I’m grateful for a lazy Saturday. I’m grateful for the farmers market and the bookstore. I’m grateful for letting things be. I’m grateful for an inky dark morning and really good coffee. I’m grateful for a fire in the fireplace and peace in my heart. I’m grateful to be sober today.

LAST WEEK ON TFLMS:

TFLMS Weekend: Where Sobriety Isn’t Just a Consequence…

(last weekend)

I’m grateful for easing off the gas. I’m grateful for rainy days and chances to brandish the swanky umbrella. I’m grateful for the swagger that comes from knowing myself. I’m grateful for quiet nights and gentle mornings. I’m grateful to be sober today.

Mystery ?? Button

song of the week:

Here we are, nearly the end of November of a pretty eventful year—and not just for me. It has been a year of change and challenge for me. Lots of ups, fair number of downs, and a lot of evens. Maybe some stories didn’t end like they should, to quote a song. A lot has changed for me, and as I have noted (perhaps too many times), a lot is changing for me. I’ve been pushing very hard this year, launching a new career at a time when a lot of contemporaries are actually considering RV purchases. It’s been an incredibly rewarding year. It’s been an incredibly tiring year.

I’m finally taking my foot off the gas pedal a little bit and trying to look around. There is so much to be grateful for. My beautiful, talented, ruthlessly incisive and organized MBA daughter is having a baby—it’s a Q1 event. I’m lucky enough to get to spend Thanksgiving helping to turn a closet into a nursery. I have some ambivalence about the title, none whatsoever about the role. It’s going to be a boy and I have already devised a mini-curriculum for the lad’s unofficial education. I, of course, had an excellent role model in this regard:

And also, as happens every few years, as everyone gathers to celebrate next Thursday, they will be inadvertently and unknowingly celebrating my birthday. I’ve been receiving pretty regular updates from my mariner son—including a surprise phone call from a hotel room in Helsinki. What he’s doing is unbelievably challenging and I couldn’t be prouder.1 There’s an awful lot to be grateful for as I look back over 2024, and I am profoundly grateful for a year that saw me get to observe a pretty unthinkable milestone: Five years without drinking. Five years of sobriety. Five years of living the life that was meant for me.

Oh wait, the song of the week. I’ve been loving this song and listening to this song since 1979. Maybe it’s a little dark, hopefully it’s not appropriate for the times, but it is just a pretty cool song. I’m also a pretty big student of military history. My newspaper route produced the funds necessary to maintain my membership in the Military History Book Club—where they shipped a new volume every month on approval. I had the biggest WWII library at Ernest Horn Elementary for sure.

Anyway, I tend to see the world a bit through that prism, and sometimes organize my life into “campaigns,” and “offensives.” I often employed WWI-style frontal assaults on my alcoholism; they would last 30-60 days, produce a fair amount of misery and ultimately ended up gaining very little ground. Of course, Ulysses S. Grant, huge alcoholic and defender of the Union, is a personal hero.2 At some level, maybe only an alcoholic could do the monstrous job Grant had to do.

Anyway, what with it being the season of giving thanks and reflections on the year that has been and soon will be “was,” I could reflect back on the last eleven months, as I slow down a little bit. And that’s where this was headed, earlier in the week. But then, weirdly, this phrase suddenly popped into my head:

I have not yet begun to fight.

A very famous saying, the story should be better known. John Paul Jones uttered these immortal words in 1779, during the Revolutionary War, in response to a request by the captain of the faster, sleeker, newer, better-armed HMS Serapis, that he strike his colors and save the rest of his crew. John Paul Jones to Captain Pearson: “F*** me, no—F8*** you!” What he actually said is way better:

I have not yet begun to fight.

Here’s what happened: Jones’ ship, the Bonhomme Richard fought the Serapis all night and suffered horrific damage and casualties—but Jones’ tenaciousness and fierceness prevailed and it was Pearson and the Serapis that surrendered to John Paul Jones and his gang of American privateers—who also seized the convoy of merchant ships that the Serapis had been unsuccessfully escorting.

I’ve come to see that this is a building time for me, it’s a time for hard work and for letting things come together the way they were meant to. The people who keep showing up in my life move me from point to unexpected point, providing sudden opportunities where none previously existed, proving the same point again and again and again:

Life unfolds the way it is meant to, when I let it.

