so why not update?

Things don't go as planned...but they go anyways. A theme that I have come to embrace...or at least try to!

Unbelievably...still sober. Not a drink or any drugs for over 6 and a half years. My goodness! If anyone is impressed know that I am far more impressed than you are. It is weird but shows my alcoholism in that even though it has been that long, I can't intellectually conceive of staying sober for that long. Every once in a while I even question myself..."Are you sure that you aren't lying about that?" It is not in my nature to not drink in so long...so it's a good thing that my nature has changed.

I remember one moment from a couple of years ago that highlighted this for me. Somehow someone got hold of my "identity." They charged a couple of thousand dollars on my card. I went to the bank to look into it knowing only that my card wasn't working and they told me. Throughout the whole thing, my level of calmness and acceptance of what happened was amazing to me. My natural reaction is to attack the situation and get angry based on a silly old idea that somehow anger is effective. It almost became an out of body experience in that I was observing myself acting so calm about it, wondering who the hell was this person? Bizarre to look back and think of someone stealing my identity as being a cool moment.

Wasn't on here much at all for a while. A few reasons. One was certainly sorting things out with relationship stuff. The permission in the relationship there, but the comfort wasn't...leading to a situation where comfort wasn't there for me either. But that has been sorted out...not by either of us but by changes happening to us.

I have long found my thoughts and reaction to all of this to be fascinating in line with life changes that were brought about through my efforts to find and maintain sobriety. I guarantee you that a lot of people "in my circle" would look at doing what I do on NN as being irreconcilable with some principles of sober living. Fortunately, it seems to me to be much, much more of an internal deal than meeting a set of external circumstances. What I mean by this is that one's personal reconciliation and motivation for doing something is far more important than outside approval. I see all of this as a celebration of sexuality and things sensual. In my book, those are wonderful things with nothing inherently wrong in them so long as it is done freely. Our sexual natures are an inherent part of us, an inherent part that is part of our whole. I have no problem with people who ardently believe that this means that their sexuality must therefore be governed by a rigid set of standards that determine right and wrong in an effort to protect their whole from being injured from that part. For myself and I assume many others on here, not living by commonly held standards of sexual behavior does not feel like an immoral thing that will injure our whole; rather the celebration, freedom and release of that part lets us feel that our whole is enriched through the enjoyment of something which seems by its very nature to be something meant to be enjoyed. Hopefully that makes some sense.

Looking forward to and already enjoying people's celebration of their sexuality!

one is the foot fetish...I just don't get it. Plain and simple, I don't find feet, whether long and bony or short and smooth, to be sexy. I don't get it...

I also don't get the excitement of cumming on someone. Such an intimate experience to share with someone...why on earth would I want to pull out? I guess I understand the "photographic evidence" as to why it is important in porn and people like it in their pics, but I always consider it to be a shame more than anything.

Piss...yuck.

It is interesting to think about fetishes though and how little I can relate to some of them. Truly sex is such an individualistic thing with intense variations as to who finds what hot.

For myself, I think a lot of what I don't get into at all that a lot of people do are things that, to me, involve the involvement of power with sex. Bondage, cum on my slut, SM, piss...I have come to appreciate more and more that sex for me is a matter of coming together on deeper levels and sharing the joy of the act itself as fully as possible far, far more than it is about either individuals pleasure...

Whatever. I seem to be fighting inertia in some areas of my life, particularly working. I have been fortunate enough to take a good chunk of time off and have been keeping busy doing a lot of AA's working with others stuff.

It is so tremendously fulfilling to take part in watching someone go from being in as much pain as an alcoholic/addict who has torn apart their lives despite wanting to be able to stop and watch them change in a matter of months from almost always being suicidally depressed to being full of excitement and joy to be able to live life.

Despite not working for over a year now, this period of time has felt like the most purposeful period of my life ever. Wonderful!!!

But it gets to be time to go back to work. Two ideas stand out far above all the others...

One is to do some more stuff with art. Try to make a go of an artistic lifestyle somehow. I have been playing around a little with screen printing and intend to try making and selling shirts at some point. Already have that dead head market to tap into...why the hell not, I guess? Eventually it would be good to get back a lot more into oil painting, but seems to me that actually making a living doing that would be awfully, awfully hard.

The other is to start that restaurant that I have felt driven to start for a long time. I do love food, cooking and cooking in restaurants. I have looked in the want ads from time to time, but truth be told I never see the sort of job that would allow me to do the sort of cooking that I would really like to do. Solution...start a place where I get to decide that stuff. The last place I worked in Oregon is such a model for that. Great quality ingredients, local as much as possible, a strange combination of authentic regional cuisines that are hardly ever seen with good old comfort foods...not a fusion, but two separate styles. Tea smoked duck with black currant cabernet sauce side by side with good old southern fried chicken. A big undertaking with an awfully good chance of failure, but starting as small as possible and seeing where it can go to seems like a reasonable idea.

Mmmmm...I miss being able to stick my spoons into a whole variety of exciting foods and explore the world of flavor every day as well.

Seems like you can tell you have a good idea for yourself when your excitement level rises dramatically every time you really start thinking about it...

so here it is...

My girl is in a full on relapse with pills. (For those who don't know, I am a recovering alcoholic and she is in AA as well.)

To see someone so beautiful in so many ways completely lose themselves in the abyss that we alcoholics and addicts lose ourselves in it is a true tragedy.

I've been through this before with her and she ended up further distanced from her kids (the true love of her life), intubated, numerous fall injuries, etc...

She has drunk herself above a .5 BAC on a couple of occasions and above .4 numerously...

It hurts and when you have been there yourself the realization that there is really nothing I or anyone I know can do to help is sharply painful and hard to accept.

If you are the praying type...

