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Man, I did something really stupid this week. Don’t worry, it’s not catastrophic. It’s just a silly—but preventable—dipshit mistake.
Before I get to that, let me again bring up my favorite passage from Drop the Rock. In case you’re unfamiliar, Drop the Rock is a recovery book written by sober alcoholics but it is not official sobriety literature. The book deals with the Sixth and Seventh Steps, which are all about how to work through character defects that either keep you from getting sober or keep you from living your best sober life.
My favorite passage is a short story from someone who says she had her sponsor over to her house once, and her sponsor said something to her about what a mess her house was. I think in the story the woman questions her sponsor about why a messy house would be important to her sobriety, and her sponsor lays out how it usually takes a pretty clean lifestyle to get sober and stay sober.
I always connected with that because I am kind of a slob. Not a slob in the “I haven’t brushed my teeth or taken a shower this month” kind of way. More like, my car’s a mess. My room is a mess. My refrigerator is a mess. My schedule is a mess. I can’t find paperwork I need because it’s buried under paperwork I don’t need. That kind of sloppy lifestyle.
I often chalk it to being a messy, creative person, that I need to be someone who is a free spirit and isn’t confined by calendar invites and Google docs and on and on.
That’s b******t. I just get lazy sometimes, and that brings to this week’s edition of “Maybe I ought to get my s**t together a little better.”
I had a work trip scheduled for Monday. My wife and I coordinated to get every kid everywhere they needed to get to while I was gone, and since that day was our wedding anniversary, we celebrated it the night before.
On Monday, I packed a bag, said goodbye to the kids and drove a half hour to the airport. I drove all around the parking deck before I finally found a spot. I parked. I lugged all my stuff into the airport. And when I tried to get my boarding passes, the screen said, “We appreciate you checking in. But you’re TOO early.” Turns out, my flight is Tuesday.
I. Felt. Like. A. Real. A*****e. How do you butcher that?!?!?! I sat down for about 10 minutes and just shook my head and laughed. Nobody got hurt. Nobody really got inconvenienced too bad. So it’s funny… but it kind of isn’t.
I have been getting a little fast and loose being a responsible adult the past few weeks. I could come up with some reasons and excuses, and there’s probably some truth to having a busy family life and a full-time job might cause some planning mistakes. But I’d be lying to myself, and I would be tempted to blame my sloppiness on somebody or something other than myself.
So I drove home and unpacked all my stuff, and will do the same thing again tomorrow. But one thing I won’t be doing the same tomorrow: I am going to start more aggressively cleaning up the corners of my life, the corners of my room, the corners of my gross car. And if it requires a Google doc, so be it.
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
AA isn’t a program from which you can graduate. The highest you can go is sober. If you get any higher than that, you have to start over.
(Credit: AA Grapevine, October 2003, Bob B. from Gretna, Louisiana)
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