funemployment

So, I got a new job, after being unemployed for only two weeks. I owe my getting a new job so quickly to being sober and practicing the principles of AA. Of course applying the steps of AA to job searching doesn't ergo mean a new job. Nor does it make the experience of unemployment any different. Being sober doesn't give me a leg up over any other candidate. But a few things to note:

1. Since being let go I kept myself busy. If I'm not busy I get VERY squirrelly VERY quickly. I didn't stop to let myself play video games and get depressed. Meetings, working out, job searching, reaching out to other alkys, writing, reading, all kept the mind churning. A still alcoholic mind, in my experience, allows the voices to talk so loud and persuasively. "You suck, you aren't going to get another job, you might as well drink and eat snacks." That's a lot less persuasive when you're blasting delts or whatever.
2. I interviewed with the faith that I'll be taken care of as long as I put my sobriety first. In practice that meant walking into an interview with my only reason to be there was to make interviewer happy to speak with me.
3. I didn't keep my feelings bottled inside -- I talked to a lot of people about being unemployed and how it was making me feel kooky. Even if I said the same thing over and over, and got the same responses, the act of communicating and connecting with others was a lot more rewarding than being stoic. Feelings can be embarrassing, especially if they feel obviously petty, childish, insecure. T

I worked to have my ego sort of brushed aside to have my HP direct me in whatever direction he sees fit. It's not always easy to put your ego and what you want to the side. IT'S HARD. You live your life asking, demanding, manipulating, pining, working to have your outsized needs fulfilled. In a sense, getting sober using the twelve steps of AA is an exercise in saying "I GIVE UP :( " When I walked into the rooms for the first time it was a real-life example of me saying "Ugh I can't live this way anymore. I can't smash myself in the face with an umbrella to make it look like I was at an eye surgeon to cover up my hungover." It was a giant leap of faith; that this program, not knowing what it was, was somehow going to make life livable. This giant leap is what I need to do each day in order to live a sober life: faith that I can only muck up things if I try to get my ego involved.

jobbbb

So I got laid off from my job of two and half years a few days ago. To think I "bottomed out" while employed there, went through a crazy first year of sobriety, learned to be a worker amongst workers, was beaten by circumstances into doing well, and then I get laid off. Well, more accurately I got fired for being 15 minutes late one day. To go from stealing things from the office ($2.50 can buy a 40oz OR toilet paper but not both, and it's not like they would miss a roll or two...).

I should have been fired any number of times on any number of occasions. I've been fired several times, directly or indirectly, as a consequence of my drinking. One generally doesn't flop into the quarry and do a good day's work when one is both brutally hungover or itching for the whistle to blow and get the beer down the gullet. And of course you get home, drink beer and whiskey and smoke cigarettes and eat a slice of pizza for dinner and fall asleep in your work clothes, wake up late the next day, maybe eat a grease sandwich before clocking in and hope people just think you're fat or sick instead of bloated and hungover.

As a result of doing the steps of AA I was able to see my part in these embarrassing episodes. I've been able to let go of many resentments against former bosses and places of work and acknowledge I was a fuck up and didn't really belong there. Just as I didn't belong in a dive bar at 2AM on a Tuesday morning, I didn't belong in certain white collar work environments. For me, ending up in both places was a result of fear, selfishness, and laziness. Afraid that I could do no better for myself, selfishly thinking my company or employ was woefully unappreciated, and too lazy to work at anything closer to what I was meant to be doing.

Now I'm unemployed! It's both a blessing and a curse. Actually it's not a curse at all, since I believe this is happening for a reason. Before getting sober I would be sure I was unemployed for a reason too; the reason being that my boss was a jerk, that late-capitalism chews up and spits out the best people, or simply that I'm cursed by genes or environment to be forever mediocre. The difference now that I'm sober is that my HP has me unemployed to get into something better.

so anyway

So anyway, I didn't update this for almost exactly a year because I was too busy, and frankly getting sober isn't always pretty. Like most people who get sober, I spent most of my first year sober pretty crazy. Going against advice of people who have been where I was, and then getting hurt as a consequence.

The biggest lesson I had to learn is that my ideas were pretty terrible and I didn't know how to live. I see people who try to live by their terrible ideas and their lives are terrible. Their egos place them so apart from others that they don't bother to talk and find out if what they're saying makes any sense or not. That's my experience and I'm not speaking for any organization or whatever.

