Monday, June 30, 2008

Welcome, Lady Salsa

You'll find a new OA blogger listed to the right, LadySalsa in Australia posting about her "journey to me." Welcome, kindred spirit! We love you!

Continuing in my perusal of "We Agnostics," Chapter 4 of the Big Book, I pause reading:

  • We talked of intolerance, while we were intolerant ourselves.
  • In the face of collapse and despair, in the face of the total failure of their human resources, they found that a new power, peace, happiness, and sense of direction flowed into them.
  • ...they were making heavy going of life. Leaving aside the drink [food] question, they tell why living was so unsatisfactory.
  • The Wright brothers' almost childish faith....
  • Logic is great stuff. We like it. We still like it. It is not by chance we were given the power to reason, to examine the evidence of our senses, and to draw conclusions.
  • Hence we are at pains to tell why we think our present faith is reasonable, why we think it more sane and logical to believe than not to believe, why we say our former thinking was soft and mushy when we threw up our hands in doubt and said, "We don't know."
  • ...either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn't. What was our choice to be?
  • We were grateful that Reason had brought us so far. But somehow, we couldn't quite step ashore. Perhaps we had been leaning too heavily on Reason that last mile and we did not like to lose our support.
  • How much did these feelings, these loves, these worships, have to do with pure reason?
  • What about people who proved that man could never fly?

Of course besides the classic passage of God is everything or nothing stands on the opposite page from a powerful paragraph as well, the bedevilments. And yes, I often pause there, and I go back and seek them out to show people, to compare with the powerful promises set out in the text on Step 9.

Crutches, both physical walking devises and symbolic ones, serve a valid purpose. A speaker can have excellent command of a topic, yet rely so heavily on notes nothing but the bare essentials is communicated, passing on none of the passion or interest of the subject matter. As long as we work on not being hurt again, we don't strengthen muscles and reach full recovery, instead leaning on a walking stick or holding an injured arm close. After surgery on my shoulder, the stretching exercises inflicted sheer agony, even when I used the other arm to raise the injured one with a pulley device. Yet by going through that and learning not just to do it with a the device but later by creeping up the wall with my fingers, I reached the point the shoulder is actually stronger than the never-injured one.

"If I turn it over to God, who's going to move my parents, who's going to clean the kitchen, who's going to comfort my child?" The idea our world cannot function absent our control is a crutch. Telling God what he needs to do to help us is a crutch. Asking him for specific outcomes is substituting our will for his, a crutch of holding onto the control. Maybe there's some faith there, but it's about as helpless as the hurt arm. Turning it over to God is tough, like the Wright brothers getting in a machine and trusting it to fly. People had proven that was impossible! Had somebody not trusted beyond the powers of reason, we'd all be earth-bound. Unless you become like a little child, you can't get there, you can't find serenity, you can't find wings to fly beyond your wildest dreams.

In early 1974 I turned in my resignation to a wise man. I hated to do it, didn't want to disappoint him. But I was going to get married and leave that city. He made the conversation easy. He told me the hardest part of his job was getting and keeping good staff, but that everybody moved on sometime, and the enterprise would go on with somebody filling my role.

Today's For Today reading hits the nail on the head, speaking of turning over the responsibility for tomorrow's outcome to our higher power. At an OA meeting Saturday a gentleman spoke of the wisdom of his seven-year-old daughter. "What you're worrying about probably isn't going to happen, so I choose not to worry about it." We still move our parents, clean the kitchen, parent our child--but God controls the outcome and we can trust him.

God doesn't need us at the helm. He really can steer the ship. And he does it infinitely better than any of us ever could. Let's let him.

