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

Fall Reflections

Well I've been out walking 
I don't do that much talking these days 
These days-- 
These days I seem to think a lot 
About the things that I forgot to do 
For you 
And all the times I had the chance to 

Well, it's been nearly 6 months since my last public journal entry.  I've been waiting for that moment when it felt right to stop and take stock, and, I guess the impulse to share abated for a time perhaps.

A lot has happened.

I left my business partnership in July, and I decided to take a break from being an entrepreneur. I have been studying to bring my professional skills up to snuff and re-enter the workforce as just another guy.  But I keep getting these consulting contracts and I'm making good money, enough that getting a regular job doesn't make any sense.  I'm grateful. I guess I'll go with the flow for now and keep doing what I'm doing until things change.

I've also done some travel.  I spent a little bit of time in the Blue Ridge mountain s in North Carolina, and did a really fun road trip up the east coast culminating with a stay in upstate New York.  It was amazing and something I'll never forget.

I left the beach and moved to Orange City Florida, which is a little town just outside of DeLand.

Leaving the beach was a tough decision but the correct one, and something I should have done years ago.  Bottom line was I was spending way too much money on maintaining my lifestyle while my financial position was eroding.  I just didn't want to face up to it.  Now I have and I do plan on returning to the beach one day when I can be a buyer and not a renter.  And not as a leveraged buyer with a big mortgage.

If if if  ::laugh::.  If I had been more realistic about my situation and done some things differently this step would not have been a necessity, but I didn't do things differently and so now I'm living a low overhead existence and saving my pennies, and it's going to be like this for some time.  And as it turns out, I'm pretty darn happy with it.  Stuff owns you, obligations own you, it's all fetters, chains, the ties that bind.  I like being free.

Since the beach is a 20 minute drive I've turned to cycling as my main outdoor activity and it's been great.  The only group in my local vicinity that rides regularly is a very fast and athletic bunch, and my initial attempts to hang with them was tough sledding.  I pressed as hard as I could and was still getting dropped within the first 10 miles on most days. My body started breaking down from the stress and eventually I had to step back and let it heal up a little.  But after getting recharged and rebooting my training I was able to start hanging with them.  It's great to have some people to hang out with who are into healthy lifestyle stuff instead of getting wasted and waking up hung over.  I like the friends I'm making in my new town.

The other big change was I took up a philosophy/mental discipline that makes sense to me, which is Buddhism and regular meditation.

What happened was everything was going great and I was pushing my limits in all areas of my life, and one day I was at the house by myself and I had a seizure.  I lost all motor control, I was lying on the ground unable to move, wondering if this was it.  After about 5 minutes I regained control of my limbs.  I wasn't quite myself for a couple of days.

If left me shaken and scared.

I got myself checked out and I was fine physically.  I had just been pushing myself too hard and my brain gave me the finger and shut down.

I went over everything that led up to it, and the conclusion I reached was that all my life I had done things to reckless excess and boozing was a way of applying the brakes (until the brakes took control of my life and starting destroying me).  Without drinking to slow me down I was running myself ragged because I didn't know how to listen to my mind or my body.

So I began to look into meditation as a possible solution.  That decision changed everything.  I discovered that I was hiding a lot from my self.  That the persona I put forward was a very different thing than the perceptions I had of myself.  I had some primitive coping mechanisms that were based on being a very insecure person.  In a nutshell I came to the conclusion that I was an insecure neurotic mess!  :)

I'm working my way through it.  It's already quite a bit better.  Sometimes the biggest part of the battle is honestly coming to terms with stuff and not being afraid.

Now mediation has become part of my daily routine.  It's really added the ballast that I needed to be a calm balanced person.  I've never been happier.

I took this photo on a morning bike ride a couple of weeks ago.  Kinda says it all.

-s

Survival never goes out of style.

If you could save yourself,
you could save us all.
Go on living, prove us wrong.
Your leap of faith could be a well-timed smile.
Survival never goes out of style.

Editor's note:  playing video at high volume while reading blog entry recommended.

One year.  Three hundred and sixty five fucking days.

Lost: 77 lbs

Resting heart rate: 48bpm

Ridden:  5,796 miles on my $600.00 entry level road bike.

Diet: completely overhauled

Possessions:  most of the excess crap sold off.

The beach house:  Fond memories but it was time to move on.

Debt:  Paid off 

Established a semblance of a relationship with my brother

Lost my woman; got her back again

That's what sits between me and my last hangover.

I didn't have a drinking problem, I had a thinking problem.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As children, adolescents and young adults, people are taught learn and develop a set of strategies or 'tools' for coping with life.  Mine were woefully inadequate   Life dealt me a couple of shitty hands and I didn't know how to care for myself.  My tool of choice when the shit hit the fan was to numb myself with alcohol.

I'm fortunate that things broke down, that I broke down, and that I was forced to develop some better strategies for coping with life.  It's been the best thing that ever could have happened to me.

The first year of this blog is my gift to you.  It is a living testament to the fact that if your life sucks you can change it.  It's not easy in the beginning, but if I can do it you can too.  It's worth it. The world becomes a much bigger and more interesting place when you stop running from your problems.

