January 9 2008 DonInLondon - ‘Day In the Life’

Some Changes For My Blog

As you may have noticed I am including the link for the daily AA readings, top right on this web page, so for a good read follow the link. That is if recovery readings are for you. This is instead of including words from external sources. So the link is there. Top right!

Tuesday For Wednesday

My you tube videos feature the readings of the day for January 9 ahead of the day and are published updated late evening for next day. And what I write here is about recovery and my day and experience, strength and hope.

Experiences

A day of updating and changing various parts of my web and looking into my photo vault for daily publishing. I am becoming more and more keen to develop my interests in photography and enjoy publishing the pictures I take. May seem quite a limited outlook? Maybe, at the same time I continue with the recovery blog and helping generally as asked by other fellows in AA.

Last night Chairing a Meeting

Sounds a bit grand, actually it merely means I go along to a meeting and share my experiences, strength and hope to people in the meeting and then others share back. I used to spend my life in front of people and share all sorts about companies and how people work and develop. Somehow the experience of ‘chairing’ can leave me feeling very out of sorts. It did today.

Feedback

We know if we have done the job reasonably well from the feedback others give us and its really hard always for me to accept any sort of praise. Never really learned to accept I did a reasonable job in the old days and there is some hangover from times past which leaves me depressed when speaking in front of others.

Today

Two AA meetings and its always good to move myself out and about. I have difficulty walking and yet I know I must, and also ride the bike. Last night left me very uncomfortable as neuropathy advances. it’s a one way ailment which is not about to disappear. And it does make me slow and ponderous.

Hinde St & Kensington Shy Sharers

Both good for me to see and hear people I have known for a number of years in the fellowship. I always feel better knowing I am in the right place and with ‘my’ sort of people. That is reformed and still in grip of a malady for which there is no cure, alcoholism. Recovery is a day long at best.

Strength

I learned again that we can get overheated and upset by small things, in the big of life, it’s the small things that often trip us up. I have good friends, and one was chairing tonight. Friendships are as important to me as recovery in many ways. Recovery and the principles need come first so I may be right with my friends and friendships. We may feel it better the other way round, and actually it’s the programme which continues to remind me of the importance of the principles so friendships can work as I do too.

Hopes

Just small and gentles ones tonight. I am hoping a friend of mine is ok, they have had a bereavement, and its not easy for anyone. I have experienced quite a few bereavements in recent times, and it gets no easier to feel my feelings, and acceptance only comes when it may. We grieve at our own pace.

Feelings Never Lie?

I am still pondering over this. I am aware that it is a bold statement, and truly its only when we understand the depth of feeling we have, that we get to understand our true capacity often to have feelings. Love of course is always top, although we are so good at denial we often cover up as soon as its activated!

Denials

We need denial, it is a coping mechanism. Some suggest denial is a coping strategy, I am learning it is better to not try strategise a profound set of feelings. We are better not coping letting feelings out as we may and only cope where the pain is lessened when we are unable to deal with all of what has been going on at once. Suppression leads to bigger problems later I realise, for me anyway.

Not Coping and Expression

A better path, never learned by me, as my stiff upper lip and decorum made it hard to understand feelings and what to do with them. All in all I pleased and very gratified to be a late bloomer, very late!

So for now its ok just the way it is. And am pleased to be home and out of the elements. I just had a call from a good and very wise fellow. Is always good for me to be a part of life and this feels just about right tonight..

Acceptance is a Key

A friend who is travelling came up in conversation, and sometimes we hear good and sometimes we wish them well, as there is nothing else we can do.
I hope for good tidings, it will be a while and no doubt the worst might happen, such is the nature of this malady.

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January 9th 2007

Getting Over "IT"

The "it" of life can be anything we encounter, which tends to lay us low and maybe make us feel undermined. I realise now why I was upset yesterday, in olden days I was able to feel like I might find ways to retaliate and make other people feel horrible for things done to me.

And over the last few hours and last night I came to the conclusion that some things no matter how unsavoury and unpleasant are just not worth the time and effort.

