random observations

I've been working on and off on another post for quite some time now and just can't seem to get it done, so I thought perhaps I'd just start something new. Obviously that other one just wasn't coming to fruition. Who knows ... maybe one day it will just seem like the perfect thing for me to write about and I'll finish it. Until then, it can just stay in "unpublished status" and I'll move on to the "next right thing."

It seems as though I've moved in to a listening stage of recovery - reading other blogs, but not having anything to post about myself; listening at meetings but not having anything to share about myself. I'm not sure where this silence comes from - I'm not generally someone who is at a loss for words! But sometimes I think I just feel a little dry - like I just don't have any insight to give. Of course the avid programmer (i.e. recovery, not computer programmer) would say that if I don't feel like I have any insight to give, then I'm dropping that 11th step ball and failing to continue through study and meditation to improve my conscious awareness of program, seeking only knowledge of program and the ability to carry it out in my life. And that avid programmer would be right!

It's interesting - working a program of recovery for me tends to be quite cyclic - I wonder if others experience the same thing? I go for awhile feeling like there is so much new stuff to learn and never enough time in which to learn it all, and then I start feeling like I've seen or heard it all before and it's just a waste of my time to see or hear it all again. In reality, nothing's changed except my attitude. With the former, I'm grateful for what is available and for the opportunity to get to learn it, and with the latter, I'm ungrateful, self righteous and full of self importance. Hmmmm. Selfishness and self centeredness ... that is the root of my troubles.

I had the opportunity to visit a man in jail today - he is an addict who will likely be spending the rest of his life in a very small box with bars. And he feels awful about what has happened - awful about what he has done to himself, what he has done to his wife, and what he has done to his family. There is definitely some self pity, of course, but there is also a geniuine grief about where his life has gone and what he has lost all in the name of drugs.

The story begins like so many others - he got into drugs. Then he got arrested. Then he relapsed and got into drugs again. Then he got arrested. Then he relapsed and got back into drugs. Then he got arrested. Then he got three-strikes, and that's pretty much where the game ends.

I just felt so bad for him - the addict in him, not the criminal in him. As we reviewed the evidence against him, he just kept tearing up about what he had done. Remorse. Just like every other addict in the world. Confusion about how and when the disease managed to take over his life again. "I was doing alright up until that last time..."

Isn't that always the case?

I was doing alright up until ...

I guess perhaps that's what living in recovery really boils down to ... taking a hard look at what constitutes "alright," and being on the lookout for the "up until."

That's all I've got for tonight ... as always, I will try to do better and try to post more often. That just might become my Walter Cronkite closing line - They say everyone should have one. (That would be the capital-T "they" ... the very powerful, all-knowing collective "they" ... but that's a whole different post.)