Praise jeebus I am a medium-to-high-functioning person today. At work I actually worked. I didn’t even make it through all my games. After work I noticed that one of my back tires looked flat. Fuuuuuuck. Not long ago in a preparatory mood I’d purchased a pressure gauge to keep in the car because I think every glovebox should have one (chalk one up to growing up in Montana). The thing barely popped. Now I have watched many a tire being changed but have not, myself, changed a tire. I googled “flat tire near me” and wonder of wonders, there was a Les Schwab like .2 miles away, two blocks, no shit! I drove a little gingerly. Sure it sucks to have a flat tire, but I was grateful that I found it before I hit the highway and also that the shop was crazy close. They found a nail in the tire and fixed it for free. This too I took a moment to be grateful for. I talked on the phone most of the time to the friend I had to cancel on and then I worked on the puzzles I usually do on the clock.
Home. Didn’t park like an asshole, hoping the other cars in the neighborhood will pick it up by osmosis—leave room for another car, drr. I’ve thought about leaving a passive aggressive note on a certain few windshields but that would make me a possibly bigger dick than the shit parkers.
Checked the mail, one envelope, boring. Walked into the apartment, didn’t like the looks of a chalkboard and a calendar that I put up in the kitchen the other day, grabbed a hammer and relocated them. Set up my coffee for tomorrow, including a timer, which I’ve never tried before. Took off my shoes and pants—the pajama transition. Finished reading my New Year’s tarot spread (a friend had my main book for interpreting so I had to wait until she gave it back). Cleaned the downstairs bathroom. Grabbed the laundry out of the dryer, hunkered down on the couch. And here I am…
OMG Dean is making out with a woman who isn’t turning out to be a monster. It’s implied that they’re fucking. Lotta bare chest and bedroom eyes. HAWT. I have a slight-to-moderate and sometimes avid Dean preference. Dean’s the funny one, the little faces he makes, his dumb jokes. Clean cut, always popping that collar. Every once in a while I get hit by Sam’s puppy-dog action but I’m not a fan of his sideburns. He’s a talllll drink of water though. I like the way women always give him a “damn you’re foine” look and he doesn’t notice. Oh fuck the lady did turn out to be a freak. Dean might have impregnated her. Witches? These guys never catch a break in the bedroom department, I swear. Uhhhh I could help with that. Maybe a sandwich?
So far for my program today I listened to the Joe and Charlie Big Book Study on my morning commute and during lunch, the sections on steps eleven and twelve, which are maintenance steps but also connecting-more-deeply steps—through prayer, meditation, and service (such as sponsorship). And now I’ve finished that round of tapes, which is saying something because there were 34 readings all told! I don’t hit as many meetings right now because I work early so I lost my regular late-nighter. I think of these recordings as a kind of replacement or transitional tool. I’m stable enough to have some flexibility in my program; it changes as I do. My potential sponsee made her call so that’s three days in a row and she needs to make seven. Then we get to work.
Prayer is something I started doing even though I didn’t believe in “God” when I entered this program and was (am?) pretty secure in my agnosticism. But in the program you follow direction. I was told to pray and so I prayed. I learned the Third Step Prayer and the Sick Man’s Prayer and of course I already knew The Lord’s Prayer and the Serenity Prayer. I’m trying to learn the St. Francis Prayer (some call it the Eleventh Step Prayer), but it’s a doozy and I haven’t been working that hard on it lately. (Okay I haven’t been working on it at all). For a while I thought about customizing the various prayers to take out the “Gods” and the “Lords” and the “Thous,” etc., but then I decided to just do them verbatim. What difference does the nomenclature make? That’s actually wild for me to say because I used to have a real chip on my shoulder in the “God” department; I certainly wouldn’t cap it. I didn’t like the word “spirituality” much either. And I was (am?) anti–organized religion (working on it: resentments). But I think we’re all trying to answer the same essential questions: Who, What, Where, When, How? and more than anything, Why? (a question we’ve been asking since we first learned to speak). So I vote for all gods, from Odin to Freya to Siva and back. The Universe. Supreme Intelligence. Just…Nature. That which I may never be able to fully articulate. Worship whoever or whatever works for you. Don’t worship at all. We’re all climbing the same ladder, even if some of us lose our footing on a broken rung.
LOCK IT DOWN 