Tag: sobriety

New Year, Old Me

Hope is a wondrous thing. I’d even go so far as to say it is lifesaving.

In the face of all challenges and heartbreak, hope can rise. Bidden sometimes. At other times, it just seems to pop up. The proverbial beacon of light and direction sitting off in the distance that appears to us, seemingly out of nowhere.

I sometimes wonder how often that very scenario played out for mariners of old. In the middle of being mercilessly tossed about on savage seas with death but a rogue wave away, off in the distance, the lookout spots a lighthouse.

Hope rises. Life continues. The sailors get to live another day.

As we mark this first day of a new year in our calendar, we are similarly touched by hope for the year to come. Hope for renewal. Hope for freedom from pain – emotional and/or physical. Hope for better news. Hope for sanity and peace of mind.

It is, of course, a false construct. Today is no different than yesterday in reality. We are not Cinderella who transforms into a princess and steps into a radically altered lifestyle. Of course, at her midnight, she reverted to her previous state. But altered.

The prince she had met and dazzled set out to find her again. That particular “New Year’s Eve” did not make the changes in her life that night. They foretold them.

Change happens like that for most of us, too. Whatever deficiencies we want to address in our life often have to be faced full-on in an instant. Then the slow process of change gets underway. The outcome we want may take weeks, months or years to accomplish. Then, one day, if we’re lucky and have worked hard enough, we are there.

I had this experience with both drinking and smoking. There was a time when I could not imagine my lifestyle would ever be other than what it was. I took some sense of satisfaction in cultivating the image of a hard-working, hard-living journalist for whom alcohol and nicotine were mandatory kit in the trade. An Ernest Hemingway-compatible type of broad.

Confirmation of a pregnancy stopped smoking in its tracks. I inherited my father’s Dutch will of iron. Ditching drink took a little longer. But with almost 24 years of sobriety behind me now, I can hardly remember how or why alcohol was ever part of my life at all.

Yet through it all, I am still me. For better or worse.

I have certainly changed from my younger self. But the essence of who I am is still there. I believe it is that way for most of us. Change does not always present with glaring neon signs in our day-to-day lives. I still have laundry to fold, beds to make, meals to make and dear friends to connect with. Life goes on.

This eventuality can be a hard learning during the egocentricity of youth phase. For some that phase lasts a lifetime. When I learned the phrase “hissy fit,” I recall how mortified and impressed I was by its’ resonance. “Boo.” “Hiss.” “I don’t wanna.” Ya. That sounded pretty similar to me having a temper tantrum.

I am beginning to find some solace in the immutable fact of my own humanity. That is allowing me to ease up on myself. The big ambitions I had for my life as a youth have been abandoned or pretty much dissipated.

And oddly, I find myself these days in the exact situation I always secretly craved. A happy home life. A wonderful and satisfying marriage to a man I think is the coolest dude on Planet Earth. I had similar feelings about my beloved Yorkie, Bailey. Not that I am drawing comparisons between the two, I only mean to say that when I love someone or something, I am all in.

So I did not create a long and unwieldy and unrealistic list of New Year’s resolutions meant to kick in today. There are a few things and unhelpful habits I want to discard. There are a few things I want to do more of. Others I want to do less of.

Like watching TV news as I said recently. That activity is like voluntarily setting yourself up to develop brain fungus. Ptooey. Don’t need it. Don’t want it.

I find myself drifting back to the homely arts and wishing to strengthen my connection to nature. I want to do more of nothing and less constant of the constant unending to-do lists and busywork. It is high time.

You see life goes on with or without us. That is a hard and fundamental learning we all must get eventually. In the face of that truism, we discover the parameters of own life and what we can realistically achieve for our own happiness and that of others around us.

Peggy Lee, the legendary lounge singer from the last century, sang a song called: “Is That All There Is?”

Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is

I know what you must be saying to yourselves
“If that’s the way she feels about it, why doesn’t she just end it all?”
Oh, no. Not me
I’m not ready for that final disappointment
Cause I know just as well as I’m standing here talking to you
When that final moment comes and I’m breathing my last breath,
I’ll be saying to myself … is that all there is?

https://genius.com/Peggy-lee-is-that-all-there-is-lyrics

I’m going to follow Peggy Lee’s advice. One day, you may discover all of your hopes and dreams and expectations may sit shattered on the sidewalk outside your house.

You may be left to wonder why you lived this life at all and what it was all about. That realization has finally hit me. I’m a grain of sand on a beach. A single star in the heavens.