Sunday, June 29, 2008

We Agnostics or Whatever

Reading on in Chapter 4 of the Big Book Alcoholics Anonymous I pause at:
  • "Do I now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a Power greater than myself?"
  • Faced with alcoholic [compulsive eating] destruction, we soon became as open minded on spiritual matters as we had tried to be on other questions. In this respect alcohol [food] was a great persuader. It finally beat us into a state of reasonableness. Sometimes this was a tedious process.
  • Everybody nowadays, believes in scores of assumptions for which there is good evidence, but no perfect visual proof. And does not science demonstrate that visual proof is the weakest proof?
  • ...our perverse streak comes to the surface and we laboriously set out to convince ourselves it isn't so. 
  • ...thinking we believe...
  • ...our human intelligence was the last word, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and end of all. Rather vain of us, wasn't it?
  • Actually, we used to have no reasonable conception whatever. We used to amuse ourselves by cynically dissecting....
  • ...a degree of stability, happiness and usefulness which we should have sought ourselves.
People whose job it is to sit through trials, both jury and non-jury, know well the reliability of eye-witness testimony. How reliable is it? Not very. Yet those people who have attended few trials, who find themselves in the jury box, put heavy weight on what people think they saw. Many wrongful convictions have occurred in that manner. "And does not science demonstrate that visual proof is the weakest proof?" 

A while ago, some friends of mine worked with an email message going around wherein an animated gif (a moving drawing) appeared to be spinning in circles. Depending on how you perceived it, she could be turning clockwise or counterclockwise. A friend of mind, unable to see her turning right no matter how hard she worked, was significantly impacted by the branding as a left-brain person. Yet it's in staring at an optical illusion, trying to analyze it and mentally conquer it, we reach frustration. It can't be done intellectually. 

I don't think it matters whether you approach finding the God of your understanding from a position of steeped in theology and doctrine or one of adamant disbelief in one aspect. The thoughts and convictions previously reached stand in the way of making it not a matter of working on understanding but of accepting like a child, just grabbing hold of the parent's hand and going, trusting. And I don't know how a sponsor helps a person make that leap from the head to the heart. My words don't seem to be doing the trick. 

So, have I fully made that leap? I firmly believe that's true. I believe it in my head, but MUCH more importantly, I believe it in my heart. Comments and suggestions as to what to tell a person sponsored, though, are mightily welcome.

Friday, June 27, 2008

"I'm a Christian, and...."

Working on Step 2, I read the first three pages of "We Agnostics" this morning. Several phrases caught my eye:
  • Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves. Obviously....
  • And it means, of course, that we are going to talk about God....
  • ...even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that Power, which is God.
  • The Realm of the Spirit is broad, roomy, all inclusive, never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. It is open, we believe, to all men.
The BB reading juxtaposed itself beside a snippet from an otherwise productive conversation last night. That snippet was, "I'm a Christian, and...." Now, the conversation was not in a void. But that statement, from a person my new sponsor has already identified as having very solid footing on my resentments list. Why is it the people who have to point out they're a Christian don't seem to be? And why do I feel a lot freer to talk about my history in the church--that I've been church staff in three churches, have a degree in Christian ed, wrote UMC literature--and I would tend to choke on the words, "I'm a Christian, and..." in casual conversation.
OA Tradition Three says the only membership requirement is a desire to stop eating compulsively. There are those who would list a set of prerequisites, a plan of salvation, for the right to say, "I'm a Christian," but that list grates like the phrase to me. A convicted felon said, "Don't you fear God since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong." And then, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." That was enough. Asking. Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise." (quotations from NIV, Luke 23:40-43)

An earnest desire. It's enough. "It is open, we believe, to all."

I walk on my side of the street. I have no obligation or right to clean up the other side. If she asks my assessment of the spirituality of her walk, I can make suggestions, tell how habits she thinks are supportive come across as one-ups-man-ship. She hasn't asked. The character defects that bug us in others tend to be our own. I'm haughty. About my religious credentials, about all kinds of things. But it's a character defect God can remove from me, from my side of the street.

I'm having trouble finishing this because God's working a miracle in my family right now! My son has an interview for a dream job! Thank God!

