Hanging On

...and then God talked to me on 86th Street

I’m grateful for seeing what can be. I’m grateful to be listening when the big guy is talking. I’m grateful hanging on to what I was supposed to. I’m grateful to be back at it. I’m just grateful and grateful to be sober today.

Lots has been swirling around my head. In this hemisphere, that’s clockwise, I believe. There’s a lot going on for me right now, and when I say “a lot,” I kind of mean it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all good stuff, but it’s the good stuff that requires the most work and dedication. Since the sun sets and rises on a pretty regular schedule, fitting all of what’s going on into that schedule has been a challenge.

Now, I preface that with this: The few months before this have actually been pretty rough. I was feeling pretty lost and increasingly isolated. I was reaching a point where I was going to have to make some decisions about the future, and lots of the options weren’t gigantically attractive to me. I’m 60 years old and basically starting over. It’s been frightening, unmooring, it’s created a lot of uncertainty, anxiety and stress. Lots of nights awake eating Lucky Charms in front of the tv,¹ punctuated by some clenched-jaw, tooth-grinding sleep.

I don’t know if you noticed, I kind of poured myself into this enterprise. I spent a lot of time writing.² There were lots of times when fear and anxiety would overtake me. My sometimes-super-logical brain would very carefully detail the next few stops on the train to oblivion, even helpfully noting the transfer points and the estimated time of my arrival. Yes, I’m being a little dramatic here because that’s what you pay for,³ but it was as much fear and anxiety as I’ve ever felt.

I’ve been through a lot of dislocation before and am pretty familiar with the way stress and anxiety, fear and isolation work on me. Historically, it hasn’t been a great combination. Newsflash: I would often drink when that combination of feelings threatened to overflow the pot.⁴ I don’t know if you noticed, that hasn’t happened here. “What did happen?,” you politely ask.⁵

On the really dark days, I sat down and I wrote and kept trying to be open to new possibilities. I went to the library and worked on business plans and proposals that weren’t going to go anywhere. I went to the library and wrote about the Big Book. I know there has been a fair amount of repetition in my writing over time, and I’m sorry for that, but it was really me trying to figure it out for myself, with all of you lovely people along as sort-of hostages.⁶

On the really hard days,⁷ when I doubted myself the most and wondered what I was going to do, when nothing seemed like it could happen, I put my head down and wrote some more and kept doing what I could. I decided at some point, real faith meant this for me:

Do my best, keep pushing and let things happen

Now, here’s the part where I was going to talk about “initiative” and what I think it really means. I was going to explain it from a military history perspective and was going to try and mix “initiative” together with “vulnerability” and “courage” and see what happened. But then God talked to me when I was walking on 86th Street.

I guess I should write briefly about this divine communication. To set the stage, despite a very Lutheran upbringing, I myself, did not believe in the power of prayer. I made a few desultory efforts as a youth, and true, I didn’t die during the night, but I also didn’t get that super-cool slot car racing set. Prayer seemed illogical and kind of inefficient. To pause from the digression, one of my core beliefs is that my higher power is ruthlessly efficient. If you think about the scale of the job, there’s not much time for water cooler chit-chat.⁸

I had only received one other previous communication from my higher power and that was in 2022 at the Equinox gym on 85th Street. I was in the locker room thinking about the playlist for that day’s workout, when a foreign thought popped into my head. It wasn’t a spoken voice.⁹ It was like the words just appeared in my head and those words were:

Do the thing you don’t know how to do.

I’ve written about this. I find that a puzzling instruction and it could definitely lead to some tragic results if misinterpreted. Weirdly, after “hearing” this an opportunity presented itself almost right away. It seemed absurd and silly and definitely something that I didn’t know how to do and would never have probably previously considered. But I did it, I put it out there and kept pushing. For the first time in my life, I didn’t worry about what people thought. I knew I was crazy, too. But I kept doing it, and thing after improbable thing and person after improbably person showed up to move me along to the next thing.

I didn’t feel as though I was in control of any of this, I just did my best, kept pushing and put my trust in what I’ve been telling all you,

I think there’s a power greater than myself out there.

That’s all it took to get the snowball rolling down the hill. So, anyway, suddenly, there are there these amazing, exciting, highly improbable projects coming out of literally nowhere. Except they didn’t. I didn’t make any of them happen, I didn’t have control over the outcomes. I just showed up, put in the work and was willing to accept the consequences. And here we are.

So, the God talking to me thing. At some point yesterday afternoon, I escaped for a brief walk, a stop at the secret coffee place, some music listening and dodging of pedestrian traffic. The things I love to do. I was walking up 86th Street and there’s a blank spot where a building got torn down and the sky pokes through abruptly. The sudden sight of that beautiful, blue, summer sky triggered the Lutheran part of the brain to suggest, “we really ought to send a thank you.”

So, I looked up and said a very heartfelt thank you. Thank you for getting me where I am, for getting me where I needed to go and for staying with me this whole time. I let out a deep breath of gratitude. And some words instantly appeared in my head, like a billboard flashing, but this time they were voiced, too. It wasn’t mine. It felt like the divine equivalent of that very satisfying finger-point on the basketball court after a nifty pass leads to an easy bucket. This time the voice actually said:

you hung on to you.

I did. That’s the difference in my life. That’s the difference that sobriety and working the steps and just trying to be a better person have made in my life. Another attribute of my higher power is apparently word economy. By my count, there have been a total of 13 words:

Do the thing you don’t how to do.
You hung on to you.

Thirteen words that sum up a pretty drastic and fantastic change in my life. I turned left on Second Avenue, so as to approach the coffee shop from the west,. Upon arrival, I engaged in some witty banter with the proprietress, received my very excellent skim cortado, cranked up the music, and prepared to head home to do some more strategery.¹⁰

Wouldn’t you know it, I had to stop and pick something up.

1. Yes, that’s true. No, I don’t think it actually contributes to the solution.

2. You actually have no idea how much I’ve written.Seriously. It’s possible there’s a manic piece in there.

3. Wait, you don’t pay?

4. By “often,” I mean, “always.”

5. The “straight man” in a comedy duo always gets paid more. Fact.

6. Free to leave at any time, and yet…

7. I just want to say that my hard days still involve a pretty nice roof over my head and all the chinese food I can eat, so take this with a grain of salt.

8. Does he/she regret that whole “dividing the light and the dark” thing?

9. Also, when I talk to myself it’s far more conversational and witty.

10. That’s deliberate.