A Searching and Fearless Moral Inventory

Working the 12-steps via the Narcotics Anonymous Step Working Guides.  Despite the plural name, it is a letter-size soft cover book of 124 pages with 400+questions on the steps.  I am writing my responses in cursive in a 3-ring notebook.  Tonight I finished the last question of the 3^rd step and so am now on the 4^th step.

Last year Lea and I started a simplified recovery bible-based workbook with short fill-in-the-blank answers.  That was not a searching inventory by any stretch of the imagination.

I read the 4^th step from the the NA 12x12 today and a couple pages from the study guide tonight.   It has been almost 10 years since my last 4^th step. 

An online definition of moral is: “Moral comes from the Latin word mores, for habits. The moral of a story is supposed to teach you how to be a better person. If moral is used as an adjective, it means good, or ethical. If you have a strong moral character, you are a good member of society. If someone is a cheat and a liar, you might say, "She is not a moral person.”

I am grateful to be sober and working on being a better person.   After a rough year with health care issues, I am optimistic for happier times.

I Just Voted

King County—in the Seattle metro area—strongly encourages voting by mail aka “absentee ballot”.  I have been to a voting both a couple times in my life in college when there was a booth at the apartment complex where I lived in Santa Barbara.  Other than that, it has been all vote-by-mail.   VBM is a fantastic way to vote by leaving a paper trail that can be audited and recounted along with no lines and open 24/7 for weeks in advance.

This year there were a couple of measures asking how voters felt for already implemented taxes such as a tax on oil trains amounting to $17M.  The choices were to keep or repeal said taxes.  I wanted a 3^rd choice to increase taxes.  Not an option.

In light of the voter suppression going on elsewhere in the country, King County is a bastion of voting opportunity in many ways.

I am grateful for the opportunity to vote in a easy user friendly manor that does not require me to get special ID or have to wait in line for hours at a distant hard-to-get-to location.

Discipline vs Motivation

I get several self-improvement emails every day.  Some are spiritual or 12-step recovery based and others are of the positive psychology ilk.   Not a lot of new material, mostly they just serve to remind me and reinforce the obvious. 

One email that continues to provide food for thought weeks later is was to go with discipline for doing the next indicated thing such as exercise or other healthy behavior instead of waiting for the motivation to feel like getting exercise or whatever other tasks I am procrastinating on.

This year I have had a rough go on doing the next indicated thing for a variety of reasons including health care problems.  This week, I am going to use discipline to get back to a healthier routine of more meetings and swimming.  I will go to at least 7 meetings and swim at least 2 times this week.

I am grateful for the self-care skills I have learned to help me live a better life today.

Back to School

My roommate Lea has gone back to college to do a vocational stint to become a phlebotomist.  Her first class is on Tuesday.  That is a huge amount of progress from three years ago having the worst case of incomprehensible demoralization I have ever seen on January 1^st 2013.  She has had to overcome more than most due to physical and mental health issues.

I am proud of the progress Lea has made.  Helping her get a life that works is the nicest thing I have ever done for another human being.  Knowing her has made me a better person.

I am grateful to be able to be of service to others today and for getting to share their success with them.   We will do something to celebrate her progress on Monday.  That is new behavior for us.

Modern Logistics

I do a fair amount of shopping on Amazon and have the $100/year Prime membership.  It is cost effective to shop on Amazon compared with driving around checking prices in real life and vastly more secure than giving my credit card to unknown merchants all over the web.

Today I bought some cat medicine.  While writing this Gratitude blog post, I checked prices.  It is the same price on Amazon as at the local Petco store (according the Petco’s 50% ad on the web…cough…cough…BS).  Before deciding on which medication to get, I consulted some cat health sites and read reviews.  The choice of medication was obvious.  It will be here Tuesday.