Will update more later because right now I have to go OH I DONT KNOW SHOWER AND GET TO BED.

esplendor gemetrico

Crikey! I haven't updated this thing in awhile. It's like a resume with the last position listed as being a y2k compliance officer. Well no not that extreme, but since whenever it was that I last updated, I'm too lazy to look, I've had a world of change. I have four months sober as of Wednesday. My world has gotten bigger and I can deal with bullshit white people problems.

Actually I can't deal with white people problems. What I can do is "turn it over," meaning, understanding that I can't control how things turn out. I can only try to do good decent unselfish things and deal with the results. I pray, ok? I don't pretend there's any logical or objective reason why praying seems to work. It just does. I have romance and employment issues now that would have been pacified with beer and pie were it not for AA. I would have drowned my sorrows in self-pity and credit card debt. Now? From all the amazing things I've learned as a result of AA, problems that used to make me whine now show themselves as building-blocks to becoming a grown-up.

Odd thing a few weeks ago. I walk down the street with my coffee and run into my friend from the meetings. "How are you doing?" he asks. It's an appropriate question, one that AA's ask each other on occasion. "Oh, I'm okay. This fucking loneliness is a bit of a sour apple, eh?" He agrees and calmly says that he sometimes wants to set himself on fire. AA's can say shit like that to each other because we've all been there.

"Yes," I say, "I've been wanting to immolate myself too."
"And, I've been thinking? Like I want to smash the infrastructure of my life with a hammer?" says he.
"Yes, yes. That was part of my stinkin' drinkin' thinkin' too. And I just came from my parents' house and it was a bit of a struggle. My man boobs hurt from clasping my palms together."

Suddenly I'm overcome with the sensation of knowing how much I hurt. Now, we're all human beings, we hurt, many times for no identifiable reason. I've spent ten years glossing over my hurt with booze. Now that booze is far away from my body and pretty far from my thoughts, my nerves are all raw and dry humping each other. Well, this hurt was suddenly an uncorked bottle of poison, flowing from the base of my spine into my head. I had the actual physical sensation of my head filling up with poison. This made my blind eye wiggle around, I nearly collapsed from dizziness, and I had to stop talking.

For the rest of the night I was in something of a daze. I'd been waiting for that all summer: the ability to feel pain again, to know what it means to live. I'm not saying it's comfortable, awesome, worth replicating. But it was something that I've been avoiding for years, with the help of booze.

I feel like an actual person.

"YES, I'M IN A LIMO!"

I haven't picked up this mother axe in awhile so let's see if I can at least bust out a few power chords:

So! I'm at day sixty-one (61) and have been noticing lots of changes and whathaveyou. For one thing, several people I never met have been coming up to me and saying, "Hey, youse. You're lookin good. I'se remember when youse came in here, youse was lookin' kinda scrappy. What with your eyes all smashed and red, your neck all puffy, your face pale and gross. Now you look good." Nice to know. I've lost twenty pounds in sobriety, which means I weigh less now than when I graduated high school in the 1990's. I no longer have to carry myself in a wheelbarrel, and when wearing tank tops outdoors I'm no longer insecure about my flubber and hairy shoulders (now I'm only insecure about my hairy shoulders).

However, it's not all narcissism and treats. No, for the past few days I've been feeling something which I can only call "overstimulated." I try to have a conversation and I'm barely aware of what I'm saying. I show up for work and can't recall how I got there. I get home from Williamsburg and realize I forgot to feel a sense of smug superiority over the ed hardy tshirted swarm. What gives? What I think is happening is my brain (that gooey pile of neurons and memories up there) is reorienting itself to a world without the neurotransmitters' astroglide of pabst.

Before I started this blog, I wanted to start a blog talking about how much better I am than AA literature. Anyone who is in AA knows of the literature's horrendous language:
1. It's wrechedly outdated. Frequent mentions of bootleggers (!!), the idea that man may one day walk on the moon, and sentences to the effect of "sometimes, even women become alcoholics!" which leads to
2. It's full of sexist language. "God as we understood Him," which leads to
3. The religious ballyhoo is written in King James Bible English." So many occurances of Thou and Thy and Thee. Puts this creepy Protestant hue all over the whole affair, voiding, a bit, the whole "God as we understood Him," which leads to
4. The literature suffers from being written by committee. Please observe this clunker of a sentence, which is part of every meeting's incantation: "If you want what we have and are willing to go to any lengths to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps." Where do I begin with this steaming pile of verbal violence? I don't claim to be William Saffire Junior, or even literate enough to write speeches for Sarah Palin. Then again, I can count the number of people who read this blog on one finger, and it's read maybe once, not billions of times. And it's not meant to be read aloud. Ooof!

