The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Tuesday, June 13th 2017 (Thinking Of Tomorrow)



Perhaps a little too much? I keep thinking that all will be revealed tomorrow. Will Barry the Bullet meet me for a day of cleaning windows? I've to give him a call this evening to arrange meeting place and time. I don't even know the address of the guy's house where the equipment is so that'll be something I ask for tonight just in case Barry should sleep in tomorrow morning – something he's been known on occasion to be guilty of. If he doesn't meet me though it will be tough to get cracking myself as I don't know which customers we still work for. I continually bang on about that week I worked in December as being the last time I was out working, and it was too, but besides that it has been some time. The last time I actually led us in a day of work was way before last December. I know very little of what goes on with my old business these days. I will be looking forward for tomorrow all day but we are taught in recovery to live for one day at a time and it is not tomorrow I should be living for – it's today.

I am freaking out a little bit about the prospect of returning to work (to continue talking about tomorrow I suppose but I am really going over how I feel about tomorrow at this moment in time and so I think that this can just about pass as me keeping it in the day). I know it'll be great for me and that even thinking about a summer without any work or study or anything worthwhile going on would be ten times worse – it might mean that I ended up travelling to AA meetings daily for the want of nothing better to do and that would be a travesty. I'm doing just fine with it for now remaining in my rearview mirror. I can turn around and travel the short distance back to it at any time should I feel the need but as things stand I am ahead of it and going strong. My work though – I have reasons to be fearful and apprehensive about it.

For a long time there – around seven years – it was something that I felt was slowly killing me. That damn window cleaning business. It tested me in ways I remember being too much for me. This time it will definitely be different. Barry the Bullet has a tight grip of the reins now. He knows in which directions it will be best travelling. I am only there to keep him company really, and to take my half of the purse at the day's end. Not traditionally motivated by money I must admit that it is playing its part in my reasons for going back out there tomorrow (please, please show up, Mr. Bullet). I have payments that I would benefit from keeping. I have said this before but this time I am on a roll – paying my creditors every fortnight now since that woman came out to visit me from Cosy Kingdom some three months or so ago (or was it even that long ago? Maybe two months. It's been a while though) and so to keep this going serves me well. I also have a holiday booked and could do with perhaps putting something away for then. A little day in Barcelona will likely cost a few quid so it would be nice to head out there prepared.

I could also do with putting some investment into that cave of mine. That will be three and a half years I have ''lived'' there and it still has not seen but a lick of paint. It is still early and I will be heading to college soon but tonight I will be heading back to my cave and I will be there for the whole week. It is handy as a little drop-off place, a ''doss-house'' or whatever they call them, but it's not ideal to be spending any amount of time in. It's perhaps this feeling that the neighbours are picking up from it, a sort of nasty, cold and isolated vibe that it gives off to the surrounding area, that it making some of those who live near me contact the council with information about my abandoning the place. I wonder if I'll return tonight to find another post-it note from my housing officer arranging a home visit to come out and see the place once more for himself before he makes his mind up about what is going to happen next. A little bit of decoration and I'd be in a much better position to convince them that I am living there. The very fact that I have spent money to colour the place up would bolster my case. It's all possible if I get enough work this summer.

Tomorrow's work is not all that I am thinking of though. Yesterday I was stuck with something at the college and the lack of available lecturer bored me into grabbing my things and leaving early. I'd asked my peers and they couldn't help me. I tried Youtube but I had difficulty in pinpointing what I was trying to do, in trying to tell Youtube what it was I was looking for. There were no other options and when conditions arrive meaning that the cat is away I'm not one for getting into the swing of childish banter that some of the mice in the group seem to thrive under. There was nothing else for it but to vanish. This hasn't effected me though as I sit with the Student Portal homepage and I haven't been marked as being absent. I've been marked on the register as being in class. This tells me that the lecturer was likely so late that when he arrived in class many of us had gone home (when I left I probably started a little chain reaction) that he couldn't be sure who had been in class and who had not and so just marked everyone he'd seen in the college at some point that day as being there. He saw me briefly in the morning.

I'll be leaving in five minutes to head back to the college and will have what will be my final written assessment of the year (which I wrote about the other day) and I'll be glad when it's all over. Then I'll be in my town staying at the cave for the rest of the week while I hopefully get back into the swing of all things window cleaning.

I'll keep writing my thoughts down but I'm not really sure when I'll next be in a position to post.

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Stevie

C'mon, Barry the Bullet. Please turn up tomorrow morning.

1165

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Wednesday, June 14th 2017 (Addresses)



I was at English Sara's last night and noticed how distant I seem when I am there nowadays. That which was once so comfortable a place for me is now becoming uncomfortable. I feel as though I'm losing a friend. I don't have enough to be losing any at the moment. Gillon popped into the classroom yesterday morning and we went for a coffee. He's another friendship I'm clinging onto. I only have two friends left besides family and Lindsay and my relationships with each of them (excluding Lindsay) has somehow managed to become worse since I got sober. I can't really put my finger on exactly why things have turned out to be as they currently are but there are definitely times when I feel as though I am powerless to stop things from continuing on this downward trajectory. In many ways things have become worse since I got sober and clean but there are other ways that they have become unimaginably better.

I managed to, against all of the odds, meet with Barry the Bullet and get out today for a full day's work. I say ''full day'' but this means only that we put the hours in and not the effort. Either it's been so long since I last worked (beginning of December) or I still haven't fully recovered from the weekend's walking but now I am even stiffer and sorer than I was upon reaching the finish line in the early hours of Sunday morning. When I wake up tomorrow morning I can expect to feel even worse. I'm using muscles this week I haven't used in a long time.

