3-7-21:  Amazingly enough, I felt more divine inspiration from my positive 7-week-long-so-far daily Zen Bible Study habit this morning than my negative sedentary Billions binge-watching while blowing out the elasticity of my stomach as I break my daily vow to quite abusing myself with gluttony habit.

            The well-known biblical story of the woman who blead a dozen years until she was cured by touching the cloak of Jesus without his blessing or knowledge finally made sense to me on a personal level for the first time since I learned about it in my Grandmother’s Sunday school program as a child.  I’d just read it in Matthew 9 the month previous, but it wasn’t until Mark 5 that I had my epiphany.  But I’m well past Mark 5, and I was re-recording it because it seems like I lost the original.  Because I happened to wake up early after another night of poor sleep, I had time to re-record Matthew 9 (another lost video), which just happened to be the same story.  Yes, another divine message to me, related directly to me, and all without a single number “27.”  I shared this at AA and on two recordings, so I’ll leave it at that.

            I walked into my gym in a great mood and full of energy, ready to run after a few bad treadmill runs in a row beat up the confidence I earned with some great runs months earlier at my previous gym.  I thought I had come so far, but then it appeared I lost all my physical skill and mental fortitude.  Instead, I’d been practicing my breathwork on elliptical machines, limiting my breathing to a specific pattern of rotations in order to build my lung capacity and endurance.  But fitness in one area does not always directly translate to another, and I was still concerned.  As always, I was alone and asked for them to start an action movie for me, but their Netflix account was down, so no “movie of the day” for me to “miraculously” connect to my life😊.  I entered my private cardio theatre room single-mindedly focused on running in “zone two,” staring at a blank screen, determined to maintain a Zen-like trance between my breathing, pulse rate, and designing my future Zen Contractor webpage.  And it was one of my most productive and enjoyable runs of the year.  I trained my body and mind with great discipline, and finalized the basic Zen-like elegant webpage that should look great, load quickly, and not cost all that much.  Add to all of that the fact that one of the workers found me to warn me that she suspected that someone might be tampering with my bike confirmed that my practice of treating everyone in my life with kindness and respect is often reciprocated.  Still cold, it was sunny and I chose to walk so it wasn’t my bike, and another wonderful first half of the day achieved.  And that’s something to be grateful for.  But that’s also almost always where the good times always (even better for the fact that I’m still depressed and will be for week, using the last six years of my life as a guide) seem to end.  My will power all used up; my addictions kick in (as least I don’t hate myself like I used to…only disappointed).

            Expectations are everything.  It’s so much easier to be impressed by concert of a good band, than that of your favorite band ever, which is why my top ten greatest concert experiences fail to include the many times I’ve seen my favorite band of all time, Metallica.  They always play songs I wish they hadn’t, and not play the ones I wish they would.  And sure, my expectations may not be realistic.  Sure, I know every single one of their songs, and it’s self-defeating to assume they will play what I know they won’t.  And now that I’m halfway through season 3 of Billions, it’s already becoming predictable and repetitive as a soap opera.  Yes, I still love the main characters.  But I was 99% sure the box these supposedly brilliant job candidates were supposed to assemble was impossible, and yet they became as frustrated as children (did this fool any viewers?).  I called it from the start.  And I was 99% sure the shuttle would blow up, and it did.  And now I feel almost no excitement when the two main characters continue to attack and outmaneuver each other at the last possible second.  You can only go to the well so many times before it runs dry.  But as disappointed as I am about the well-tread patterns of these characters, I’m becoming so much more disgusted with my own.  They are just as glaringly obvious to me, only I can’t escape them by changing the channel, or by getting up off of my tight ass and doing something about it rather than just writing about it.  There is nothing wrong with finding comfort in habits and patters if they work for you, but mine only work for the first half of the day.  Then I just fall apart.

            What will I actually accomplish today?  I’ll e-sign the contract to sell Annabelle, almost instantly giving up my “fight” to decrease the outlandishly and unfairly steep commission rate.  I always knew I was powerless to change it.  At least I tried.  At least I understand where my PTSD concerning my lack of trust in all realtors originates.  But I guess I did what I had to do, and then do what I knew I would anyway the following day.  Is that progress?

