My friend, John, and SEVERAL of my young, male compadres are all about Ron Paul (I never hear women championing Ron Paul’s cause). Oh, dear lord. It’s like they’ve found a new religion. Their savior has come, and he can be yours too, if you’ll let him. I won’t let him, but I would love if I could cut out the rest of the crazy and go with his plan just to fuck off of all the wars. I don’t know where we get off thinking we’re so much more awesome than all of the other countries who went to Afghanistan and came back home whipped, with their tails between their legs. And you’d *think* maybe Vietnam would have given us some recent lessons in such matters, to boot. But, we just don’t seem to be very good at history.  It’s like we’re alcoholic when it comes to war. There’s some strange mental blank spot that prevents us from remembering the suffering and humiliation (and death and horror) of even a year or a decade or a generation ago.

And I’ll be the first to admit, there’s a huge percent of the population that can go by, willfully ignorant to it all, if we so desire. If you have no one enlisted, and you want to turn a blind eye, you can. There’s no draft. No rations. No victory gardens. No working together to help the troops. In fact, I don’t really even see those overblown dramatic commercials for the military anymore, either (I’m not exactly sad about that, but that’s one less reminder of what’s going on). There’s no personal toll or loss for most of us to be in these wars; our gas is a little more expensive, but just like the alcoholic and the person addicted to cigarettes, it’s not stopping anyone from buying those SUVs and driving them everywhere. Or continuing to drink and buy cigarettes (“When they get to $5.00 a pack, I’ll definitely quit!).

But someone’s paying a toll. Someone’s losing. Families are losing daughters, aunts, wives, mothers –  brothers, uncles, sons, fathers. American and all over the world. Men and women are losing limbs, memories and the ability to come home to a normal way of life. Communities are being torn apart with families grieving and people struggling to make a living and wondering how they will make their mortgage, even *after* they return home with a hero’s welcome. Veterans are left with scars that no one else can see and desperately fight to assimilate into their old world while still trying to make sense of memories and events they’ll never quite leave behind.  I don’t know that we’re doing any better of a job of helping these men and women now than we ever have.

I talk about this because I was trying to get rid of some things in my inbox and I came across a draft of something I had written when I was still working for the apartment finding service. I think it was the Saturday before I was let go.  I had written down some notes about a man who had come in to get an apartment. He was somewhat handicapped. It was hard to tell exactly what was going on. He seemed a little physically disabled, but there also seemed to be some mental struggle as well. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but one of the managers was helping him out. When people couldn’t take the stairs, they would always just take care of them downstairs. I was happy to see that he was being so well taken care of.

He was filling out some paperwork, and he started telling his story. He was in the military. He was on a personnel carrier. When he said that, I was thinking aircraft carrier at first, so I wasn’t really expecting the rest of the story. But it makes sense once I think about the words … it’s a *personnel* carrier. They’re the ones that are like the fast tanks. They’re the ones you can climb out of the back and shoot and fight. He was in one, and they got hit.  There were three of them — him and two of his friends, two of his brothers in arms, and he was the only one who came out alive. It took him a whole year to learn how to walk and talk again.

He told us that he can’t remember things. That he couldn’t remember having conversations an hour later. Or how much money he has with him or how to buy a soda. That it’s very easy to get lost. If he has to go into buildings, he’s not going to have very good luck. I remember that we (do you like how I instantly co-opted him? I wanted him to do well) needed to find him a place that was going to be a straight shot, bus route wise, to where he was getting help — some place related to the VA or something. The military was going to pay for his housing and such; a landlord really should have no problem accepting any application we turned in. It was guaranteed money.

Just like I’m sitting here, crying now, I just remember thinking that here is a guy who now has physical and mental disabilities — who KNOWS he has them — who was previously fully functioning. We might not have agreed on politics, I don’t even know. He could have been a right-wing, gun loving Republican, for all I know.  But now, because of a war that is so needless, he is irreparably damaged. And two of his friends? They’re not even here to tell the tale. So, he’s got that on top of it all. Broke my heart.

I know that it’s a speech. But I just don’t want any more war, Mr. President. It’s good for absolutely nothing.

Here’s why I will be eating at home: I’m unemployed and sometimes a trip to the Hollywood Grill is out of my budget. I understand that a  prix fixe menu at a really nice place is an incredible deal, and I have often lamented that I haven’t taken some of these places up on their offers for a nice, three course meal for $30 or so — pretty nice for a French restaurant, especially when I’m not going to be drinking.

