Late Sunday Afternoon

The weekend has been a great one, as evidenced (I suppose) by my obvious lack of postings throughout the past several days. My plan was to do as little as possible, and I'd like to write that my mission is accomplished, but I managed to fill up the majority of these two days off with as much recovery-, Brodie-, and friend-related interaction as possible. I figured this would be the case, which was the reason that I flatly stated "no" when Matt asked if I would come in for a meeting early Sunday morning. He asked why not, suggesting that I let him in on whatever plans I might have. I flatly explained that I had plans to do nothing, and I planned to keep my plans as such.

The bid committee met Friday afternoon at 6:30, and we reviewed the skit I wrote while I munched on a Tiger's Blood sno-cone (snow cone??? - that doesn't look right) that I'd gotten from the gas station beside the church. One of the best discoveries I've made since summer began is that that spot has a few great flavors to offer. Following bid committee business and the young people's meeting that came after, I came home to read

(Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis - I'm letting the Stephen King in 2013 have a little room to breathe for a while. I go in stages like this from time-to-time. I sometimes need to change my literary ramblings and enjoyments to a more serious, albeit darker, reality and to move away from the realm of horror, fantasy, and sci-fi)
                 
while I waited for Brodie to show up and the real weekend to begin. I met with my dear friend, Tabi, after St. Luke's for what I hope will turn into a regular, or semi-regular, weekend ritual of fattening frappucino from Starbucks. I couldn't justify spending $80 to $120.00 on a pair of sneakers from New Balance, and I'm glad I was able to exert a little control over my spending.

I write all this to end my post by writing that the weekend was productive. I got to hear Andrew tell his story at Oakwood. We got to gorge ourselves on Johnny's Pizza and sleep until nearly ten AM on a bright, Sunday morning. It's back to work tomorrow, but it's going to be a short week.

It's ten minutes before seven, and I already can't wait for next weekend (which sort of begins on Wednesday this week) to arrive.

Photobombed by a Unicorn

Gratitude

The topic for tonight's meeting was gratitude. Anyone who reads my blog knows that this is one of my favorite ideas to read about, talk about, write about, and ponder. I live on it. I thrive on it. I'm grateful for the things that I have to be grateful about and I'm grateful that I'm able to start making gratitude lists and have to force myself to stop. It's when I'm actually putting pencil to paper or ink on the leaf or gliding my fingers around in keystrokes to type my way through it that I realize to just what extent my cup runneth over (an expression that I consider something of a cliche, but appropriate to the feeling I get in my stomach and the drive I feel on the subject).

I wasn't called on to share in my home group, and that's okay. To be honest, I don't believe in offering to share because I don't think doing so necessarily allows for higher power-driven commentary. I think that offering to share is a sign of one of two things: either I'm fairly fresh in sobriety and I'm not using my sponsor to the fullest extent of the suggestion, or I'm allowing self to promote some nonsensical ideology. Extreme, eh? I'm sure there are plenty who would disagree with me and some I might offend, but I also know that there are just as many who would nod in approval. 

I write this because I was day-dreaming for quite a bit during the meeting, thinking about what I have to feel gratitude for... everything that makes me feel pleased and content. If I were called on to share, I might have mentioned a few of these things, but I doubt that I would have been able to formulate any sort of clear and concise framework from which to operate.

Of course, I'm happy for the grace of God and that, through it, I have a spiritual side that keeps me in tune with my daily reprieve from active alcoholism. I'm grateful for sobriety, for the program, for my program. I'm even grateful that I'm an alcoholic (in recovery) because that means that I have that very program, and I have things that I can do on a daily basis to cope with the slings and arrows, the bill collectors and the forbearances, the pain and the sickness and the catastrophic illnesses and deaths, the mean reds and the azure deep bottomless blues that sink one to the depths of that thing we call misery. 

I have my writing and an outlet from which to work - both here and through the project I've been granted by The Shreveport Catalyst (not to mention through step work and journal-keeping and all the myriad other ways that I'm allowed to express myself technically and creatively each and every day). There's the world I'm creating through my soon-to-begin-publishing column and the world I've expanded on through the LASYPAA Bid skit. There's the billions and trillions of ideas that I have floating around my head constantly, so many that I can never wait to get them all down on paper, hoping to allow the idea to take flight at the first chance that I get to tune the real world out and build a life in a world of my own. I'm grateful for my love of writing and for being given an opportunity to do it.