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

An Overload of Hopelessness

What a way to turn a phrase! "An overload of hopelessness." It belongs to Peter G. Lindner, M.D., who also said:
  • Submission implies no real acceptance of one's inadequacy; on the contrary, it demonstrates conclusively that the struggle is still going on. Submission is, at best, a superficial yielding, with the inner tensions still present. When the individual accepts, on an unconscious level, the reality of not being able to handle compulsive overeating, there is no residual battle. Relaxation ensues with a freedom from strain and conflict. This freedom is the aim of the OA groups, and complete surrender is manifested by the considerable degree of relaxation which is evident in the behavior of those who have achieved it.
  • ...constructive action takes the place of skin-deep assurances that will merely comply temporarily until the memory of their suffering and self-pity weakens and the need for compliance lessens.
  • Surrender, then, is an unconscious event.
  • ...after all, it is our thoughts that precede our emotions, and it is our emotions that make us eat inappropriately and become physically obese. (all from Appendix B, Overeaters Anonymous, 2nd ed.)
A woman steeped in the wisdom of AA gave me a copy of Overeaters Anonymous, and I surprised myself by reading it--at least I read the stories. That was in December of 2006, and reading the stories softened me up and led me at that moment when I cried out for help, telling God, "This is stupid." It was kind of by way of saying grace over that last sweet roll and large vending machine cappuccino December 17, 2006, the day I found OA (or, I think, OA found me.) Now another kind woman, steeped in the wisdom of OA as well as AA, pointed out to me those pesky sections I hadn't bothered to read, not then, not ever until yesterday and today: The appendices. (I also read the Foreword, but I think I'd actually read it when I first got the book.)

Submission is superficial yielding; surrender yields a considerable degree of relaxation. I've written here on surrender before. (Surrender, among others.) But had I figured out what surrender means? Wasn't my surrendering in Step 1 conditional? I know it was. My first defined abstinence, (after the get-through-Christmas-and-New-Years-trip period) was pretty much a particular program, but I could take one bite of anything. I lost weight that way, felt righteous and yet not "deprived." When I got a new sponsor six months later she said give up sugar, and I did. Pretty much. Almost completely. The one bites were REALLY exceptional. Then there was the hard candy. But not much. Surrender? No, that was submission. My idea of years in OA at my ideal weight were always going back to eating a bite of anything I wanted to. Certainly the struggle, subdued though it's been, persisted.

I am part of the "we." We admitted we were powerless over food. I admit it. That's the part I glossed over. Admitting my life was unmanageable? Easy. I think. We'll see how long that conviction stands. No sugar today. None yesterday. Gosh, God, do you really mean no more dates as long as they have the sprinkles of sugar?

And how do you plan an unconscious event?

Saturday, June 21, 2008

About Resentments

The counselor, in suggesting I work with the old humiliation/shame feelings, directed me toward the story in the AA BB on page 544 (4th ed.) "Freedom From Bondage." I'd read the particular page she mentioned, 552, yesterday morning but with more time today I read the whole story. Boy, does it speak to me. Bits and pieces that tug at me:
  • I am a result of the way I reacted to what happened to me....
  • ...aware of emotions I'd not counted on: restlessness, anxiety, fear, and insecurity....
  • ...I had acquired an average amount of intellectual training in the intervening years, but there had been no emotional maturity at all....
  • ...necessary to escape from myself, for my remorse and shame and humiliation ... were almost unbearable....
  • With deep shame came the knowledge too that I had lived with no sense of social obligation nor had I known the meaning of moral responsibility to my fellow men.
  • ...reality too has two sides: ... but now I had a chance to learn about the pleasant side as well....
  • "happy are ye who know these things and do them."
  • "The only real freedom a human being can ever know is doing what you ought to do because you want to do it."
So. Those will guide my today. Yesterday? During a long download when my computer wouldn't do much else, I opened and played the sudoku program. The pull wasn't there, and I didn't get the rush from the addiction, but that was playing with fire and with God's help won't get repeated. And I ate lots more cheese yesterday than I should have. (about 2 ounces.) Today will be better, because I'm walking with God and have asked him to control my thoughts.