It's worth the pain though. To get back out working has been good for me today. It brings back some memories so it does. Barry himself seems to have lost a little weight. He does look as if he's been through a stressful time and from what he tells me his mum has been in and out of hospital. Under normal circumstances he would likely have had time of work and so I don't grudge him the time he's had off from doing this. It's not his fault he's the entire skeleton crew of this company these days. He has had some help along the way. Ian (one of our former workers when my brother and I ran this company back when I was a drinker) has been out with him a few times. He's also had one or two others out helping him but, as to be expected given the working attitude of the people of the times, they were useless and not worth keeping a hold of. So for the most part Barry has been at it himself.

The first thing has says to me having not seem me in over six months is how well I am looking. I don't get this because I see myself all the time, or at least every now and then when I look into the mirror at Lindsay's or the triangular glass in this cave. Perhaps he's referring to a look of lessened sadness and anger. Could be. If working today has done anything for me it's brought back memories, sent me triggers, and one of the things I remember most is how I used to feel upon waking in the mornings back when I was drinking. My brain would pick someone at random, likely someone I was most resentful at that time, perhaps someone at work, someone from the family, someone who was doing better than me, a customer who had recently bumped us, anyone it wanted to – and then it would hate upon them for the full morning. This made even bouncing from the bed to the bathroom a difficult experience. The hate was actually painful. A voice from inside would wish upon them many very unsavoury things. Of course – they couldn't hear me, I was only hurting myself. This hatred in the mornings and these incredibly negative conversations I would have in my head, directed at people I was resentful towards, often including myself, never happen anymore. It's like some surgeon of sobriety has operated on me and completely removed them.

So – just in case Barry the Bullet does a runner again in the near future and I struggle to contact him again over the course of the summer and beyond I will keep track of the addresses we have left and the dates they are due. This was today's less than stellar effort (but was the best my tired and stiff body could manage on the first day back):

Annandale Gardens

80 – Done
79 – Done
77 – No longer clean – people moved out
76 – Done
75 – Done
73 – Done
72 – Done
71 – Done
69 – Off the books, we took too long to come round this time and he's got someone else.
65 – Done
60 – Done
58 – Off the books, got someone else, didn't think we were ever coming back.

Stevie – ''How long has it been since we were actually in this street?''

Barry the Bullett – ''Fuck knows man, I reckon maybe two months.''

I'm thinking that Barry's ''two months'' is maybe more like three months.

52 – Done
51 – Done
50 – Done
36 – Done
34 – No longer gets done, moved out at the start of the year.
32 – Done
30 – Barry cancelled them because they bumped us of fifteen quid.
27 – Cancelled to go with another guy because we were taking too long.
23 – Done
22 – New one picked up this afternoon. Paid Barry with a half gram of grass rather than cash and so Barry made the necessary deduction from his cut of wages. Wants added to the monthly run.
21 – Cancelled, got someone else months ago as we were taking too long to get round each time.
16 – Done
11 – Cancelled months ago as we weren't regular enough any more.
10 – Guy died a couple of months ago and the new folks moved in get the same window cleaner as number eleven next door.
6 – Cancelled, not regular enough.
5 – Cancelled, got someone else more regular.
4 – Cancelled, taking too long to get round the run.
3 – Still on books but didn't do him today as he's in the hospital. He's ninety six years old.
2 – Done
1 – Done, plus extra job of cleaning moss from gutter and downpipe.

Heriot Way

13 – Cancelled, got someone else as she didn't think we were ever coming round.
12 – Done

All in then – quite a few lost and these are the ones that Barry is concentrating on the most. Likely he feels guilty, like he's been left with the responsibility and has let me down. I don't feel this way at all, and I'm not thinking about the ones we've lost. Think about all of those customers we still have left. That's nineteen in just one street in just one of the four schemes we'll work hard this summer at trying to keep. Nineteen houses at five bucks each plus the twenty five quid for the extra job we got at no. 1 Annandale and we managed to complete just over one hundred and twenty five bucks worth of work. I'll begin to lose this muscle stiffness soon and will be much quicker up and down that ladder. The idea is to complete two hundred pounds worth of work per day between the two of us.

I've many reasons to be earning some cash this coming summer. A day in Barcelona later in the year for a start. I want Christmas out of the way as soon as we hit autumn as well. I'd like to get ahead for once, even if just for a little while, rather than always trailing behind. I want to try to get away from this hand to mouth existence that I struggled with for so long and that did nothing but bring me down. There I go again though – all the ''I wants'', I'm setting myself up for a crash.

It's not about what I want, hasn't been for two years now. I have to try to remember that it is not about what I want but is instead what the God of my understanding feels necessary for me to have.

I wrote yesterday about how I had reasons to be apprehensive about working today. Turns out that this was all just bullshit. I was wasting my thinking time with worry.

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Stevie

Is gonna be really stiff tomorrow.

Worth it though.

1468

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Thursday, June 15th 2017 (Super-Stiff)



Still unable to post these ramblings onto my forums I nevertheless continue to write and to store them onto my computer for future uploading, likely tomorrow evening when I am at Lindsay's. There aren't many other places I go to where getting online is possible. I used to go and visit with Gillon at least once a week but I tend to find that he has become a little negative in his views. That might seem strange to you – I mean, the thought of me finding something or someone negative is like the pot calling the kettle black. He's negative in ways he'll not now be able to change.

He was talking with me the other week about this ''emptiness'' he sometimes feels when he wakes up in the morning and goes to bed at night. Also, I'm assuming, it follows him around during the day as well. Emptiness. I think that what he really means is that he feels loneliness, but it takes a rare man to admit he's lonely. It's been easy for me in the past because I have been encouraged to be honest with myself and others (not to mention the God of my understanding) about how I feel while in recovery and so I am miles ahead of many of my non-addicted peers in terms of honesty and being able to look beyond the surface. I think he's lonely because his brain is trying to tell him that he's on the wrong path, like mine starts to tell me if I place money and status at the top of my list of priorities each and every day.