No matter. I have friends and some family members who love me. I love them back. I plan to keep writing and, as Peggy advises, “hope to keep dancing and having a ball.”

Minus the booze, of course.

123123

So here we are. December 31, 2023. New Year’s Eve 2023. What a year it’s been.

The world in which I am growing older seems nothing like the world I grew up in. And yet in some respects, it is exactly the same.

I lived through Watergate and Nixon’s “resignation.” A wise and timely choice that he made to avoid the impeachment motion that would have ousted him from the Presidency anyway.

Today, we are dealing with the non-stop histrionics of another corrupt and ambitious soul who is determined to reclaim the Presidential office. Whatever else Richard Nixon was, he exhibited a modicum of decency in certain regards.

Respect for women for starters. His vile thoughts contained within his inner circle. No suggestion of insurrection.

War is raging in the Ukraine and the Gaza strip. Though less invested in these wars than Vietnam personnel wise, the US Congress still votes billions for support for its preferred victors in both conflicts. War is good business, after all.

The headlines of 2023 were full of doom and gloom. Unprecedented wildfires of such scope and intensity as have never been seen in the world before. Not in our time anyway. And so the alarm bells about the negative effects of climate change are rung harder and louder.

Billionaires traveling to the moon in their customized spaceships. Moon travel now a business model designed to rack up even more millions for their coffers. These shrewd businesspeople don’t have stars in their eyes or great dreams for the evolution and betterment of humanity. They have a keen eye on their bottom line.

All of this demonstrates a world badly out of balance with the fundamental laws of nature. I often read that billionaires wealth can be compared to the mental illness of hoarding. The disconnect between what they really need and what they want is incalculable.

And yet, we must adjust to the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. Our only personal defense to all of this external craziness in my opinion is rigorous environmental and personal mental hygiene.

I am no longer watching TV news, for example. It has drifted so far from the fundamental ethics of journalism that I once practiced as to be unrecognizable.

Female journalists who once consciously worked to present a professional and respectable image now focus on their sex appeal. Where has the thinking gone that women professionals needed to restrain exuding their inherent sexuality to be taken seriously? Another quaint and old-fashioned notion.

I am choosing to eat more consciously. Don’t get me wrong. I occasionally enjoy fast food as much as anyone. But beyond the dictates of a good dietary regime is the pleasure that comes from “home cooking.” I’m not a saint and drift away from healthy eating more often than I care to admit. But I am conscious of it and aware that healthy eating is my choice.

I’ve taken up yoga again. I had forgotten how important that discipline is. And demanding. I’ve always laughed at those who see yoga as a simple and not at all strenuous exercise. You try holding a spinal twist or tree pose for several minutes. You’ll soon discover how essential strength and balance are to the practice.

So better habits – mentally and physically are on my list of New Year’s resolutions. Wisely I started them a few weeks ago so as not to experience the tapering off on resolutions at the end of January that so many experience.

When I quit alcohol for good, I started in October 1999 on Thanksgiving Day. That way I had a few weeks of sobriety under my belt before the new year and new millennium in the year 2000. After 23 years of sobriety, that strategy and resolution seems to have worked out.

I am doing the usual stock taking today. Reflecting on the year that just passed and hopeful for positive change in the year ahead. It is ever thus.

I should mention this is my last post for 2023. My 293rd to be exact. I’ll remind you how it started. On March 14 during a writing retreat in New Smyrna Beach of this year just past, I set out to write a daily blog post for one full year. I am flabbergasted by how close that one year anniversary is now.

The logic when I started was to grease the wheels of my internal writing machine in aid of finally revving up the engine of creativity to write “that book” – a memoir still conceived to explore the consequences and my strategies for surviving a violence and addiction addled childhood in a small town Canadian provincial backwater.

So there’s one resolution I will need to make and resolve in the new year. After the one year anniversary for this blog, then what? I am still writing for me. I’ve connected with a few kindred spirits along the way in the form of regular readers. That’s encouraging.

Like most of 2024 or any future speculation, there will be countless unknowns. And like every new year and every day on the planet, I will live as I always do. Hoping for the best while being prepared for the worst.

Buckle up, folks. Whatever else comes in 2024, it will inevitably challenge and change us. For my part, I think I’ll head to the kitchen now and prepare a “colorful” and nutritious New Year’s Eve brunch.

That outcome I can say with some certainty, is something I can control and look forward to. We all do what we can when we can as we can. Happy New Year, folks! See you next year.

Happy Anniversary

Today’s writing prompt: What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?