I'm grateful for the first time I've begun a relationship and ever actually been sober, really sober and working a program and loving and fearing every move and every moment. I feel like a kid again, that sensation that you get when you're first falling in love and not sure what to do. I feel awkward and uncertain, impressionable and questionable, and I love every second that I have spent getting to know another person and wondering what's going to happen next and when it's going to happen. It's weird to feel all these things as an adult. I feel like we should be passing notes in between fourth and fifth period and slipping folded up pieces of paper, the boxes checked with the appropriate response, into a locker on the A-wing hall. That might be sweet or it may be sad, depending on your perspective. To me, it's purely magical.

My mother and my sister, brother, and their families all seem to like and to trust me and to be genuinely interested in the many accomplishments and developments in my personal and professional life. I'm still very much in the ninth step amends process, even though I've moved forward and onto the other steps. I'm fairly certain that step nine is one that I will continue to work, along with the founding fathers that are steps one through three, on a continuing, daily basis. I still have a ways to go, especially when it comes to the financial end of the process, but I no longer mind so much, and I feel good every time I resolve to take on another creditor. I have dental insurance and vision insurance and an excellent medical/prescription plan. In essence, I have all the tools I need and no reason to want for anything - even when car repairs and other unexpected expenses throw themselves my way.

Lastly, I'm grateful for the fond flock of friends with which I've been gifted today. Never could this ever be more apparent than in the events that transpired before, during, and following the big, gay prom that was Saturday night. Everything that could have gone wrong, was capable of going wrong, and potentially go wrong became not only mights or coulds or possiblies, but probablies and quite likelies and absolute certainities. After being stranded on the sixth floor of the parking garage at El Dorado, not moving for more than forty minutes before deciding to just park, go into the hotel, and find something to eat, we pulled into slots and my car immediately erupted a ghastly fog of smoke with a noise that Sarah Erickson described as "the angry bull" - funny, I immediately visualized exactly what she meant. "Is that my car," I asked her in shock and disbelief; to which she replied with her usual, flat self-assured speech: "Yeppp!" 

In spite of taking too long to find the lever to open my hood, much to the chagrin of the gentleman Good Samaritan trying to help us, we just walked into the hotel. Then our cell phones started dying and we had other avenues that could have created anger and heat and crankiness and arguing, but not us, not with them. We were finally seated at a table and the service was awful and the food was overpriced and not that great, but we spent all the time laughing and joking and smiling at the fact that everyone kept coming to me for instructions or directions or to find something lost because I looked like a member of the hotel staff. When Bryan Sullivan came to sit at our table while his was waiting on its food, we told him about everything that had been happening, and he quietly remarked in his usual, inoffensive manner, "and yet you guys are all sitting here laughing and not worrying." 

We looked at one another, the smiles still there, and I felt a quiet certainty pass between us. What good would not laughing do? If we were going to be stranded in downtown Shreveport by a string of unknown variables for an undisclosed length of time, who better to spend the time with? Who better to enjoy the gift that was the most memorable prom night of our lives?

I'm grateful for everything and everyone that plays a role in the amazing life in which I find myself currently living.

Pride Week 2013

Photos from the Weekend

Sunday Night

I just climbed into bed with the full intent of composing something incredibly profound. After all, I've had an incredibly profound weekend from which to pull a tremendous amount of content. Unfortunately, I don't think that I'm gonna get much typed out before I have to put my laptop off onto my night stand and pull out my book to read until I fall asleep.

Between LASCYPAA Bid Committee, Big Gay Prom prep, Big Gay Prom, and the endless list of events that occurred as our group tried to leave the downtown Shreveport area, I have plenty to write about, but there was a fair amount of intrigue last night that I'd like to use as fodder for my column.

Goal for the week: finish the LASCYPAA Bid Committee skit.

Everything else should just be frosting.

I'm hoping that my bed buddy shows up pretty soon. It's getting late.

Stephen King is calling my name.

Another Night

No blog. We had dinner and two back-to-back Stephen King movies (The Shining first, Misery now).

First Kiss

That's all I have to write tonight.

I Still Have Much to Read...

And it's almost eleven already.

So, I've completed the first several pages of my foray into the world of literary publication. It may not seem like much, but what I'm doing and what I'm planning to do is everything that I've ever wanted to do - I hope that's all that matters.

