Be The Artist In Your Life

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I went to the new meeting last night.  It was a HUGE meeting with a seriously Big Book Thumping Message.  These folks are carrying the message and they were funny and touching doing it too.  Ran into someone I knew which was good.  It will be good.  It’s so big that I can sort of pretend I’m a newcomer and sit and knit and listen to the message.  Because this is really about sobriety in the end.   This group also goes out to eat and next week I will go with them.  Last night I went by the old restaurant after wards to check in with my sponsor and a friend or two.

Had a good chat with my sponsor, still a bit vague because we were in company but I wanted her to know that I really am okay.  Something that an email really just doesn’t get across.  Saw my girlfriend M, who I got sober with, and had a nice chat.  Saw M and he said he was glad to see me, he was worried when I wasn’t at the meeting and was going to call me.  That phone call would have been the first one in 14 years showing concern I wasn’t at the meeting.  Touching that.

The party line I gave is that I need to do a few new things.  Freshen up my program, hear some new stories, have a Beginner’s Mind, and meet some new people.  Girl M said, and she was right, “if nothing changes, nothing changes.”  Since I need to meet new people I have got to get out and do it. What I said was absolutely true.

It was bittersweet however.

Girl M starts this conversation, “We found out my boyfriend’s cabin is available the week of New Year’s and I was wondering what your schedule was like.”  “Oh, man, I’m busy that weekend.”  “Oh, she says, no, I’m sorry, I wasn’t inviting you, we’re going alone, I need a housesitter. You’ll be in town right?”  *laugh*  *sigh*  I get invited to housesit/catsit a lot.  And I’ll do it because I need a break from the home front here but you know?  You feeling me?

Change is hard.  Everything I said is true.  I do need Beginner’s Mind I think the most.  I need fresh. I need to feel a part of something bigger than myself.  While yes, we humans have evolved further than our monkey ancestors, there is one thing we still have in common. If we are ignored, if we don’t get touched or acknowledged, we shrivel and die. I need more than this or I’m going to cave in.

My sponsor has a New Year’s Party every year where the whole gang goes and “We blow shit up!” as she says.  I’m not going this year and she understands.  But guess what?  She told me last night that one of the home group members came up to her and said “Are you going to the Solstice Party?”  Yup. Neither my sponsor nor I had even heard about the Solstice party.  And the person who brought it up? Clammed up. Not invited again.   Either of us.  How can this not be hurtful?   *laugh* OMG.  These people! Pointy.

Come on. You Know When It’s Time To Leave.

I have a party tonight where I’m going to see many old friends including the first man I ever slept with.  Cuhraaaaazy man.  That’s just weird and wild.  Friends I haven’t seen in 30 years.  It’s going to be a hoot.  It’s the last show of a band that’s been playing 25 years and EVERYONE is going to be there.  I bought my ticket in advance to make sure I could get in, going early to make sure I get a chair.

Another reunion show on the 28th and one more on New Year’s Eve.  Another old friend and past crush is coming back to Seattle from Austin for two reunion shows.  Two more incredibly fun shows.

Several people have written that they are excited to see me and I’m excited to see them.  It’s going to be so great to continue this year’s theme of reconnecting with the old and discovering that I have friends in places I forgot I’d been.  And to ring in the new year with them.

Oh. And I Look FABULOUS! I’m in darned good shape these days. The Times, They Are A Chaaaaaangin’

A Note

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As you read Radiomancy, IF you read Radiomancy, remember this from this weeks horoscope…

Have you been taking care of the finishing touches these past few weeks?

It’s December 11th.  How much more will be finished in, what, 20 days?  There’s not much left, I think the finishing touches are quite finished.

I’m really excited about this coming year.  I have a job and can spend my time thinking and doing things I simply couldn’t focus on in the last two.