Friday, June 20, 2008

Moving Forward

I worked with a counselor on the issues that caused the inappropriate eating Wednesday. I had indentified it as embarrassment over a fact I knew and forgot I knew and said I didn't know if I knew. The only people aware of my being wrong already love me and don't think less of me for being forgetful. But it bothered me. And the counselor put her finger dead center on just why it might bother me so. It's a long-standing character defect I can't quite pinpoint. Oh, I know exactly what it is. I just can't name it. Something like "embarrassment/humiliation/don't look at me/don't notice me/let me fade into the dirt, please." And the counselor suggested I write about the times I remember that being triggered. I did. Well, I don't guess I finished the list. I stopped at 84 of them I think. Just to give you a few examples....

  • I was 1968 summer youth director for a church in a town owned by a petroleum company that was not Texaco. By definition, every family I worked with had at lesat one adult employed there. Before supper in a home one evening, I commented about the nice crystal glasses but went one step too far, saying at home we just drank from Texaco glasses.

  • My kindergarten teacher had me sit in the corner for scratching the red vinyl top of a folding table, something "everybody else" had been doing--and stopped in time not to get caught.

  • At a concert in a high school auditorium with my college band (class of 1969) I had an F handbell in one hand, a G in the other, and they were in the wrong hands from those intended. I played the wrong bell at the wrong time and was chastised by the first chair alto sax who sat in front of me.
I usually write rhymed, structured poetry to work through feelings and attitudes. This isn't rhymed or structured. But it's real....

Humiliation

Like two claws hinged
encompass my heart from behind
squeezing, gently but steady
cutting off
turning in
imploding the chest.

The warmth starts
from under the chin
creeping toward eyes
invisible hands
shielding my mortified face.

Don't look.
Don't see.
I'm not here.
I'm not me.

"How dumb can you be?"
"Stupid!"
"You arrogant, ignorant wimp."
"Who are you,
pretending to be somebody,
pretending to matter!"
"You can't do anything right."
"You're pitiful.
An imposter
masquerading as somebody.
Just quit.
Don't bother the world.
Enough of your crud."

Don't look.
Don't see.
I'm not here.
I'm not me.
For shame.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Restless, Discontent

But not much irritable. I'm doing okay. I want to open a game. I won't. But I won't say anything here worth reading, either.

I'm back. I posted this about 35 minutes ago. It was a lie then, it's more of one now. I have had tonight two cheese sticks, a slice of cheese, and dates twice. I also had two sugar-free no calorie tiny Popsicle things. They don't really count as compulsive eating, they were to stave it off. But I didn't behave, anyway. But I do promise that's all for today and tomorrow will be abstinent. Good night.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Futility Thinking

My assignment for today -- and it's a big enough one it won't happen today, but starting today -- is to work on my futility thinking. This is adding a "but" to every "yes." I'm going to work on getting my rational/analytical/skeptical self out of the way and letting God really lead me where I want him to lead me, which is where he wants me to go. That's convoluted. I'm saying I want to hitch a ride with him, not put on the brakes.

My food is in good shape. I ate some cottage cheese, and 1/3 of a cup, last night, that wasn't planned but was a better choice than most I could have made. Otherwise I followed the food plan. And My food buddy is due back from her trip, so I'll send there the nitty-gritty details and quit boring you with those. But I'll confess here to indiscretions, and if I open a game, I will immediately come here and tell you. And I'll try to identify the yes-but pattern and let you know how I'm doing on that as well. Thanks.

Monday, June 16, 2008

One Day at a Time

Can't I help God? Why do I have to just trust him and not step in and fix things? Isn't that a mother's prerogative?

