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Stop me if you’ve seen this movie before…
I did a bunch of stuff with my family yesterday, so I pushed off some other work and personal obligations. And as the emails and errands piled up, I began to get a little edgy and panicky about all of the things I had to do that I wasn’t currently doing. By late afternoon, I was pretty unpleasant to be around.
So when I got home around dinnertime, I started having that thought so many of us addicts have: I could probably use a meeting… but I’m sooooo busy. I have a meeting that I love, that I find very spiritually nourishing, and yet, I convinced myself around 6 p.m. that I needed that hour for other things. “I’m too busy,” my brain told me.
That’s the part I bet many people can identify with. It’s a legit thought some days. I’m not going to sit here and tell everybody that there aren’t moments in a busy sober life where you have to maybe skip the meeting on Tuesday and try to get to one on Wednesday. Or that you should always skip your kid’s parent-teacher conference or soccer game for a meeting. I’m not going to do that.
But I will say that I always try to treat that voice with a lot of skepticism. Is it true? Am I too busy for a meeting? If the answer is yes, fine. If the answer is maybe, or “I’m not sure,” then it’s worth a little more investigation.
So for me last night, I thought I actually could use that hour to catch up on things. But I also kept kicking the tires on that thought, because there’s an important followup question I need to ask. Which is, am I better off over the next, say, eight hours, if I use one of those hours for an injection of serenity and recovery? Or am I better off using all eight of those hours to dive into the stuff I need to do?
Because in my experience, taking that hour breather to reach for some peace and sobriety often times makes the other seven hours more productive than eight hours of edgy, aggressive catchup work.
I often make sports analogies, and I’ll make another one here: In an NBA game, when the other team goes on a 10-0 run, sometimes the best immediate action to take is to burn a timeout, sit down on the bench, drink some water, breath, and collect yourselves.
To carry that analogy further, my brain in those moments is telling me to hustle the ball up court, try to get a shot off, don’t waste any time, we need points! But as often seems to happen in a basketball game, you end up taking a rushed, bad shot, and suddenly that 10-0 disadvantage is 12-0 or 13-0, and you get the ball back and are breathing out of your mouth even worse, hustling to take another bad shot. So meetings can be a valuable timeout.
You probably already guessed where this story was heading. After dinner last night, I did go to that meeting. I didn’t raise my hand to share. I thought I could use the hour to listen, to be quiet, to breath (out of my nose!), and try to remember to turn my will over to something bigger than me.
The topic of the meeting was mostly Step 10, and that made me smile. Step 10 is about taking a daily inventory and when wrong, promptly admitting it. I read that a little differently this time, though. I always associate the “when we were wrong” part to stuff we did earlier in the day that we need to consider making amends for. But when I contemplated it this time, I interpreted it as me taking my inventory at 7:00 p.m., realizing I was headed for making a bunch of mistakes that night and into the next day, and promptly admitting it by immediately taking corrective action.
And I did. The meeting really helped. I went home 50% more calm and peaceful, and I think I caught up on everything I needed to, despite “losing” that hour.
The truth is, I didn’t lose anything. Except, of course, the myth of the “I’m too busy” part of my brain! I’m sure it will come back again soon—maybe even tomorrow. But for today, I’m not too busy for some serenity.
ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT JOKE OF THE DAY
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.
One day a skid-row drunk collapses on the street and a large crowd gathers around him. They all try to be helpful.
“Give him a drink of whiskey,” says one lady.
“Stand back and give him some air,” a man shouts.
“Give him the whiskey,” the lady insists.
“Call an ambulance!” someone yells.
Suddenly the drunk sits up and hollers, “For Pete’s sake, shut up and listen to the lady!”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, October 2001, Dick L. from New Westminster, British Columbia)
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