Life is an amazing and precious thing.  Strange how lightly we treat this irreplaceable, matchless gift.  Like playing football with a Ming vase.

So stop fucking around and take control of your life right now.  Don't waste another moment.  Seize the day.

Be well and I'll chat with you again soon.

-s<

Looking at the crest of the hill

Well, this last month has been like a country music song.

My dog Rell, my best friend, was struck and killed by a hit and run driver  She died in my arms.  I miss her.

Not too long after that I was surfing and suffered a neck stinger.  I felt it in my back but it turns out it's a neck thing.  I gutted it out and did a century ride on the bike I was planning and basically was bedridden for two weeks after that.  I'm recovering now, can sit upright, but it's still pretty tender and may take a while to heal.

Needless to say the big hero trip to Indonesia I was planning for May/June of this year is not happening.  I was pretty devastated at first.  I worked very hard to get to this point, and to fall short of the goal is a bitter pill to swallow.

My work situation is weird.  As I have gotten healthy mentally and physically I could see I was involved in a really unhealthy and dysfunctional situation, and trying to stay involved with it was a very bad idea.  fortunately someone has popped up to take my place and I don't feel the least bit regretful about moving on other than complications with making sure my brother lands on his feet, which I am actively working to address.

The good news is I am officially debt free.  Selling off all my extra crap and moving into a much humbler living situation has served me well and I was able to dig myself out quickly.  Great feeling.

I've also got my diet fully sorted.  I don't eat compulsively at all any more.  It's wonderful.  The blood sugar crazy train is a thing of the past.

I have hacked away all the withered old growth, the dead branches, the BS, have freed myself. I can choose. And I will choose wisely, always keeping my long term objectives top of mind, not distracted by short term tactical concerns or a need to please others.

I wake up every morning with a calm clear mind and sense of well being I have never experienced in my entire life.  I'm cool with just being me.  I have nothing to prove to anyone, and there is nothing about me that needs fixing.  I'm just....Steve.

Decluttered, but not declawed.

"People asking questions, lost in confusion
Well I tell them there's no problem, only solutions
Well they shake their heads and they look at me as if I've lost my mind
I tell them there's no hurry
I'm just sitting here doing time"

Been a long time since my last entry.  At that time I mostly reviewed what had changed in 6 months of making a commitment to personal growth, although the word recovery would be interchangeable I reckon.  Hey, let's talk about that for a second.

Recovery....hmm what am I recovering from?
I am recovering from all the damage that had been done from being unwilling to accept and move through painful situations, from being unable to accept reality when the facts were not beneficial to me, from trying to control things situations and people I had no control over when I could not accept the reality.

Emptying the Box
The thing is, you can't really escape pain whether you're willing to accept it or not.  You can try, but it only makes it worse.  And what's more, when you begin to avoid (which is what eventually happens when you refuse to accept it for long enough), there's fear that develops which magnifies the problem, makes it seem bigger than it really is.

I had all this stuff I was avoiding and rather than look at the individual things, I was just shoving it all into a box called "try not to think about it".  And since I had been working diligently at forgetting what was in the box, I started to fear it, that at some point it would come open and spill out, destroying my life.

The box is mostly empty now.  Once I opened the box and realized it wasn't as bad as I thought.  I set about clearing all the crap out and it kind of developed a momentum of it's own.  It was quite a lot of work, going through a lifetime's worth of accumulated possessions and beliefs, taking stock, dumping it all out in front of me, deciding what to keep, what to sell, what to donate, what to discard.  Then taking what was left, reorganizing, rebooting daily life in a new configuration.

I've gotten rid of most of my possessions.  I'm renting a room now, don't even have my own place.  Sounds weird, but the math said it was the smart thing to do for at least a year.  One thing that's nice about it is I don't really have the ability to accumulate things as I would have no place to put them.  Hopefully I can maintain that when I go back to having my own place.  I don't want to collect a bunch of useless shit again, pain in the ass having a lot of possessions to worry about.

Retracing steps
After all of that craziness I needed a break.  I went Costa Rica for a week, a place I thought I would never visit again.  I wanted to retrace my steps from an earlier time, compare and contrast how the world and I have changed in the last 8 years.  I'm really glad I did.  Met some great people and left with a few things to think about.

The next big step is Indonesia   Once I've been back to indo, I think the retracing of steps will be complete and I'll have a more solid sense of direction.

Embracing life
I'd heard it all before, that the only moment that truly exists is now.  Yesterday and tomorrow are constructs of the mind and if you lose yourself in them, you find yourself missing out on life.  I used to think those were concepts best suited to those who don't have to work for a living and have a lot time to just sit around.  I see now there is a practical application in daily life, no mystery to it really.   The more mindful and present one is, the more life you can have, and that's something that is very energizing to me, so I will continue the follow the path of embracing life, in whatever form that takes.  Sounds like a bunch of hippy shit or something don't it.  Beats waking up with a hangover and wondering if I have any smokes left.