8 Year Soberversary

Theme music:

Summary of the last two years:

• Career flourishing
• Struggled with injuries and chronic pain
• Health finally seems to be trending up

Years 7 & 8:  Moar Roller Coaster

Health

Over the last couple of years I've spent time on and off the bike.  The knee got better, then I started working with a coach.  I got really fit, but by the time I reinjured my knee and had to get back off the bike I had also given myself a case of Sciatica and lower back pain.  For months I couldn't sleep for more than 4 hours at a time, and I was sleeping on a yoga mat.  Having sleep dictated by pain and fatigue battle for top spot is. not. fun.  It wears you down.

Looking back, the knee (re)injury was probably a gift because it forced me to stop before I made things worse.   For years I had taken it as an article of faith that cycling was the cornerstone habit that drove my trajectory. I could easily write a book's worth of material laying out the case for this.

Yet, somehow my obsession with progression and improving my fitness led me to a dark place of pain and chronic injury, so clearly something went wrong.  Was it the same psychology that led me to the depths of chronic drinking so many years ago?  I believe the answer is yes.  

So what went wrong? 

 Man, I get tunnel vision *really bad* when I want something.  That's mostly an asset, but in this case, it became a liability.  There wasn't enough rest, recovery, self-care.  I beat myself down into a state of nervous exhaustion and that's when my body started breaking.  Damn it, I should have known better.  I did know better!  But I was chasing a number, and it was so close.  300 watts for an hour.  300 watts and I would stop.

My body gave me the finger at 292 watts.

I had knee surgery in August of 2019.  The surgeon repaired the meniscus and cleaned out some loose tissue, and found that I had arthritis.   It's taken a lot longer to heal from knee surgery than I expected but it's definitely a lot better.  Obviously, there's no fix for the arthritis, only management.

Re: sciatica.  I still can't sit on a chair without literal pain in my ass after a couple of hours.  I wrap a towel around a 2" piece of PVC pipe and sit on that which takes pressure away from the nerve.  I do rehab it daily and it's slowly improving.

Re: lower back.  This is the scariest one.  Back injections have been ineffective.  I was told spinal fusion would probably not help.  What does help mobility and strengthening exercises.  It has gotten better but the experts tell me the overall trend on these is always downward.  That's going to be a yikes from me.  For now, it's manageable and I'm thankful for that.  

Now that my health is a limiter, the days of chasing numbers on a bicycle are done.  That means refactoring my relationship with the bicycle, and perhaps my approach to life in general.  I'm feeling my way through it.

Travel

In 2019 I went to Mallorca, Spain for a week, and then northern Italy for nearly a month.  The Italy trip in particular was incredible.  Venice blew my mind and I've developed a mild obsession with it.  Riding in the Alps on the Swiss border was amazing and I want to experience a whole lot more of that!

 

Venice Canal shot

Caroline and I

first climb in the Alps (This is Canaco)

High Altitude Sufferface

The iconic Passo Dello Stelvio

Lake Garda from the top of Monte Baldo

Climbing Monte Baldo

Career

In August of 2019 I accepted a job working for literally the best company in the world.  After having seen my fair share of corporate malfeasance up close and from a distance over the years, I had little to no trust that large businesses would look out for the well-being of the workers.  However, there are industries where attracting the best talent is a key ingredient, and these companies are incentivized to treat the workforce well.

So yeah. It's been amazing.  I've never worked somewhere that gives its employees practically unlimited resources for professional development.  I'm definitely a small fish in a big pond now and I've got a few years of open space to grow.  Exciting times.  Sometimes I want to pinch myself and make sure it's real.

Education

At the beginning of the year, I enrolled in a Cybersecurity Bachelor's program at Western Governor's University and I just completed term 1.  I put all the math courses in the first term and took the pain :). 

Covid - the elephant in the room

Yup, it's pretty much sucked.  I was extremely upset at first because I did the math when the initial modeling came out, and it was obvious that there's going to be a lot of death and suffering.  People have been overly optimistic and treating like it's some kind of political thing and not an existential threat for millions of people.  It's weird and confusing and it makes me angry sometimes.

I've found my feet and try not to get too distracted.

Status of the quit:

I think it says something that I forgot to celebrate my soberversary two years in a row.

In summary:

• I don't think about drinking
• I don't think about the quit
• I don't care about other people's drinking unless it's hurting the people around them
•  I fully trust myself to take on hard shit and not give up.