Oh, trust me, I’m not sitting in the lotus position, sagely awaiting my fortune, I push pretty hard, but it’s in a different direction. I’m just trying to be the best version of myself that I can muster. I do the things that I think are right, even when there’s no prospect of a reward, I do the things that make me feel happy and peaceful inside. I am working to let go of my attachments to things I can’t control (and shouldn’t try). I’m building a peaceful, quiet, calm life to replace the one of chaos and regret that I lived for so many years.

There have certainly been times when I’ve seen my struggles with alcohol as a battle to be won, but that’s not how I look at it these days and that’s not why the quote really hits me. John Paul Jones arrived at a moment that was meant for him, that stood ready to be defined by his action. That’s where I think I’m arriving, too—at a moment meant for me. A moment where I’ll have a chance to follow the path I’ve been on, even though it might seem very, very challenging.

I know I employ a lot of pirate talk and metaphors. To be fair, the “Pirate Balcony” has its name not because of the occupant in the camp chair at the very end, but because it’s very narrow and resembles a gang-plank. Or, maybe there is a pirate who sits in a camp chair at the end of the balcony and watches sunrises and quiet nights and plots the next chapter of his life. And there is definitely a pirate-y attitude behind saying something like, “I have not yet begun to fight.”

I’m not fighting a war these days, that’s not what that means to me. It means, get ready, I’m shifting gears. I’m not quitting or giving up or slowing down, I feel like I’ve finally arrived at the starting line for the race I was supposed to run. I have a lot of regrets about what happened over the last many years and lots of regrets about what didn’t happen, too. But my life is no longer defined by regret, only by what’s next.

When you play pick-up basketball, you “call games,” in advance. The phrase, “I’ve got next,” means when this game is over, my team will be playing the winners for the right to stay on the court and keep playing. Maybe there’s even a martial aspect to that, taking the court and then defending it. Here’s what I know: Right now, I may be hunkered down in something of a cocoon, being transformed into what I was meant to be. That definitely fits my mood these days, feels like the right way to live. I’ve got next.

Things are changing, the way they always do. The world never stops spinning and I’m nowhere near ready to find a relaxing verdant pasture. I don’t know what’s coming next for me, what will happen, how I will be challenged, where I will end up. Those were the worries and concerns that dominated my thinking in the olden days and drove my drinking in the olden days. If you had asked me at this time last year, I would never have predicted this year.

A year of challenge and discovery and hard work and sitting through a fair amount of fear, apprehension and foreboding about whether I could make this all work. Well, here I am. Pretty battle-hardened after more than a decade of fighting to get sober, still pretty sad about some of the losses we endured during the fighting, proud of what I’ve accomplished and mostly grateful for not giving up. People in AA like to use the phrase “surrender” and often extoll it as a necessary step in the process of gaining sobriety. I still have enough of my old alcoholic ego to choke a bit on the word.

Sure, I gave up a lot to get here. I gave up the view of the world, and of my place in it, that had animated me for the first 57 years of my life. I had to leave a lot behind, a lot of cherished beliefs and hopes, and even dreams. I didn’t have a choice but to jettison them, they weren’t actually mine and the longer I chased them, the further from the path I strayed. What I really gave up was the conceit that I had a plan, or was capable of doing the planning.

As 19th century Prussian military strategist Helmuth Von Moltke wrote, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” Maybe, Mike Tyson has the better version, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” I don’t have a masterplan or strategy, I’m not slowly revealing some intricate mechanism that will catapult me to the top of some heap. I’ve got a capacity for hard work and a willingness to look at things differently. I’ve let go of a lot of my expectations and replaced them with acceptance. I’m embracing the uncertainty in front of me, like an old friend.

Maybe I should feel scared, I’m a bit unmoored and not really sure where things might go. But I’m not. I’ve never felt more alive, more vital, more creative, more me. I didn’t just recover from the disease of alcoholism, I recovered myself—and that’s why everything is different. We united the warring factions, established a united front. We know that bad-assery always prevails over dumb-assery and we are ready.

Here are two things I know for sure as I stand on the Pirate Balcony, almost 62 years behind me, on a windy, rainy November morning, surveying the world laid out in front of me:

I’ve got next

and

I have not yet begun to fight.

Happy Friday.