Writing wipes me out. I don't realize it at the time. It's only after I've forced myself to stop that I realize just how much of me I've put down on paper. My creative process starts from the moment that I get out of bed in the morning, and I allow inspiration to hit me at all levels of my daily life. Too bad I waited this late to post. My eyes can barely stay open, and I'm not sure that I'll even muster up the energy to open Night Shift and conquer one of those very short stories before I succumb successfully to sleep.

Best not to leave this post hanging in wait.

More tomorrow.

Another Step in the SKn2013 Endeavor

At book club today, Meg pointed out that Sundays always have some semblance of depression with the way that they come and go. The weekend's over and irresponsibility is no longer looming in the forefront of time, but preparing to make its way to the other side of the week - real life is suddenly coming back, and the laundry needs to be done and everything has to be laid out and readied for the working days ahead. I don't necessarily get to feeling depressed on Sundays, but there is a sort of sense of closure. This was a good weekend to have closure on, though. I have everything prepared for my Monday through Friday, and I have my column ready to proof, type, edit and bring with me to the board's meeting this Tuesday afternoon. It's that thing for which I am so excited and I've been so evasive in actually describing outright here. I'm almost nervous about it. I don't want to jinx myself.

In the meantime, my plan is to read a section or story in Night Shift every night and then to follow up with reading from Under the Dome. I'm not sure if the miniseries premiers next week or the week that follows, but I know it's soon to arrive. I'm eager to continue in my self-imposed Stephen King endeavor, but it will be difficult to top the fondness I feel for his Bachman work after completing Rage.

On another note, the Huckleberry is in town, but I likely won't have the opportunity to see him until tomorrow (hopefully not later, though that's the way our luck in interacting has typically worked in the past) night. Seems that there's something of an unstable atmosphere making meteorological forecasting a little interesting for the next few days. It'd be nice to have him around for a night like that.

Saturday in the Middle of June

I can usually rate my gratitude for a day by the amount that I've accomplished and feel pleased about having accomplished. Today was a good day, a great day maybe when considering all the days I've had in 2013 and in the thirty-four years that I've had to experience days one at a time. Not that I ever have anything to really complain about. I have far too much for which to be grateful than to throw out a bunch of complaints, but there are some revolutions around the sun that are a little better than others. This was one of them.

I finished Rage this evening after the surprise sushi soiree for Barbara, and I am really pleased to have waited until this time in my life to embark on the literary journey that I've undertaken. I don't think that I would have appreciated it at any other point, and I really appreciate the wisdom that Stephen King managed to shove into a relatively short (especially by typical King standards) volume. It's complex and surreal at times. In my Goodreads review, I called it the Stockholm Syndrome on acid or The Catcher in the Rye on mescaline (or shrooms maybe - I dunno, the psychadelics were never really my thing), and it is both of those wrapped in a Travis Bickle-like antihero with a penchant for sexual ambiguity and droogish  ultra-violence a la Anthony Burgess. For all these reasons, I really understand why Stephen King has taken the book out of print and now calls it a potential catalyst for a sick mind looking to justify similar actions in real life.

The aspect of the novel that really intrigued me was the sudden and complete willingness of the hostages to side with their captor and follow through on what psychiatrists would call groupthink. Everyone was quick on the draw to push each others' buttons and expose each other for their innermost fears and secrets. This was more apparent in no other point than when the story's outcast, Irma (the Carrie White figure), goes from a driveling, raving moralist to one of the gang, even returning to the room after having the opportunity to escape when she was allowed to leave to use the restroom. The most frightening section isn't the initial senseless violence that opens the story, but the cataclysmic, climactic moment when the students turn on the room's scapegoat, the only member of the group of hostages to speak out against their fearless captor. Stephen King was obviously a very bright individual, finely tuned to the inner psychological mechanics of the human mind at a very young age (in the introduction to The Bachman Books, he mentions that this was something he originally wrote in his late teens). The work comes across much more in the style of Bret Easton Ellis than King himself - long before Ellis ever wrote Less Than Zero during his stint at Bennington College in Vermont.

Moving in chronological order of publication, my next stop should be Night Shift, a collection of short stories that I actually read only two years ago (maybe three - I wasn't exactly sober at the time, but I do remember it fondly) and I fully intend to read again (as I do several of the others that I've completed more recently; remember: this concept was originally embarked on to solve the riddle presented by The Gunslinger and the supposed tie-ins between all of his works and his magnum opus, the Dark Tower series); however, an issue has presented itself to which I've pondered the outcome of since first seeing the previews for the upcoming Under the Dome series on CBS.

