The Journey's the Thing…

Today is my third anniversary. I actually have over 4 years sober from alcohol, but I did some other things, so I only have 3. Honesty is the best policy, etc…If you get a chance to hear my story, you can pick up some of the details.

It’s been an amazing year. My schoolwork has progressed from an idea of going back to school to a first semester ending yesterday with an A- GPA. I guess that is a 3.25. That’s amazing for someone like me, who rarely achieved anything over a C+. A B- was an occasion to celebrate!

I have 2 sponsees who are both very different and both doing well, as long as I let them do mostly what they want. As long as they want to stay sober, they will, with or without my help. I have learned to give them just enough rope to hang themselves and be there when they need me.

My relationship with my mother has grown in leaps and bounds. At one point I came home for security, now I stay home to be of help and comfort to one who needs me. This is an amends I could never have planned out. To be available at this time in my life to someone in a trying time in their life is truly a gift.

The sun is out and the temperature has cracked 5 degrees above zero. I have to go to my shrink this morning and then a last small round of Christmas shopping for my father, his wife, and my niece. I already have some stuff for her, but she is thirteen and needs some cool music for Christmas. I’m thinking Beck, Sinead, and Ani. I’ll ask at the store. It’s a hip store, so they’ll know.

I visit with my father next week in The Big City. He and his wife are in town for a few days so I’ll hop a southbound commuter for a couple of days. I haven’t seen him since before I was released from jail, so this will be an emotional time. I’d like to make my amends to him somehow. Maybe it’s already happening and I just can’t see.

So what’s next for Johnnyboy in his fourth year of sobriety? More school, certainly, and more travel. I’ve been thinking about another sorely neglected aspect of my life: dating.

We’ll see…They’ll have to be ‘Blog-compatible’…

Johnnyboy

Not really. I mean it’s cold outside right now at 9:10PM. The weather-o-meter says 7 degrees above zero, but who’s counting…This is the kind of weather that freezes pipes, exposed skin, and leaves the homeless and destitute with few alternatives. Jails and shelters are filling up with the lucky ones. The unlucky…Tragic and senseless.

I know these facts only because I served time in the county lockup. Jail populations increase as the weather changes to winter. Many folks will gladly take a drunk-and-disorderly charge if only to serve 6 months inside where they are guaranteed 3 hots and a cot, cable TV, medical attention, and all the hands of Pitch you can play. I was there. This is the truth.

I am eternally grateful for not having to make this choice today. It is purely by chance that I do not have these decisions to make. There but for the grace of God go I…

I heard a great thing last night at a meeting…

“Today I work on the effort, not worry about the outcome.”

Simple, profound, and true. I find myself working the same program, sometimes. It shows when I work this philosophy to its fullest. When I don’t my serenity quickly leaves me, like a cold wind.

Here are the haiku…

#34.
The yip of foxes
in the darkened, snowy, wood,
all bare oak and birch.

#42.
Crisp winter night air
an owl flies across the moon,
wings silhouetted.

#59.
These are old witches
swaying ’round and cackling:
icy, windy, trees.

Johnnyboy