I’m grateful for a YouTube home tour that gave me some creative, unique ideas on how to decorate our small space. I’m grateful for teamwork around designing our new gallery wall. I’m grateful for how brightly the sun shines in Denver because even on super cold days my runs are still manageable. I’m grateful for seeing storm clouds gracefully envelop the mountain peaks as I did my circles in Cheesman. I’m grateful for retuning to some super interesting, non-political podcasts like Radioloab, 99% Invisible, and Flightless Bird after having taken a break from them. I’m grateful for being able to virtually lead a NYC meeting that I haven’t attended regularly since my move. I’m grateful for reflecting on spot-check inventories as a means to maintain my serenity through the day’s ups and downs. I’m grateful for the rotation of powerful personal mantras that I am now able to repeat instinctually, especially when confronted by negativity. I’m grateful to practice living in the solution these days rather than lazily leaning on my defects as a form of expression. I’m grateful for enjoying hot chocolate and marshmallows when it’s so very chilly outside.

I recently finished listening to the latest Serial podcast season called The Good Whale and it’s about an orca named Keiko, who was most famously featured in the 1993 masterpiece ‘Free Willy’. I don’t know about you, but that movie was a staple of my childhood. The iconic imagery, the ubiquitous marketing, the novel animal protagonist were all kind of like the perfect storm when it came to imprinting on me at an impressionable age. I haven’t thought about that film, or that orca, in adulthood very much so to hear Keiko’s story in this podcast series was both surprising and moving. I won’t spoil what happens, but suffice to say it got me thinking about the Keiko in my own life. He’s a nearly 4-year old Poodle-Shepard-Terrier mix named Harper.

I adopted Harper soon after I left my 2-month stint at a sober home on the Upper East Side. I wasn’t planning on getting a dog – in fact some folks say don’t make big changes in early sobriety – but I got one nonetheless. I named him after the author of my favorite novel as a young adult, “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. He was a little floofy bundle and we got along instantly. After my relapse nine months later Harper was there on my bed – a place he typically isn’t allowed – unusually calm, curled up in between my legs, probably sensing that I was going through some stuff.

The Serial podcast made me reflect on Harper and his indelible impact on my sober journey so far. When it comes to being disciplined about healthy routines, Harper has always been faithfully present to remind me of their importance. Despite barely being able to crawl to the bathroom a few feet away during my relapse, I still needed to somehow take him out for walks in the December cold 3x a day. That necessary task was honestly so helpful because I realized I cannot drink and do that too. I needed to put away the vodka bottle to be able to stand upright for at least 20 minutes and perform the bare minimum of any dog owner. It sounds insane now, but when in the throes of addiction sticking to the simplest routines was integral towards helping me claw back to normalcy. If it weren’t in part for Harper, I don’t know how long it would’ve taken me to get back on my feet – if at all. Nowadays being disciplined around my healthy routines is a MUST for maintaining serenity. I’ve thankfully graduated to recurring activities much more intricate than standing or walking my dog, but all of it is only possible when I successfully tackle those baby steps first. Harper was the initial catalyst for returning to my routines until I eventually garnered the strength to do it of my own volition.

Another event that taught me a lot about myself through Harper’s experience was when he randomly got attacked by another dog on our street. Somehow I had had the foresight to get pet insurance a few weeks earlier so the $14k emergency vet bill was mostly covered. Unfortunately the owner of the other dog ghosted me despite promising to help foot the remainder of the bill (and being told by the courts to do so). While the human drama unfolded, I also took time off work to care for Harper who had to be given a bevy of medications throughout the day. Luckily I was able to leverage AA’s wisdom during that period to guide me. I understood this is a situation I cannot control so I simply needed to perform the next, small right action to get through each day and whatever came about I had to find acceptance and gratitude in the result. The whole saga was important in revealing to me that I can go through hard things in sobriety and move on with my head held high regardless of the outcome. It also further strengthened my embrace of acceptance and gratitude, which have both become mainstays in my current sobriety.

I could go on and on about how caring for Harper has reinforced a myriad of sober values in my life. Values like love, loyalty, empathy, loneliness, adventure, self-care, and much more. I’m certainly not recommending getting a dog if you want to sober up (especially if you don’t have the time or finances), but I will say my experience with having one has taught me a tremendous amount about practicing my Program. “Attraction, not promotion” is how we disseminate the message of AA and in a similar sense Harper shows me how to live a good, sustainable life through the power of example. My daily focus on my relationship with him has revealed answers to totally unrelated (occasionally bigger) issues impacting my existence. Thank you for being my teacher, Harper.

