Whatever it takes

Updated links

I've really neglected this blog and reading other OA blogs for a couple years now. I continue to struggle with relapse. I make little efforts and convince myself I'm back on track, but really I'm just doing enough to keep life bearable. My intentions mean nothing when my actions don't back it up. My food "isn't that bad." That's what I tell myself when I don't want to take an honest look. I'm missing meetings here and there. I know I have to go to both my meetings every week. That's one of the basics for me.

Doing a bit of housekeeping here on CB. I removed some inactive OA blogs from my sidebar, but didn't want to lose them entirely. There is some good stuff there even if it is old. I'd love to see fresh content from these people, but I understand how blogs can be abandoned without intent.

Foodfairy's Journey to Freedom
Last updated November 2008

It's Not About the Food!!!
Last updated January 2009

reignfyre recovery
Last updated May 2008

Recovery Girl
Last updated May 2006

Added a few people too. Sometimes I hesitate to add someone to the sidebar list because I don't agree with everything they say about OA. Mostly this tends to be specifics about people's Higher Power. But really, I guess it is like meetings, these are the opinions of individual OAs and do not represent OA as a whole. Also, keep what you like and leave the rest.

New to the roster:

• oastepper
• Overactive Fork

And while I'm at it I should acknowledge Down in Sunny San Diego. She is the most consistent OA blogger I know. So many recovery blogs disappear. It's great to find Down in Sunny is still blogging each time I come back to reading OA blogs. I'll have to use her blog list to find more people to read.

Falling

I think my annual autumn depression is trying to lay claim to my soul. I’m out of sorts when nothing is different. I’m getting a bit stressed about running out of time to make my nephew’s Halloween costume, which could be contributing to my exhaustion. It’s probably allergies too. I take Claritin every day in every season except winter. It takes the edge off all be the worst symptoms, but I get tired. Compared to bronchitis and sinus misery it is a fine trade off.

I spoke at my Thursday night meeting last week. It was a crazy work week and I went directly from a go!go!go! work day to the meeting. I prayed before hand to be useful and according to one person I was. That is all I can hope for, but it felt awful at the time. Once others shared I finally felt the sanity and serenity I find at meetings. I felt then that I was ready to talk. To bad I’d already rambled for 30 minutes. The longer I’m in program, the more info I feel compelled to share. Next time I’m asked to speak I must remember to take time to get serene before the meeting.

I wanted to prepare for speaking this time. The first time I spoke my sponsor would not let me prepare. I still think that is a good policy, but I wanted to look at some old posts and see some progress I could talk about. I took literally two minutes before rushing to the meet to look back. I started WIT in November 2005. I skimmed a few posts and was dismayed to see that I’m struggling with the same crap now that I was almost two years ago: late bills, focusing at work, procrastination, stalling on steps and over-sleeping. It freaked me out a bit. I thought I had made so much progress, but it didn’t look like it in my blog. So I called my sponsor.

I still struggle with calling her. When my sponsees have trouble picking up the phone I can relate absolutely. When I talk with her I feel better. She always says something helpful, even if she is simply agreeing that something sucks. But I’m always making excuses when it comes to calling her. I’m trying to push past those excuses. If I think I should call her, I do it. So I called her Thursday night on my drive from work to the meeting I was to speak at. She told me it was all about degree. She was still dealing with the same character defects from 19 years ago, but to a much smaller degree. I can see this is true with me. Yes, I still pay some bills late, and I need to stop that, but I set up most of my bills to auto-pay so there are only three bills I need to worry about each month.

My character defects are still there, they always will be. But the degree to which they control my life is so much less than it was two years ago. I have made progress and all I need think about today is today.

Supporting each other

Please send some recovery strength and warm fuzzies to Capsdeej at Lucid Madness. She has had a really rough summer and could use any positive energy you care to send.

Whatever it takes housekeeping

The number of spam comments has recently increased on both WIT and CB. You may not have seen many because I delete and report them as spam as they come in, but some may have slipped by. In response I've changed the security settings for commenting. To comment you must now have a TypeKey. It's a simple, free sign up process.

I hope this will cut down on the random comments with dubious URLs. I also hope this will not keep people from posting comments. I love comments. Each time I get an email that someone has commented it makes me happy. I don't always reply because I don't always know what to say. I feel stupid saying thank you each time. I should get over myself I guess. I value feedback and people have been so kind and generous I'd hate to lose that.

I should update my links too. Some bloggers have disappeared (where'd you go Charlie?) and I've added some new recovery peeps into my regular reading schedule.

Does poor selection reflect weak recovery?

