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I’ve been pretty aggravated driving around my town recently because there has been a lot of road construction going on. It’s nothing major—it’s usually lane closures or short detours.
But it tacks on a few minutes to short drives, and that has caused me on more than one occasion to be frustrated and growling under my breath as I wait in traffic. It’s the epitome of a luxury problem to have a 6-minute drive turn into a 9-minute drive and you’re pulling your hair out and cursing out road crews—with the windows up, of course. I don’t need a road construction worker to kick the s**t out of me for barking at him.
I’ve also caught myself on more than one occasion groaning at meetings if someone shows up that I don’t particularly want to hear share that night. I don’t really despise anybody in sobriety, and I tend to not avoid meetings if I think someone I don’t care for will be there. But that thought has been crossing my mind quite a bit lately—I have several meetings where there’s a person or format that I don’t love, so I cross it off the list.
So last Friday, I went to a new meeting in the next town over, and I had to laugh when I sat down and noticed a pinboard behind the chairperson. There were multiple signs up announcing upcoming sober events, and a few meetings that could use more support. And then there was a big orange traffic sign that said, “Character Construction Zone.”
For some reason, that sign really hit me, because it tapped into both areas of recent frustration, the road construction and the people, places and things that annoy me at meetings. It hit me in the moment that I need to never, ever forget that we’re all characters, and we all probably have some character defects to work on, and we’re showing up at that particular meeting at that particular time because we want to do that work. There are definitely people in recovery who have what I want, and there are definitely people in recovery who have what I DON’T want. It’s fine—we need all the different flavors of sobriety to make 12-step recovery possible.
On a deeper level, any time I notice multiple areas where I am aggravated, it always means one thing—I am walking out into the world with an idea of how things should go, and it usually is the way that I want them to go. When they inevitably don’t go that way, that leads to aggravation.
I find that to be a self-centered way to approach life, and it usually means my faith in a higher power has dwindled. To put it bluntly, it usually means that I am my higher power. Spoiler alert: That rarely works out.
So I made a promise to myself that I would get to meetings this week that benefit my recovery, without taking attendance of who I like and who I don’t. And I also vowed to be more relaxed about accepting roadwork as a necessary part of life. (But holy s**t, if they close that right lane on Main Street again, all bets are off…)
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:
A guy goes into a bar, takes a seat and orders five pints. The bartender gives him an odd look since the guy’s all by himself, but he lines up five pints on the bar.
The guy downs them. One, two, three, four, five. He finishes the last one, and calls to the bartender. “Four pints, please, mate!” The bartender serves up four pints and lines them on the bar.
The guy downs them. One, two, three, four. Then he belches, sways on the barstool, and orders two more. He quickly knocks them back. One, two, three.
“Two pints, mate!” he calls, and when the bartender places two pints in front of him, down they go. One, two.
The guy slams the last one down, puts the empty glass on the bar, and says, “One pint, mate.” So the bartender fills the glass.
The guy sits there, staring at it for a moment, trying to focus. Then he looks at the bartender: “Y’know, it’sh a funny thing, but the less I drink, the drunker I get.”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, May 2001, Anonymous)
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