Blog entry for:

from recovery, I must do the work
Here it is, our last day of vacation and finally they are dragging us into the little room to see how much more that can get from us. Neither one of us are happy about that and we are going to do everything in our power to escape their clutches and enjoy most of this day, save homicide or suicide. I jest of course, about the efforts necessary to get out from under the thumb of the sales force here, but quite honestly I am going to do my best to carry recovery into that little room, be assertive enough for the both of us and leave the seals person feeling like they really did their best, even though they are barely going to get our attention. Inside I am a bit unsettled as they had to call “just to be sure,” we were coming, right in the middle of my 11TH STEP, this morning and I could not go back down again.
Moving forward I really am clueless as to how some my peers can walk through life without working steps. oh, I know.many of them have worked all 12 with a sponsor, in order and that is great, but to stop right there and not move along through the notion us progress always working a step brings, is a puzzlement to me. Even when I am walking into a very unpleasant situation I have a few spiritual principles to carry with me, because I have done the work over and over again. For me, each trio through the steps has been a very unexpected journey and the destination I thought I was working towards, is more often than not anywhere close to where I arrived at, after I complete another cycle. Ah. I, however, digress, what is supposed to be about me has been thrown under the bus and is now all about them. Getting back on track…
Today I find myself in an unprecedented position of having completed another STEP cycle and not moving into my next. My sponse does not seem overly concerned about this little pause, as it were, but it is driving nuts. What I am hearing over and obverse again is that I DESIRE to move forward because that is what I ALWAYS do, and what I am FEELING is, not yet. I truly hate that phrase as it implies that I just need to take no action, pay attention and allow whatever needs to happen, to happen of its own accord. I am not very good at sitting down, shutting up and listening. I have been cultured and or trained into stepping into the fray and taking action. Even back in the day, when I was manipulating everyone around, passive-aggressively I was taking action, pulling strings and pretending I was above it all. Today I may be better than that, but doing nothing is one of the most difficult tasks I face and perhaps this “pause” is all about learning to be okay with doing nothing.
Now it is time to breathe, take a minute to contemplate what I want to accomplish in the next few hours and allow myself the freedom to say no thank you, five hundred thousand times and when 1130 rolls around say so long and thanks for all the fish!

∞ DT ∞