Thinking of Yourself Less

 I celebrate 27 years sober this month. For most of my sobriety, I worked in a transition house for men in the early stages of recovery from alcohol drugs and gambling. I don't work there now. I retired about 18 months ago. I was talking to a young man who currently resides in the house and the conversation was good. I told him I used to live there and work there. And he said, "Yeah, you're somewhat of a legend there." I laughed and we went about the things we had been doing to set up the meeting we were at.

Later, I realized that I never really gave any thought to the impact I may have had while working there. My name is on three plaques there. One as a resident, one as a staff member, and one as a resident who continues to donate his time to uphold the philosophy of the home.

Every morning when I wake up, I pick a word from my god box. This morning, yesterday morning now, my word was Pride.  I know that the opposite of pride is humility and that humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.

So, I'll do that now. 

November 7

 Every morning, I start my day the same way. First, I remind myself that I am powerless over alcohol and then I let God know that I might need a little help getting through my day. Next, I pull a word from my God box to give me something to do today. This time, it was the slogan First Things First.

Last night, I went to a meeting and was able to help some new people understand how the program works. This morning, I messaged one of them to give her a little more help. Later this month, I celebrate a sobriety milestone. 27 years. But, just because I have the time in now doesn't mean that I stop doing the things that got me sober and one of those things is helping others.

Today, we have a meeting with the Reverend of our local church, basically to introduce ourselves and talk about things we can do to make our community more of a community. See how that goes.

November 6

Hard to believe that Trump could get re-elected, but there it is. I'm not much for politics so I don't have any windy arguments on whether or not that was a wise move on anyone's part. It is what it is. I'm Canadian so it's not my circus and not my monkeys.

I'm celebrating a sobriety milestone this month. 27 years. There are a few others celebrating that night and because I will be the eldest, I get to select the speaker. I already have someone in mind, someone with over a decade himself and someone with a good story. I sent him a message so we'll see how he responds.

I think we're going to al-anon tonight. Usually, I do one alanon meeting per week, but since I was chosen to be an alanon speaker at the midwinter roundup, I thought I should let some of the members in this district at least know who I am.

I had been making these posts at night so I could talk about how my day went, but it was slipping my mind, so I thought I'd switch things up and post in the daylight hours. Now, I have to talk about what I plan to do as opposed to what I have already done. We'll see how that goes. 

November 5 Late Again

This entry is late, again. Maybe posting late at night isn't a good idea. Maybe early in the morning would be better. I'll try that tomorrow and see how that goes. Today was just ordinary. Nancy had an outing with some of her friends, the proverbial Group of Dames. I was baking cookies for a meeting I was going to tonight, so I made sure she got a few to take with her. I also made a pot of stew today and some tea biscuits to go with that.

I'm increasingly aware that I make a lot of typos. I was always such a good typist, even with one hand. Sometimes I'm comfortable with blaming it on the letters on the keyboard sticking, but other times I notice blatantly dyslexic errors. Age? Well, I am getting up there. It's difficult when you write to have to keep going back and correcting yourself. Oh well. 

November 4/24

I was supposed to post a blog entry last night but as Barliman Butterbur from Lord of the Rings used to say, One thing drives out another. We had a good day, a productive day. We started off by going to church, something we haven't done for decades. The building didn't fall down. The service was actually interesting and on a good theme. The importance of community within your community and recognizing that your neighbours may be good people also. We enjoyed the reverend's talk.

There was also some talk about outreach services the church would like to do and a few of them are similar to what my wife and I already do so a light bulb came on and gave me an idea or two. I always say that coincidence is how God protects his anonymity.

Later in the day, we went to a committee meeting and I let myself get talked into volunteering to be a guest speaker at the welcome meeting of the event. That will go alright bcause I am no stranger to public speaking. I'll just tell them the same story I always tell, except from a different perspective. It isn't until February so I'm going to forget about it for a bit.