I want to watch the series as it airs, yet I don't want to disrupt the natural flow of things. Simultaneously, I hate to keep moving so far ahead of the Stephen King in 2013 book club, which will only be reviewing 'Salem's Lot at tomorrow's meeting. Weighing a few pros and cons, I decided to go forth and read Under the Dome before the series begins (next week?) and supplement it with interspersed reading of the shorts of Night Shift. We'll see the way it goes, I guess.

In other news, the universe played one her great tricks with chance (...kismet...fate...destiny...serendipity...whatever it turns out to be is what we'll call it later) today in the form of the physical manifestation of the three-month-in-the-making unicorn who gets tagged in a bunch of these posts. What are the chances that EXACTLY three months to the day after our first conversation, the stars would find it necessary for us to meet by utter happenstance in the parking lot of a Walgreen's on a Saturday morning when I'm looking like shit, un-showered, but riding fresh and serene on the coattails of the morning meeting at St. Luke's? Pretty good if you were walking in my shoes or the shoes of a unicorn today.

Now, it's time to post and pull out the sturdy notebook and pencils to work on the other writing endeavor. I have a few pages due by Tuesday, and I want to make sure that my first effort at this is as pure and perfect as I can possibly make it.

Photos from Barbara's Two Year Celebration

Charlie Decker

Now that I've nearly completed the first of Stephen King's Bachman books, I can honestly write that I don't think I would have made a connection between this work and the first three that were in print at the time of its publication. There are some similarities in writing style that may have alerted me, but I definitely wouldn't have been savvy enough of a consumer or fan to wonder whether or not the man had written both. Had I, by some chance, read Carrie and Rage back-to-back, I may have felt struck by the many similarities in theme between the two; however, Charlie Decker is much smarter and much more alert to man's natural instincts than Ms. White ever had the opportunity to be.

Once I've finished this, I hope to have more thoughts to coordinate here. I just don't really have much of a yen to blog tonight. Maybe my focus and energy is overall spent elsewhere. I feel like I have to save something to write here, but my brain is transfixed by my other writing endeavor at the moment.

Also, I've spent the past several days (and nights) feeling a weird combination of being both under- and overwhelmed. Explain that because I sure as hell can't. I feel like I've lost some link in my chain of spiritual certainty and I can't quite seem to locate it to put it back in tandem with what I carry around with me every day. 

Maybe tomorrow will be better. I certainly have a ton to do to fill up my time.

Why Was I Ever Opposed to Reading The Bachman Books???

Rage is phenomenal, but like most everything else that I read, the problem that I have is waiting until sleep is settling in to open up the book to read?

Although I have a letter to re-write (Ryan agreed that seven pages of overly indulgent emotional banter is probably not hitting the nail on its head, especially considering where this letter is headed - and why), and I still have a ton to get through for LASCYPAA bid, I have all weekend for re-writes and first writes and working on my new writing gig. Plenty of time.

For tonight, I'm home from the Lambda meeting, and I'm just tired enough to agree to let myself take it easy with Death Becomes Her playing, my chicken nuggets in the oven (I eat an awful lot of these, it seems), and my copy of Rage waiting to be opened and devoured.

The story is great, but I understand why Stephen King decided to take it out of publication. I would never want any of my work to be cited as a potential catalyst for violence.

The Gratitude List (Redux for B, B, & B - You May Pick Which "B" You Want to Be)

Although staying in on a Wednesday night isn't really anything new for me, there are currently two events taking place that I would really like to begin attending. At the Highland Club, a dude I really admire is going through his personal process with anyone willing to listen; meanwhile, everyone else seems to be hitting the Refuge Meditation Group for their mid-week sessions on holism and spiritual strength. I'd like to be at both places at once, and I may have found myself seated in either location at this time tonight, but home works were calling my name. The one specific thing that I need to complete is finalizing this letter related to everything that happened in my experience with the practice. In talking to Ryan tonight, I realized that a big part of the funk I've been feeling has a tremendous amount to do with the fact that I've been sitting on this effort for a week now. The only way to get rid of it is to get it done.

