I’m grateful for a fantastic rainy, cloudy day. I’m grateful for delicious garlic scape pesto. I’m grateful for Tylenol Cold and Flu. I’m grateful for spending time with a sponsee and grateful for all of the insights we shared. I’m grateful for a cup of coffee at the ready and being eager to get to work. I’m grateful for all of the pennies I found yesterday. I’m grateful to be sober today.
That right there, is the start of my strawberry crop. I got two Italian strawberry plants at the Farmer’s Market a few weeks ago and planted them in the balcony garden. It looks like I could soon be harvesting up to 3 delicious strawberries. Exciting stuff this living off the land.1 Speaking of exciting stuff, you didn’t forget about Episode 17 of Breakfast with an Alcoholic, did you?
I explain my thing with pennies in Episode 17 and I really do see finding pennies as little specks of affirmation that I’m on the right path. When I was drinking, and trying to stop, therapist after therapist, counselor after counselor, sponsor after sponsor, kept telling me I needed to let things go. I was holding on to way too much; anger, trauma, resentments and fear were the things that drove my life and my drinking. I knew I needed to let go of things, too, but I had no earthly idea how this would work. When someone would tell me I needed to “let go of that,” I’d erupt and not so politely say things like , “I f***ing know that—tell me how to do it, because I obviously do not have a clue.”
I’ve been struggling with something for the last several months. I knew it was time to let go of something very important to me. It made me very scared and sad but I knew it was time.2 One of the ways I wrestle with things is by shooting baskets and I worked out a lot of adolescent life problems in the driveway growing up. This decision had been weighing really heavily on me and I went over to the park to shoot baskets. It was a nice cool, cloudy morning and I put my airpods in and started to listen and shoot around.
I’ve shot a lot of baskets in my time and I can tell pretty quickly if something is off. Keep the elbows in, don’t chicken wing it, balance evenly on both feet, square to the basket and rhythm are my keys. Of course, I’m pre-occupied and I’m not making many shots. Finally, the decision flashes through my head—this is what I need to do. I can feel the sense of resignation, but also the sense that things are going to be ok now. I shoot from about 15 feet away and the ball hits the back bracket perfectly and spins back to me.3 I dribble a couple of steps to my left and shoot again, boom.4 I start to compose the message in my head, and the next shot goes in. I think about how it will to feel to say this and another shot goes in.
I started laughing because I hadn’t really put the two things together, but every time I made part of the decision in this “letting go” exercise, I made a shot. I don’t attribute this to my Higher Power taking pity on me and saying something like, “let him hit a few shots, he’ll feel better.” This was just me being connected and being present and letting the right things happen. The key, I’m learning is to recognize when the right things are happening and hitting those shots was a way for me to see that. None of this made me happy, it’s all a very hard thing, but I was convinced now that it was the right thing.
I rely on some pretty unorthodox personal way-finding techniques including the whole penny thing and of course that came into play yesterday. I found 4 pennies yesterday including this very rare double.5 I very much appreciated the supplemental affirmations.
I realize that might not be the precise road map you were hoping for, but the point for me was that the right answer eventually just came to me. Letting go of things we cherish and love is very, very hard, but sometimes you have to. The hardest part of it is wondering if the thing you’re doing really is the right thing. In this case, the Universe kindly supplied a little validation—just to let me know that things are ok and we’re headed in the right direction. So, I have that going for me now, too.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
While I am not technically a farmer, I did grow up in Iowa, all of my grandparents did grow up on farms and I worked summers at my Uncle’s farm in Southern Minnesota. Growing a few strawberries on a balcony on the Upper East Side of Manhattan is not the same thing, but highly exciting all the same.
Yes, I’m being very vague and that’s on purpose.
When you shoot a lot of baskets by yourself, particularly when there is a steeply sloping driveway behind you, it makes sense to focus on getting the ball to come back to you. Part of the reason I shoot with a lot of backspin on the ball.
There wasn’t an actual “boom” sound, but the ball hit the back bracket of the rim perfectly and spun back to me again.
York and 84th.
The concept of letting go -- and the actual letting go itself -- is so freaking hard. I've struggled with it for years; I still struggle with it. I've found that the more I think about the "how," the harder I seem to hang on -- too much brain, too much thinking in it, for me. So I show up to meetings and I say, "I am having a hell of a time letting go" and then I get in my body through meditation and exercise (for me, much of meditation happens *while* exercising). The answer will just come from nowhere -- my higher power speaking to me while I'm lying on the floor, trying to calm my mind, or during the 40th lap of the pool, when I've sufficiently out-thought myself and everything is just blank inside, in the very best way. I'd do anything to take a "letting go" pill that just magically MAKES it happen, but alas, all I have are the tools of my program and the faith that I can learn to let go again and again and again, because I've done it before.
Thanks for this newsletter, Randall -- it's a little touchpoint in my morning now, and I always appreciate what you share.