Okay, I got that off my hairy chest. Despite all that, I can't recommend the literature enough. Reading it with a sponsor dulls the verbal burrs.

Since this post is boring, I'll tell a nice illustrative story:

I went to my company's factory in NJ today to do some work on blah blah blah. Anyway I tell the receptionist to call me a car to get to the train station to go back to NY. A stretch limosuine drives up. This can't possibly be my car, I says. Sure enough, I notice the car is from 1985 at the latest. I ask the driver, who appeared to be lacking in hygene, teeth, and knowledge of when to stop eating, told me it's the same rate as a normal car. I get in the back, and, a stretch limo? More like a stench limo! I count fifteen (!!!!!) pine tree air fresheners hanging from those ceiling hook things like they were sets of janitor's keys. The floor is covered with a rug from the dollar store. The cabinets are smashed and splintered. We drive under a rainbow to the train station. I get on the train and call the receptionist and yell to never call that car company again. Yup, I was that guy on the train: a white guy yelling about work into a cell phone. Sorry America.

The point of this story is, in sobriety, all these things seem to happen that make a loud sucking sound where sense should be. There was something horrendous and wonderful about that car ride that would have totally escaped me while not sober, with a healing brain.

Also, cats like me more now that I'm sober.

!!!

Remember when I was saying how Kyan Douglas (god) appeared to me in the form of a squirrel eating a lollypop? (The squirrel was cute, what with his little santa claus beard and white robe and all.) Since then, the dude hasn't appeared to me once. What-the-F-gives?

I totes lack words how to describe what's been happening inside my noggin in the past few days. This thing has creeped up on me and...hmmm...let me give a few anecdotes about stuff that's happened:

1. I got a "sober haircut." There is no such thing in AA as a sober haircut, but for the past week or so I've been itching to totally change my hairstyle for the sake of sobriety. Before yesterday, my hair was something like a cross between Harvier Bardem's in "No Country for Old People," and an expensive mop. I imagined it perfectly showed the world what my taste in music was (garage, punk, grage punk, and glam). Yeah, read that last sentence again. Like it was real important to me for the world to know I wasn't a square? Jeez! Who-the-F-cares?! I'm not totes thrilled with my hair now (AA peeps have told me it looks "young professional," a lot less geico caveman and a lot more like "Tom Cruise." (Really? A guy told me that and I groaned, "Agh! That guy is the WORST!" before I quickly realized it was a compliment and mumbled, "Thank you, that's a very nice thing to say to someone.").

2. Mood swings. I've had mood swings here and there, but not like this. They go from (don't know why this quote sticks in my head lately, but) that line in MacBeth, "Yet do I fear thy Nature, It is too full of the milk of human kindness." At these times I may as well be a cartoon archtype of a happy guy, what with birds chirping on my shoulder and cats playing fiddle at my feet and all. One perceived slight later, and "Ye done pissed in my milk of human kindness, and I do throw up on my wig and throw it at your face and say 'bitche, make me a sandwiche.' " (From the adult movie "MacBeth II: Deez Nutz."). These rapid declinations feel wreched. I'm sleepy but can't sleep, hungry but can't eat, hyperaware of everything but unable to remember it. At times like these I get spiritual all up in there, so

3. Feeling my Higher Power, how you say, taking over. The biggest thing on my mind is this newfangled and newfound religious feeling that's taken root. This is a big deal, yo, but I hesitate to talk about it. Why? For one thing, whenever someone talks about spirituality, more often than not it's complete mush. Total nosense. An absolute fucking waste of words. Why? Because (I invite debate here) real religious feeling defies logic. Since it defies logic, it defies grammar and syntax. Therefore it cannot be communicated. Hence this blog post is full of pointless asides and parentheses. Since you can't communicate religious feeling, you cannot talk about it without either lying or being coercive. I could be way off base here, and look forward to my views on this evolving, but for now, I feel like talking about religious experience is basically an act of violence.

