Long, Strange Trip

Just a quick update. I really have no time anymore... I made the mistake of praying for help with my laziness. Now I have a 75 hour a week job running a kitchen again. It's very different this time around. I'm not hungover or overwhelmingly stressed all the time. I can almost wrap my brain around this job.

There are many things at this job and at the halfway house that I'm still living at that would have caused me great stress and anger in the past - reasons to drink. But I'm learning now to approach life from a whole new angle: responsibly and maturely? Holy crap! What madness is he speaking? Whatever. I'm still completely fucked up in the head and hardcore immature - but that will improve over time as I learn the strange craft of "growing up" without booze.

Anyways. That's what it is for now.

Life on Life's Terms

I've been sober 92 days now. Yes, it's very different. No, it's not different at all. Basically it boils down to not having an escape anymore. I have to face shit. Fuck. Do I have to? Yes, Scott, you have to. Fuck!

There is something that makes it a bit easier, and that's giving up control .... control that I obviously never had anyways. I'm gonna shut up about this. I find that I know absolutely nothing about staying sober. Everything I ever thought I knew about staying sober never worked. My genius thinking got me nowhere but fucked up. So I just work on trying to forget everything I thought I knew. I work on trying to let God show me right ways to think. That seems to be going in a good direction right now.

Anyways, Hi Blog. I might be posting again soon.

Whoa... too much thinking for now. I'm gonna take a break and go to work.

Acceptance

And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation - some fact of my life - unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God's world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life's terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.

- Alcoholics Anonymous, The Big Book

2009 Reading

What I've been reading this year...

Sparks, Nicholas – A Walk To Remember
Steinbeck, John – Tortilla Flat
Hesse, Hermann – Steppenwolf
Fitzgerald, F. Scott – The Great Gatsby
Hesse, Hermann – Siddhartha
Shreve, Anita – The Pilot's Wife
Hesse, Hermann – Magister Ludi - The Glass Bead Game
Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching – Victor H. Mair Translation
Alcoholics Anonymous – The Big Book (4th Ed.)
Ludlum, Robert – The Cry of the Halidon
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander – One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Hamsun, Knut – Growth of the Soil
Baty, Chris – No Plot? No Problem!
Koontz, Dean – Darkfall
Koontz, Dean – Sole Survivor
Alcoholics Anonymous – Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
Alcoholics Anonymous – Living Sober
Koontz, Dean – Velocity