This is timely. Today is the 24th anniversary of my sobriety. Back in the last century, I made a commitment several weeks before the turn of the century. I was going to take my last drink before the clock struck midnight on December 31st, 1999.

So I did it. In retrospect, it feels easier to have quit booze than it likely was. In the culture I came from, drinking was social currency. “Have a beer!” “Join us for cocktails after work.” “Pick up a 2-4 and we’ll go camping for the weekend.”

That booze masks pain is a given. But there was something more to it and the culture in which it thrived. A mark of adulthood? A sense of belonging? An adult-like behavior denied to us when we were 18 years and 364 days old. But the next day!! Wow. Hoist a glass. Join the fellas. Be a man!

Of course, this mysterious crossover to “adulthood” age barrier is quite state or province or country specific. Also gender specific. Women are not granted the same sense of admission when they take their first drink – another peculiar sex based inequality in our culture.

When I was a teenager, I was a passenger in a car that slid off the road and flipped over. We all walked away. When the tremulous driver shakily meets up with his father (the cars’ owner), his father offers him a “real” alcoholic drink (instead say, of a glass of milk or a soda).

It would appear an element of the rite of passage into the drinking culture also has to do with not killing a carful of your peers. Chin, chin!

Some famous incidents stand out in my drinking career. I was 20 and had just travelled nonstop overnight by train from Munich, Germany to Barcelona, Spain. I was exhausted. But not too exhausted to go wide eyed when I learned styrofoam coffee cups full of Grand Marnier cost 20 cents each.

I think I downed a dollar’s worth. Not to good effect. I fell asleep on my side under the hot Spanish sun. I awoke several hours later with a deep, painful sunburn on the right side of my leg. It took many more cumulative years of similarly stupid acts before it finally dawned on me that I had a problem.

One thing about alcoholism is that it can take time to develop and for the problem to become obvious. When you are young – as with most everything else – your capacity for recovery is more resilient. Long term alcohol consumption seems to break down cellular resistance to its more deleterious effects.

It did with me. I can’t say precisely when I realized “I had a problem.” I can’t say precisely when “I knew” I had to quit booze for my own sake and the sake of my children. Booze took nearly everything from me until it finally exited my life. Booze did not go quietly into “that good night.”

But went from life booze finally did. October 11, 1999. There is much to say about what the intervening years without booze taught me and put me through. How I learned to manage pain and tragedy and disappointment without it. I’m not 100% sure how I adapted and survived life without it. I just know I did.

Am I stronger? Probably. Healthier? Absolutely.

Sometimes I get my jollies sniffing the bouquet of a dinner companion’s delicious liqueur. If there is one thing I miss about booze, it was the sensual delight. The exquisite tastes. The heady bouquets. The complexity of the flavors.

Then my mind casts itself back to waking up deep fried in the Spanish sunshine after my Grand Marnier binge all those years ago. And all of the temptation and inherent pleasures that imbibing even a sip of the liqueur in front of me dissipate.

I get myself a soft drink and more and more frequently, a glass of ice water. With lemon. Liquid nirvana.

Considerably less flavorful but infinitely more satisfying. It’s a more than acceptable tradeoff. It still is today, 24 years after taking the pledge.

Never Forever

It was Winston Churchill who famously said: “When you are going through hell, keep going.” Hell is not usually a nurturing environment so there is a human tendency – forgive my obviousity – to get the hell out of there.

But that’s not an obvious choice for everyone. If indeed we are in hell trying to realize a goal, going through the hell of reaching it is an accepted part of the game. Give up the game and you give up the goal.

Many accept a life of hell as “normal.” They don’t see a way out of their present circumstances or the way out is too hard. So they live in hell until they die. I often think of junkies and alcoholics who can’t or won’t get sober as living in that terrible place.

When I was drinking, I remember I couldn’t imagine socializing without a drink. Part of that belief was cultural. There were people who didn’t trust anyone who wouldn’t take a drink. I also imagine others’ sobriety made problem drinkers highly uncomfortable.

In that weird projection thing that people do, sober people – alcoholics or simply the unafflicted – were deemed suspicious. They were often treated as having or being the problem. The problem was not the thirteenth glass of beer you’d had since arriving at the pub a couple of hours ago. That was “normal.”

I am in the belly of the beast in the house sort, purge and trash exercise. I am beyond tempted to quit. I can’t, of course. Part of going through all this is because I need to meet obligations to others and to myself. But it is decidedly unfun.

