Blog entry for:

with the life i have found since coming to recovery. i have always found this particular reading fraught with peril, as it invites me to inventory all that is right with my life today and more or less ignore what i find less than **up to snuff.** i know that is just my reading of it and after being locked to work for the past week, i always seem to be less than satisfied when i am once again set free. this morning, may be the exception as what started as a request to travel North to visit with a friend and sponsee, turned into an afternoon on my porch, surrounded by the haze of Habaños. in fact, being chained to my work computer allowed me the freedom to just sit and visit and yes take a few walks around the block to cater to my wrist-bound master of fitness.
as i sat this morning and my pulse rate fell into the mid50's, i had a sense of maybe i am far too hard on myself and have set expectations of what my life “should” look like at this stage of my recovery, a but too unrealistically. what i am therefore suffering from is not a life unfulfilled but a life that has yet to give me “enough!” i am often tempted to spin a yarn or three about how wonderful my life is, or serve up a finally honed whine about what it lacks. seldomly to i see it as the best possible life i could have, given what it has taken for me to arrive here.
the fact that gratitude does not pour out of every pore, is something that i have to deal with, and i have often wondered if my peers who seem to walk around in a state of immaculate graceful gratitude are actually fronting something they are not. when i sit down at the end of every day, by rote i express my gratitude for the slice of life i have just completed and for the fact, at least up to last night, that i have arrived at that place clean. when i start my day with the affirmation that i am an addict and to stay clean today, i will need a POWER greater than i am, i have the FREEDOM to walk through my day and see it for what it is: an imperfect obstacle course that requires a bit of extra careful navigation. there are pitfalls and yes there are delights, all waiting for me to walk out of my door and face the “real” world. for me today, i do not require any external validation that my life is a gift for me to cherish. i do not need others to dote on my every word. what i do need, is a bit of perspective and the courage to okay with what comes down the pike.

∞ DT ∞