Blog entry for:

nest of negativism, exactly WTF does that mean in my life today? the reading seemed to indicate that there are such things as **positive** and **negative** attitudes. my attitudes towards my life, my responsibilities and what recovery means for me, have certainly changed over the seven thousand six hundred or so days. i do not blame anyone or anything else for the consequences of my decisions, including when i CHOOSE not to decide. i do not, on the other hand, skip merrily down a “yellow brick road” highlighting the bits of my life that i find pleasurable and swallowing those bits that are not. is that being “negative,” or perhaps realistic. i know many of my peers believe in the Law of Attraction and of course that is their choice, even though like things very seldom attract like things in the physical world. using pseudo-science to justify a “feel good” sort of philosophy is more than a bit disingenuous, so when i run across similar notions in the daily readings i have to pause and consider what exactly is the message that is being carried.
for me, i do my best to look at life through a balance of opposites and live in the boundary that separates one from another. i have no issue in saying that beauty is defined by ugliness. i have no issue saying that there is no such thing as “cold” or “darkness” as neither exists as a physical world. the is no way to measure cold, but the means exist to measure heat, it is called a thermometer and absolute zero(-459.67° F) might be perceived as “very cold” but it the lowest temperature that is theoretically possible, at which the motion of particles that constitutes heat would be minimal. when i look at life as pieces rather than a whole i get myself all worked up into a dither, so all of this talk about “positive” and “negative” attitudes means, at least for me, that i have to run what i am thinking through some sort of internal judgement machine and compare it to some artificial standard, instead of just accepting that it is how it is for me today.
the problem that i run across, is when i project my motives on to my peers and what they choose to share. perhaps, they truly believe the “Mary Poppins” stuff they are sharing and are not just trying to “look good.” my tendency when i hear that stuff over and over and over and over again, is to be grateful that a meeting uses a timer to limit the length of a share. i, on the other hand, seem to dwell in the darkness, perhaps a bit too much, but there is a balance to what i give away. mostly that yes even after thousands of days clean, life i complicated and has both beautiful and ugly parts to it. i could have had a new job, they wanted me to come on board, BUT, and yes it is a big one, it would have required that i take a 15% cut in my pay. i am unwilling to adjust my lifestyle quite that much, so i will continue where i am, taking home the paycheck that is about to get incrementally bigger. the absence of light here, is that i CHOSE not to move along and am right where i started. i do not blame the recruiter nor the company i was looking at for the outcome, as i am responsible for not selling myself short. so is that part of that “nest of negativism” or just life on its own terms? i would venture to say, it is part of the balance that i am trying to achieve in my life, being whole, with both Yin and Yang in balance. just for today, i can be myself even if others perceive that self to be some sort of dark and dreary Cassandra-like type, it is my self that i am responsible to today.

∞ DT ∞