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So this week ahas been one of those ‘when it rains, it pours’ kind of weeks. Emotions have run high in my mind about my future, present, and past and the eternal question ‘what will become of me?’. The answer, of course in in the hands of a power greater than myself, and by that I do not mean a person, but rather a Force that guides and bends to the natural magnetic fields within us and without us.

I finished my paper on Martin Hiedegger and sent it to my professor. That means I have officially completed my first year of college, and as of now, have retained a straight ‘A’ average. I have been able to do this only because I am sober today. So much rests on my sobriety…thank the Force I don’t have to keep myself sober, just do the next right thing and try to turn over the rest.

My session with my shrink the other day was very interesting as well. We spoke about all my anger, that has seemed to turn into sadness these days, and both agreed that I was grieving over the past (what could have been, what was, etc…). This is different than the pity pot, because if used in a healthy way, the grief leads to acceptance, and then to letting-go, and that led our conversation to emotional attachments. Without going into too many details, lets assume that emotional attachments are a good thing. They are, too, until they start to infringe on the well-being of others and the mental health of the emotional volunteer. That’s when they need to be let go and dumped…the attachments, I mean. I think the 3rd Step says something about that in the 12/12…but I’m not sure.

Another thing we talked about was my art. He reminded me that although I could never be the painter that my sister was, or the academic wiz of my other sister, or a writer like my father, he felt that what I may find out, in the second half of my life, is that I am the real artist of the family. Not to be too presumptuous, but I do write and play my own music, write pretty well, and my prints, photographs, and sketches are pretty good (people who know have told me so). I also have a great sense of culinary balance, a natural love and understanding of engineering and design, and the ability to comprehend dense philosophical thought. All this stuff existed while I was drinking, for sure, but it was always suppressed by my own fears (that I would never live up to…to….to what?). So this is all stuff I can explore, and it’s no race, because I really don’t care what any of my siblings, relatives, or anyone else, thinks about my artisitic bent.

To celebrate my finishing my Freshman year, I bought myself a new guitar. I haven’t had a new guitar in about 8 or 9 years, and when I got sober (about 4 years ago) the music stopped coming out of me (which it does. I can’t help it. I ‘hear’ songs fully composed in my head, complete with lyrics) and I was despondent that it would never come out again. It seems that this phase is over. A song washed over my noodle last night as I was falling asleep, so I jumped up and wrote it all down. Nice tune, too. Dark, spooky, with juju grease in between the words. True story, too, I think. It’s called ‘The Haunted House of Dreams”…the chorus reads…

‘Orchid powder, cottonmouth juice
the organ grinder’s gone to town
to the creaky haunted house of dreams
and the monkey’s not around’

So I bought the new guitar, an acoustic-electric, made by Dean, a very nice company, and it sounds super. Here’s a picture…as well as a picture I took at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last week…

Johnnyboy

Well, last week, after the urging of another AA who correctly pointed out that my lack of sponsorship was making me tense and freaky, I made a decision and asked another fellow to be my sponsor. He’s a guy who I have already worked a 5th Step with, and who I also admire, but not because he’s a spiritual superman—quite the opposite. He shares his struggles as well as his victories at the meetings and has great wisdom and humor as a result. This was something that was missing from the previous relationship. Nonetheless, I made the break official two nights later when I “gently withdrew” (as another AA put it) from the old union. I had no other way of reaching M, except via email. He didn’t return my calls, so I was left with that avenue. In my letter to him, which was short, I acknowledged how much he had guided, inspired, and taught me over the past 3 years, and how it was time for me, I felt, to seek that guidance from someone else.
I wished him well, sent my hopes and prayers to him and his family, and hit ‘send’. Not the best way to sever a tie like that, but still, I haven’t heard a peep from him since, so I assume it is a mutual feeling.
The good news is that my new sponsor solved my 9th Step dilemma right off the bat…He assured me that by remaining sober I am taking steps against committing the same derilictions as I had in the past, but I could go farther as an official amends. He suggested that I take the inspiration from the 3rd Step prayer and the Promises, namely when it says to “Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help…” and also “No matter how far down th scale we have gone…”. So the upshot is that he he told me to find someone else who had a similar (or identical) story to tell and share my experience, strength, and hope with them, as way to both get some things off of my chest, but to show them that perhaps they aren’t as alone in this world as they may believe. The final result is that I contacted another program of recovery that deals with these issues and will be attending a meeting tomorrow night. I am nervous, to be honest, but also excited, and will be saying many prayers to try to gain humility and clarity before I go.

So, the previous sponsor set me on an intellectual, fact-finding. quest for some abstract quality with which to quantify an amends that, in his words, “should hurt”. This is all wrong. I’ll take the new sponsor’s program of action first, thank you very much. Humility and service will always beat the hair shirt and knotted ropes of self-castigation.

As an AA is often heard to say around these parts…”The chapter is called “Into Action” not “Into Thinking”.

Johnnyboy