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I am so grateful to be sober today. I’m grateful for time with friends this weekend, for the holidays around the corner, for reading more again and for talking to my sponsor. I’m grateful for rest, for the nice weather, for learning, for honesty and for growth.  

Goooood morning my friends (:

As always, I hope everyone had a nice weekend! My head is all over the place this morning (one of the downfalls of NOT journaling might I add). But before I get into my typical word vomit tis the season for my holiday reminders – PSA the holiday season is upon us.

And whether you have already decorated or are a firm ‘do no decorate before Thanksgiving’ person – the holidays can be tricky. But above all else they are just another day, and we can all get through them without drinking.

This year is a particularly charged time to maybe be with family. Sometimes being with family is charged in general. Go prepared with people to text or call, find local meetings, maybe don’t go if that’s what’s ultimately best for you. But don’t drink, you don’t have to I promise.

Now onto the word vomit – I am. So. Burned. Out. I heard a speaker yesterday who was talking about relapse and basically, she was saying that she’s not going to beat herself up with ‘I was doing all the wrong things or things I wasn’t supposed to’ she just didn’t know then what she knows now.

And I truly believe that applies to all of life. This year has been one big giant fucking growing pain and I very much so ready to come out on the other side here. But this whole year has also been about learning what I don’t know.

I didn’t know how it feels to be on the other side of losing a sponsee. I didn’t know what it was like to have sponsee’s ghost you and reach out MONTHS later to tell you that they are finally doing really well. I didn’t know what it was like to end a friendship that didn’t fit anymore, to respect my boundaries and to come out not only not alone but ALSO with a new appreciation for the friendships that don’t ask me to be anything other than me.

I didn’t know what it was like to 1) not have a psychotic boss and 2) receive a relatively negative performance review because I could genuinely do better and then putting everything, I had into doing better all to receive a really great review but feel so shot that cleaning my apartment is a task I simply cannot handle right now. I still DON’T know how to speak up when I’m feeling that way in a place that’s not AA and ask for help and a break.

I didn’t know what it was like to be a dog mom and how much of a change owning a pet really is (shout out to the moms and dads with human children – don’t know how y’all do it).

I didn’t know what it was like to no longer live two blocks away from your home group. There’s a lot of things I didn’t know that I have learned, and I am still learning how to navigate.

My apartment is so gross and needs to be cleaned so bad, but I am so tired and that’s just going to have to be okay for right now.

I really did not want to go to that meeting yesterday, but I was reminded of the importance of learning what you don’t know and how it changes you are you do learn.

I really want to decorate for Christmas and slowly sip my coffee and read a book and spend all day at the park with my dog but it’s Monday so – Back on the horse, back to learning as I go, back to beating myself up less and appreciating more and finding comfort in the fact that I don’t always know. But I will always learn.

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Xx

Jane

I’m grateful for a busy Saturday. I’m grateful for seeing that setbacks are temporary. I’m grateful for sunny morning and excellent coffee. I’m grateful for surprises and what happens when I stay open. I’m grateful to be sober today.

LAST WEEK ON TFLMS:

TFLMS Weekend: Where Sobriety Isn’t Just a Consequence…

(last weekend)

I’m grateful for a Friday morning. I’m grateful for a really good week. I’m grateful for adventure and the unexpected. I’m grateful for what is. I’m grateful letting things come to me. I’m grateful for quiet and peace and coffee. I’m grateful to be sober today.

Mystery ?? Button

song of the week:

Officially, the first piece of recorded music I was able to call my own, was by the Monkees: “Last Train to Clarksville,” which I carefully cut off the back of a Honeycombs cereal box and actually played on the record player. My favorite Monkee’s song would be “Stepping Stone,” which is a really dark song for a TV band conceived to appeal to ten year-olds on Saturday mornings:

Of course I love it very much for exactly that reason. It applied perfectly to my very ephemeral and mostly imaginary junior high relationships. I’m no one’s stepping stone, not even you, Jamie S., reading all them high-fashion magazines and going on bowling dates with my now ex-best friend, Kent K.

Now, perhaps you’re wondering, why is that first song, “I’m a Believer,” the song of the week when you just said that “Stepping Stone” is really a much better song? If you want to know the truth, it’s the same reason that I also didn’t choose this song:

Because it’s not clear what I’m going to write about then. By the way, “Say Anything,” is one of my favorite movies and features one of my favorite scenes from any movie ever:

I’m going to ask you a personal favor here, please watch that scene. Even if you never click on anything, which is a lot of you, you should. But back to the song of the week, “I’m a Believer,” actually resides on my main, everyday playlist and I like it much better than the Smashmouth/Shrek version, which is noticeably not posted here.

