I’m grateful for opportunities to practice resilience. I’m grateful for seeing the turns I used to take. I’m grateful for seeing how things can be different. I’m grateful to be sober today.
End of the week. End of the month. Judging by the smoke rolling in here, maybe it’s just the plain old end of times. There are many great song choices featuring “smoky” themes which would have been perfect, except this got decided yesterday. I’m not going to go through the entire selection process, but there was substantial weight afforded to a potential footnote that would go along with this song. Make of this what you will, I’ll explain later:
Why?1 Of course, there is the connection to David Cassidy and then to the Partridge Family.
This is a classic late ‘70s vibe and you know that’s kind of how I roll. Also, Shaun Cassidy was a dead-ringer for my college pal Jack M. Or vice versa. So pictures of Shaun Cassidy from various magazines figured into a lot of really inappropriate pranks.2 I guess “Hey Deanie” is the Friday Song or whatever, is because it brings back some pretty fond and funny memories.
This has been a challenging week, for a number of reasons. I’m starting on a new project, actually two new projects and that all feels a bit overwhelming. In the course of getting set up for one of those projects, I was called upon to install some Microsoft stuff on my Mac. Not a screed here, I have some history and also, it has just been my experience that the Mac/Microsoft integrations seem like they present problems.
Just before I hit the install button, I had this moment of clarity, in which it was suggested to me that perhaps it would be better to just put the new stuff on my laptop and leave the desktop out of it. “No, that’ll be a pain,” someone decided, and pushed the button. Well, I’m going to tell you that when your mac crashes 2/3 of the way through the disk encryption process—it’s kind of a f****ed up situation. I’m in this weird place where my password no longer unlocked my hard drive.
Is that an allegory for addiction? It wasn’t when I started typing it, but maybe. Not the point. The point is that I kind of saw my life pass before my eyes. This computer is a pretty integral part of my day-to-day routine and I’m a creature of Routine.3 I wrote about fear the other day for a reason; that reason being that I’m experiencing a lot of fear these days. Is it the bear chasing me kind of fear? Not really, and there isn’t actually a bear chasing me. But I think one of the hallmarks of my disease is the lack of nuance and subtlety in my fear explosions. Maybe the rest of you have different gears or speeds, I have a hard time getting unstuck from that one-speed, that one way of looking at and experiencing fear.
I approach fear pretty logically, my brain starts spinning really fast to identify the next most likely consequence and the next and so on. That spiraling down of the next most “likely consequences” elevator shaft goes at about the same speed no matter what, and it’s always accelerating. I begin making plans, judgments and contingencies around what I think is the logical consequence of the thing that is scaring me.
From a statistical standpoint, those equations don’t really hold up. When you start multiplying out all of those probabilities it comes out pretty fantastical and not-so-likely. That’s not the point. Unfortunately, my brain doesn’t run on purely objective and verifiable data. So, pointing out the logical fallacies in my feelings doesn’t seem so productive.
Here’s another problem I encountered. I finally erased the hard drive and pledged to start over.4 There was a certain amount of liberation in that moment, I get to start fresh. Then I realized how many operating systems I was going to have to re-install and update. This was how I spent several lovely summer evenings. It was a little bit like time-travel. I could see (in a frustrating way) which apps that I now consider essential didn’t exist a few years ago. I also determined a significant, likely problem with time travel.
Current Time TBD has two-factor authentication turned on. What happens when you venture back in time and install the old operating system and then you want to update from there—to get back to where you were? I’ll tell you. That old OS doesn’t accept your password, because they didn’t support two-factor authentication back then.
If I travel backwards, are you sure you’ll recognize me?
Apple Support is kind of, “wow, that’s a bummer.” But some clever someone figured out a really insanely easy hack which makes me wonder why Apple doesn’t solve this problem? Not the point. I was recognized and the updating and re-installing continued apace. I’m not quite all the way back, but that shore is in sight.5
Like I said the other day, when I trace the fear back, it usually comes to the same spot, I won’t be enough. There is something wrong with me. I’m not going to be able to do this. Those are hard fears—we all have those fears. I’m not a doctor, so I can’t really explain why, but I think that among us alcoholics and addicts, those fears become magnified or somehow twisted into something that is perfectly resolved by drinking something or using something. Early sobriety sucks so badly and is so hard because you’re forced to stop running from the thing you’ve been running from your whole life and without the crutch/buddy/car/love-of-your-life to do the whole ride or die thing.
I don’t know if fear hits me harder than it hits you. I guess since I haven’t been using the muscles everyone else develops from actually having to confront fears for a long time (since like 1978)6, mine are a little flabby. I still try to avoid the feelings I don’t like, but it’s more half-hearted and about emotional scheduling than anything else.
It’s scary standing up there waiting for the next pitch. I really need a hit. There’s only one way that happens. I have to take a big cut and confront the mighty possibility that I might not be standing up and waving from Second Base afterwards.
Or I might. I think it’s a fastball coming right down the pipe.
I feel like we’re asking that a lot these days.
Very much a sorry/not sorry situation. This is not the footnote.
Capital R on purpose. Routine = “The Black Lagoon.” Also, not this one either.
Are you sure this isn’t a metaphor?
No, not yet.
I can get from “Hey Deanie” to the Partridge Family and then to Rachmaninoff with only one intervening step. That step—I feel like it’s going to be featured in the Sunday Gratitude Extravaganza!! Also, the thing about “Always have a plan (and a potato).”