Gillon hasn't had the cruel life lessons I've had in losing the rights to see my children and so he has moved onto the ''take them for granted'' phase, a phase I didn't have the time to get to, but again, of course, he'd never admit that. He's lonely, I think, because he's completely disconnected from his family, his children and his partner, even though they live in the same house as he. He's lonely because they are but a smokescreen and not at all what he lives for. The real prize, that which he desires most of all, the real prize is status. This, Gillon believes, can only be achieved by earning more money than all of the people who know you. When you earn more than all of them then they will start saying things like: ''Oh, hasn't Gillon done well for himself!?'' and if they don't then it's because they are bitter, resentful at the fact he has done better than them. I fear for Gillon if he is at present fearful and feeling his loneliness acutely enough to mention it to me when he reaches the end of his degree and then he finally realises that this ''emptiness'' he feels is actually loneliness.

I had forgotten that I was supposed to be visiting my brother (well – the nieces really) this week but he's text me to cancel, saying that he's forgotten about Oldest Niece's swimming lesson this evening.

Stevie – ''Nae worries, some other time.''

Gary – ''I'm off after this week''

Does that mean don't come round this week at all? I mentioned in a journal post the other day that while my life has improved in some ways in the time since I stopped drinking that it has in other ways completely shut down and somehow become much worse and it is with regards to my family that I mean it really has shut down. I think it's getting close to the stage where I fully call in my Detached Protector mode on this one. It will come in and relieve any emotional connection to my nieces – effectively forgetting that they exist. I won't have to move anything from the walls of my cave, the customised calendar or the pictures and drawings I have from them – they can stay where they are. My father's death when I was so young followed by the loss of being able to see my own children has left me in possession of impeccable skills in relation to disassociating from things that might hurt me. In this regard I might well be one of the best in the business. Continuing to not see my nieces won't be a huge problem to my conscious mind.

For my passport application I needed a few things from my mother. One of them was the date that she married my father. Mum is somewhere in Europe right now that isn't Scotland and so she's difficult to trace. Out of the blue she posts on Facebook that it has been forty years to the day (this happened on Sunday I think, the eleventh) and posted a wee note going on about how she doesn't know where the time has gone and blah blah blah. That she has two wonderful sons out of the marriage even though it ended in bereavement after only a few years. Makes me wonder for the first time actually.

It makes me wonder about what she might have said had I done what I should have done back in 2013/14 and killed myself. This is the first time I've thought along these lines. I've thought back to those days every now and then but I've never actually looked at things the way they are now and contemplated how they might have been had I just grown the pair of balls I needed to do what I'd promised myself I would do. It wouldn't have had any kind of effect on Lindsay because she didn't know me back then. It wouldn't have had an enormous effect on my mother because she's only seen me once or twice in the time since. I think I'm getting a good insight right now into how it would have touched my brother. Not at all. It might have damaged Barry the Bullet more than anyone else. Two and a half years on and I realise that no one would have been effected by my death. My mother would have made out as if it were bothering her. She'd have been so self-involved though that all of her grief would really just be guilt, she'd turn it all to be about her and what she could have done. It would have made a complete mockery out of my suicide. Either that or it would be blamed on the drink. I killed myself because I was a drinker. None of those reasons would have been the truth. The truth would have been that I did it because everyone is trying to do nothing more than what Gillon is trying to do just now.

I'm going to have to walk up to Dr. Bacon's now for my next psychology appointment and the weekend's big walk combined with yesterday's working escapades has ensured that this will be no easy feat. I'm now super-stiff. I did a little stretching this morning and will do some more in a couple of minutes when I prepare myself to leave the cave Bacon-bound.

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Stevie

Bring on the weekend.

1206

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Friday, June 16th 2017 (Stevie the Self-Aggrandiser)



Ten minutes later than usual we get the session underway. We start with the usual meaningless pleasantries that only really serve to waste time.

Stevie – ''I managed the first lap no probs but the second was far too long, and then I was working yesterday for the first time in months so I'm really stiff and sore so that's all the muscle groups had a workout.''

Dr. Bacon – ''Oh right, ha ha, yeah. So, I apologise, I have to head off quite sharpish at half past four, if that's okay.....''

Stevie – ''Yeah, that's fine.''

Dr. Bacon – ''Yeah!?''

Stevie – ''I couldn't really be arsed today anyway, it's been one of those days, I didn't want to phone up though, to cancel, so I just decided to....well....I'm here now.''

Dr. Bacon – ''Well I noticed that you're a wee bit later and it's not like you, to be late I mean.''

Stevie – ''Well I usually sit out there for ten minutes and there's never any water, or I've never been offered any, so when I was walking past I figures I might have time to nip to the shop before it hit half past, didn't quite make it.''

Dr. Bacon – ''Ah...''

Stevie – ''It still gives us fifty minutes so that's cool.''

Dr. Bacon – ''I apologise, normally I'd stay a bit longer but I've got something on that I have to....was there something coming up that made you a little later? Or....''

Stevie – ''Nah, not really, I was walking past and I made the choice to go get juice rather than just sit out there in the waiting area for ten minutes, there's a shop just up....''

Dr. Bacon – ''Oh right, I appreciate that I do run over time sometimes.''

Stevie – ''We run over sometimes so others are entitled to that as well.''

Dr. Bacon – ''Yeah, so anyway -...''