Human beings acclimate quickly. Whatever circumstances we find ourselves in, we can adapt. It is part of our strength as a species.

Think of those “reality” TV shows about surviving in the wilderness alone. Participants are dropped in the middle of God knows where and their goal is to survive in order to make a lot of money. Their circumstances often overwhelm and defeat them.

But even in the face of medical advice and direction, many participants howl and protest about being taken out of that environment and losing the dream of “easy money.” Or can’t bear seeing themselves as failures or quitters.

So I am up and at ‘em again this morning. Bins to go through and contents to sort. Ancient bills and papers to let go of. Every day a little more is accomplished. Yesterday the full dumpster was taken away and replaced with an empty one. I hope to fill it before this is all over.

I’ve also learned that neither good times nor bad last forever. That is a simple truism that I’ve lived, so I’m electing to believe in that now.

This is hell for me. I will get through it. I don’t exactly know how yet but I realize the only choice is putting one foot in front of the other until I arrive at a better place. Hopefully much less cluttered and more organized.

Those may seem like simplistic goals. But offloading the accumulated detritus of a lifetime is as hard emotionally as it is physically. By organizing my insides, I am driven to get my outsides in order, too.

That reminds me of the insight and wisdom of a little boy trying to get his Dad’s attention.

On the coffee table, Dad saw a magazine with a picture of planet earth on the front cover. He said to his son, Do you see this picture of world, tearing the cover off the magazine? The little boy replied “yes”, thinking he finally had won, his Dad was going to now play with him!

Taking the little boy to the kitchen table and ripping the picture of the world into little pieces, mixing them up on the table and giving his son some “scotch tape” he said, “When you put the picture back together then we’ll play OK?”

The son said, “OK Daddy” and started to work on the puzzle. Dad went back to the living-room, sat on the couch getting comfortable and turning the “Big Game” back on, thinking to himself, it will take him all afternoon for him to figure that puzzle out.

Dad had no sooner started watching the game when his son came running into the living-room, shouting with glee, “I did it, I did it, look Daddy I did it, I taped the picture back together!” His Dad couldn’t believe his eyes saying, “How, how did you do it so fast?”

This little boy looked up at his daddy and said, “When you tore the cover off the magazine, I noticed a picture of a little boy on the back of it. I just knew if I pasted that little boy back together, the world would come together too.”

The full story is here.

The Little Boy who put the world back together: A story by Jim Quinn, Founder of the Lifestream Basic Seminar

Fleet Footed Fame

I often wonder how a publicist would portray me if I ever became even a little bit famous.

They would dredge through my past accomplishments and elevate them as bona fides to justify my by then elevated station – me being famous and all.

I am curious about the fiction of it. I have done some pretty cool things in my life. I have a curriculum vitae of degrees and scholarships that I earned back in the day. But I have also done many bone stupid and horrible things which I pray never come to light. They diminish me and the person I feel I am and wish to keep striving toward.

I look at my life after it evolved from an ill-considered and ill-fated marriage. Interwoven with alcoholism and riddled with fear and anxiety, so many of my choices and actions in my life after that union evaporated was simply show. Most of the world simply doesn’t care.

Like an empty Waterford crystal vase, as long as I looked professional and presentable on the outside, the world need never know I was emotional hamburger inside.

There are many chapters in each of our lives. They often have dramatically different qualities to them. Those chapters are shaped by your particular pursuits of the time, the people you hang with and where you live. Each of these influences shapes your character. Each character handles life’s up and downs according to who they are and what they learned along the way.

Today is novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birthday. Famous, of course, for The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night, The Last Tycoon and others. He didn’t live long. Dead at 44 from a heart attack exacerbated by the ravages of alcoholism, he became another of history’s legacy of troubled artists who died young.

So I am moved to ask what keeps us upright and moving forward when we are in agony inside? When life has let us down badly and we are a million miles from any of our goals. Depends on who you are and how those influences have shaped you.

It can be argued that “creative” types are more susceptible to life’s insults and can more easily be undone by them. They feel more and more deeply, it might be argued, so they have more difficulty keeping pain at bay.

Oddly, I harbor an unreasonable anger at Philip Seymour Hoffman for the heroin addiction that took him out. He seemed smart enough to “know better.” Yes, I know that is a ridiculous statement in the face of fighting an intransigent addiction. But I feel robbed that Hoffman checked out so early. He was brilliant and had so much more to offer. I needed him.

Then there is the infamous “27Club” which started with Jim Morrison’s death at the age of 27. Several prominent 27 year old rock stars died between 1969-71, solidifying the myth. Morrison was soon joined by Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Brian Jones. Later, music legends Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse followed.