Abstinence is going fine. Supper last night was turkey chili, a slice of bread, a supplement, and a pudding supplement without the extras I'm avoiding. The scales said 184 at the center where I weigh in, down 1.5 pounds from the lowest previous in 30-ish years. Last time I weighed, it was 186, about 2 weeks ago. Foor today is 2 eggs, bread, cheese, supplement, turkey chili, grapefruit, and supplement. Boring is good. Boring is comfortable. Boring is following the food plan.

No computer games.

I've willingly spent a sizable chunk of time the last 24 hours helping son with a resume and cover letter and logistics of getting it submitted, etc., with him on the road driving a truck. It's the perfect job for him; he's perfect for them. He knows the first part; they don't know the second part. So couldn't I tell them? Or get somebody more credible than a mama to tell them? Please? Pretty please?

God said no. I sit here chuckling, because he said it pretty sternly. And I'm listening. I'm not talking to them, not even saying the name of the potential employer to try to get somebody from there to contact me. I've got to leave it up to God and to son's excellent credentials and talents. Gosh, that's tough. Almost as tough as not playing computer games for about 72 hours, but I've done that. And I'll do this. Promise. But it's hard to type with crossed fingers.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Twelve O'Clock and All's Well

All is well. Food and games are under control, this day, this time. For supper last night we had our staple meal of turkey chili. I had a slice of bread, a supplement, and then the pudding supplement I put in the leftover part of the fruit and supplement my husband didn't eat at lunch, so I had an extra half of supplement and an extra half serving of fruit. I did eat a spoonful of fat free cottage cheese and two cheese sticks yesterday. Today I had 2 eggs, bread, supplement, a Santa Fe grilled chicken salad from Arby's with 1/2 the included tortilla strips and 1/2 a package of low-fat ranch dressing. Plus a supplement and a grapefruit. No games.

But all is well way beyond the absence of compulsive eating and computer games. How do I say what I'm feeling? I think of John Wesley's journal entry, "I felt my heart strangely warmed." This certainly, to this point, isn't a day memorable hundreds of years hence, but God's presence is very real today. There's another illustration I want to use. Not one a good Methodist girl's supposed to know about. It's the third chakra, below the heart, above the navel. 
This is our third chakra, a yellow lotus of ten petals, located at the solar plexus—the place where we get those butterfly feelings when we feel scared or powerless. Its element is fire—fire—that radiates and transforms matter into energy, giving light and warmth. This chakra represents our "get up and go," our action, our will, our vitality, and our sense of personal power. Its name, Manipura, means "lustrous gem." We can think of it as a glowing yellow Sun, radiating through the center of our body. Source
That's what today feels like, a glowing sun radiating through my body. It's neat. And it's how I most thoroughly feel God's presence. 

In Sunday school this morning, we had four teens and an adult, all Navajos, and a missionary working on the reservation. They were visiting the college where I graduated almost 40 years ago, one starting school there next year. The other three, all fourteen, were seeing what possibilities might lie "out there" beyond their thoughts and contemplation. The missionary and some of the others, at her guiding, talked of the conflict between cultures and religions. Some of the "others" were quoted as talking about everybody having the same god, everybody praying. While I understood the teaching that it wasn't true, my inner me said, "Oh, but it is!"

Meditating the morning (which I start with random readings) God kept telling me things like:
  • Reaching is the essence of recovery (For Today)
  • "Problems have been our stimulus. How well, though, shall we be able to meet the problems of success?" (As Bill Sees It, page 207) 
  • "We have tried to hold the love of our children for their father" and that our husbands seemed to like it when we had the same behavior that characterized them. (page 106 BB)
  • Growth comes from inconvenience and discomfort. Tend to business, be clear, and wait on God's will.
  • I should know my limits and boundaries in all four area, spiritual, mental, emotional and physical.
I repeatedly prayed the 7th step prayer, wanting to commit it to memory, both as to the words and, much more importantly, in my behavior. "My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character that stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen." (AA BB p. 76)

But the main understanding I came away with was the meaning of intercessory prayer. I've always been hesitant -- and I believe for good reason -- for in asking God for something specific, we're imposing our will on him. But this morning I found myself praying aloud (first time since establishing the meditation time a few months ago) that God bless those people I'm concerned for in the four areas, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically. I think that's the realization I came away with that warms my heart--and my solar plexus. 