He asks about the walk and I let him know about it and how I feel. I don't feel much about it. He pulls me up on this. Apparently I won't allow him to congratulate me but it's so last week's news now. Besides – I think that when people at the event itself were praising one and other it meant something. Now that people who weren't there are saying it I find it weightless. It's like when people pretend that they really cared about the ''victims'' of the Manchester ''terrorist'' attacks. It's just words, it means nothing. One thing I think he quite liked was the way I didn't seem to be beating myself up over not finishing both marathons. That he feels as though this could have been a good opportunity for my Critical Parent mode to come out and really ruffle my feathers. Instead I don't seem to feel myself to be some kind of loser for not doing what I set out to do.

Stevie – ''I'll do it next year, or I'll keep going back to it until I do it.''

I don't know if he likes the idea of this or not. This kind of thinking is going back to goal setting and this is what we are perhaps trying to avoid.

As the session picks up some kind of momentum he points out to me that Little Stevie, the ''vulnerable and angry'' child within (something I am beginning to get sick of thinking about, not just in this session but in general) never really allows anyone to praise him and so loses out on these chances of connections. He then moves onto another ''mode'' – as if we haven't covered enough about these things already – and this time we are talking about self-aggrandising. This is ''perhaps'' another mode I have.

Dr. Bacon – ''It is similar to the Bully and Attack but it has a slightly different function. It's not so much there to protect – it's more the idea of putting other people down so that we can be up.''

Stevie – ''Don't you think everyone does that!? Don't you think that's just a natural trait of humanity and that a million or maybe even a billion are doing that right now as we speak?''

Dr. Bacon – ''Do you think perhaps that right now as you're saying that...''

Stevie – ''That I'm doing it? Probably. I just don't think I care this afternoon.''

We talk about why this might be. Why do I not seem to give a shit about my therapy this afternoon when I am usually so eager to get through this stuff? I mention about the charity shop. I've decided not to continue volunteering there. This decision has been made after the recent price rise in all the items sold there. This others me for many reasons but the main one is that it is just another example of capitalism swooping in and destroying a community hub. The new chair of the charity shop has made many changes to the way it is run. It's obvious to anyone now that she's in it for the money. This price rise confirms it. People say: ''It's still cheaper than some places!'' They are right, it is still. This is only due to the fact that other places have to pay staff.

I offered my services to the cause as a way of making my Step Nine amends to my community and trying to get involved more in it. The charity shop has slowly turned more into a business and so it is no longer there for the community. This then breaks the deal I had with it. I'll lend my time to help a cause but I won't contribute to someone getting rich by taking advantage of my time in this way. I walk out the door and I don't think I'll be back.''

Dr. Bacon – ''That's a very Detached Protector thing to do.''

This is one of the main problems with therapy. It was the same with AA's Twelve Steps. The confusion, the not knowing if I was doing the right thing. I don't want it to get to that stage again where I am questioning everything I think and do. For now I am no longer a volunteer at the Charity Shop Cafe and I feel my reasons to be just and perhaps even noble. For now I'll leave it at that.

Stevie – ''The Detached Protector, in some form, is where I've spent my entire life so far and it's very likely the place I'll spend the majority of the rest of it too, and that might be good enough I think. It's not a huge leap from where I was when I was drinking but it might be good enough at the moment. If I was self-aggrandising all the time then I'd likely expect more from myself.''

Dr. Bacon – ''Self-aggrandising, when we talk about that we're more referring to times when you actively rubbish other people, when you bring them down.''

Stevie – ''Everybody has some form of human they hate. For some it's blacks, others it's gays, for some it's junkies, for others it's anyone Asian. I'm not that pathetic – I just hate all humans. Where my hate is concerned it is all inclusive. People don't really change all that often, and remember I'm a member of AA, but I have to say that even in there humans show me a staggeringly limited capacity for change.''

Dr. Bacon – ''I'm really pleased that despite this being not a great day for you that you made it here today and that you didn't just go along with that Detached Protector which could have just cut you off from it all. I think that there's some Healthy Adult that has come through there.''

I have to try at all times to remember that this is what I'm actually here for – to try to strengthen my Healthy Adult so that it becomes my dominant mode. When this happens I will then be able to make better use of my other modes and my Critical Parent won't always be nagging in my ear. Then I'll be able to work on my relationship with the God of my Understanding. I am still very much blocked off from it at the moment. I suppose that it's a good thing we only have one more week at college before I go back to work full time as this means I get two months of therapy to get through this assessment phase and start putting some effort into my recovery (I don't mean recovery from my drinking here – I've moved past that now) so that when I set off on my next adventure I can do so with a little Healthy Adult in me helping me along.

Dr. Bacon – ''Which part of you is this do you think? This part of you that hates people?''

Stevie – ''I don't think it's the part of me that you might think it is. How do we know it's not Little Stevie?''

Dr. Bacon – ''It could be, could be.''

Stevie – ''Wouldn't that be something?''

Dr. Bacon – ''One of the reasons that I'm not sure if it's Little Stevie is that it doesn't strike me as a childlike mode in that – often the childlike modes are very extreme or undercontrolled, whereas.......when this side of you comes out....it's quite decisive. It's a bit like a....lazer surgery precision, almost, in the way it sort of cuts things out, or detects the flaws and analyses them. It's not the way I'd normally see child modes functioning.''

He's trying to bring out this Self-Aggrandiser mode more. This is exactly what this exercise is all about.

Stevie – ''Which mode is it then?''

Dr. Bacon – ''Well I'm wondering if......it might be this Self-Aggrandiser, and....just let me explain the function of this to you: it's a mode in which we use when we're.....overcompensating for a sense that feeling inferior, feeling not good enough by putting that onto other people, by judging them.''

We end up using the charity shop as an example and I start talking about that again.