Amazon Prime purchases used to arrive in 2 days.  In the last month, some Prime purchases have been scheduled for 3ish weeks away.  My guess is they are shipping from China.  It feels like bait and switch scummy that these items are presented as “Prime” and yet shipped via slow boat.  Definitely diluting the Prime brand with small print about arriving in 3 weeks.

/rant off

My thought in writing is how fast products and services are delivered at low cost in my life.  My sister sent a printed document from Australia that got here in less than a week.   Amazon has a same-day delivery service for a large selection of goods for customers living in selected places including the Seattle metro area.

Email blows snail mail out of the water.  Digital downloads shrank Blockbuster movie rentals from custom built stores to Redbox vending machines in a few short years.

My dad was a pilot and got to fly around the world for work in trips lasting up to two weeks.  Now the world comes to me faster than he could make it to Hawaii and back.

I am grateful for modern logistics including Amazon, UPS, FedEx, the USPS, and the web.  They make informed shopping a lot easier for me.

Changing Seasons

It will be Autumn in four days on the 23^rd at 1:21 AM PDT.  I miss the long hours of daylight. 

This year I am going to get a plant light that I will also use to help mitigate Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and to keep my plants green, lush and thriving through the winter.   I use the front window as a backdrop for my office/computer desk.   The plants are relegated to a dark corner where they do not thrive.  My plant-killing cats don’t help.  A grow light will make for brighter days for all.

I am grateful for the 23° precession of the earth around the sun.  That gives us a reasonable change of seasons which is vital for life as we know it.

Swimming Again

Went swimming tonight for the first time in 8 months and 2 days.  It felt great to be back in the water.  I was in the pool for 25 minutes.   That was a good start on exercise and a bit of an investigation into how well the skin on my burn and legs would handle the 91° water.  It went well. 

Hopefully I will soon be swimming every day.  That was the plan when I got a 90-day unlimited pass the day before I burned my ankle.  Fortunately, the pool was nice enough to put the plan on hold until I commit to restarting the clock on the unlimited plan.  Tonight I paid the single use fee of $5.

I am grateful for getting to go swimming again.  It took a lot of resources to make that happen including help from Lea and a great place to swim.

Refugees

According to Google (matching donar site) the biggest refuge and migrant crisis in Europe, the Middle East and Africa is affecting the most people since WWII.  The people in the videos I saw were healthy young men that made it to Europe.  By extrapolation, the aged, women and children are being left behind.

One of my favorite quotes on war is “war is a place where old men send young men off to die”.  If those declaring war had to do the fighting and dying, there would be a lot less war.

For my entire life, the USA has spent more money on defense than any other country and usually more than the next 20 countries lumped together.  That was not a good investment in long-term well-being for anybody put the owners of the military-congressional-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about.

The biggest problem in my locality is the construction noise while the siding is being replaced on my 180 unit apartment complex.   That is a first world problem.

I am grateful to have a stable safe peaceful place to live where immigrants to our local community come to work at Microsoft and Amazon as opposed to fleeing for their lives.

A Gorgeous Late Summer Day

It was a perfect 78° in Seattle on Thursday.   For having had the hottest driest summer on record, trees and bushes are amazingly green around Puget Sound.  Cottonwood tree leaves are starting to change to autumn colors.

I am grateful for a gorgeous perfect day, a chance to spend time with others and for trying to be of service to another person in heinous pain (especially grateful it was not me).

A Friend of a Friend With a Resentment

A common 12-step cliché is that ‘having a resentment is like taking poison and expecting someone else to die’.  My friend of a friend (fof) is living (via casual rental) with a man that started smoking heroin again as of last week.   It is not going well.  The fof is determined to fight it out and emerge triumphant over the man and his addiction.  Pure crazy making insanity.  It is not going well and will only get worse as the battle wears on.

They are not asking for advice.   They did ask for a ride after the bus they were on stopped at an intersection proceeding no further after the light refused to allow for a left-turn for half an hour.  I won’t drive around Bellevue in rush hour traffic if I can avoid it.   For them, I got on the road at 4:50.   Two hours later, I completed what is usually a 30 minute drive.