All is well, at this time, on this one day.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Success, This Day at This Time

To be honest, I haven't done what I said I would do, but I've been compliant as to the spirit. Let's see. Since two posts ago I have:
  • Read half of the book manuscript.
  • Fixed one non-profit website as a minor fix.
  • Spent hours on another that was far from a minor fix, but it's been updated after being ignored four months. Normally I try to do it at least monthly.
  • Emailed offering to speak at an OA meeting. I got an error message from the web-based form and may have to follow up on that if they don't answer after the weekend.
  • Found out more about what's going on in the life of one of the people I said I would write. I've spent some hours reading blogs but haven't written her.
  • I cleaned the half of the kitchen I didn't get to yesterday, resealing the tile grout, etc.
  • Hubby bought a new appliance and I put it together.
  • I've posted to a group at The Recovery Group and answered several OA emails.
  • In doing my literature reading, I did more than normal, reading the story on page 301 of the AA BB. Wow, is that meant for me to read today! He says, "Mine was the skid row of success. The physical skid row in any city is miserable. The skid row of success is just as miserable." His stopping drinking sounds a lot like my stopping the compulsive eating, and the advice to really DO AA rather than looking down at the butcher, the carpenter, the baker and the mechanic who made up his group. That hit the elitist in me as did the portions of page 58 he quotes. Then later he says:
What is this power that A.A. possesses? This curative power? I don't know what it is. I suppose the doctor might ay, "This is psychosomatic medicine." I suppose the psychiatrist might say, "This is benevolent interpersonal relations." I suppose others wold say, "This is group psychotherapy."

To me it is God. (AA Big Book, page 308)
Yep. It's been a good day. And a better day because I have NOT opened a computer game. I ate what I said I ate yesterday, and only that. Today I have had only:
  • 2 eggs, 50 cal. bread, a vegetarian patty (100 cal.), and a liquid supplement
  • green salad with grilled chicken, cheese, and an egg, finished two bottles of fat free dressing and still really didn't have enough. Just a touch of each. A liquid supplement fixed with frozen blueberries and Splenda. 
Thanks for being here.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Service Works!

I haven't done anything but read half the manuscript, but I did want to report in. I had an Arby's grilled chicken club salad with 1/2 package of low-fat ranch dressing with water to drink. I came home and did a liquid supplement then a pudding supplement with only millers bran and non-caloric "fuzzy" water. I will eat no more tonight.

I have been working with a new sponsored. I set out to respond to this latest part of our discussion about step 2:
I guess I really need to figure out what I can believe in. Is there such a thing as a home made god. I really need to figure it out. I need to find out. I am going to do some research.I guess I do believe so. I just need to figure out what I believe in.
My response, after some web research was:
These are some web pages that may help you in looking for your higher power. He/She/It doesn't have to be called god. You choose the name. GUS (Guy upstairs), Hallowed (Hallowed be thy name), The Big Guy, Spirit, Mother Earth, Buddy---anything.

http://powerfullyrecovered.com/articles/exploringspirit.htm

http://worldwideaddiction.com/articles/spirituality.htm

http://www.giftfromwithin.org/html/trauspir.html
Mainly I wanted to amend my commitment so it included no slices of cheese as evening snacks as well. Now I've got some web pages to fix. Thanks for being here.
Consider Romans 7:21-25.

I started this blog September 1, 2007 struggling with my addiction to computer games. I conquered it, not with my willpower, for I'd tried that many times before but with the help of God and the support of many of you, individually and through email. I did conquer it. Yet it didn't stay conquered. I don' t know when I started again. It was absolutely gradual. Probably a bit at a time beginning in February, and lately it's been out of control. So here I am again. Woe is me! That which I would do, I do not. That which I would not do, I do! I am powerless over mindless computer games, and my life has become unmanageable. I know full well God's capable of remedying the situation, restoring my sanity. And he'll have to do it again, for I'm just as helpless as I was on August 31.