But the noise (buzz?) that’s being generated all around Alinea, Next, Girl & the Goat, Longman and Eagle, Publican, Blackbird*, Moto and the like is starting to give me a headache. I won’t lie and say it’s not a muddled combination of sour grapes, envy and just a lack of general foodie-ness in there somewhere. If someone said they’d take me to one of these restaurants, I most likely wouldn’t turn them down. I hate to be left out of things.  However, I will say that another element in my general distaste for the constant chatter comes from the fact that even were I able to go, I’d feel pretty guilty knowing two people had spent my rent on what would soon be toilet fodder.

I’ll be eating at home instead of out at Restaurant Week not because I’m finding fault with the general concept/treatment, but because I am treading water just to pay my bills while looking for employment. And that my friends, is the reality for a lot of people. So, before we get all whipped up about how Restaurant Week is sucking, maybe we can go donate some money to the Chicago Food Depository?

*Out of that list, the only one participating in Restaurant Week (as far as I can tell), is Blackbird for lunch.

victims don’t stay sober.

i keep walking around in this surreal chain of watching people and thinking “if you keep doing that, you’re going to die.” and then i look at my life and i think, “if i don’t change, i’m just going to eventually die and not know it.” i see people who want people to fix everything for them and can’t figure out why the world just isn’t stepping up to the plate. and i look around and wonder why no one ever calls me. why people i thought were my friends really aren’t my friends at all. why they say one thing and do another. i look over at people and pity them because they can’t see how they are being taken care of. and i listen to myself complain about how i just can’t ever get anyone to listen to me about this or take care of that.

it’s bizarre.  i’ve been also stuck between this place of listening to a lot of old-timers in coffee club talk about the old days (these people have 32, 45, 53 years type of sobriety) when people were given a certain type of direction. when the program wasn’t as watered down. when people weren’t afraid to hurt people’s feelings a little. and i’ve been identifying with that a little. feeling like there’s a bunch of “kids” in coffee club who don’t know to act anymore. like they don’t know how to listen or sit down or come in on time or just respect the program. or how to be involved.  and then, i’m pissed off because i think my friend doesn’t really want to give me the time of day because i’m not working the kind of program she wants me to be working. because i’m not doing it the way she thinks it should be done. so, i become the friend of convenience. even while i judge others who are doing it “wrong,” too.

see? it’s a rock and a hard place. i think it’s why i’m so humbled this anniversary. instead of 10, it feels like _0 again. i just realize how blessed i am to be alive and sober and still around the rooms. still open to being taught and open to new experiences and open to what god has in store for me. i just know i have so, so much more to learn. i just don’t know anything and i hope that god is gentle with me and continues to help me as i struggle with my ego and wanting so desperately to be right.

the gentleman who spoke tonight said that when he came in, a woman told him his ‘ideas were like cement: well-mixed and firmly set.” i feel like that. i feel like they are like new cement these days. they can be changed easier than when i came in. they’re open for molding.  but i’m still hard-headed.  i still struggle not to be the one in charge, the one who has to be in first.

i feel like i’m on high heat, tumble dry these days. i just want the world to stop spinning and to have some peace. it’ll happen. i just need to get on the same page as god.

And that’s what I did. Blessedly, it was easy to let the day counting go quite easily, for the desire to use alcohol and smoke marijuana wasn’t there like it had been. Every day after work. Every weekend. Every time I was bored. Every time I went out. Every time there was a party. Every time there was nothing to do. Every time there was a time that that wasn’t filled with work, if I had a job. I loved to drink and I loved to get high. These were comforts to me, they were companions. They were the ways by which I measured your personality and the way you would fit in with my “lifestyle.”

It was a life, but I don’t know that it had much style. Some people I know finished college during the worst of their addictions. Some people bought houses and got married. Some people traveled, had careers, accomplished things. It’s not to say that they weren’t still miserable, but it always strikes me as odd that I didn’t think I was miserable, but I couldn’t get any of the aforementioned done. I was being slowly poisoned. I was imperceptibly drowning.

The final straw on my way into the coffee club was that my brain finally shorted out and I was diagnosed with manic-depression. That led to an intensive outpatient program and an eventual week’s stay in the psych ward which led to a summer of the worst isolation and depression I have ever known. It is always darkest before the dawn. I tried to rekindle my romance with alcohol for a bit, but it was never the same again.

