Blog entry for:

to express my gratitude is really not all that hard. actually feeling what i am talking about, well that is sometimes a horse of a different color. when i feel compelled to conform with what my peers share, i often drop into a share filled with platitudes, clicheés and bumper stickers, sprinkled with first person plural and second person pronouns. if one is even a casual reader of this little bit of my mind, one sees that i may not always sound as if i am walking on the sunny side of the street, but looking beneath the surface, there is a strong theme of being grateful for starting off a new day day, CLEAN.
that could have been a great segue into a whole paragraph about how grateful i am for the gifts of recovery. instead, what i heard this morning was a sense of wonder about how i got here. people like me, do not get and stay clean, all that often. even if we do stay clean, we often fall by the wayside when this recovery gig starts to feel onerous or oppressive. i am, however, still clean, still living a program of active recovery and still a part of the fellowship that has brought me this far. as much as i bitch and moan about living life on its own terms, i am grateful that i GET to live life on its own terms, as i have lived in the alternative. the fact that the only thing the doctor had to tell me about was my slightly elevated blood pressure, is a sign that the life i am living is not a bad one, at least in the physical sense. ironically after six weeks at my current job, i am getting my unemployment check, on Thursday. it is a good thing i had a bit of savings to fall back on, when i was seeking a new position. i am not one of those who walks around speaking of miracles and mysterious ways, but to be sitting here this morning, writing about life in recovery, in a home i share with my wife, getting ready to drive into work, is not how i saw my life turning out. i never worried abouyt retiring , because i never believed i would arrive at the age of sixty-five. yet, here i am, healthy, emotionally stable and mostly mentally fit, stating that just for today, i am grateful for another day clean.

∞ DT ∞