I am grateful for my housing security.  The place I live is not perfect and I will have to take action to rehab the interior with new flooring and paint.  That is small potatoes compared with living with an addict in active addiction after having pre-payed the rent.

Labor Day

Today is Labor Day.  I owe a huge debt of gratitude to those who fought for the rights of workers in the prior to shortly after the turn of the 20^th century resulting in Washington State’s Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1911.  After getting paralyzed on the job in 1981, I have been on workmen’s comp for the last 34 years.  It is the difference between living in a place of my choice or being trapped in subsidized housing with poor medical care.  A huge quality of life difference.

Until now, I did not even know when WC started in the world, USA, or in Washington State.    Here is a nice article on how it came about in Washington.

I am grateful for my Workmen’s Compensation insurance.  My life would not be the same without it.

Happy Labor Day!

A Prime Number

Had 1181 posts when I started to write tonight.  Wondered about the factors, e.g.2 & 3 for 6, and checked Google.  1181 is a prime number.

I have much better math skills than most of my friends, mostly it is a bit of a parlor trick to me.  It turns out that social and emotional skills are a lot more helpful in living a happy life..  On the other hand, math literacy is vital, useful and wonderful to be able to quantify things.

I had a hard time with calculus.   More studying would have helped a lot.    I am in awe of the math insight of others such as Euclid (geometry), al-Khwarizmi (algerbra),  Newton and Leibniz (calculus).  Imagine needing to invent the concept of zero as happened several times and places in history—that seems bizarre to me—even a cave man (or a monkey) could tell he had no food.

I am grateful for how the language of science has shaped our modern world.

An August Rainstorm

In August, Seattle is one of the driest places in the US.   For the next week, we are getting a November storm set from Hawaii, aka the Pineapple Express, that is forecasted to drop several inches of rain on a parched landscape.  It could not come at a better time.  We are having the worst fire season on record in terms of burned acreage.

I am grateful for an out of season storm sequence bringing rain and cool weather to our record hot summer.

New Apartment Siding

My apartment complex is owned by the largest publicly traded apartment on the west coast—Essex Property Trust.  Essex spent $4.3 billion two years ago to buy BRE Properties.  Now Essex looks to be spending some money on upgrades with a substantial rental increase that is sure to follow.

I love the accessibility of my apartment, ,my parking spot and the location.  The two downsides are my shower is less than ideal for me and that we are on a small hill that prevents me from going for walks around that neighborhood.

I am grateful for a nice place to live in a crime-free neighborhood that is well maintained and incredibly convenient to run errands around town.   Few people live in a more convenient location than how mine works for me.

The Chasm Between Wisdom and Virtue

I have not exercised in 8 months beyond the occasional more active outing that would consist of wheeling around on a relatively flat hard surface.  This morning I was overwhelmed by self-pity due to my rapidly aging body and so skipped going to a morning meeting—that did not help my attitude.  Fortunately lunch with a friend and therapy resulted in feeling much better and some activity.

I am not much of a “hater”.  I do hate the tyranny of insanity that results in my doing much less than I know would be good for me while feeling bad about not doing anything.

I am grateful for the scheduled structure in my life that gets me out of my head and into the action of getting out interacting with others.   It makes it a lot easier to help downsize the chasm between knowing what is good for me (wisdom) and doing what is good for me (virtue).

Lost and Okay

I have lacked a sense of direction on my journey through life for a long time.  Sure, I am working on staying sober and my relationships with others, those are great things but not enough.   I need to find a “mission” or project to work on to provide a challenge and a sense of accomplishment with creativity.

Swimming will be a part of that journey in a couple of weeks when the local adaptive access pool re-opens in three weeks.  I will have gone 8 months without swimming due to health care issues.

Working with others needs to be a part of whatever I do.   I will work on some craft projects at home.  That is a double-edged sword.   I would enjoy the projects and be isolating—that never works well for me on any kind of long-term basis.