I had several powerful spiritual experiences in a short amount of time which led to my eventual sobriety. One was that I realized I was completely powerless over alcohol — that I could no longer stop drinking when I wanted to — after I was with someone who couldn’t have alcohol around them and whom I had never drank with before. Despite potentially catastrophic consequences for this person, I absolutely needed (and procured) alcohol for myself anyway. The second came a week later, after having gone to a meeting where people shared their personal experiences with powerlessness and having read a little bit about the physical aspect of alcoholism, when I sat down for a night of drinking. The first sip of alcohol hit my lips and I knew without a shadow of a doubt what people were referring to when they talked of a “phenomenon of craving.” The idea that one drink begets a string of many that the drinker has no control over. I also knew I would have no future success drinking with that sort of shit running around in my head. The third came the next day, when someone I had been in the outpatient program with called to ask me if I wanted to go to a meeting. For some reason, I said yes. I don’t know why she called, and I don’t know why I said yes.  We stopped by another friend’s house to see if she wanted to go with — she was already in a few wine glasses deep and declined to join us. The first friend didn’t manage to stay sober with any regularity as far as I know (I lost track of her pretty quickly) and the second friend is dead; murdered by her lover.

I don’t know why I’m here. I really don’t. I know that over the years, I have taken actions that were contrary to my desires. The coffee club is the *only* thing that I seem to be willing and able to get up on a weekend at 7 or 8 am to go to some conference to speak or hear someone else speak. It’s the only thing that’s held me accountable to things that to other people would seem wildly tedious and boring. I have definitely learned how to grow up here. I realize that I have learned many things — many skills, emotional and practical — that I previously didn’t know and didn’t know I didn’t know.

But I also have done so many things “wrong” here. Failed to take suggestions. Plain refused to do things. Stalled out. Balked. Neglected my spiritual life. Struggled to find my way. Been headstrong and filled with self-will. Things which I have seen put other people out on their ass and sometimes in their graves.

So, I don’t know. I don’t know why me and not someone else. Frankly, I don’t know where the time has gone. I don’t know where my original crew has gone — how they all ended up getting married, moving away and having kids. How life keeps on happening and things keep on changing and at the end of the day, it all sort of kind of stays the same.

God, I guess. Creative Intelligence. Spirit of the Universe. Higher Power. That’s what I got or regained here. A sense of connection with it and the spark of the divine that is it in me. That knowledge that I have it in my soul — that I am it, that it is me. That I have a small, still voice right inside of me to guide me, lead me, give me the next instruction — if I clear away all the other crap that’s screaming over the top of it and generally saying some really crazy ass shit.  That’s the thing I know. That’s the thing that keeps me sober every day. That I ask for help. That brought me in, that got me here, that takes me home. I don’t care if it’s JC or Buddha or Allah or Taoist or New Age or Kundalini Yoga or whatever. It’s all of that. I take them all. I use them all. It’s all the Source. It’s all the deal. It’s all conspiring for my (and your) good.

Now, I just have to walk out there and act like I believe it’s true.

Ummm … who gives a fuck? Are they kidding? Rick Perry? Herman Cain? Newt Gingrich? Mitt Romney? Ron Paul? Rick Santorum? Jon Hunstman? Michelle Bachmann? Seriously? Dear God.

I wouldn’t have wasted one minute (I didn’t) watching debates with these people.  Some of them are flat out crazy. Some of them are just degenerate. Some of them are really unthinkably twisted. I don’t get it.  Here’s the thing … I’m not voting for any of them. Ever. Even as I struggle with some of the things Obama has been doing recently, I’d never, ever vote for any of these people.  (No, my dear, friend, Sam, I’m NEVER VOTING FOR RON PAUL.)  So, I’m not going to sit and make my head want to explode and my ovaries want to burst into flames and my blood run cold every two minutes by watching that shit. I just don’t get why my friends and acquaintances and other people do. WHY? What are you possibly gaining from this? Are you saving up some sort of special ammunition for when one of the jokes is nominated as the Republican candidate?

