Category: Alcoholism and Recovery

Paper done, tweaking ahead…

Johnnyboy

My paper on Yugoslavia is finished.  All I have to do is finalize the bibliography, correct some of the last few pages, and submit it for official inspection.  Done.  All forty pages.  Granted, I could have written the thing in two weeks, but it took me all summer.  Now I can concentrate on the b/w work in the darkroom and be through that as well.  12 credits to go after this month!  A light at the end of the tunnel…

On an AA note, I realized last night what Step Six means.  It means that my character defects limit me from being all that I could be.  It seems obvious, but it has taken me 6 years to understand that concept.  I think my friend Lolly is right…A Step a year…

I ran into an old friend at the Men’s Group last week.  He was always a good man, supportive of me and now he has 6 months of sobriety.  We talked of old times and he told me that another old colleague had OD’d last year sometime–found dead in his dirty, dark apartment.  Too much Crack. His heart exploded.  No one was surprised.  I certainly wasn’t.  RIP George Benner–It could have been me.

Johnnyboy

2010 International Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous…

Johnnyboy

As former GSR of my AA homegroup I am still on the mailing list.  This means that I have received the applications for the 2010 International Convention being held in San Antonio, Texas next July.  I am going, and have only to mail my registration and book my room.  I’ll do that today.

I brought the applications to the meeting last night and made the announcement, held up the flyers, etc…Then I saw that the registration applications went into the chairperson’s notebook, which means they will never be seen again.  This makes me sick, and opens my eyes again to the apathy that surrounds me in this program.  This group is full of people with long-term sobriety who do nothing outside of coming to one meeting a week (maybe two) and leaving it at that.  How sad.  They have lost the gift of desperation and in doing so dampen the exciting fire of sobriety that I felt when I came into the rooms, and still feel at certain meetings.  They no little or nothing of the 12 Traditions (which are not suggestions, like the Steps), and to top it off, I found out last week at a business meeting that the current treasurer (15 years sober) had no idea what a prudent reserve was.  Once again, puking time is upon me.

In any case, their sobriety is not my own, and they can do what they want, but they give the impression that it is OK to just go to meetings and so forth.  They take it all for granted.  Blah, blah, blah…listen to me go.

Good news is all around me…Mom is doing much better (reading, with it, etc…) and the world still spins on its wobbly axis despite my disappointment with a bunch of whinging old ladies.  I am going to finish my thesis and photo class by the end of next week and move along in life.  This, I declare, is my goal today.

Johnnyboy