Best wishes, and may you care for yourself with ease.

Relentlessly moving forward, 

-s

6 Year Soberversary

6 Year Soberversary

Tunes:

Summary of the last year:

• Got in the best shape of my life
• Rode in a bunch of crazy awesome places on my bike
• Got a knee injury and lost all my fitness
• Passed the CCIE security lab
• Got Married
• Approaching a career crossroads
• Kicked in the balls a little financially, but able to absorb the blows

It's been a roller coaster year.  Started out unbelievably awesome.  I actually started getting kind of fast on my bicycle.  Stayed in the mountains in North Georgia for a month and it was so great.  Riding on lightly trafficked mountain roads every day, working on my laptop at the kitchen table.  Then I got to ride in Colorado, Oregon, and South Carolina and it was just ridiculous.   Started making plans for Spain and Italy for the following year.  So many good memories. I can close my eyes and flip through them at will and it's amazing.

But all the riding in the mountains on a bike that wasn't geared correctly for it took a toll on my left knee.  I ignored the soreness because it always went away after a couple of days.  Then one day instead of going away it got much worse.  I had to stop riding for the first time since I quit drinking.  It's been my one major anchor habit so that was weird.

I took advantage of the downtime to fully focus myself on my studies and after two attempts I passed the CCIE security exam.

Result of passing the lab has been a bit bittersweet thus far.  It's not going to make a difference in my salary at work, and the expense both in terms of paying for travel and the exams, as well as lost income from working fewer hours, really took a financial toll.

Reality is the place I'm working at has shifted gears to  cutting costs as much as possible without outright breaking shit (or even breaking things and watching to see how badly they break).  This is a new thing, and I don't think that's going away.  These "spend to fix the broken things, then cut costs until things fall apart again" cycles are common in businesses.  So, yeah.  It's the right of the owners to manage their assets as they see fit and I have no hard feelings about it whatsoever.

Bottom line is I'll have to make some changes to get a return on my investment, and doing that may mean my cozy life of sitting in my home office and looking out at the Lighthouse and the Ocean could be winding down.

Somewhere in there I got married.  We've been together for a long time; both of us were married once before where things ended badly, so this was weird and we kept it low key.

I'm back on the bike but my knee is still not right.  Rehabbing it and building fitness within the limits that I have.  I don't know how that's going to turn out either.  I might have to get it scoped, simply don't know at this point.  But I am grateful for being able to ride

And for the kicker the spring has brought an avalanche of unplanned expenses.  Between that, paying for CCIE, and the injury, we pretty much have zero plans for vacation this year now.  I'll find some way to take some time to unplug this fall, but I'm knee deep getting shit done right now and don't even want to think about it.

Weird year.  Ebb and flow of life.

Status of the quit

I had to use this blog to look up my quit date.  That's how often I think about drinking now.  One thing that's changed is I no longer pay attention to other people's drinking unless it's pretty clear it's affecting them or others adversely.

In summary:

• I don't think about drinking
• I don't think about the quit
• I don't care about other people's drinking unless it's hurting the people around them
•  I fully trust myself to take on hard shit and not give up.

And that's it for year 6 I guess.

 2x CCIE.  Deal with it.

Best wishes, and may you care for yourself with ease.

Relentlessly moving forward,

-s

5 year Soberversary

Tunes:

Summary of the last year:

• Saved money
• Stayed in shape
• Worked my ass off
• Started studying for the CCIE security lab
• Bought a super bitchen totally awesome road bike :) 

This has been a pretty calm year.  It's not that my overall effort level or amount of striving towards my goals has lessened.  I think it's just an in-between year.  Some things got done, new things got started and I'm just going about my business.  Settled into a routine that works for me, and I'm living my life.

I don't feel nagged by self doubt or anxiety as much as I used to be.  There's a lot to be said for developing trust in yourself.  It has to be organic though; it's not something that comes from positive affirmations that aren't backed by anything..  It has to come from making commitments and following through on them.  Every time you say you're going to do something and then you don't it weakens you internally.  On the other hand following through (no matter what) strengthens you.

Significant outgrowth of that:  As I've gained trust in myself, I've found that I'm able to at least somewhat discern trustworthiness in others.  Even more interesting is when you kinda clump together to work on a project or something like that.  When you are part of a group where everyone is striving towards a common end and they trust each other it's immensely powerful.  I feel like I've been able to tap into that, and it's something I want to explore more.  It's such a tremendously powerful thing, can't be understated.