And with so many positive things happening in my life (I've not yet mentioned the fact that I am soon to be a continuing contributor to one of our local publications - more about that at some other time), there is no reason that I should allow myself to feel funky or stagnated or any other comparable way.

Before I run downstairs and turn off my baking chicken nuggets, transfer one load to the dryer to start another in the wash, and work on this letter to appease my spirit, I've been promising a new gratitude list to a few people.

In no particular order...

1. Brodie Vines
2. Baylor Boyd 2. Bruce Parker II (listed on the line in alphabetical order only, not necessarily by merit)
3. My mom
4. Mary Louise
5. Ryan and Christina
6. Kristi Hylan
7. The Stephen King in 2013 Blog
8. The Stephen King in 2013 Book Club
9. The Super Secret & Ultra Selective Book Club
10. Tiger Axles, Inc.
11. New Beginnings with the Catalyst
12. Sponsorship
13. Sarah Erickson
14. Meg Davis
15. Angie Impson
16. Barbara Triola
17. PACE
18. the North Louisiana Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
19. Bridegroom
20. Geography Club (the book)
21. Richard Bachman
22. The Bachman Books
23. Tyson chicken nuggets
24. Fabreze
25. Acrylic paint
26. Blank canvases
27. Positive bank accounts (all three of them)
28. My brother, sister, and their families
29. Porn
30. Prom

"skies are blue..."

"...and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true." -- E.Y. Harburg

Thirty-four years of dreaming and hoping and never really putting much effort behind this great big goal of mine - all the work I've put in is finally allowing my one, tall aspiration to come to it's fruition.

I don't want to let a night pass without submitting at least a little something here in my blog, but my attention is now required on another major undertaking.

Much more will soon be revealed.

Blahhh

I haven't had a day pass in which I haven't felt like being around people in quite some time. Probably not a good thing, but that's exactly what I did this afternoon, after work.

At first, I planned to go to the five-thirty. I showered and I got dressed in comfortable clothes to cope with the summer heat that's finally here. Once dressed, I decided to try to make it to an eight o'clock, but I didn't feel like doing that after I talked to Ryan and had a bite to eat for dinner.

I decided to stay in and watch a movie (Rosemary's Baby) that I've seen before while I tried to get some work done, but I really just spent the evening wasting time. I didn't get anything done.

And now I don't even feel like writing. I dunno what the hell the deal is.

I'm hoping that tomorrow will be better because I realize that it's really just my outlook, my perception on things in my life not working out the way I think they ought to work out. I'm spoiled like that. I don't like it when things don't go my way.

A little Stephen King before bed (at 9:21?!?!) ought to make this better.

First Foray Into Bachman Tonight

I have my copy of The Bachman Books ready to begin reading tonight. Moving in chronological order, the next stop in my Stephen King in 2013 journey is Rage, a book that is now out of print. The story is that King decided to take the book out of publication after Columbine and the rash of school shootings that plagued the U.S. within the last ten years. In one interview, he mentioned that he doesn't believe that the book inspired anyone to commit any senseless acts of terror, but he does believe that the book could act as a potential "accelerant."

I'm eager to get into this one. Although I read Thinner (also at a very early age) and The Regulators sometime shortly after my first stint in rehab, I'm curious to find out if the Bachman voice is any different from King at all, if I would have suspected that the author is the same.

The introduction in this particular tome describes why he decided to publish work under a pseudonym when his career was really just taking off. I plan to write a little more about that once I've really gotten some of this work under my belt.

And This is How We Roll on Saturday Nights

Mom, These Are My Friends...

Hall Summit in Ruston Wants a Post from Shreveport

Opening up my laptop to write, I'm realizing that this is the latest that I've been up since before the end of my vacation last weekend - something that was the case for the majority of the two weeks that I spent on employment hiatus. In between jobs. In medias res. Neither at Point A, nor at Point B, but somewhere in the middle of the thick of the fat.

And where do I find myself tonight when I'm up way past my usual bedtime? Re-watching Something Wild, which I haven't seen in at least ten years, maybe more. Contemplating the lengthy to-do list that I made for me to try to accomplish everything on in the next forty-eight hours. Also contemplating staying in my pajamas all day tomorrow and doing nothing, but I know that will never happen. It's a great idea, though. A nice thought: staying in pajamas, laying on the couch; reading, and really doing nothing substantial.

Once again, I'm supposed to be including a gratitude list in this post. Don't think I'm gonna make one out tonight.