I am grateful to be okay and look forward to engaging in right-size challenges in the future.  I will get help from others in locating the right project for me.

Restarting My Day

Had a rough morning and afternoon today.  Compensated for my sloth and self-pity by doing nothing allowing a trickle of negative thinking turn into a stream of ill-will.

Fortunately I am getting better at taking right action before that kind of thinking turns into a raging torrent of days with of negativity.  I got up, got dressed and went to the last half of a meeting.  Chatted with some friends afterwards, shopped and ate at Whole Foods, and made it home feeling much better.

I am grateful that I don’t get trapped isolating with “my own best thinking” nearly as long nor frequently as how it used to be.

One Last Hot Day

It was 89° today.  According to my weather website of choice, wunderground.com/, there are two days in the next ten days that will be above 80°.  The hottest summer on record in Seattle is cooling off.  Statistically, the average temperature cools off 2/10ths of a degree per day from July to January, then warms up again.

On a thermal tangent: Speaking of heat, J. Williard Gibbs comes to mind.  Without the concept of Gibbs free energy thermodynamics would be nothing.   JWG is widely regarded as America’s greatest native born scientist.   He graduated from Yale with the first American doctorate in engineering.

Both last summer and this summer, I bought portable AC units somewhat shaped liked oversized carry-on luggage.  Both of them began to die well before their time.  The good news is that I got my money back last summer and just need to ship this one back in the next week to get a refund on it.  I appreciate the refund but would vastly prefer a quality product that did not die after a month of use.   The fan noise quality was disappointing.   I bought the ones with the best reviews.  Next year, I will strive to get a better model.    The good news is that my summer was fantastically more pleasant with AC in my bedroom.   My plasma TV is generates way too much heat to watch without AC.

I am grateful for a warm dry summer and look forward to a cooler season to come that is projected to be warmer and dryer than average.

Crossroads Mall Farmers Market

A small group of us meets every Tuesday morning at Crossroads Mall to fellowship and discuss 12-step recovery.  Deborah went with us today. 

After our meeting, we browsed the Daiso store which is a Japanese dollar store where everything costs $1.50. 

Then we got a delicious slice of pizza from a wood-fired oven at the farmer’s market.  After that, we got a beautiful small bouquet of flowers for $5 and a tiny half-flat of blueberries for $16.

The farmers market tends to be overpriced in my humble opinion compared with the QFC next door.   It is worth a few extra bucks to wander the stalls and support local small businesses.  The local blueberries were better than the California imports sold at the grocery store.

I am grateful for a warm sunny day, cheap stores, good pizza, beautiful flowers and fantastic blueberries that I got to enjoy as a result of my meeting with others at the mall.  It would not have happened nor been nearly as fun without them.

A Good Day Today

Today was a good day for me on a perfect mid-August summer day in Seattle.  It was a cloudfree 82° with a slight breeze making it pleasant in the shade and warm enough for swimming in the sun. 

Went to a meeting, did some chores around the apartment, a great lunch with a good friend, met with my therapist, a few more chores, watched the second half of a Kung Fu movie, halfway thru the 5^th book in the A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) series. 

I am reading the GoT series for the first time.  I thought I was going to be done when I finished A Dance With Dragons, but a little Wikipedia research revealed that there will be 7 books in the series.  Books 6 and 7 are not yet published.  It is a masterpiece of story telling.

I am grateful to have had a good day and am looking forward to another good day tomorrow.