Dr. Bacon – ''This feeling that I'm picking up on, this anger, this is good. It's really important that it comes out in healthy ways and this is good.''

He wonders how is comes out at other times. He's a complete and utter hypocrite, has no way of doing his job without being one, in that he speaks of the dangers of judging people while he spends all of our time together doing just that and nothing else. I get what he's saying though. How does this anger of mine come out under other circumstances?! Usually by bringing people down.

I'm nearly at the ten thousand character limit for a post on the My Way Out forum and so I'm going to leave it there. I'll be leaving this town in an hour to visit with Lindsay for the weekend after a mixed week.

I may write about some more of this session in another post over the weekend.

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Stevie

Self-Aggrandiser?

1875

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Saturday, June 17th 2017 (The Good Stuff)



Today has only just started and already I am confused to the point of wanting to just say ''Fuck it!!'' and go back to bed but then that would just become a part of the problem. I'd lie there wondering if by doing so I was in Detached Protector mode and if I should challenge it by getting up and going finding something productive to do. So far this weekend I've been challenging every thought and behaviour I've had and it's not cool.

I'm not thinking about drinking. That's cool too. But I got this way when I was going through this point in the Twelve Step program – we were looking at all of the problems with me – essential to even thinking about recovery – but no closer to thinking about a solution. It was around this stage of the Twelve Steps that I started smoking weed again. This was better than drinking but still wasn't ideal. This time it's likely to just be a cigarette. I wonder though. Were I to start smoking again then how long would it be before I started the weed? Then the booze? I'm not going to, of course not. I'm not even thinking about it. What I am doing right now is acknowledging that I've been here before and know that I have to take it easy at times. Perhaps I need to bring out my Detached Protector on Dr. Bacon a little more often during our sessions. I said I would perhaps write a little more about this week's session in a weekend post, and I likely still will, but this morning I would like to concentrate on some positive things if possible.

First, though, there is always some shit to trawl through. Lindsay started at seven this morning. It's now just before nine. Both of us got up around six. She's gone back to her bed. What can I do to try to help her get into the hospital on time? She came home early yesterday after being sent away for having a bad cough but I never heard her cough the whole time I was here. This morning she says that she's not feeling any better and so that's that – another day off! I'm no mathematician but on this placement, her final three month (four if you count the extra time she has to make up, which we should) placement she's been scheduled to work for sixteen shifts over the last few weeks (twelve hour shifts so she's only in three times a week) and she's missed six of them – counting today and counting yesterday as a day missed. That makes for an awkward sum total. I'm just thinking about it from my own perspective in that if someone started working for us doing the window cleaning with Barry the Bullet and me then this attendance record would have been enough by now to have seen us get someone else in.

Right then – half a post in and we still haven't reached anything good. Story of my experience I guess. The best thing that's happened this week, the only good thing to have happened really, is my return to work. This has been a long time in coming. Last night I went online and, giving Lindsay the money so that I can use her ebay accont, designed and ordered business cards for us that will hopefully arrive before my next shift on Wednesday. I text Barry to let him know.

Barry the Bullet – ''No worries lad sound sound man tickets that be a novelty lol''
(No problem, that's good news, we haven't had business cards in a long time, will be good)

He's just been writing on a piece of paper ''Windows Cleaned Today'' and stuffing it through the letterboxes of those who are not in to pay us. This has been going on for around six months now. How things have changed. Well, now Stevie's back!!! I feel like there should be some superhero music playing in the background.

Stevie – ''Indeed, were yous oot the day?''
(I agree – were you and Ian out working today?)

Barry the Bullet – ''Aye man were 4 away from denholm court lad''
(We were – we are just four houses away from Denholm Court)

This means that either we've lost shit loads of customers in the streets between where Barry and I finished up on Wednesday and where they were working today, or, more likely, that both Barry and Ian were out working on Thursday too. This will be the first time that two people have been out working for three consecutive days in months. I'm feeling good about this.

Stevie – ''Nice one, we're back on it in a big way.''
(I like it – feels like we're getting back to work again like we used to)

Barry the Bullet – ''Aye lad just have to keep on it good to have you back though''
(I think so too, we just have to try to keep it going and get a run of days together)

That will be the hard part but I have a good feeling about it this summer. With Ian looking for work at the moment and me finishing college in a few days there is the potential for three of us to be out working if the work allows it. I'd have to get another ladder but this was a part of the plan anyway. There's a little chance that I could make a good go of it again this summer which is fantastic considering how worried I was before Barry answered his phone last weekend. He says that it's good to have me back out working again and I think he means it. He knows how hard it is to find people that will go out day after day and work for it and I think he feels that with me showing so much interest in coming back out that he'll be safe with work at least until the summer's over.

So my fate is becoming clearer. This coming Monday will start an eleven week spell of summer holidays in between courses finishing and new ones starting. Quite what I'll be doing come the fourth of September is at the moment anyone's guess.

None of that matters at the moment though. Ten weeks of window cleaning lie ahead.

I hope I don't pull a Lindsay too many times.

I should go see if she's getting up.

Until the next time.

Take care.

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Stevie

Focusing on the good stuff.

Even if it is cleaning windows.

1121

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Sunday, June 18th 2017 (Dunkirk)



It's a town in the extreme north of France. Hypothetically I am sitting there right now having walked the equivalent distance from the front door of my cave to this Dunkirk place in the time I've quit smoking some four and a bit months ago. I know not where I fancy going next. Perhaps I'll travel into Belgium next as this little town lies just six miles from the border. According to Wikipedia, Dunkirk has a population of just over ninety one thousand and so it hosts more citizens than my town and Lindsay's town combined. Some of my Scottish peers may be forgiven for thinking that Dunkirk might be found on the British Isles and I have to say that I could feel my brow raise when I saw it pop up on my Endomondo account which I am using to track my mileage this year.