Am I vamping here? Maybe. I know there’s a lot of inner drama and self-realization uncorked on these pages and even I need a break from all that meaningfulness sometimes. At the same time, things are really, really good in TBD-land. I vaguely make mention of the people who very mysteriously have come into my life and helped me get where I needed to go. I was talking to one of those people yesterday about what happens when the universe grants wishes.

2023 was, in retrospect, a very hard year for me. As I reach the end of 2024, I see even more clearly how hard it was and how much there was to cope with. Anyway, one particularly dark day, I was sitting at my desk and had been writing or something. I was tired and stressed and pretty fearful about where things were going, or not going.

I’m not a frequent prayer. I never really understood the concept of prayer. I do try to say thank you to the great force in the universe, whatever it is, on a pretty regular basis and there are occasionally semi-mysterious, direct communications. But I don’t do the get on my knees and pray thing, unless I’m in church and everyone else is. That day, I definitely did one of those foxhole prayers; we alcoholics are pretty famous for those. Here was a typical example of one of mine from the olden days:

“Please don’t let X find out Y.”

It was never really clear what was owed (or to whom) when those prayers were answered. For sure, I was pretty grateful.1 That particular day, on that dark morning, I stared out the window in front of my desk, at the island that I believe could be named for me, and I just thought this:

If I can please just stay here and keep doing what I’m doing. I don’t need much else and I could be very happy.

I wasn’t trying to manifest the accoutrements of the old life, I wasn’t wishing for transformation or fame or power or wealth. I just wanted to keep sitting at my desk in my lovely den and write and listen to music, take long walks and play basketball in the park, and work on things I think are interesting, love my kids and their kids, and so on2 —and let the life I was meant to lead come to me, a piece at a time, a day at a time. At the moment, even making that pretty spartan ask, seemed pretty f****** extravagant.

I don’t think it was even all that detailed, it might have just been,

“Please let me keep what I’ve found.”

Here I am. I’m not sure of the exact date of that prayer, sometime last October-ish or maybe November. But here I am. Sitting in the same chair, looking at the same view (although a plant I’m sponsoring is now part of the view) and realizing I got exactly what I prayed for.

This is what my friend and I were talking about yesterday. She said that she realized her simple (maybe too simple) prayer had been answered as well, leading to that “now what?” moment that sometimes attends the granting of wishes and prayers.3 We both laughed, maybe we should have asked for more. But that was exactly the problem. As long as I was compiling a list of things I wanted and including those in my “prayers,” well, even when I get some of the requested items, I found I ended up getting even more resentment as part of the package. In the olden days, I spent my time seething about the wishes that went ungranted, instead of appreciating the beauty and meaning of the ones that were.

The Big Book talks about living a life beyond our wildest dreams; I’m not sure my dreams are all that wild anymore. During the dark days, I dreamed about living a life that I didn’t have to hide, being a person I didn’t need to obscure or alter, doing the simple things that produced joy in my own life and helping others when I could.

My friend and I realized that the universe had granted our respective petitions and we both had the sense that maybe we should have asked for a little more? The thing is, it’s hard for me to imagine what “a little more” would even be. I have finally built a home for myself, perhaps it’s a cocoon, but it’s all mine.

I guess it’s true, the life I’m leading is one that was beyond my wildest dreams when I was drinking. I found a life of purpose and meaning and happiness and sadness and love and loneliness and kindness and disappointment and connection and excitement and mystery.

I’m not sure what I would even use the other three wishes for.

Happy Friday.

I’m grateful for attending some NYC meetings I’ve been absent from for a while. I’m grateful for the practical wisdom found in “Living Sober”. I’m grateful for rethinking the design of our space in some fun, creative ways. I’m grateful for the charming Holiday section at the grocery store right by us – will definitely be investing in their candle options over the next few weeks. I’m grateful for another long run where my body felt up to the task. I’m grateful for the myriad of gifts I have in my life today – both tangible and intangible. I’m grateful for knowing how to reorient my mind towards the small, tiny activities that nourish my soul. I’m grateful for the community AA provides and how quickly strangers can become friends. I’m grateful for checking out from certain actions for a bit in order to protect my serenity. I’m grateful for being on the north side of the street because it ensures the snow melts pretty quickly after a storm.