It is hard to pin down what this death predilection is. The pressures and expectations of fame foisted upon vulnerable and sensitive artistic personalities may be a partial explanation. Life is difficult enough. The emotional self-regulation that may have saved them from suicidally driven forces might be the very element that allows superstars to perform at the level they do.

Fitzgerald wasn’t alone in the realm of doomed literary luminaries. Ernest Hemingway took his own life at 61. Sylvia Plath stuck her head in a gas oven to check out. Virginia Woolf put rocks in her pocket to weigh her down as she elected death by drowning. For all of their creative output and fame, it didn’t mitigate whatever internal pain and emptiness they were dealing with.

For me managing emotional pain and mitigating emptiness has been a key marker of how well I am managing life. I keep pain at bay these days largely by not engaging in painful activities. Or actions that will invite negative consequences at any rate. Seems simple enough. But it wasn’t always that straightforward and some days, it still isn’t. It has been a tough learning and a discipline and a decision of the “don’t go there” variety.

In about two weeks, I will celebrate my 24th anniversary of sobriety. In its place, I engage in all of the “healthy” coping mechanisms that life offers: yoga, meditation, exercise, reading, writing, time in nature, “talk therapy” and if I’m completely honest, “retail therapy.” Except for the last one which causes its own distress, these modalities are pretty effective most of the time.

So I renew my commitment to writing for me, myself and I alone. I like putting my thoughts and feelings and opinions out there for no one but myself. If I attract and find fellow travelers to walk on this path with me for a while, that’s a bonus.

But I abhor the notion of fame for fame’s sake. I know marketing is essential in today’s brand-soaked social environment, but hey. There are thousands and thousands, maybe millions out there, who are happily seeking out and eating up the fame bandwidth. I hope they all know how fleeting and fickle fame will be to them when it matters. If they don’t know now, one day they will.

Fame doesn’t need me, nor I it. I plan (with God’s complicity) to live to a ripe and healthy and sober old age. I have made headlines and bylines in my short turn on this planet. That’s been plenty. It is important to know when is enough.

Auld Lang Syne

I think of what I might say to my friend from long, long ago.

When I see her again.

I think of what it will take to get to where she is now. Winging my way back to visit someone I have not spoken with in person for … ever.

The journey-to-be plays out in my head: first getting to the airport, arriving, navigating the checkin counter, the security line, the waiting lounge, the flight to her current there, arriving.

She’ll order a soda with lemon. I’ll have a tonic water with lemon, too. We both turned our backs on mead and the grape some time ago.

I imagine we will gently jog down memory lane.

Trying to look at life and our life as it was then through the microscope of hindsight to recall – inaccurately – what once was and will never come again.

I struggle to remember what it was that tore us asunder all those years ago. What words did I say? How did I act? I writhe internally with discomfort as I recall all the possible friendship-fracturing infractions. I was a troubled child.

Why did she matter so damned much? What was it that created such an impassable gulf between us until now, all those years ago, to arrive back at where we are now: a place of truce and reconciliation?

Age, maybe. Curiosity likely, too. Two friends who knew each other when they were young nobodies. Perhaps we want to test each other and ourselves to see if one or the other of us remembers anything from back then in exactly the same way. Unlikely.

She became a superstar. Her god given talents fully explored in this lifetime and her contributions globally recognized and lauded. It is fair to say, our paths diverged.

Yet, here we are making a conscious choice to reconnect. And to what end, I wonder? For my part, I loved her much. Banishment from her life ate away at my soul for my whole adult life.

So maybe, our reunion is simply that. To be able to tell her how much I missed her. How much less my life was without her to share it as we once had without even touching base occasionally. To give simple thanks for the gift of grace and forgiveness she is giving me for sins which neither of us remembers now with any clarity.

To sit at her fire and hoist a mug again. It truly is only that I seek. To let her know how much she meant to me and how affecting the loss of her presence was. And to tell her how happy I am to see her. One more time.

Up we’ll both stand in whatever social venue we mutually selected and agreed upon to share this ritual of reunion. We’ll hug likely, and share pleasantries and reaffirm that yes, there once was something of substance that mattered between us as friends.

She’ll turn and leave to go back to her there. I’ll turn and leave and head back to my temporary lodgings and start planning the steps needed to eventually fly home.

After that meeting, I expect I will never meet with her in person again. We will leave each other along the way as we once did so many years ago. But we’ll leave each other this time … differently.