I’m grateful for a Friday morning. I’m grateful for not knowing what’s ahead. I’m grateful for a quiet day. I’m grateful for coffee on the pirate balcony. I’m grateful to be sober today.
song of the week:
Why? Because it is just a kick-ass song, that’s why. I owned this very album and can remember spending quite a bit of time playing this song on the record player in the Living Room. That was pretty much a down-low activity. Number One: Use of the Living Room was generally discouraged, except when “Company” was involved. Second: I really didn’t want anyone knowing what I liked, what I thought, what I wondered about, any of that. This was all probably around the 11 or 12 year-old time range.
I’d put this album on and crank up the stereo, I’d imagine myself playing basketball to this song, in particular, there’s a spot in the middle where the beat is just going and there are occasional, jagged guitar stabs, which would be perfect for dribbling up court, going behind the back on the guy at midcourt, then, sharply left-to-right, slight shoulder lift as though I’m about to shoot, then hard to the left, pull up about 17 feet away, just left of the key and off the shot goes, and of course, the ball goes spinning perfectly through the net at roughly the 2:50 mark of the song.1
Taking care of business and staying sober was nearly impossible for me for a very long time. I can see work is a place where all of the traits that make me such a compelling alcoholic seem to come together. It’s where I’m the most fearful, where pride and resentment grow like weeds together, where envy and jealousy and perceived slights lurk in every corner. It’s where I fear failure the most, where I fear that I’m not enough the most.
I’m pretty sure I’m not the only alcoholic who feels this way. One of the Sponsees is finishing up the 4th Step. We came up with a spreadsheet approach and one of the columns is listing an “intensity” score from 1-10 for each of the resentments on the list. When you total up scores by person, you get some pretty surprising results. This particular spreadsheet,2for this particular Sponsee, listed out resentments by person and were grouped by affiliations and categories and even color-coded, which I very much loved. The list of resentments moved through Family and Friends and other categories, presumably based on the perceived importance of the relationships.
What’s really interesting is that even though the “Work” group of resentments were one of the last categories we went through, the intensity of those resentments came pretty close to the really significant relationships that were at the top of the list. It made me realize that even though I wasn’t married to the people I worked with,3 those relationships were maybe the most important to address in sobriety. Or put another way, “Work TBD” needed some work.
I’ve come to believe that fear is near the bottom of a lot of my feelings, and the way my brain processes, magnifies and distorts fear is one of the things that contributes to my alcoholism. I think “work” has roughly the same number of letters as “fear.” Like everything else, once I get an idea about something and then go back to the Big Book, there’s usually something that’s been in front of me all of the time:
First of all, we had to quit playing God, it didn’t work…When we sincerely took such a position, all sorts of remarkable things followed. We had a new Employer. Being all powerful, [God] provided what we needed, if we kept close to [God] and performed [God’s] work well.
Big Book, p. 63
Achieving work/life balance turns out to be part of the Third Step. When the new boundaries of living are being established as part of the process of determining to turn one’s will and life over to the power of a higher power of their own conception, the lines around work are pretty crucial. For me, for many years, the frustrations of work, my own alcoholic need for recognition, the desire to get all the credit I was due (which never, ever happened, by the way), the fear that I was always ultimately doomed to failure, came together to create a really poisonous environment in my head. For many, many years, the preferred antivenin had the appearance of shimmering gold in a glass.
For purposes of keeping “Work TBD” sober, the exercise has been transforming the goal from ultimate success, world domination, a really funny interview with Oprah and the ultimate subjugation and humiliation of my enemies. Which is to say, divorcing myself from outcomes was a split that needed to happen. Now, many of you astute capitalist-types will say things like, in business you get paid for outcomes. Yes, that is true and I’m quite familiar with that particular mode of operation and compensation.4
What I mean is this:
My job is to listen and then do the best I can.
What happens after that, well, I can only do my piece. I’ve learned over the last 60 years that what’s going to happen, generally does happen. My chance to contribute to a positive outcome, to maximize the happiness and value in that moment, comes from simply doing my part. One of the points of the 4th Step exercise is to determine “our part,” in the transactions of life.5 Letting go of outcomes at work sounds completely antithetical to the idea of gainful employment and getting paid, and yet, like so many other of the miraculous paradoxes of sobriety, it works wonders when put to use.
People are frustrating and difficult. Alcoholic TBD finally realized that controlling all of those people was simply expanding the list of places where I drank my life away. I do my part, let it rip, let the chips fall, sit with the fear that attends all that (this is called courage, fyi) and then trust that what I did will be enough.
This is not the way one is taught to think in Law School or at big law firms or in the boardrooms of big public companies, but it turns out to be a secret weapon. Also, it seems to be the only way for Work TBD to remain Sober TBD, which is to say the, Only TBD there is. To be honest, the only real TBD there ever was.
So there it is, the secret to staying sober at work in just about 1,000 words. Also, Fridays.
It’s possible that this song is on a playlist when I shoot baskets and it’s also possible that I’m still trying to make that same shot almost 50 years later. Hmmmmmm.
When I get a nice template together I will share it!
Mostly.
That’s why they’re so broke and I’m so paid. RIP Biggie.
Also, if you hit the “shift” key, what does the “4” in the 4th Step turn to?
I would totally purchase a downloadable Step 4 spreadsheet that allows me to color-code my resentments.