I think I’ve shared here before that I love these little phrases, little acronyms we have in AA to guide us. “Bless you, change me” is the most recent one to enter into my vernacular. Its timing is certainly apt because I’ve been feeling more on edge over the past few weeks. Whether it’s events well outside my control or tiny things in my own life, I’ve found my character defects pushing for a seat at the table more fervently than usual. When this happens I can easily blame the universe for wronging me, for not giving me what I want instantly, or for not understanding how my point of view is the sage one.

That’s why the introduction of a pithy phrase like “Bless you, change me” is so timely. “Change me” is kind of analogous to another favorite sober tenet of mine that says recovery is an inside job. Essentially any true change in thinking, any true change of character, has to come from within. I cannot expect the world to regularly fall in line because as I’ve been retaught many, many, many times in sobriety, I am not in control. To avoid resentments building from things not going my way, I must look internally to find acceptance and balance. If I authentically reframe my thinking around challenging situations, big or small, then I am a better sober person at the end of the day. Reframing is really hard though. Luckily I get to rely on a lot of the wisdom I’ve accumulated from attending Meetings, reading the Big Book, speaking with fellows, practicing my routines to let me realize the discomfort I’m experiencing can transform into a positive if I put in the work. Being active in recovery has provided the opportunity to find multiple paths away from toxicity and towards constructive thought.

I also appreciate the “Bless you” part of this saying. Initially I read it as slightly cheeky, maybe even condescending. However if I absorb the words with greater sincerity then it’s simply a reminder to always lead with love. Whether it’s a stranger on the street, a pushy coworker, or someone in my inner circle I have to demonstrate love first. I have to demonstrate empathy first. I have to demonstrate kindness first. When I do that then I can better understand where others are coming from and thereby feel less angst and more peace.

All the above takes practice of course. Practice I’ll undoubtedly be doing for the rest of my life. Being on a solid sober footing though gives me a leg up to tackle this more maturely and more effectively. I need to just keep integrating wisdom like “Bless you, change me” into my DNA so that these straightforward words are translated into my everyday actions. I can practice my shift in thinking by applying it initially to the little stuff – like not being annoyed when my partner fails to put on our dog’s harness properly. When I’m capable of addressing those category of things, I can gradually transfer this to life’s larger issues. I feel quite blessed to be able to have the regained the capacity to better myself again. It’s no longer wallowing in a mosh pit of self-pity, but rather going with the flow of self-improvement.

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I am so grateful to be sober today. I’m grateful for seeing my family this weekend, for Timmy’s anniversary coming up, for a slow and restful weekend and for the day off today. I’m grateful for the city that I live in, for NYC AA, for my sponsor, my sober friends, and for continuing to learn and grow every day.

Gooood morning my friends!

As per usual, hope everyone had OR is still having a lovely weekend (: Happy Veteran’s Day to anyone who served!!

Days off like today are my favorite because everyone else for the most part also has off and there is this unspoken ‘do not bother me’ across the board that you just don’t get when you take a random day off.

Anyway, I’m spending the day going to the eye doctor, finally making it to the 6:15pm meeting at my home group for once and staying for a special meeting after. And I wasn’t sure what to write today so originally, I was going to post my obligatory I don’t know what to write long gratitude list but as I unloaded the dishwasher, took out the trash, flipped the laundry my head of course started to swirl.

First and foremost, Timmy’s anniversary is this Thursday, and I couldn’t be any prouder of him. How far he’s come. All the places he’ll continue to go.

Over the weekend we went down to Jersey to see my parents and have their dog meet our dog which I personally believe couldn’t have gone any better. We should definitely be able to bring the dog down to their place for Christmas and the fact we were even able to do such a successful meet & greet is truly a direct result of being sober.

That said as I am sure you are all super tired of hearing – I am super tired. And day’s off like today are so helpful in terms of cup refilling even if it’s just a little bit but it’s never felt like enough. I’d love to take like a month long sabbatical but that’s neither here nor there.

The point is I’ve been thinking a lot about longevity rather than the short term what’s directly in front of me. Whether that be at work, or in AA or in my relationships. I have definitely been a little over the line when it comes to selfishness lately, I cannot see past how drained I am and there is so much truth to putting the oxygen mask on yourself before you put it on someone else. I can’t help anyone right now because I am so consumed by the short term.