Yes – I think that is what I shall do. I shall make way (hypothetically of course – I won't be leaving the miserable climate of Scotland until early October when Lindsay and I head off to Spain for a week on what will be this particular alkie's first time out of Britain in over a decade) for the French/Belgian border. I shall continue to walk along the Chassee des Darses in Dunkirk until I reach Rue du Magasin General from which I can get to Rue du Leughenaer and it is on this that I can suck up the French coastline and head onto the D60 which will take me to the border. This way I feel motivated to get back out there and walk a little. The training has been done and the main event has passed. Now I have nothing to train for and so no reason to get back out there and walk again. I'll have to find something soon but for now this silly little challenge of getting into an imaginary Belgium will have to do. The next time I go out I will be travelling across a border and into my fourth country of my smoking quit (Scotland, England, France, and then Belgium). For now I am in Dunkirk, but that's fine. Actually, right now I am in Scotland – not so fine!!

I say that but the way the weather has been again this week I can safely say that being Scottish has been okay for a few days now. I know not the exact temperature, and I've no doubt that for most people on forums like this which are dominated by Americans and other places where the summer weather is much more pleasant than this, that it would be nothing special but it'll do for me. It's nowhere near cold but not so hot that it makes going on my little walks a difficult thing to do. I'm trying hard to keep it going, to keep walking despite my challenge being done, but I've only managed seven miles this weekend. There's nothing to train for anymore. My motivation is being tested. The walking has a downside to it too though, the extent I've been doing it these last few weeks.

When I came back from my little (and at just over three miles it really was ''little'' by my standards) walk this evening I decided to step on the scales. If I want to keep my Slimming World membership then I have to show up at least for the weigh-in once a month. This means I'll have to go tomorrow evening. I wonder how I'm doing. Slimming World helped me shed seven pounds of unwanted Christmas blubber and helped me prove that weight gain is not necessary when quitting smoking and you never know when I might need it again. I am sitting at my target weight of eleven and a half stone and have been now for around five weeks. I step on the scales to confirm this. Yikes!! I'm a little on the light side! Eleven stone and one pound. At Slimming World you remain at your target weight providing that you stay within your target by three pounds either way. This means I can go as high as eleven stone and ten pounds and as low as eleven stone and four (although I don't know why I'm spelling this out to you because you're likely not mentally challenged and so can probably work it out yourself no bother). Right now I am sitting at eleven stone and one pound. I won't freak. I won't have to pay at tomorrow's class. It's amazing the amount our weight changes throughout the day. I'll weigh more than this in a half hour when the water I've lost through sweat returns and my body goes back to normal. Give me a decent dinner tonight and a decent sized lunch tomorrow at the college and I'll give you my target weight tomorrow night.

Speaking of the college – this'll be the last week. I'll have completed what I set out to do over the summer last year. There was a big build up to this course. Could I finish it? Could I prioritise? Could I demonstrate enough self-care to get me through to the end? Could I bond with other men? Would I push the Fukkit!! Button halfway through and give in? I am happy to say that the answer to all of these questions was a resounding YES!! - except for the Fukkit Button one, obviously. Not just have I managed to pass the course and get my qualification but it would seem that I have done it with less sweat and tears than I might have thought. Two full days to go and then we're off for the summer.

Well, just forty words or so to write before I reach my daily total of one thousand (it's not a bad discipline really) which only works out as a couple of lines really, given the font size and the surface area of the page on this word processing program I use. In fact – I'm probably over the thousand already.

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Stevie

Well over the thousand.

1031

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Monday, June 19th 2017 (The Penultimate Educational Experience)



This is it! The college has now but one day to go. After tomorrow it'll be all over. That's all folks!! Just one day to go. I wish I could say that this meant that I have been in college today working hard but to say that would be telling only a half-truth. I've been in college, sure, but again – even though we are this close to the end and only have one day to go – still I seem to be sitting around with little to do really other than assist others with things they still have to do. We're a team at the college and for one of us to pass we must all pass. I'm doing my part to help with this cause.

Just before lunchtime I am approached by the radio lecturer. He's willing to give me my interview and answer any questions I may have regarding the course. I know that Shaun and Paige, two of my sound production peers this year, have already signed up for this diploma next year but they are twenty and sixteen years old respectively. At my age (forty next April) I can't afford to make a mistake and so need to make an informed decision. I have to gather all of the information I can get my hands on before I decide whether next year will see me studying sound production, radio broadcasting, practical journalism, or no study and continuing to clean windows for a living, at least temporarily while I decide on my next move. It's all go. There are so many directions my story could go in the next few years and so quite a lot (as I see it anyway) hinges on me making the best decision in the next couple of weeks.

So what was said at the radio interview? I guess I was a little worried about the creative aspect of things. Out of the three courses on offer here (journalism, sound production and radio) I had figured radio to be the one that would encourage the least amount of creativity from students. The lecturer disagrees (well – he's going to, isn't he!?) completely and says that in actual fact it is likely the course from the three that has the largest scope for creativity. He explains by letting me hear a little of the students from this year and what they did for their end of year graded unit. One of them was interested in homelessness in Edinburgh (timely given what I saw last weekend while doing the Moon Walk) and so made the trip through and interviewed a bunch of homeless people. There's a cafe through there that helps feed them, offers soup and suchlike throughout the day, and she went to this cafe and interviewed some of the volunteers there too. She then compiled a thirty minute show and that was that. From the snippets I was allowed to hear it sounded pretty good. This was from a student doing this year what I would be doing next year was I to give the lecturer the answer he's looking for.

