Blog entry for:

an inventory helps me see beyond the demands of active addiction, beyond my desire to be loved and accepted, i find out who i am and who i may become. and yes i added that last bit since i surgically removed a whole bunch from the quote.
anyhow, i had the chance to speak to a group down in southern suburbs last night, and as always i was surprised about where my share took me. i have yet to listen to the tape, but from what the members talked with after the meeting i must have been pretty focused. i have discovered across the course of my recovery that what i think i want to do and what i really want to do are often two different things. there was once a time in my life when i desired nothing more than to be a "hot" convention circuit speaker. i polished up my story, added some pithy little jokes, pulled out a bit of the tragedy of my using and waited for the phone to ring, and waited and waited and waited.... in fact i am still waiting, however today i have a different outlook on the whole matter. yes it would be nice to travel around the country for free and be a convention speaker, it might even be fun BUT i am not all that wiling anymore to leave my soul mate, my home, my friends and family to jet off to some convention half way across the country on a continual basis, i could have had a job that entailed the same thing. no i am quite content to speak locally when asked to speak and to enjoy the life that i have been given as a result of the program i have been living since i got clean.
which brings me back to the topic at hand, yes i realize the topic was about using my fourth step inventories to uncover who i really am. part of the inventory process is sharing that knowledge with another human being. i have discovered that for me, when i share my story as a speaker for a meeting i seem to get the same feeling as when i do i fifth step. it is like all the material that i have inventoried is accessible to me to pass on to those who happen to be present when i share at length. one of the things i do remember saying last night is that i am unwilling to be the man i was when i came and finally accepted that life in recovery was the only acceptable choice for me. the further away i get from that day, the more and more i find that i did not like that man, and i like him even less today. i am grateful that i have chosen to live the program, with all the work that entails, and that i do not have to be the guy that was punted from society and into the rooms, kicking and screaming the whole way and pissed off about where he landed. i may not yet see who i am becoming, but i do know better who i have been. so today i am willing to accept that i am a work in progress, who has been given direction to start his sixth step and continue the journey to become who i will become. and that is enough to get me rolling this morning!

∞ DT ∞