One more week and I will have made it through a calendar year without a drink or drug for the first time in 20 + years. Astounding to me.

I came into AA two years ago and attempted to do the same thing last year. I was completely committed to doing it. I remember my conviction on January 1 of 2006.…I found out that I could not do it. Life without it was just not possible for me to endure at that point. Three or four relapses in 2006, all before January 24. Each relapse was significantly more than a fifth. I remember waking up on January 24 and being so desperate for a drink…going through all the empty bottles in my room and trying to suck every drop of alcohol out of them that I could.

I remember thinking last year at this time that I had dropped down from somewhere around 4000 drinks the year before down to a 150 or so during my relapses. Now down to 0. The temptation has rarely even raised its head this year. It baffles me that it has been relatively easy this year and that I am comfortable and actual enjoy being sober. That is something that was impossible for me.

It is a Merry Christmas and was a Happy Year.

Onto new things this year with a great deal of optimism!!! Hope you can all go into this year with the same!!!

The teacher tells the kids to share with the class what they did over the summer, but now that they are in school they have to use "adult" words.

First kid stands up and says, "My parents took me to see my Grammy!"

Teacher, "Use adult words. 'My parents took me to see my Grandmother.'"

Second kid, "My parents took me to see the choo-choo's!"

Teacher, "Remember, use adult words. Not 'choo-choo's' but trains. My parents took me to see the trains."

Third kid gets the hint and says, "My parents took me to Disneyland and I saw Winnie the Shit!"

Adding to my pleasure of hearing this was that it was at a little AA mini-conference. A nice sweet lady of about 60, conservatively attired, standing up at the podium in a church breaking out this bawdy and irreverent joke. I truly loved it!

then someone who enjoys their self pity? A couple of people I have been trying to help out lately embrace their self pity with such gusto...my love, patience and tolerance is getting a good testing. Anyways, I find pervasive self pity to be among the most unattractive qualities a person can have.

Strange efforts this week helping clean up an apartment for someone who suffers from the condition of hoarding. Unbelievable. Stacks of books, papers and assorted crap from the floor to seven feet high throughout his entire apartment with three paths in it. One from the door to the corner of the bed not covered with books and papers, one branching off from that to the toilet (not the bathroom...the only accessible part of the bathroom was the toilet) and one branching off to the kitchen. You could only open the refrigerator about one foot and had to lean over a bunch of stuff to get there. He could only use the extreme right side of the refrigerator to store stuff because you couldn't get to anything else. Everything collected within the last five years. The people who like to "brag" about how screwed up they are they usually have no idea what screwed up people are actually like.

A dent was made in it. Huge, but only a dent.

Still taking a "vacation" from working and still amazed at how busy that vacation is keeping me. All good stuff though...

I got a book on Java programming today. I'm shocked.

When I went to college, all of that stuff came naturally to me and I know I could do it and make ends meet easier doing it than I can cooking, but I love the sensual nature of working with food plus the exciting chaos of the kitchen environment...

Still...I kind of enjoyed the problem solving involved with programming and I figured I would dip my fingers into it a bit to see if I would like it. We will see shortly I assume...

Part of the deal, I guess, is that the restaurant I worked at closed down a couple of months ago and I have been taking some time off just because I can and I have some other sobriety related things that I have wanted to get more involved in. But I have been looking around for other restaurant jobs and there really are not many that appeal to me. I got spoiled working in Eugene...just got to do sooooo much stuff there that you can't do in 99-percent of the restaurants and I was always learning and able to taste new and exciting foods that you can't find anywhere else. There is really only one restaurant in Madison that I look at and say, "I would really like to work there." Not many options here besides trying to start my own place, which would be fun but awfully time consuming, that would satisfy my cooking desires I fear.

But things are great. Money is fine since I live so simply (I am an ascetic at heart...shockingly I still have clothes from high school (yes, they fit)) and other things are going well. Good friends are wonderful things to have.

And I went to a meeting today at a treatment center which had three alcoholics that I sponsor in it...two are doing really good so far (not many who go to AA do good) and the other is taking some much needed action...he has been around for years unable to stay sober but he has never taken the steps of AA and seems willing to do them now. The odds are not good at all that they will continue to do the work necessary to stay sober, but it is nice to see them growing as people and full of hope right now...truly rewarding stuff.

Maybe that is why I am not so concerned about pursuing the impractical cooking stuff right now and considering a more practical job...so much more is in my life that it would be a lot easier for me to do a job that involves something that is not a great passion...

La, la, la...

Time to go look at some pics and get myself revved up...I love looking at naked people who want me to look at them. Exciting!

I was checking out Erotic-not-porn's pics and thought for a second about incredible preference for sensual over raunchy stuff...

I think it comes down to the sensual stuff strikes me as a celebration of sexuality while the raunchy stuff always tends to strike me as exploitation of sexuality. Of course, that is only as it pertains to my point of view and I'm sure some view bottles stuck where they are not supposed to be as a celebration. But celebration versus exploitation works for me. Glad I resolved that a little bit further for myself.

on the list of most overrated bands...

Bah.

I have discovered that one has to be an active listener when listening to the Dead to enjoy it and what is going on in the music but if you can it is truly an experience (yes, I did a lot of drugs and drinking at Dead shows but I enjoyed them just as much when I was sober at them)...

This led me to thinking about cover bands...I have heard cover bands that are able to really, really pull off a good version of most bands but no one who has been able to pull off something that sounds remotely like the Dead...

Grrrr...

I guess I'm a little sensitive about the topic because I have heard all the negative stuff since I was sixteen.

Little story that pops to mind...I did well in school and was in the top three students picture at my high school. They told me to dress up so I completely hippied myself out...tie die fabric belt tied around my forehead and all that stuff. The principal wasn't none to happy but my favorite teacher (an English teacher) loved it. Good fun.