My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen. (AA Big Book, 7th step prayer
Insidious. Cunning, scheming, conniving defects. What? You say the computer game habit has no motives? What? Would you prefer I play Flip Wilson and say, "The Devil made me do it?" That would be an easy out, exonerating me. Nope. I did it. By not trusting, not looking forward, not actually listening to God when he told me his will for my life this day and countless (okay, something like 45) days before this. He gave me the power to carry out his will. I know, for I asked for it each day. Then he proffered it and I turned it down.

Why? What's the fascination in computer games? WHY WHY WHY????

Let me count the ways:

  1. When I play sudoku the mental challenge changes with each game, but they're always different, and they intrigue me.
  2. The button is so easy to push to pull up one more game, even though I vowed every one for seventeen before that one it was the last game.
  3. I don't have to feel feelings when I'm playing sudoku.
  4. I don't have to interact with people.
  5. I don't have to become what I can become.
  6. Becoming what I could become scares the begeebies out of me.
  7. I stuck my head out of the shell and it got shat upon. I don't like getting shat upon.
  8. Hey, it's harmless. It doesn't put the pounds back on even though I'm not being "responsible."
  9. So why does a baby suck a pacifier? It's the same reason. It feels good.
  10. People still think I'm "good." What do they know?
  11. I sit here trying to answer the question. You wanna know what my instinct is? Go play some sudoku and the answer will appear. But it doesn't. I've tried. I lose myself, my time, my mind, my self-respect, my emotional abstinence. And while when I finally quit I usually can answer the question, I could have done it much more quickly without the hours of distraction.
  12. I've always thought hell is floating around on a cloud all day with a harp for ever and ever and ever. How dull and boring can it be? How dull and boring can sudoku be? I'm sending myself to hell every time I click the new game button.

Enough. Enough reasons, enough excuses, enough sudoku. And no, I don't get to substitute minesweeper, freecell, yubotu, or--tiddlywinks. Enough games. Enough fear--that's what procrastination is, chronic low-intensity fear. Enough. I played by last game--when did I start this post? Maybe 15 minutes ago. And that's the last game of sudoku ever. I may have to keep eating so I can't swear off food, but I can swear off stupid computer games. And I do. So help me God.

I'll be back tomorrow with a true and accurate report of my sudoku abstinence--and my food abstinence since that was slipping as well.

Today's food report:

  • 2 eggs, 50 cal. bread, 1 oz. cheese, liquid protein supplement.
  • lettuce, cherry tomatoes, several kinds of fresh fruit, and 1/4 cup cottage cheese, brisket which is not on my food plan, and a veggie casserole which had corn and a sauce not on the food plan. That was the best I could do in the setting, a service club buffet.
  • a liquid supplement.
That's it so far. Yeah. More than you wanted to know. Before I come back here I will have: (wait a minute. I may need to blog instead of playing sudoku. Before this time tomorrow)
  • read what I wrote a long time ago in a novel dealing with overcoming evil (with the purpose of finishing the darned thing.)
  • edited at least 50 pages of the book I've got on my computer that I'm editing.
  • worked in either the junk room or the storage building for at least 30 minutes.
  • Written a letter that I decided to write but it intimidates me.
  • Writing another letter and sending a gift by way of making amends, then calling the person.
  • Making a phone call or sending an email volunteering to speak at an OA meeting where they need speakers.
  • Fixing two websites, small issues that need to be repaired.
I won't put more than that, but I probably will do more than that. I won't do sudoku or any other game, and I won't eat sugar, won't have dates after supper, won't have yogurt in my supplement pudding. This is too private for the tone of this blog, and I apologize. But I need you now, and by tolerating me, maybe I can be of service to you better soon.