Radiomancy or Divination by Radio

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Speaking of “Clinging to old relationships where it’s clear it’s time to move on”

I have my alarm clock set to play a local rock radio station.  I snooze it every morning for 30 minutes.  I am a slow riser.  So one morning the snooze went off and I heard just what I needed to hear that morning.  Every morning since I’ve been listening to see what little bon mots come through.  Guitar solos and fuzz don’t count.  It must be a clear phrase.  It also has to be the first thing said when the alarm goes off.  Not something I hear AFTER the guitar solo. And boy howdy they just hit me.

Some mornings are better than others.  Sometimes I get something like a gum commercial “fresh breath!” and I giggle.  I’ve had this kind of thing happen before in the car and when waiting at a bus stop and it always caught my notice and I would go, “Whoa,”  but I wasn’t trying to hear anything, something just caught my attention and was appropriate in that moment.    This time I’m doing it intentionally.

But some mornings, today for instance, are really something else.

What do I hear? Continue reading →

Drum Majorette

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So how are you doing with your year-long resurrection project, Cancerian? Have you been taking care of the finishing touches these past few weeks? If not, do so soon. It’s high time for you to officially and definitively rise from the dead. Your wandering in the underworld is at an end. Your mourning for broken dreams should be complete. In January, the age of exploration will begin; make sure your reborn spunk is ready for action by then.

Heh.  Again, he just nails it.  Just. Nails. It.  How Does He KNOW? *laugh* It has lasted a bit longer than a year but these things are hard to predict and have their own flexible timeline.  I’m juiced.  Jazzed.  Looking forward.  In some ways parts of me have been dead for decades.

A blog friend who has been away for awhile told me today that she’s looking forward to me taking up the blog baton again.  What a great phrase. Blog Baton.  And my first thought, because it’s who I am, was that a baton is something cops use to hit people. And I thought, hmmm, am I hitting people with a blog baton?  Thankfully, my second thought was that a baton is what the leader of the band carries.  I like that.  The Drum Majorette as it were.  Certainly the Drum Majorette of my own life.  If it was the first before, let’s have it  be the second now and forward.

It’s funny,  there have been a lot of things I’ve let go of this year. Some of it isn’t exactly “things” as much as “ideas.”  Some of it wasn’t planned.  I don’t know if I could ever say, “this will be done Dec 31 at 11:59pm,” and I don’t want this to turn into a new year’s resolution because this was last year.  Let’s call it a general inventory of themes this past year as some finish up their tenure and some begin new lives.

What I’m letting go

  • The need to be understood by others
  • The idea that I will find everything I think I’m looking for exactly how and where I hoped it would be
  • The idea that I have to live in fear
  • Seeking out those who are not interested in my company, who do not respond to my overtures, letting them go so softly, they are on their own path and I can love them but don’t have to have them in life.
  • Clinging to old relationships where it’s clear it’s time to move on
  • Constraint, little boxes, pigeonholes, for me and others

What I’m letting in

  • I can live in love, in trust
  • I am lovable and the love I give myself, it is enough, the spirit gives me love every minute of every day
  • I will continue to expand in my creativity
  • That I will open myself to new opportunities, new ideas, new adventures, and new people
  • That I will honor the parts of me that I have hidden because I was afraid others would judge me and let those parts of me shout themselves to the world. I admire those who obviously do not follow the “party line” out there in the world, they have had more courage than I.  I’m talking geeks and fairies, punks and freespirits here.  The radical fringe.  The only place I need to fit in is my job and I have more freedom here than I thought.
  • Spontaneity
  • Respond positively to those who seek me out
  • The things I don’t recognize immediately as exactly what I’m looking for but turn out to be better than I asked for.  I’m not looking for the familiar any more.
  • The freedom I had when I was younger of refusing to try to fit in when it didn’t fit ME.  I know what it looks like and how it feels, it is mine, and she’s coming baaaaaack.
  • More meditation, as my teacher said last night, it is the best form of magic.  To continue looking at why it is so hard to trust others.  Why I bristle when attacked.  It isn’t about me, it’s about them, and I can stay calm and not join the spinning whirlwind.