Maybe I'll be in more of a mood to write here tomorrow. I've got my creative writing energies otherwise expelled. I'm hoping that I'll soon be able to post about why that is.

The Reason I Haven't Answered My Phone

is because I've gotten all these requests for a new gratitude list. I thought about making it tonight, but I think I'm going to make this a short post tonight. My readiness to pass out is already kicking in. I've already gotten my daily tenth step inventory knocked out. And I'm ready to read a little before bed. Last day of the work week is tomorrow, and the weekend is looking pretty promising... mostly because -other than the two book clubs- I have absolutely no plans whatsoever. I think I really will allow myself to sleep in both days. I do need to try to get a double dose of meetings in, though. I missed last night because it was Wednesday. I missed tonight because I was participating in an interview.

I have plenty more to write. About the saga of the final practice paycheck. About my eventful, flooded day in general. But I'm way too sleepy, and the alarm is set for incredibly early.

Until tomorrow.

Ideas

Tonight's post is brought to you by the often overly industrialized mind of Mr. Miles Jay Oliver.

My plan was to just take the night off totally. Not to paint or to work on any extracurricular clubland activities. Not to spend all night wasting time playing Words With Friends or cleaning. Not doing any of the things that waste my time in general (and more often than not).

I watched one of the film submissions (which I'm hoping will be accepted by the committee for the festival - I feel like I'm saying this about the majority of those I've seen), and I loaded a bunch of dirty clothes into the washer. In the load, I included the jeans I wore to work today since I've been leaving with my clothes reeking of cigarette smoke and machine shop utilities. It wasn't until a half hour later, when I was making my daily six-o'clock phone call to Ryan and looking for my cigarettes, that I realized I'd left a nearly full pack in my jeans pocket when I threw them in the wash. Needless to say, I spent time re-washing and picking little pieces of tobacco and bleached white butts out of of the machine. Cigarettes are expensive, and that's basically a five dollar loss that I can't afford, especially since that pay check I keep bringing up is still lost somewhere in outer space - seeing as not one of the multiple people I've called and left messages with at the practice seems to know where the hell my money is right now.

Sometime between the evening phone calls and the sanitizing of the washing machine and dryer, something occurred to me that I haven't given much serious thought to recently. It was an idea that struck me so hard in one of those moments of perfectly serendipitous convergence of everything that shows up in just the right place at just the right time, so hard that I literally froze for a few seconds before leaning back on the pillows propped up against my headboard and allowed the idea to bounce around in my brain.

This idea of mine involves a pet writing project that I've had since the late nineties. It's one that I take out and play with when the time is right and I'm on track with regularly writing, but I always put it back away because I end of feeling like the time isn't right or I don't have the perfect outlet in which to express it. Despite never feeling that the right moment will ever arrive, I've held onto the concept of what I'd like to do long enough to know that someday, at just the right time, I'll pull it out and see it to its fruition. During those moments, I remember a very good friend, Juli (one of the many relationships that I allowed my past alcoholic behaviors to rob me of), telling me that her mother always telling her that, one day, she will write a book. Her mother is now in either her sixties or seventies and still repeating the same declaration, yet no book has been written. Juli often told me just to write and to see where my writing leads me instead of the other way around. If I keep waiting, I'll be in my forties and never have really done what I wanted to pursue my goal.

Rather than revealing everything in this open format, I will write that I talked to the person whose text message spawned my idea and made plans to meet with the right person who could help me make this long-standing dream a reality. Either tomorrow evening at eight or Tuesday afternoon before my home group, I'll have the chance to sit down and discuss this thing I want to do with someone who has the power to either encourage or to not accept (not to discourage; I'm too fired up again and brimming with my outlook on the project).

Maybe this meeting will have the best possible outcome, maybe it won't. Either way, I am determined that, no matter what, this is something I've been sitting on for entirely too long to just allow another day to pass without pushing it from my brain and onto the page.

I'll do this. Without knowledge or expectation of where it ends up.

Tuesday Night Fatigue

Tuesdays are always the best nights of the week. I always leave the meeting of my home group feeling especially content and right with the world. It's like I've suddenly had a reminder of everything that is most important, the things that are less important to worry about today, and those things that I can probably put off until next week. Tonight was more meaningful than many others because I got to be a part of the celebration of Sarah E.'s three years of sobriety. In many ways, Sarah is one of the greatest people I've ever known. To be in her life is to watch a person walk with purpose in the grace of God's will and see true humility in practice. It was amazing to listen to the loads of accolades heaped in her direction, and it was an honor to be someone to share with her what she means to me.