I Had Dropped Out

We might next ask ourselves what we mean when we say that we have "harmed" other people. What kinds of "harm" do people do one another, anyway? To define the word "harm" in a practical way, we might call it the result of instincts in collision, which cause physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual damage to people.   12x12 p. 80

I had been to Eighth Step meetings, always thinking, "I really haven't harmed many people, mostly myself." But the time came when I wrote my list out and it was not as short as I thought it would be. I either liked you, disliked you, or needed something from you—it was that simple. People hadn't done what I wanted them to do and intimate relationships were out of hand because of my partners' unreasonable demands. Were these "sins of omission"? Because of my drinking, I had "dropped out"—never sending cards, returning calls, being there for other people, or taking part in their lives. What a grace it has been to look at these relationships, to make my inventories in quiet, alone with the God of my understanding, and to go forth daily, with a willingness to be honest and forthright in my relationships.

            From the Daily Reflections for August 16^th.

I had truly dropped out of relationships from an early age.   Upon reflection, it amazes me how much I had sought to isolate from others from an early age.    I think of the book title All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten and wonder how I possibly missed all those important lessons for 50 years.  It doesn’t really matter how it happened—nature or nurture—what matters now is how I deal with where I am at today.

I am grateful to have fantastic resources that help me not only get sober, but live a richer life filled with relationships in my community.  The opportunity was always there, I just never answered the door on a regular basis before.

A Solo Quick Trip To Monroe

Tonight was the night that I volunteer for my monthly prison meeting.  My road-mates could not make it so I left earlier than usual due to missing out on the carpool lane.  75 minutes later, I completed a drive that takes 30 minutes with no traffic.

There was some sort of staff training event going on.  I waited for 30 minutes only to find out that they would not be having inmate activities this evening.  Time to go home.  I stopped by a meeting on the way home chatting with friends before the meeting started.

The pleasantly amazing part of this evening’s effort was that nothing bothered me.  I missed yakking with my road-mates on the drive there and back due to their having to take a night off for family events.  I missed being with the inmates and our meeting time.

I am grateful for having a peaceful sense of serenity and acceptance for having made my best effort for an event that did not work out as planned.

Into The Sunset

My roommate’s son came by this afternoon to get some clothes and gear he had left here.  I made him lunch, he got a shower, did laundry and had a nap.   I took some pictures of them together. We gave him a ride back to Everett. 

My roommate has been to 50+ meetings in the last 20 days.  I shared that with her son on the way to Everett.   I am sure he was glad to see his mom in recovery.  Seeing and hearing her success has to give him some hope.

We dropped him off at a gas in NW Everett.  He got out of the car, gave his mom a hug and said goodbye.  We watched him walk a short block west into the sunset to the next crosswalk.  His story was that he was going camping with a girl.   Looked like he was going to the dopehouse to me.   It was sad.

I started the car and we went the other way to go directly home.  My roommate sniffed back a few tears and said “I hate this town”.   She did the vast majority of her using in Everett/Snohomish County.

I am proud of my roommate for being the best mom and friend she could be to her 24 year old son that appears to be in active addiction to me.   

I am grateful for the resources to be of service to others today.  I am blessed to have a nice place to live, food, a car, and to be sober so that I can be of service to others.

Now Garden Variety—Was Terminally Unique

I was so deep in my self-pity that I was terminally unique being sure that my problems were worse than anyone else’s problems.  It was crazy, lonely and painful.

Now I am just a garden variety drunk that mostly hears the similarity between myself and others.   It is a far cry from being able to identify with everybody I meet, but at least now the possibility exists.

I am grateful to have progress from terminally unique to being a garden variety drunk that hears the commonality when listening to others instead of the differences.

Working Towards Mindfulness

Most of my life, I would (day) dream about how my life was going to be.  My past was a painful place to reminisce, the present sucked due to my baggage of the past and so I was stuck dreaming about an unrealistic better future while never taking enough of the right action to make it happen.

Today I get to spend a lot more time in the present doing the next indicated thing.  I am working on being more productive in creating a happier place in my mind and my life.  Self-compassion helps me accept my life as it is instead of ruing the life that I don’t have, never had and never will have.

I am grateful for knowing and living a better life than how it used to be.  I have hope for a realistic pleasant future.  That is a lot better than how it used to be.