To put this in some context, trusting people is scary as fuck for someone with lifelong trust issues.  When you have them, there's typically a reason, and you can't wave those reasons aside and pretend they don't exist.  I guess that seems to be the ground now, the growth area.

Ok, about drinking and the quit.

I cannot recall what it feels like to have a strong compulsion to drink.  It's just gone.  I have drinking thoughts, but they're like if you see a bunch of ads for shrimp, then you think 'gosh I sure would like a plate of shrimp'.  It's just a result of being around messaging and advertisements and stuff.  Kinda funny.

What's interesting though, I very much note when people say they're gonna do things, then I see them posting pictures of themselves partying on social media, and surprise surprise, 'something came up' or 'came down with a cold', and they end up not doing what they said they were gonna do.

Seems like a small thing right?  It's not.  I use it as a reminder that even if the fantasy of controlled drinking was somehow magically possible for me, would I want the baggage that comes with it?  Are the struggles that are part and parcel of life not enough as is?

The answer is self evident at 5:30am when I pedal down the road on my bike, look out at the lighthouse and crescent moon, and the ocean glowing in the pre-dawn light.  I feel my heart coming to life as I feed power into the pedals, looking forward to the day's adventures ahead.

May you care for yourself with ease.

-s

4 year Soberversary

Some music:

Another eventful and interesting year in the books.

The TL;DR version:

1. Quitting drinking was the best decision I've ever made and it's not even close.
2. I've met a lot of great folks through simply getting out and riding my bike.
3. Caroline and I bought the condo on the Hillsboro inlet.  Mind pretty much blown
4. I passed the CCIE route/switch lab (woohoo!)
5. Professional life has been great.
6. I'm really a very fortunate person and have so much to be grateful for

Let's unpack a couple of things and make a proper journal entry.

Quitting drinking and what it's meant - pretty much everything good in my life has come from the quit. 

There was an incident I was thinking about recently.  Caroline had left me, and I was happy that I was going to be able to go out and party without someone harassing me and asking me where I was.  On the night in question I did some pre-gaming and drove the golf cart down to the corner. Walked up to the beach bar to meet up with my friends, and the off-duty cop working the door took one look at me and told me to beat it, and he better not see me getting behind the wheel.  I thought I was mildly buzzed and couldn't understand his reaction.  Having recently gone though a DUI (in which I wrecked Caroline's car BTW), I at least had the sense to keep my mouth shut and walk home, leaving the golf cart for later.

My sense of reality was so warped that pleasantly buzzed for me was piss drunk to someone else.  At that point it had dawned on me that I was on borrowed time and that being able to go out and party was not something I could safely do any more.  It was turning in to a game of I need to quit, but I want just one more.  one more day, one more drink, one more cigarette.

I did quit obviously.  A few months after the above incident I was at a house party and I put my red solo cup down and walked out, and that was it.  Since then life has been on a steady upward trajectory.  I don't take it for granted for a minute though.

I had my mind blown and expanded by the courage of others.

Last spring I had purchased a training package from a cycling studio.  I would show up twice a week at 6am and get my ass kicked on a computrainer.  Very effective!  So much so I bought my own smart trainer.  Anyway, those drives took a little bit time and I had some talks from Thanissaro Bhikkhu on a usb stick that I would listen to.

There was one talk in particular about dealing with pain and suffering that really resonated with me.  Basically what it amounts to is everyone suffers deeply, everyone experiences pain and loss.  One way to cope with it is to generalize.  In other words, don't personalize it.  "my pain", "my suffering".  When they become possessions like that, when we make them touchstones of our identity and personal narrative, it leaves us prone be becoming isolated emotionally, and easily offended.  "doesn't that person know what I've been through!", that sort of thing.

It was about this time that through riding my bike, I came in contact with people who've been through some very serious shit in their lives.  I saw how great their suffering was, and yet they were these amazing and open and caring people.  To see people suffer so deeply and to respond like that - it's as though this weight is lifted off of your shoulders.  It's inspiring and amazing and it makes me yearn to be a better person.   I could write page after page about these people.  I'm so lucky to have met them.

The Condo - It's been a hell of a thing.

We did close on the Condo.  We're still remodeling it.  Is't turned into a much larger project than we had imagined.  The building is 42 years old and the condo had never been updated.  Also getting good help is tough (understatement of the year).  He had to let the general contractor go, and getting a new one was not easy.  No one wants to come in and sort out someone eles's mess. We're finally closing in though.  :-)

Here's a panorama shot that shows why we fell in love with it.




