Blog entry for:

of consistency, is a concept that i have proven to be true in my recovery journey. for over a decade i struggled with the meditation part of STEP ELEVEN, barely being able to eke out five minutes of sitting still and no more than thirty seconds at a time at stilling the my internal dialogue. i persisted and lo and behold, for the past decade or so, i can “sit” for twenty minutes at a time and have little or no of the constant dialogue filling my head. i have applied that same sort of consistency to the various bits and pieces of my active recovery program and these days, i feel strangely calm and <GASP> even balanced. i did flip off a driver who refused to yield to my right of way while i was running this morning and i have to admit that i felt smug, self-righteous and happy about doing so. will it make a difference of any sort, probably not, but it gave me a bit of a thrill and one i did not have to buy.
the other side of this coin, is i see what the lack of consistency in my program and that of my peers buys, and it is certainly not something i choose to brag about. when the pandemic shut down almost every meeting, i had been going to three to five meetings a week on a very consistent manner. i found that the alternative was not all that appealing to me and proceeded down a path of isolation and complacency, until i surrendered that i could not continue my recovery in that manner, if i wanted to continue my growth. i came to be a “regular” at a local virtual meeting and it was sufficient to keep me connected. after the lock-down was done, i have found that one meeting, every single week, is enough to keep me sane and connected and has become my new consistent pattern. my peers, sponsees and friends can count on me being there and i will do what i can to keep that meeting going, even if the odds of doing so seemed stacked against us.
with that in mind, i think i will head on out of the house to enjoy a cigar, work a tradition with a sponsee and walk away from the chaos that seems to be swirling in my household today. it si a GR8 day to be clean and to be consistent in my application of living a spiritual program.

∞ DT ∞