What is the goal?

Where are we going? How do we know we are on track?

In my experience, we start out with simple goals. For me getting sober I did not want to go where it looked like I was headed. As I cleared up and got some normalcy in sobriety my hopes turned from grabbing a lifeline to trying to define my sober life want to stuff. In those early years, I gradually dared to hope for a life of standard stuff. And I wanted some comfort in my skin, I wanted to be in the herd moving thru life. I discovered the life of doing things drinking precluded. I hiked. I worked. I met people and fell madly in love with ladies of all kinds. Miraculously I was alive. It was painful, but in retrospect wonderful.

I had my stuff. Everybody has stuff. I just didn’t have the capacity to enjoy my life with the stuff along for the ride. And this is what my next podcast is about learning to enjoy the ride. I am negative by nature. I am terrified of being happy. I am afraid Carma will steal it from me. I struggle to enjoy the good of the moment. I let the normal grit of living clog the wheels of life that are simple. but wonderful.

In retrospect, I have had and continue to have remarkable stuff in my life. And I have struggled with stuff that clogs the good stuff. Maybe recovery is enjoying the good in the presence of our stuff and others’ stuff.

When I was a couple of years sober I chased a girl into a prayer meeting. She left and I stayed. I found Jesus and got the baptism of the holy ghost. Then it was my stuff with the church’s stuff mixed with the Jesus glow with the inevitable flack of following Jesus.

I have learned and continue to learn to cherish the amazing in the presence of the absurd. Maybe that is what recovery is!