brief period of sitting this morning was too hurry up and get done, as i am late. i overslept thirty minutes and now my ability to be out of the house and on the road by 7:00 AM, is severely compromised. it is true, i am obsessed with being where i said i would be, no later than WHEN i said i would be. my joke from early recovery was that i will be fifteen minutes early for my own funeral. i am much better about this than i have ever been in the past, especially since i realized that by arriving early and having to wait, i was providing myself the ammunition to manipulate whomever i was there to meet. it gave me a sense of power and i frequently used that tiniest bit of power as a wedge to gain even more.la voilà an instant resentment! part of the amends process to myself, is changing the manner in which i walk through life. even though i am severely constrained by my obsessive punctuality, i realized this morning how freaking ridiculousness it was to be worried about arriving where i am going on-time, this morning, the point being, that the person i am meeting is not going anywhere and certainly has nothing that they need to do, other than sit down with me. in fact, whether i arrive early or promptly, doe not really matter, i will still have to wait for the process to unfold. the fact is, i “sacrificed” my quiet time for the sake of looking good. i volunteered for this misery and am hardly a victim, and yet i can hear the the wails of woe emanating form the martyr withing, “see how good i am, i even give up…”
be that as it may, i really do need to feed my need to get rolling through the rest of my morning, and yes that extra thirty minutes of sleep, probably was exactly what this body needed, to get the rest i needed. i am not one of those that says everything happens for a reason, but sometimes, it certainly seems that way, and that most likely is the human part of me, looking for connections that do not exist. one thing that does exist is my commitment to cause less damage by living a bit better than i did yesterday, just for today.

∞ DT ∞