If you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces right now, but paid subscribers do have access to monthly premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!
Somebody called me a go-getter the other day, and it was intended as a compliment and I interpreted it as a compliment. Honestly, it is a compliment—a go-getter hustles and makes things happen and is relentless. Those are all positive things, right?
Well, yes and no. The longer I have been sober, the more I have tried to take a harder look at my go-getterness.
First of all, I have found that I tend to be a go-getter about things that I really care about, and the opposite of a go-getter on the stuff that I don’t care about. Which means I aim my will in self-centered directions, and I pick and choose when to be relentless—I usually only pick the ones I want to be relentless about. For example, last year I had a very busy Saturday once and only had a small window of time to pick between two things: I needed to mail out my taxes on a Saturday but I also really, really wanted to watch a sporting event. It obviously was much more important to handle my taxes, but guess who went to a friend’s house to watch sports instead?
Secondly, I’ve noticed in others that their go-getter instincts can drift into disastrous territory. I say that I noticed it in others because I often don’t truly understand some of my bad behaviors until somebody else does them and I see how it feels. The thing I have noticed about go-getters—including myself—is that they suck at the idea of being responsible for the effort, not the outcome. When I am in go-getter mode, I am trying to get a certain result, usually the best result for me, and sometimes the answer isn’t what I want. For example, in the past, I have wanted to be promoted at work, so I busted my ass and brought it up with my bosses. My recovery program would preach a principle of doing all that you can and then let go of the result. But when I am full-blown go-getter, I keep going and going and going. And in my experience in the professional ranks, you can get so nagging about promotions that bosses go the other way and think it is a sign of somebody who should NOT be promoted, and I can’t disagree with that logic.
The third thing that I thought about was that being a go-getter is a muscle that I want to have but not use often. There are times in this world where you cannot take no for an answer, or you have to convince someone that yes is the right answer. I had a recent situation where my high school senior daughter had a confusing F grade on an AP course that would be her first college grade if we didn’t get some clarification on it. We were pretty sure she actually got a B and the F was a mistake. So I ended up dogging the living s**t out of a college department that handles incoming AP grades, and nobody would get back to me as the deadline for finalizing the grade approached. I would not let up. I just kept calling and emailing until someone responded, and we got it straightened out, and it was a mistake on their part. So in that situation, I was persistent but kind, and I think the principles of 12-step recovery would agree with that approach in certain situations.
The last thing is, I don’t know too many go-getters in life who I would say are really, truly happy and content. There always is a new mission, a new passion project, a new something, and when that new thing gets accomplished, they’re onto another new mission—when I am in that headspace, it very much reminds me of when I was in full-blown addict mode of trying to find that next high.
And in situations where I have chased something hard and it fizzles out, I see a lot of regret and resentment in myself. I think launching my go-getter muscle often achieves good results, but they’re often short-term results, and people don’t end up saying, “Wow, that guy is a real go-getter. Good for him.” I think they more often say to themselves, “What a pain in the ass. I’m not sure I want to deal with that again.”
People probably already say that about me, so I’d like to keep it to a minimum!
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:
HEARD AT MEETINGS
"Made a searching and fruitless moral inventory of ourselves."
(Credit: Grapevine, Oct. 2004, by Ames S. of New York, NY)
Please spread the word to a sober friend! Find me on Substack… or Twitter… or Facebook… or Instagram… or YouTube. And introducing my web site, LOLsober.com.
