Day 169 – …and the Truth shall set you free
I love the truth; it's a balm. It befriends and defends. It sets me free to be. Me. Jesus said: " I am the truth, the way and the life". Skipping over the enormity of what he was saying about himself here, he reminds me of how beautifully, crucially, entwined are...
Day 165 – A wake-up call to dream dreams
Oprah says in her book that one of the greatest adventures of our lives would be to live our dream life. I like this posited idea as it resonates with the echo of truth. Like many truths, however, this one raises more questions than it answers. What is my dream life?...
Day 160 – Pain and suffering – The imperfect world.
If I choose to take on a challenging ordeal, it feels better than when one is thrust upon me. Expected trouble is less traumatic than unexpected trouble. Invited trials are more manageable than those I inherited. Example: The walk home is long, and I do not have a...
Day 157 – 1DAAT
1DAAT is a term often used in the sober community. It is advice I would do well to heed. "One Day At A Time" There are so many battlegrounds where this approach can help me to victory: Anywhere I face a problem which threatens to overwhelm me by its sheer scale or...
Day 151 – Gratitude
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard it all before. Let me listen to it again. Gratitude is so much more than a polite set of words. It is a mind-set, an attitude, and a viewing angle that directly turbo boosts my baseline abilities. In martial arts, I learned how to place my...
Day 149 – Making a bid for New Life.
It's a powerful thing to challenge the established. Why? To question the incumbent power base is to risk an attack. The potential gain is to invite reform. Danger versus reward. The ruling authority will have found a place in the landscape and successfully set up...
Day 146: The learning curve continues.
I have been out of sorts for three days, unsettled and disquieted. I have craved an excess of something but struggled with how best to scratch that itch. A whole packet of chocolate digestives is not very rock 'n roll. Has my life become beige? WTF is...
Day 142: Who would want to be a teenager again?
My teenage years began with taking off my life's stabilizer wheels far too early. I stepped out from under the parental umbrella's security and guidance and began making decisions for myself. It was a painful and tortuous long-haul disaster. I crashed a lot and got...
Day 141 – The snowball
One hundred and forty-one days ago, I interrupted a destructive process happening to and within my life. Alcohol was slowly, sneakily, seditiously, and surely undermining and dismantling the components of my life. Oh no, it wasn't! Oh yes, you were! Health...
Day 139: Was I an addict?
Someone close to me recently stated that alcohol was not an addictive drug and belonged more in the same category as chocolate, i.e., something which could get out of hand but was different from nicotine, heroin, or cocaine. I struggled to explain it at the time, so...