As well as praising his own course he has a little rubbishing to do on the practical journalism. He calls it a ''dry'' course meaning that the students (and probably the tutors as well) are almost incapable of cracking a smile. It's an awfy dry course. I'm sitting there thinking to myself that this could possibly be right up my street, the perfect course for one such as I, the type of person who can rarely, if ever, crack a smile. Someone like me – a ''dry'' person. But then I am trying to get away from my default and miserable self. That means trying to get away from ''dry'' things, be they people, places, things, or college courses. As fickle as I may be I currently feel that the journalism course is at the bottom of my list of possible courses and study options for next year. This will change from one week to the next and so I'm no further forward to making my decision but I know a lot of things now about the radio option and it sounds pretty good from where I'm sitting.

I won't be posting over the next few days as I won't be near an internet hotspot. I'll be in my cave from tomorrow night until the weekend. I'll be working on Wednesday and Thursday this week with Barry the Bullet. I don't know if he and Ian have been out working this week at all but they were out at the end of last week. With the college ending the day after tomorrow it's important (to me at least) that I try to accept as quickly as possible that I'll be back to cleaning windows for the next ten or eleven weeks. I found this very difficult in the past, to accept that I would be cleaning windows from one week to the next, but I think that this was largely because I didn't think there could ever be anything else. Now that I know there is an end to it I might be able to handle it a little better. Ten weeks, maybe eleven, and then I can once again try to revert to part time.

I'm going to jump in the bath now (probably won't – will most likely just slowly climb into it, I don't know why we have that saying) but Lindsay and I were both at Slimming World earlier this evening and were both still at our target weights meaning that we don't have to go for another month again and don't have to pay. There are a few newbies and each of them looks as though they have a heck of a lot of work to be doing before they get themselves down to a reasonable weight but that's what it's all about. Slimming World is the place for them to do it.

This is what it's all about. Making little goals and then going out and achieving them.

Dr. Bacon has a few opinions on this but until we've talked about that I can't really comment on it.

Tomorrow will be a decent day I feel. Saying goodbye to those I have studied with for the last nine months.

I'll keep writing my posts as usual, but I probably won't see you again until the weekend.

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Stevie

Getting close to the end.

1095

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Tuesday, June 20th 2017 (Year of Two Halves)


I'm a little disappointed with the end of college and the way it went. It just kinda ended and we all went home. I don't really know what I was expecting really but whatever it was it wasn't as flat an ending as it was. Now there will be no studying, at least for a couple of months. The lack of college will from now on leave an enormous hole in my time. Every week I'll now have a whole bunch of hours to kill that I didn't have to worry about for the biggest part of ten months there.

I'm going to talk a little about the college in this post, I can feel it, and I'll probably even ramble a little about my future and what I see myself doing next term. This is well trodden ground in this journal at the moment and after this evening I'll make a point of leaving these types of thoughts for a week or two. I want to try to get quickly into the habit of not being at the college. Since I don't think that I'll be going back to work at the Charity Shop Cafe again either then I'll have more time than I'll have been used to having since I started college. The first half of last year was very different from the second.

The first half of 2016 I was living in complete squalor. I mean it too! I'm not just talking ''I was a drunk and had a bit of a messy home'' – I'm talking complete anarchy. I started the year off by being eleven months sober but still smoking weed every day and I had moved things into the bedroom in preparation for the winter. I had, the month before, lost my car, pretty much the business, my internet (would also have lost gas and electricity if the law in this country didn't protect me so well) and had been referred to the local psychiatric ward . The business funds were crumbling and had reached almost nothing. I was running around the streets collecting money from window cleaning customers that hadn't paid Barry and co. during the day. It was quite pitiful. Inside the one room I was ''living'' was my bed on the floor and I was surrounded by garbage. Flies would constantly annoy me and buzz around in front of the laptop screen and I would have to clap my hands on them to squish them dead and then throw them into a mould filled tin of baked beans. It wasn't my proudest moment.

I wasn't seeing Lindsay at this time. Wasn't seeing many people from one day to the next, and although I got my act together over the following months (largely thanks to a forum member from Glasgow who made the trip through to help me – not that I had been appealing for it or anything) I still had loads of time on my hands. I quit smoking the weed and taking any drugs at all in the February and go the cave cleaned up over April and May. Over the summer I spent a lot of time at the local library. This got me into many other things including the courses that community education was running like Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and a couple of self-esteem building courses. Still though I had much free time. I don't know how many shifts I went out to work with Barry the Bullet but I can't think of one until the week I did in December. I did see my nieces on a regular basis at this time though.

In the second half my life changed completely. Time became less of an enemy. I started working at the charity shop in July; started the college in late August, then started seeing Lindsay at the beginning of September (I think our first date was on the first of September actually but I'd have to go back and check). I was much more involved in Alcoholics Anonymous (actually still had my home group one town away in the opposite direction with my sponsor Stu at this time, the beginning of September) and was at Restoration every week without fail.

I guess I'm a little worried about how my time will be spent now that the college is over. I'll be spending more time in my town on a weekly basis over these next ten weeks than I have done at any point since last summer. I wonder how my time will start to feel again. Will something else turn up that will allow time to feel comfortable again for me? Or will time become something like it did before, something heavy, like every hour is an enormous weight I have to lift? Perhaps this week I go to Restoration!? In the last three months I think I've been two or three times. I don't know why or when I stopped going so regularly. If I don't watch what I'm doing then I'll become excluded. Actually – when was the last time I received a text from Nikki informing me of the plans for the week. I've been going so irregularly that I've been taken off the group text? Nice. Get it sorted!!