And actually highlighting and letting powers greater than me scrutinise the situation has left me feeling more ok and more right sized than before the event.

We do get times when others have a go, simply because they don’t find us helpful or compliant to their outlook or point of view. And its quite natural for them to try and make us feel bad in some way. When others suggest we are something they choose to describe, we don’t really have much challenge other than the record and what people know about us. And as to making out someone has qualities or virtues which are untrue, or similarly vices which are criminal, it is an unfortunate set of events. So we are best to hand these types of problem over to authorities with power to do something if they feel its right to do so. Indeed its not my judgment which is being questioned at all, it is the behaviour of another, who knows me well enough not to participate in their malicious and degrading behaviour.

Fellowship Friends

My fellowship friends have been fantastic, as usual. Even when I have nothing much going on, they check on me to see I am ok. And I need this help, for its easy for someone like me, to get off track.

Being Human

We are all human and we don’t like to be falsely represented, or to be involved in harmful conflicts. I don’t for sure. Anyway what I know is, I am trying to do the next right thing. And that is simply to live as well as I can and make of my life what I may. And feedback is great. It helps me when I wander off the track and helps me find the right path..

Contacts

I am so grateful for people inside and out of the fellowship who just keep an eye on what I do and share. There are in tune with my moral compass. And they know me better than I do probably, as they are on the receiving end of me. And it’s a two way street of feedback.

A friend I have known a while, has thirty plus years sober, a great wise old man. I hope he does not mind me describing him so, but he is over 70! And smiles here, has an agile and young outlook!

We shall have coffee this week sometime. And will be good, because I value him immensely, for his humour and wisdom and forgiving nature. And if I make it to his age and where he is, simply living a simple and straightforward life, I will have contentment.

Tonight - Step 4

Now this step of action in the AA programme asks us to write a fearless moral inventory of our history. This reads and feels like a great exposing of the inner person. And of course it is. The good news in all these things is we get to know ourselves, our part in the life we have had, the true of good and bad. There are so many ways to actually do this step it would a million people a million descriptions.

In essence though we start to get a grip on who we are, how we have been, where we are ok and where we need make changes

Changes are the Key

Not big ones, and the real way to do this is to remember we are in a fellowship where we live one day at a time.

Changes in the Day

Some people spend months identifying there part in life, and this thorough approach can be very revealing, after a while though the themes become quite clear, where we need to change our attitudes and our behaviour.

Fundamental Change

Is a day by day process. People and Organisations get buggered up by calamities and big changes which cannot be sustained. So in our programme a day at a time, we get to change a bit and then another bit. We make life by changing our attitude and our behaviour, its that simple. Doing it is very hard, as we are set in stone sometimes!

Making Changes requires awareness and help and support.

So don’t go changing to try and please me comes to mind, a Billy Joel song. What’s important is changing ourselves and our outlook and behaviour so we make life work after we give up our terrible drinking habit, to live sober and have a happy up and down ordinary life. this means we achieve our ordinary human status and get on as others do and deal with the good and hard as we go.

Changes for me Today?

Yes in attitude and outlook, keeping it so and reinforcing changes is another hard path. I need fellowship and good orderly direction (god, if that were my key), or good conscience and higher power of AA to help with wisdom and direction.

We are not islands as somebody many years wrote about, Donne methinks:

"No man is an island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
it tolls for thee."

-- John Donne

January 9th 2006

Good News And Bad News

Where is the news today? International news is depressing and local news as bad. Where are the feel good stories we all need to take our focus from the serious. Indeed should we take our focus off the serious?

I guess not. As we see new political struggles emerging in key states, masquerading as religious geo political stances, the old necessarium of economy, money, lending and greed emerge triumphant!

So what changes? There is a mood emerging slowly in decadent civilisations within an educated populace, which is growing and undermining old stogies and decrepit warhorses.

Emerging slowly, yet strongly and more aware the big business and profit racketeers...

Time moves too slowly for impetus to gather, a few more decades I suspect.

January 9th 2005

Handles

To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.

-/-

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