So, what do I need to do for the long game? Take breaks, rest when I need to, talk to God, journal. But saying that all together feels like a lot and don’t forget – I am super tired.

So very simply, I just have to put the oxygen mask on myself for a little. I feel like I am constantly at war with myself too – be a worker among workers BUT I also want to succeed and make a name for myself. Go back to being the AA gold star child I once thought myself to be, but don’t overdo it because you’ll burn out. Rest when you need to, but the house is dirty and really needs to be cleaned.

Surely there is a middle ground if I just zoom out a little. So, there’s no neat way of tying this all into a cute little bow – this past year has been a long phase of learning and growth and growing pains.

The middle ground is out there, I’ll put the oxygen mask on and please, the office is closed today – do not email me.

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Xx

Jane

I’m grateful for a fun-filled Saturday. I’m grateful for the life I get to lead. I’m grateful for drinking coffee while the sun comes up. I’m grateful for long walks in the park on Fall afternoons. I’m grateful to be sober today.

LAST WEEK ON TFLMS:

song of the week:

TFLMS Weekend: Where Sobriety Isn’t Just a Consequence…

(last weekend)

I’m grateful for chances for renewal. I’m grateful for seeing the things that are. I’m grateful for living my own life. I’m grateful for the way the game slows down when I let go. I’m grateful for sunny mornings and the chance to be myself. I’m grateful to be sober today.

Mystery ?? Button

song of the week:

Do you want the long or the short version? hahaha As though you have a choice.1 Let’s say that I became intimately familiar with the contours of this song after a break-up back in the 2015 time period. I wrote about this recently:

I would walk around the neighborhood we shared, late at night (usually after a fair amount of drinking), and this was on the playlist that accompanied me. It should have been called something like “Adventures in Melancholia.” She lived about four blocks from me, so every day presented an opportunity for the random, atomic collisions the universe employs to produce beauty and uncover truth. Well, I’m pretty sure that’s not how she looked at it. I often had this song on repeat and it so captured my mood.

I want to tell you, baby
The changes I’ve been going through

And then the best line in the song (and you should listen to this one, I’m asking you personally):

Missing you, Listen you

That is very Burt Bacharach-esque and I think I assumed that he maybe wrote this song (It was Stevie Wonder!). When I listened to this song in 2015 I was focused on the persuading part of this song—I was going to persuade someone so hard that it was just a matter of time Until You Came Back to Me.

I so wanted to explain that I was not the lying alcoholic that she had had just uncovered. I was actually thoughtful and earnest and turning over a new life and coming to understand what was really important and understanding how I got to the spot where I would do things like that and of course that could never happen again because of how much I’ve changed. Sound familiar? She didn’t buy it either, wasn’t even interested in talking about it.

Fine, I’m just going to walk around the neighborhood at night and be sad and bide my time until you’re ready to see me again.

I’m going to walk by myself
Just to prove that my love is true
All for you baby

I did that part of the plan for a while and then I moved on—as usual, it involved a lot of drinking and probably a new girlfriend. On Tuesday night, when I could no longer watch the news, I decided to start the search for the song of the week. Somehow, this is the song that popped into my head, in the same monstrous manner as the Sta-Puff Marshmallow Man spontaneously appeared in Dan Ackroyd’s in Ghostbusters. I listened to a lot of versions and I am going to tell you, I was very into this and definitely singing along.2

A lot of versions got disqualified because they botched the “Missing you, Listen You” line. In the end you get the incomparable Aretha Franklin, accompanied by Stevie Wonder. About a year or so after that break-up, I was at some black-tie thing where they were going to unveil Aretha Franklin’s portrait at the National Portrait Galley. She actually walked out, sat down at the piano, put her oversize purse on the bench next to her and knocked out her greatest hits, finishing with this song. Poetic justice somehow, I thought, gazing at the new girlfriend.

I landed on this song Tuesday night and it doesn’t have the same feel or meaning as it used to. I’m not trying to win anybody back, not trying to prove anything to anyone. My day-to-day philosophy is to show up and see what happens; Accept what I must, change what I can. You know the deal.