Why can’t I find any OA specific stuff? Other than a few aluminum coins and one generic OA recovery medallion, there isn’t any stuff. The recovery medallion can be engraved, but it doesn’t say what it’s made of. At $3 USD it can’t be quality metal can it? AA and NA have tons of stuff, authorized and not. I like physical reminders of stuff. I was thinking of getting myself a medallion for my 1 year abstinence anniversary, but I can’t find anything cool. (Am I jumping the gun here? It is eleven days until the one year mark. I know anything can happen. I try not to focus on the numbers.)

I don’t want to walk around in an Overeaters Anonymous t-shirt, but it would be nice to have a subtle necklace or charm for my keys. I’d also like to find some little gifts for friends to help celebrate milestones. I don’t want crosses, roses, or praying hands. There are some nice AA things, but they all have the unity triangle symbol on them. I’ve only seen one OA charm. It is for sale on Ebay. It is nice, but small and somehow not what I was looking for.

It would be great if there was more 12 step stuff that isn’t associated with specific programs. I may have to make some myself. I do want to practice wax carving again. My jeweler friends can cast stuff for me. I better not go down that path until I get my nephew’s Halloween costume made.

The lack of stuff available makes me nervous about OA recovery. I know several people with decades of recovery in OA, but you would never know it is possible from the web. I’ve had to edit my links list often because people seem to drop off the planet. Sometimes the blog disappears entirely, mostly people just stop posting. I keep everyone in my FireFox bookmarks in case they come back. I shouldn’t equate consistent blogging with recovery, it’s just that without new postings I have no idea what’s going on with people.

Blogging has been great for my program. It’s the most consistent writing I ever done. I already have three journals I’ve started and stopped just for OA stuff. I love to buy journals, but rarely write on more than a third of the pages before abandoning them. I love being part of the greater dialog that is created with the cumulative output of blogs. Or maybe I just have an ego driven need to share the minutia of my life.  That reminds me, I have to find a new therapist.

My sister’s due date is today. No news so far.

Surrendering sugar

I read Sober Chick's comment on yesterday's post and started thinking some more about that day I gave up sugar. In memory I made the decision to not eat sugar in the morning, but I looked at my other blog Chicken Butt (CB) in September. I made the decision not to eat sugar while writing a post. I hadn't started WIT yet in September, so I put it all over at CB.

Here is my first post from September 19: You can even eat the dishes. It is all about my struggle with sugar. In the fifth paragraph I made my decision:

"

So, for today, I will not eat sweets. I’m not going to worry about white bread or simple starches today. I will not eat sweets or anything that has sugar in the first five ingredients. I’ve already had Diet Coke today. I’ll probably drink it tomorrow too. I also know from past experience that the first couple days are easier than the third and fourth days. At that point the crazy thinking kicks in. I try to justify, rationalize or trick myself into eating sugar.

Instead I will write, I will call people from OA, I will drink more water than I usually do, but I will not eat sugar today. It starts now. I will never be ready to quit, there will never be enough sugar to satisfy me, and so I just have do it. Arrrr!"

The rest of the week I tacked on sugar progress reports to all my posts. I'm not sure why August and September are missing from the index of archives on the sidebar. Here is the the September archive from CB.

All this thinking and writing about sugar has me feeling vulnerable. There has been a cheese and some fruit danish sitting on a table about six feet from my desk all day. I wasn't seriously tempted, but I did spend more time pondering how it would taste than I'm comfortable with. The danish is gone, but there a little bits of the white sugar drizzle on the table and no one else is around. If you think I wouldn't eat sugar debris you're crazier than I am.

Contest at CB, my other blog

I'm holding a contest over at Chicken Butt, my general blog. Check it out. Everyone welcome! Real prizes and everything. If you can slap together a haiku you have a good chance of winning. Submissions due my Midnight CST Thursday December 23, 2005.

If you love collecting books and haven't been to LibraryThing yet, you should check it out.

What's in a title?

Yesterday I added a few more links to my Other OA Blog list. I added The Shockwave Runner because I enjoy his writing and he in an OA. I also enjoy his blunt style and male perspective. His reaction to my comment and link is this post:

“Is this an OA Blog?

No.

It is an important part of my life right now.

Perhaps it always will be.

Feel free to read it but keep in mind it is rated 'R' and isn't all about OA.

Keep coming back.”

I have to respect that. So, do I take him off my list or change the title of my list? I’ve decided to change the title. WIT is focused on my OA journey, but I don’t want to limit my quest. If I find something interesting or helpful to me I’ll post it. Hopefully others will find it interesting too. So I’m changing the title and removing one of the links because it hasn't been updated for a while. If she starts posting again I’ll add her back.