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or am i? that question rings through my head on a nearly daily basis. and if i am getting better what exactly does better look like? so as my sponsor often asks me and i ask my sponsees i look for evidence of change in my life, and weigh the preponderance of that evidence to come to a conclusion. if i looked at the events in my life over the course of the last four weeks it certainly looks like a mixed bag. i have made a commitment to the woman i loved and am working on joining our lives together. i voluntarily accepted a lay off from work to help my family business survive and i have increases my sponsorship activities. in the same period of time i chased away an old friend by acting-out in anger, started my amends to my ex-wife, spent far too much money buying ‘stuff’ that i could really live without, and spent money on acquiring the things that we need to make our new life comfortable. so looking over just those events i would say i am getting better. there was a time when i would have alienated everyone while going through the changes i have been dealing with or even worse withdrawn from the world and laid around the house full of self-pity and anger at the world for dealing me such a crummy hand.
i have not used, nor have i wanted to. i talked to some close friends about a silly little obsession. i accepted my sponsor‘s suggestion that i sit on my current step for a bit and actually made an appointment to sit down and talk to him about what is going on. and as i write this little missive to cyberspace, i am getting a sense of gratitude for my life today. yes i could have behaved better in a whole bunch of instances lately and yes some of the underlying motives for my behavior were not necessarily pure, nevertheless i am doing better than i feel and the gift of my morning meditation is starting to kick in. no i am not getting perfect BUT i am getting a whole better and today i can accept that for the gift that it is, without qualifications. after all i am just another recovering addict, doing my best to stay clean another day!

∞ DT ∞