I just can’t do it. I don’t see the point. Seriously. It just makes me angry even THINKING about watching that shit. So, I can’t figure out why you’d want to do it. Romney seems like he’d stand the biggest chance to make a play against Obama, and you have people who probably won’t even vote for him because he’s a Mormon. Really? You fucking psychopaths. And then there’s the whole thing that he sort of kind of did Massachusetts a solid and got them all healthcare. You know, that douche move. Yeah, I can’t even get into it. Cause then, it’s all about how they can all out-crazy each other by taking away abortion rights (even if you’ve been raped by your dad) and all sorts of other crazy ass shit. I don’t get it. I don’t get who really is that fucking scared of Obama and buys into all this crazy shit that is being thrown around that they really look at these sexually-harassing, adulterous, crazy people and thinks, “Yeah. This is my guy/gal. I want them in charge of the weapons.”

See. I’m all riled up and I’m not even watching this craziness. Why are you?

I wasn’t going to do a radio shift this time out, but there was an empty slot Mondays from 3-6pm, so I took it in the meanwhile that I don’t have a job. Today, I got to play a request for a Matisyahu song for my would-be nephew, Rex. Kid knows Matisyahu, and he just turned 4. I don’t know any Matisyahu. What the hell?

But his mom said he heard the song, and better yet, heard me say his city and his name on the air. That made me so happy. It makes me happy to make people happy by playing music. So, that’s something creative if nothing else.  Here’s Rex’s request:

But for now, i just know that time feels like it flies by faster and faster every year. That blocks of six months go by without even having given much acknowledgement (1), and people are growing older without my permission. On the contrary, I look at the idea of 2012 and the fact that I’ll be 38 in a few months, and I realize I’m living in a time that is now beyond when I previously could have even understood or imagined.

There were the days of figuring out how old I was going to be in 1999, to figure out what my life would be like when we’d all reach the futuristic world that Prince sang to us about (25 years old). There were the days of calculating when I would turn 18 (1992) and then, the invincible, untouchable age of 21 (1995). There was the exciting precipice of the millenium with all of its requisite promise and danger (26). I suppose I might have vaguely considered 30 once I got to my mid-20s (2004). But anything past that didn’t exist. Honestly, it just didn’t.

But here I am, in the year 2012, 37 years old, and headed for 38 in a jiffy. In 10 days, I’ll have been sober for 10 years and that alone is a miracle and something that seems absolutely incomprehensible to me. To the smussyolay of 21, to the smussyolay of 27. To any smussyolay. I’m living in times that were absolutely unforeseen. Times that obviously didn’t exist 10 or 20 years ago, but didn’t even exist in the reaches of my mind. My imagination hadn’t even thought to imagine that far yet.

And yet, when my imagination *did* imagine, I had imagined having a college degree and having traveled the world and having been married by now. Living a life more well established, more accomplished, more something to have been proud of. Instead, I have a cat and debt and nothing so solid as a piece of paper to proclaim that I’ve done anything or that I’m smart enough to have pulled off a collection of small accomplishments declaring me worthy of a bachelor’s degree. All of these things are wildly disappointing and send me quickly in to a swirling shame spiral, to be sure. But it seems a desperately pessimistic way to start the new year, right?

If nothing, I’ve always tried to remain truthful here, so I would have been remiss to leave that out. But I don’t want to end this post there. I want to remind anyone who is reading (you), and primarily the one who is writing (me), that I believe in divine providence. Not predestination, but divine providence. That idea that we’re all exactly where we’re supposed to be right now. That things are going along as planned. That everything is working out all right. That God or god or goddess or the Creative Intelligence or Spirit of the Universe is benevolent and loves us all, regardless of how and where and why we see ourselves. That we’re perfect and whole and just right in that entity’s eyes. It’s so hard for me to truly understand, and I can believe it so much more for you than for me. But I’ll say it just to say it, just so we remember that it really all is good. It’s all working out fine.

More Avetts, yeah?

(1) This is even more pronounced in coffee club, where people you see at their first time around all of a sudden are announcing that they’ve been there for three months, six months, a year. How is that possible? Wasn’t it just yester … oh, never mind. I guess it’s just happening.

Here are some of the things I’d like to resolve to make goals next year (rather than make resolutions to do):

take some classes — improVISation, stuff at old town school
walk more
eat healthier:
– drop the sugar
– learn to cook
sleep more regularly
have a job
have a job i really like
pay my debt off
write more
take a picture a day or write a blog a day or do something positive toward creativity a day
pray more
work harder in my spiritual life
– create a meditative practice — whatever that looks like for me
– work hard to align myself with the universe — take the actions necessary to help achieve that
be nicer
seek compassion in my heart for people
drop judgment
be less envious and jealous
try to see how i can be of service to other people instead of always and constantly thinking of myself
DO more things instead of talking about things or thinking about things

This was a weird year. I’ll be wrapping up 10 uninterrupted years of sobriety fairly soon. Seems so crazy. There’s so much yet to go. so much yet to learn. so much yet to do. I feel like I’ve done nothing. Like I know nothing. I do know that I should just keep walking and things will eventually be revealed. I wish you all the best for the new year and every peace and blessing to each one of you.

