I’m grateful for a soft breeze and a quiet morning. I’m grateful for the newspaper at my door. I’m grateful to be seeing my son later today. I’m grateful it’s Friday. I’m grateful for really excellent coffee. I’m grateful for connections and friends. I’m grateful that I didn’t believe all of my own stories. I’m grateful for my excellent desk chair. I’m grateful for coming out the other side. I’m grateful to be sober today.
Happy Friday. This has been a very busy and eventful week. Episode 18 of Breakfast with an Alcoholic came out last weekend and I will literally be chained to my desk until Episode 19 is edited and ready, except for doing the interview for Episode XX and then seeing my son for lunch.1 But otherwise chained to the desk, no matter how nice the weather or what kinds of things I could do around the apartment to make it extra clean or what-not. The Liner Notes for Episode 18 came out yesterday:
I’m never quite sure what the Liner Notes are going to be about when I sit down to write them. I mean, while I do the editing I have a chance to listen to the episode three or four hundred times and I come up with an outline of things I want to say and points I want to make. I sit down and write from my outline and it’s usually pretty wooden and not very good and I get kind of frustrated and maybe think this is all stupid and I walk over to the secret coffee place and get a Cappuccino or shoot some baskets at the park, or more likely, both. To some people, “ABC” has to do with sales, but for me it’s “Alcoholics, Basketball and Cappuccino”2:
When I come back and sit down, something else makes its way onto the page and it shows up in your inbox and I call that the Liner Notes. Matt and I talked about how prayer can actually summon a Higher Power into existence. Matt started praying while an atheist and he wondered more than once about exactly who he was praying to. I think we agreed that didn’t really matter, praying is an act of faith and an exercise in humility and there’s no reason it needs to be limited to reciting something at the same time every day. I love this newsletter on Substack and the way it elevates prayer to an art form:
You could have asked me at any number of points in my life whether I would one day be writing about the power of prayer for people with whom I’m not really personally acquainted. I would have told you that seemed like not a good bet. And yet, here we are. This is going to sound weird, but sometimes I find it kind of exciting to be an alcoholic. Well, maybe exciting to be a recovering alcoholic is a better way to say that. I feel like I am constantly discovering new things about myself in sobriety and letting the old nonsense just fall away. I repeat this over and over, maybe because I’m forced to listen to it over and over,3 sobriety is fundamentally the process of finding and living the life you were meant to lead. That’s a pretty groovy thing. Hope you have a good Friday.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
He calls it breakfast and while it may be his first meal of the day, the fact is that it is occurring in the afternoon. Also, can you believe we’re at Episode XX? I remember how excited I was when we got to Episode Single X, now we’re at Double X and soon, well, I guess I should be careful with the guest alcoholic for Episode 30.
Alec Baldwin would be an interesting choice to play me in “Breakfast with an Alcoholic: The Movie.” I don’t think there will be too many gunfights in the movie, so it should be ok. Well, unless I tell the Reverend Danny stories…
If you’re reading between the lines and that leads you to believe that what I’m hinting at is that my sponsor says this all the time, well, you’re good at reading between the lines.
Yes! Doesn’t matter who you pray to, the higher powers hear your love and light !!!
Hope this weekend brings you lots of joy!!
“This is going to sound weird, but sometimes I find it kind of exciting to be an alcoholic. Well, maybe exciting to be a recovering alcoholic is a better way to say that.”
Absolutely! Sobriety is a hell of a drug.