Work has been good.
I work with some really great people who appreciate what I have to offer.  Hard to believe sometimes.  I was in a dysfunctional work situation for several years and that can make it hard to trust.  It's nice to not feel like I've got to watch my back at all times.  It's not an easy job and I wish I had some backup, but on the balance I don't have any serious complaints.

I passed the CCIE lab exam, now I'm going to go for an actual degree

Studying for the lab was a sacrifice.  It was tough at times.  But I did it, and I passed the exam.  I'm going to do another one!  Datacenter next.  I'm also planning on enrolling in WGU, an online school, and getting a proper degree.  Making study and learning part of my daily life seems to have been very good for me so it seems logical that I should continue.

The path forward in the coming year:

• Work hard
• Stay in shape mentally and physically
• Always be learning
• Be grateful for all the blessings in my life.

May you be happy and at ease.

-s

With no larger problems, that need to be erased.

My suggestion is to press play, then read while enjoying the music:

Today is my third soberversary.

Mindfulness is not just bare attention or raw presence.  It's presence combined with the memories and knowledge gained from prior experiences.  Therefore, this journal is an important exercise in mindfulness.

In the last year, I've composed perhaps half a dozen journal entries that I never wrote down.  Why didn't I?  I guess it didn't seem that important relative to other things I was engaged in.  But, I do think it is important to have written record to refer to if for nothing else, to ensure that I never wake up to another day 1 ever again.

It's been an eventful year. Last summer Caroline and I took a 6 week, 22 state trip across the United States.  What and adventure that was.  We hit most of the  major national parks out west.  I'll never forget the moment I came into close range of a bison while riding my bike through Yellowstone national park.

The thing that made the biggest overall impression was Yosemite national park.  The high Sierra was really something else.  I wanted so badly to buy a bunch of gear and disappear into the high Sierra, exploring its peaks, ridges, valleys, and undulations.  I settled for purchasing a kindle copy of John Muir's My first summer in the Sierra.  

Glacier point, then and now:

Granite is not forever, but it's for a damn long time compared to the lifespan of a human.

Another place that really spoke to me was a park we camped at in Arizona for about a week.  It was on an Indian reservation and it was very quiet and out of the way.  This box canyon was one of several within easy walking distance of the campsite..

And, of course I have to throw in a Yellowstone shot:

I would be remiss if I didn't post one photo from our time in Colorado:

After the trip I resumed my studies. However I found myself running low on money and I needed to go back to work.  Plan A was to get a basic job with not a lot of responsibility so I could continue to study for my next CCIE lab attempt.  However life had other plans.

I was sitting in a recruiter's office discussing a job that ticked all the boxes I was looking for.  A few minutes later her boss came in.  He peppered me with a bunch of questions, rapid fire style.  After he seemed satisfied that he had my measure in whatever respect he was looking for, he put down a job opening description in front of me.  It was for a company in South Florida and it paid twice the money of the job I was there to interview for.  

The job came with a lot of responsibility and I would have shift focus from my studies for a few months due to the distractions of having to both move and master the demands of the position being offered.

Stuff like that doesn't happen every day, so I pursed it and got the job.  That was in October of 2014.  The job has worked out so far, and I absolutely love living in South Florida.  It did take me a few months to get everything wired and sorted out, and now I am finally back to my network engineering studies.

I've been riding my bike a lot, getting fitter, though I still struggle with overeating.  Dang it.  I've met lots of super nice people here from riding my bike which is great.

And if that wasn't brilliant enough, Caroline and I found a Condo on the intracoastal that's also just a few hundred feet from the nearest beach.  The place has unreal views.  Three years ago being in a position to make an offer on a place like that would seem like a distant far-off dream, if not impossible.  But here I am three years later, making the offer on a place next to the ocean, which I love so dearly.

If there's one major outstanding item these days, it's that I have not yet found a new Sangha to call home.  In case you don't know, that's the Buddhist equivalent of a church.  The one I went to in DeLand was wonderful.  I loved the intimate and informal atmosphere.

So, it's pretty much amazing how great this last year has been to me.  I'm humbled and grateful for all of the help I have received, and I hope that I can be worthy of the gifts that have been bestowed upon me, and be an asset to others.

May we all be happy, free from animosity, and may we care for ourselves and each other with ease.

-s

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