Hence, you can only talk about religious experience by talking about what it is not. In theology this tradition is called "negative theology," and in western philosphy it's known as the ineffable. AA is a perfect example of this theory in praxis: before we entered the rooms, we lacked a spiritual what-have you. After we got into the program, we have one. Since we can only talk about what spirituality is not, most of what AA's talk about is all the horrors in their previous modes of living.

Make sense? No? Oh well.

Silly Sally Fourth

On July 4 I saw two Polish men chase down another Polish man and throw him to the ground. Once on the ground this poor guy got, yes, repeatedly slapped in the face. Is this a sort of Polish martial arts? I watched in disbelief and wondered if I was really seeing what I was seeing. Then an old lady yelled out, "Hey, no fair! One is okay, two is too many!" referring to the two men slap-attacking the floored Pole. I quickly pulled myself away from this obscene display with cartoon question marks floating above my head.

Likewise, the rest of my fourth of July followed this pattern. I didn't do much that day: reading, puttering, wandering here and there, cooking, cleaning, unpacking from the recent move. AA meeting at 7 where I saw my sponsor's sponsor speak. Afterward I called up a pal I used to troll around with and we went to a party.

No big deal, I was well-armed with enough repulsion/fear/distaste toward drinking. I was confident with my giant bottle of Orangina. I get to this place and it's a new-fangled building in the middle of abandoned industrial-land, around 9pm. I notice the building is insanely huge and brand new, with about as much charm as a stack of shipping containers made into a multi-level wal mart. My pal buzzes me in and I go to the roof. Within about ten seconds I wanted to leave. Not only was there a jam band, but the jam band was playing ON TOP of Bob Marley. That marjiwanny-smell was everywhere. All these dudes wearing flip-flops and button down shirts were flirting with or making out with girls so hyper-feminized that they may as well have been transexuals.

I start gnam-gnaming on pretzels and chugging my sody, when my friend introduces me to some guy who is disgustingly inebriated. I do what I planned on doing when finding myself in this situation: I messed with him. "So, you're a rich kid, eh?" I said as I got in his face. My rationale behind this was that the guy would...well, I had no rationale; I was just being cocky and egotistical, flaunting my sobriety the same way douchebags flaunt their shiny automobiles. In the space of three seconds I went from feeling bored to angry, and I went downstairs to pee.

I spent the next TWO HOURS hanging out with my friend who said we're leaving in a minute, we're leaving in a minute, we're leaving soon. As sucky as I felt, it never occurred to me to just leave. Nobody would have cared, and I could have gone somewhere else less insane. Instead of stepping back and trying to do something, I just endured this horrific tableau; a cross between a dentist's waiting room with no magazines and the L train on Saturday night.

If you asked me five years ago, or even one year ago, what my idea of a great party would be, I would respond thusly: shitty garage punk bands playing in a disgusting warehouse in the ghetto, pounding 40 oz's and making out with girls who looked like the hipster grifter. It wouldn't have been awesome, but there was a time I would run the falicy of what historian E.P. Thompson calls "the enormous condescention of posterity." I would idealize such parties, neglecting the funlessness, puking, waste of cash, and general ass-making of myself. In other words, there probably was a time when that was the pinacle of fun, but that stopped being true years and years ago. Without AA I would be not unlike those unfortunate 40 year-old women who dress like it's 1987 because that's when they peaked.

Getting back to this time, I finally left the party and met up with my lady friend and drank some water at a bar (no big deal) and tried to forget the party; nothing terrible happened there, it was just boring. So I thought. I woke up the next day with what I can only describe as a "hate-hangover." I was in such a crappy mood so I called up a fellow alcoholic and said, "hey, what's this?" He said it's probably that I had resentment at the party animals and I didn't know how to properly diffuse it. How right that dude was! I owe him a fist bump when I see him.

AA suggests we avoid people, places, and things that are associated with our drinking. When I first heard this I thought, fair enough, don't go to any place or hang out with any people you used to drink with because you may wanna pick up a tipple. But musing on that, the reasoning behind this suggestion is more subtle: being around those places and people you may have a surge of emotion that you won't properly know how to handle. That was definately my case. Being tempted to drink wasn't an issue for me, since my belly was full of coffee (and the only beer left at that place was high life, which I always thought was revolting). The bigger issue was resentments, hate, etc., and not knowing how to properly express emotions like a grown up.

The moral of the story is, my friend as awful taste in people. Just kidding. The moral of the story is, getting cocky makes you think too much.