            I will try to force myself to research business plans, write a draft of mine, and sketch out my webpage ideas.  I should explore ways to find a great developer, because I know whatever money I try to save by actually coding it myself (not matter how simple they insist it can be) will end in procrastination and disaster.  But I’ll soon start to abhor overheating in my bedroom, insist that it’s in my own best interest to walk before the sun goes down, then eat even more when I return on top of an already full stomach, and not accomplish a fraction of what I could do.  I run my mind in circles of knowing what I should do and then finding ways to justify why I can do it tomorrow, over and over and over again. 

            Then I excuse myself by further spending time on this blog analyzing my thought patters, making a list, and calling that progress.  And it might go something like this:

1. I am accomplishing some positive things every day; physically, spiritually, ideas, and more
2. I am not drinking or drugging, only binge watching and gorging on enough food to kill a lessor man
3. I am depressed, yet still feel happier and more grateful than times when I wasn’t depressed, and that’s a monumental accomplishment right there
4. The longer I take to do some things, the more I can perfect them in my head before committing to them and possibly avoiding a mistake
5. It’s still winter, I still can’t drive, and I still don’t have the money from selling my house, so I’d have to wait to pull certain triggers anyway.
6. I still must wait until 3-11 to get fingerprinted to finalize my name change, which I must do before I sign all the legal documents needed for Zen Contractor
7. I could keep going, listing things forever, all while acknowledging even this represents further procrastination but, since we’ve reached my magic number, I must conclude; my point is clear

As I’ve said many times in AA, alcoholism and addiction in general and bipolar disorder all have some key components in common:

1. Oh shit, another list (this one snuck up on me)
2. Step 1, recognize the problem; step 2, admit it, step 3; finally decide to address it
3. I’m desperately trying to address it but, like a fat lazy person finally deciding to eat better and work out, it took many years of bad decisions to end up that way, and it takes a hell-of-a lot more than a few good decisions to rectify it.

And now it’s almost 6 PM, the sun is almost gone, and I guess I can walk and watch videos on how to find the best web site developers and lessons for writing the best business plans and maybe even order the best book on starting a contracting business and consider that progress.  I mean, I could think of worst ways to spend the next two hours.  And I could think of better ways. 

            And finally, it is Sunday after all.  And all gym commitments and diets and shit like that start on Mondays, not Sundays.  Will I conclude my lethargy and gluttony today and declare Monday to be the “first day of the rest of my life?”  I could.  I mean, if I could achieve the following:

1. (Oh funk, are you kidding me, another list?)  Hike down to Phantom Ranch and back out of the Grand Canyon long before learning to actually hike
2. Run my first marathon without ever having run more than ten miles at one time in my life
3. Fully organizing the group (as always) and climbing the world’s tallest freestanding mountain, Kilimanjaro
4. Forgive the woman who illegally sabotaged my dream teaching job
5. Forgive the Judas who stole from me around $700K of my total net wealth
6. Never even thought about hating the babysitter who sexually ruined ten full years of my post-pubescent life
7. And never once hated, soon completely forgave, and eventually was grateful for the love of my life, my Bramble Bunny, my soul-mate-for-life no matter what, for deciding not to marry me the week before our wedding [and yes, this was just another pep talk for myself, and I think it worked, but only time will tell]

If I could do all of that—and so much more—then I sure as hell can buckle down, man up—depression be freaking damned—and start making and achieving very specific necessary goals with a very specific time table that absolutely must be met.  Met with such urgency that the guilt I would feel by wasting my life sitting in front of that damn TV in that same chair I almost killed myself in six years ago with alcohol poisoning the night I learned the best friend I’d ever had (who suffered such similar mental disorders as myself) would out weight the fear or whatever is keeping me from doing what I know I must do to fulfill my purpose in life!

            God, grant me the strength I know I have to fulfill the purpose I know you gave me by using the skills and determination you have blessed me with!