And that's a wrap on year two

One of these mornings,

Will be the loudest you hear.

You'll write your story on firecracker paper,

And disappear.

The story I heard,

Is that people are bored,

And the measures you take,

To wrestle with your Lord.

All the money you take,

All the memories you spill,

Will He measure your time,

Will He measure your will?

This is about a month late.  I reckoned if I didn't write something down soon it would not be at all, so here it is.

I failed the certification exam.  So I'll be studying a lot over the summer preparing for the next attempt.

I let the last of my clients go this month.  So the past is officially the past.  I struggled with it in the immediate aftermath of telling my clients, their reactions caught me off guard.  But I quickly remembered why I'm making this change and any lingering second thoughts have since dissipated.

I'm taking the gap in employment as an opportunity to do a long road trip across the united states.  Of course that's quite exciting.  I'm especially excited to see old friends on the west coast whom I have not visited with in many years.

Seems like the only drama in my life these days belongs to other people, and my role is to not get caught up in any of it!

Anyhow, since it's right and proper for a bit of looking back in these kinds of things, here's something I wrote in my journal the other day that sums up some important ground for me:

One of the things I discovered in early sobriety is that I didn't have the first clue about handling my emotions, about how to set boundaries and cultivate healthy relationships with other people

I did not self identify as being neurotic and insecure, but eventually I discovered those attributes greatly informed how I interacted with people, how my overwhelming need for validation and approval led me into one dysfunctional situation after another. Everything has always been crazy nuts and over the top until I exploded in a fiery ball of burnout. Then I'd patch myself together and do it again. Well I'm tired of that shit and my preference at this point is to live with a little more skill and refinement.

Meditation.  Why?

Meditation is primarily about developing a measure of control over my mind. It's more like a martial art than a touchy-feely thing.

What's interesting about it is control is not about force, it's not about will, it's not about "trying".  This is quite counter-intuitive for a lifelong try-hard.

It's about letting go, releasing, detaching, being. Allowing thoughts to rise and fall without responding. Sometimes I get trapped inside the bubble of something really strong, and I learn how to gently release myself from it and let it drift away. Not self identifying as the thoughts or emotions that come up within me. Instead observing them as phenomena, watching how they originate, unfold and transition. And sometimes it feels like I've woken up, everything just is. No mental dialog, no telling stories, creating narratives, flitting from one topic to another like a crazed moth. I'm just there, taking in sensory input and noticing the smallest and most subtle of details.

An acquaintance who I think is a bit bemused by all of this recently asked me "What metric shall be used to judge one's own formations of thoughts?".  And I knew the answer right away. I think that's a good sign."

Pretty weird huh?  I'm fairly certain that I'm out of my fucking mind.  And I'm pretty happy about it.

-s

Better bring your own redemption when you come

Pages turning
Pages torn and pages burning
Faded pages, open in the sun
Better bring your own redemption when you come
To the barricades of heaven where I'm from.

When I started this journal, I had recently come to the realization that I had a serious problem with addiction, and that if I didn't do something about it things were going to get worse.  So I resolved to do something!

The first year and a half or so of this journal is an account of doing precisely that.  It was more than just kicking the booze and smokes to the curb.  It was a complete reboot of how I live my life from the ground up.  It’s not that I was doing everything wrong, it’s more that I saw it as an opportunity to start with a blank sheet of paper and retool, taking into account everything I had learned in my 40 some odd years of living.

I feel like I've done a pretty decent job.

It feels like a good time to re-frame the last couple of years.  Another round of major changes is coming when the career part of the reboot hits full stride and I want to document my mindset at this time.

Looking Back:

The facts are at the time, getting drunk a lot was in the short term a more appealing alternative to examining the reality of my situation.  Let me tell ya, that doesn't lead to good things.

Probably the most difficult thing to come to grips with was my professional life was a shambles.  I had entered into a partnership to save the remains of a business that I had put all my savings into.  And if there was ever an example of letting go being better than getting yourself deeper into trouble this is it.  The people I was involved with make a living out of finding distressed small business owners and offering them a life ring.  The thing is, any time you’re dealing from a position of weakness, i.e. not having any money, the results are going to be predictable.  Anyone who has ever gotten a payday loan or gotten into the habit of pawning things can tell you how it works.

I had put all of myself into making it a success and after a couple of years I realized I was kidding myself; the game was rigged.  I was super deflated.  I stopped caring because there was no way to win.  So I took my paychecks and did as little as possible, and drank a whole lot.  This had the predictable effect of alienating everyone who worked for and with me, my brother included, and I certainly don’t blame them for viewing me in a negative light.  The adult thing would have been to walk away, rather than take the money and lead people on when I had stopped believing and no longer cared.

The other major source of trouble was my girlfriend has a daughter who is struggling with life, ironically in many of the same ways I did when I started drinking heavily even though she’s not a drinker.  But the underlying psychology of not having good tools for coping with stuff, not understanding the taking care of yourself comes first, of trying to find escape in pleasurable things, the same.  She ended up staying with us and she brought a lot of craziness and stress into the household, and my girlfriend and I just could not see eye to eye on how to deal with it.  So once again, drinking a lot seemed like a good short term answer!

In sum, I was renting a house I couldn't afford to rent, I had spent all my savings to keep my prior business afloat and was carrying debt from it I could not afford to pay due to my lifestyle.  I was a small business owner trapped in a dead end situation, and I was having problems with the girlfriend and her family.

And the drinking was making it 50 times worse.  Even though I thought of it as “taking a break” from my worries.  Reality is it was a major contributor if not a cause of problems in some cases, as heavy drinking affects your judgment, and not just when you’re drunk or hung-over.

The thing is when you start running from your problems, it changes you, but you don’t realize it when it’s happening.  Far from being an oasis of happiness and good times, drinking life was turning me in to an unhappy stupid fat shell of a man.  A hungry ghost.  The world is full of people with big bellies and pickled brains who have forgotten how awesome life is.  No one has any sympathy for a hungry ghost, but hungry ghosts like to keep company with each other because addiction makes a person feel lonely.

That’s all in the rear-view mirror now.  Got healthy, learned how to take good care of myself, got my finances cleaned up, got out of a bad business arrangement, and learned some skills and tools for coping with life, though I have serious room for improvement in that department.  I do get along with the girlfriend’s daughter now, which is amazing, because I thought that was impossible at one point.

The big takeaway from my mid-life crisis I guess is living is a process, and the qualities of your process is going to have a lot to say about whether your life sucks or is awesome.  Things aren't always going to go well, how to you deal with it when they don't?

Looking forward:

For the last year I’ve been studying to re-enter the field I was in before I went into business for myself.  And anyone who knows me knows when I apply myself to something it's usually pretty insane and over the top, and this has been no different. 

It’s been fun and good for me.  It’s also been humbling.   I have major exam coming up on the 15^th of May and I’m studying my ass off for it, 50-60 hours a week.  If I don’t pass I’ll take it again and again until I do.

I miss the beach.  It’s painful not living there.  I miss my morning coffee, watching the sun come up over the horizon, I miss hanging out with the neighbors, having barbecues, playing guitar, going surfing, fishing, the salt and the sand in every nook and crevice of my things.  I miss it so much.

It motivates me to study even harder and to keep moving forward so I can come back to the beach and buy a place, grow old there, surfing with the groms and hanging out, playing guitar, softly singing sweet songs of the contented.

-s