It’s not like my family has super nice paper or anything, my mom usually buys whatever from Kmart or Target (2) or wherever she’s been that season. For years, we had those now seemingly dated plastic bows with the adhesive tape on the back and the name tags (3) that went on the corners. The paper was generically Christmas (e.g.,”Merry Christmas”) or sometimes just holiday (e.g.,  snowmen). It often was very thin, which also presented even more of a challenge for wrapping and cutting, especially if you got the “bad” scissors.

But it’s a challenge my dad takes on with relish, it seems, working meticulously to present the snappiest looking present you could want. And something odd shaped? He’s your man. He’ll engineer that out, too. You definitely want him on the case. I’ve never been able to figure out why he takes this task on with such pride, but maybe it’s just a mix of wanting to look good for the recipient and just taking satisfaction in a job well done.

I know he takes this business seriously, because it’s the one time I’ve ever seen him use a material with reckless abandon. Normally, he’s a man of thrift; someone who believes that less is more. I’ve heard him eschew using air freshener after going to the bathroom because you shouldn’t “waste it,” not because of any safeguarding of the ozone. He routinely advises us to use half of a kleenex. He claims he uses 4 squares of toilet paper — he’s a guy, so he’s only using toilet paper for one reason, people. And the best of the insanity is that he doesn’t use a blinker — because he doesn’t want to “waste blinks.” I wish I were kidding, but I’m not. He claims he uses one when there’s people behind him, but I think he waits until the very last minute, so the courtesy and safety in that has got to be nil (4).

But when he wraps presents, he uses as much scotch tape is as necessary to do the job. I know that sounds like a small detail, but it’s not. If you knew my father (see the aforementioned), you’d know that it’s just not. The fact that he’ll tape down three things in a very small area just to ensure he can get stick straight corners is amazing to me. I can’t believe he’s using all this tape. And for what? Wrapping paper that will soon end up in the garbage … I mean, recycling bin? It’s just fascinating to me. I’d think he’d be yelling to one of us (as he eavesdrops on every possible sound that goes on in his house), “why are you using all that tape!?” But no. He’s fine with it. Because he also will just use as much as he needs to make that wrapping job look immaculate.

I wonder if it’s somewhat related to the fact that my Grandma used to take an inordinate amount of time UNwrapping her gifts. She would take her time, delicately unwrapping the paper, making sure it didn’t tear, and folding it nicely afterward. You could have wrapped a present with her present’s paper directly afterward. I’d sit there and think — “C’MON, Grandma. Let’s DO this.”

As I was wrapping tonight and musing these things over, however, I realized that growing up in the midst of the Great Depression would probably make you cherish your gifts and make you slowly unwrap and save your wrapping paper.  You learned to save everything (a trait that has been passed down to my dad — known as being a pack rat — and down to me — now known as hoarding), and you only got one gift. She’d tell me of the Christmases she and her nine other brothers and sisters got to go to the Salvation Army (or what have you) and pick out one gift from the donation bin. Sad.

So maybe his desire to wrap like a badass comes from that mentality. I don’t know. But the man spares no expense when it comes to Scotch tape. I’ll tell you that. And these are the details which I’ll miss someday. These are the small pieces of minutia that make us real.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

(1) I’m not a great RAPPER, though. I *can* rhyme pretty well on command, but I sort of freeze up in front of people. I’m not guaranteeing my rhymes will be slick, but they’ll rhyme.

(2) I was at Target and Costco tonight. Both of them were so much less scary than I thought. Costco was like a Wednesday afternoon. Shocking. Target also had “premium” wrapping paper for $5 a roll. It was pretty nice. I got the $2.50 a roll instead. C’est la vie.

(3) When we were older and got more physical gifts, the boxes were still wrapped, but our names were just written on them in black Sharpie …

(4) What’s even more baffling is that he’s given me so many more awesome tips for driving that have been with me all throughout the years and have made me such a good, safe, defensive driver.