I still have far too many pages to read in an effort to complete Lamb before book club gets here on Sunday, but I do feel less hectic and rushed toward completion of everything else that I have on my to-do list. Talking with Brodie and then my mom reminded me that I have a tendency not to bite off more than I can chew, but to bite off a terribly abundant amount and then to allow myself to feel overwhelmed when I really only need to take one thing at a time, one step at a time and to remember to stop and smell the roses.

I think that part of my feelings of having too much going on stem from a combination of two things. First, I've yet to receive my final pay from that place that dare not have its name spoken, and it's been nearly three weeks since my last shift. Several phone calls and text messages have yielded no results either, and I'm more than tempted to take the advice and suggestions of nearly every single person in my life and to report them to the state, which I was entitled to do some time ago. It's not so much about the money (although Matt, my new boss, asked his mom to advise me today, and she looked shocked: "if it were me, it'd sure as shit be about the money - that's YOUR money, you earned it) as it is about the principle; however, everyone in my life all have the same opinion: what'd you expect from people like that?

The other thing that I'm finding somewhat bothersome is that I have not been taking a decent amount of time every morning to do those things that I find so important. Of course, I'm still reading the morning meditation from the 24 Hours a Day book, and I continue to read "on awakening" as well, but I'm not having nearly the necessary time to really read a bit more, to pause, to reflect, and to really meditate on what I've read. I realized today that I've been addressing this new job the same way that I did the last one. I've been hurrying to get in the shower to hurry to get out the door to hurry to show up early, and Matt made it perfectly clear today that that is something totally unnecessary.

My plan is to allow myself to sleep until 6:00 and to get up and have an actually leisurely morning getting ready, and to enjoy the moment, to enjoy the day, to enjoy the journey. I'm glad to have a journey. And I'm glad to have been asked to The Big, Gay Prom at the end of the month, to actually have been invited by someone that I really like and can't wait to keep getting to know.

I'm also glad to have my family and my friends, to have the people in my life that I never want to leave it.

And I'm grateful for sobriety.

And Mary Louise.

I guess it's about time to make another gratitude list, but that gets so many people who I know read my blog up in arms about where they fall on it and why.

I'll maybe make one tomorrow.

Monday Night - Nothing's Done

Q: What did I accomplish tonight?

A: I finished the painting for Sarah E.'s three year birthday, and I finished my list of sponsors for the NLGLFF.

Q: What did I not accomplish tonight?

A: LASCYPAA minutes, LASCYPAA Needs Statement, LASYPAA skit, watching a selection for the NLGLFF (and I'm very near the end of the list), reading an email from Bruce Parker II, reading my page goal in Lamb, cleaning the bathroom, thank-you notes (which are now long overdue), and exercising.

At this rate, it's going to be another week before I get to the next book in the Stephen King in 2013 challenge...

Vacation Ends Now

New spot opens in the universe tomorrow, and I need to get my rear in gear and ready for bed before too much more time passes - I need to get a little more beauty sleep if at all possible.

The photo shoot for Catalyst happened first thing this morning, and it was my second day in a row (on a weekend) to get up too early for comfort so that I could get going with all the usual endeavors and necessary demons. Since no one was finished with Lamb, the book club passed our meeting off to discuss until next weekend, something we should probably find a way to stop doing.

I feel like I ought to have something a little wittier, definitely more clever and creative, but I've got nothing. Yet another night in a row.

I'll have to end this while I'm ahead and wait for a little word or two from Hall Summit.

And my own reading - I'm not finished with the book either.

The First of June

I remember Mom once telling me about some old saying that when it rains on the first day of June, it rains every day for the next thirty days. Or for the rest of the month. Or something like that. If that saying is true, and today is indicative of the remaining days of the month, I won't mind so much. I dig rainy days. Rainy nights even more.

Getting ready to read a little before bed. Lamb, to finish before book club tomorrow (Note: I won't finish the book before book club, but I'm going to read as much as possible). Back to Stephen King in 2013 after our meeting tomorrow afternoon.

I have tons more to write about, but I really don't have the fortitude to get anything substantial out tonight. What I have up to this point will have to suffice.