The sotw resonated the way it did because it really captures my mood and outlook—this song strikes me now as a “bide my time” kind of song and I think that’s kind of where I am. In a funny way, my life empties and fills on a very unpredictable schedule and is driven by events in ways I don’t really understand. I lead a pretty solitary life these days and it feels comfortable and right for it to be that way. But it definitely feels like things are changing, evolving right under my feet.

I will turn 62 on Thanksgiving Day and I celebrated five-years of sobriety on October 22nd. I’ve been given the chance to build a new law practice, my children are off pursuing exciting and purpose-driven lives and while my alcoholic brain tends to see the glass as always half-empty (seriously), the bottom line is that the universe not only gave me a new lease on life, it gave me the green light to decorate the new digs however I want.

This week gave me the occasion to look out and decide how I want to lead my life in the face of a quickly-changing and very challenging world.3 I spent a fair amount of time thinking about where I want to invest my energy going forward and I think I decided to do buy back some shares. I was talking to a good friend on Wednesday and said:

This is going to be my caterpillar year.

You know the deal with caterpillars. They are ungainly and definitely not appealing to everyone.4 They find a sturdy, secure place and they anchor themselves to it. They spin out a gauzy cocoon, build a safe place for the evolution that is about to take place. And then they wait.

There’s probably some other weird stuff taking place in the cocoon and somehow I think sprouting wings probably hurts a lot. But this is my caterpillar year. That doesn’t mean I’m going to hide, it means I’m going to focus on evolving and changing. I’m going to be intentional about how I spend my time and where I invest my energy.

I think there is a dangerous philosophy that has emerged in the world, it’s not limited to any political persuasion, but it’s the idea that if everyone pursues what makes them the most money, then everything else will turn out great for everyone. I think this confuses the building blocks for highly-efficient markets with the foundations of civilization. I think these people are not very familiar with game theory or the prisoner’s dilemma, or what economists call “externalities.” Or really understand or value art and beauty in the world.

It’s actually people contributing goodness to the world, without expectations of outsize returns, that have created most of the beauty in this world and the things that have lasting value. Or at least the things I value. To me, celebrating things you can buy with money usually heralds creative emptiness rather than sophistication. For sure, this is part of my professional-life mantra for the new era we’re entering:

By the way, did you know that we’re on TikTok?

But personally, I’m building. This is my caterpillar year. I’m going to focus on deepening and widening my spiritual life, I’m going to let go of what doesn’t serve me or isn’t meant for me. I’m going to be open to what the universe sends me. I will try and remember that a lot of what the universe sends my way is not lasting, but meant to teach me something, take me from point A to Point B. I need to accept that things are meant to be transitory for me now.

I don’t have expectations about where I will end up or even what I’m building. I’m going to pay attention to the simple prescription in the Serenity Prayer, accepting what I must, changing what I can and investing myself in people and situations in accordance with my own values and principles. To thine ownself be true, like it says on the coins. Over the years, I’ve identified the things that actually make me happy, that get me vibrating in a way that is expansive and opens doors. For whatever reason, I never stick with those things. But I’m doubling down for my caterpillar year.5

I spent a lot of time watching the news and I’m taking a break from that, and a bunch of other things for now. As I sipped coffee in Wednesday’s pre-dawn darkness, I realized the universe had just freed up a lot of time for me, cleaned the slate, in a way. Emptiness is a necessary precondition for fullness; As I turn away from what is not meant for me, the things that are have room to land. Those are things like writing and art and music—that’s what has always fed me. And that’s where I’m going to turn now.

I’ve had “Until You Come Back to Me” on repeat this morning. It is a perfect song for my caterpillar year. It’s optimistic and hopeful and has a strongly-voiced work ethic. I’m going to make myself the best person I can be and see what happens. Until You Come Back to Me. I don’t have expectations for the final product—moth or butterfly are both possibilities. I believe that joy and serenity come from letting go of notions of the final product and the destination, and embracing the beauty of what is.

I don’t know who or what I’m waiting for. Mystery and uncertainty are essential elements of the caterpillar year. There is little to be done except devoting myself to the work and seeing what emerges, what happens. There is quite a bit of uncertainty in my life right now, but strangely, there is something I know, and I know it deep down. I think it’s the secret the caterpillar knows, as they weave their cocoon and ready themselves to leave behind what they were, preparing to become what they are meant to be. As a consequence, I have to take issue with the second line of “Until You Come Back to Me,”

I know I’m not sitting and waiting in vain.

That’s the secret of the caterpillar year.

Happy Friday.