So college is done. One by one we walked out of the classroom and into our futures. It was pretty much a case of once you have everything ticked off then you can go. First it was Paige. The only girl in the whole year she was fifteen when she started this course. She's come of age a little and deserves praise for the way she worked these last two weeks to make sure everything was handed in. First finished too. She wouldn't leave without getting my number although quite how willing I'll be to message a sixteen year old lassie I'm not sure. Then it was Shaun. Undoubtedly the person I became closest to over the year - I'll miss the banter. Then it was me. Off into the sunset to face another challenge.

Both Paige and Shaun have been offered places on the next level of sound production but have refused. They've both been offered places on the Level Seven Radio course and have accepted. At the moment I've been offered the same radio course and the college is awaiting a response. I've also accepted the Level Seven Sound Production so unless things change it is that I'll be doing next year.

But things always change, don't they!?

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Stevie

Noticing things changing this week a little too much.

1116

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Wednesday, June 21st 2017 (An Out-of-College Assessment)


Ian used to work with us every day back when the window cleaning business was my main source of income. I haven't seen him in over a year but this morning I am, with Barry the Bullet, sitting in his new house. When I say new – I really mean it. He's moved into a property that is brand new. He was the first person in the scheme actually. Some of the houses are still empty, awaiting people to move in for the first time. The reason I am there is work-related.

Both he and Barry the Bullet were out working last week on Thursday and Friday. No one has been out since. This morning Barry and I are hoping to sort this and get out there. It's not going to happen though. Not for me at least. Ian and Barry the Bullet left some of the gear at Ian's and so we collect it, have a chat and a coffee, and then head out to get started work for nine o'clock arriving at the garden where the rest of the gear may be found, which is, incidentally, Ian's brother's garden. Only some of the stuff is missing. We're a second man's squeegee down. I ask Barry to get started while I walk up to the cave to get a spare. Only the spare doesn't have a rubber. Now I'll have to order some online from Lindsay's over the weekend and hope that they arrive for Monday morning. So Barry works himself for a while before the rain sends him home while I sit around the cave twiddling my thumbs and waiting for this week, and the next ten, to be over so that I can get back to studying something.

At least I have been able to open my mail on time this last two weeks as I've been spending most of my time in the cave and very little at Lindsay's. One letter notifies me of my upcoming health assessment. This sucks a little but I should be grateful in that it has come now of all times. It could have come much sooner. It's going to make me have to take a little look at my financial situation. For the last ten months I have been supported by my student bursary but it doesn't seem to have been reaching me due to some government fuck up and so I have been getting instead my sickness benefit still which I was on prior to my studies starting up back in late August last year. I went for one of these health assessments back in 2015 and was declared unfit to return to work immediately and was instead placed on something called the Back to Work Program which meant I was referred to an agency called Triage and they would meet with me twice a week for up to two years while I strengthened myself to the position where I was ready to go back into the workplace.

Then I started college. This seemed to cock everything up and I continued to get sickness benefit and letters telling me of my next appointment with Triage. I called Triage and explained that I was no longer a part of the scheme as I had started college and the woman assured me that this was noted and that I'd be taken off the system. Then I got another letter telling me when my next Triage appointment was. I ignored it and continued to get money put into my Credit Union I thought was from the college and appointment letters from Triage continued to come through the post. The Credit Union brought it to my attention that sickness benefit was going into my account and that the college were paying me but that money was going into another account and asked if I wanted the two of the accounts merged, which I did. I then withdrew the one thousand pounds overpayment and put it into one of Lindsay's accounts (which has been used to pay for the holiday and a few other things) just in case.

I got a Triage appointment through the door with the post the other day telling me of my next appointment and now, almost two years exactly after I first went on their little scheme, I am back for another health assessment with the Health Assessment Advisory Service. I have been told that they are even more motivated these days to try to find holes in one's story to send them back to work. I think that the people telling me this perhaps work a little too hard at getting away with things like not working for many years. I'm not there yet but it's been a while since the system had me down as doing any meaningful paid work. I'll try to keep things as they are (I have college starting back up, most likely, in ten weeks, and this time I'll have to take out a student loan – there's no way that I could still claim sickness or any other type of benefit) for another little while but I'm growing slowly out of this crippling fear I have of not being on ''the sick!'' Even should the woman who assesses me in three weeks time decide that I am fit enough to return to full time work immediately then it'll be another two weeks after that before I have to begin the gruelling experience that it visiting the job centre every fortnight.

The window cleaning can sustain me for the next ten weeks and then I'm back at college. When that equipment arrives I'll be good to go with Barry the Bullet and we'll start working on getting another ladder so that we can get Ian out full time as well. Then I'll work on trying to grow the business a little again. I have ten weeks.

Nowadays sometimes time is all I feel I have.

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Stevie

Has too much time.

1013

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Thursday, June 22nd 2017 (Looking Through An Old Door)


I've had a bad day today. This has easily been the worst of the days passed since I posted last. I was at the Charity Shop Cafe earlier this morning and explained to Elsa that I wouldn't be there tomorrow, wouldn't be back at all, and that I'd bring my things back to her at some point in the coming days (would have brought them back today but have left them by accident, or more likely without thinking, in Lindsay's town). I wonder a little about this place now. What exactly is so ''charity'' about it?

Most places who call themselves charities tend to say so on the tin. They are working in support of the British Heart Foundation, or Oxfam, or Cancer Research Scotland. It is obvious then how these places work (or at least should work) but with this shop I am not so sure. Where does the money actually go? What does this shop actually support? Where does all of the money it makes go? Does it simply go to the three or four paid members of staff? If so then there is something seriously wrong about this whole thing. This has contributed to my low mood on this day. I feel kinda like I've helped someone stab me in the back. I felt as though my time (it was only three hours a week, I know, but it was more than some give) has been used to support the very things I am most against. I feel slightly like I've been used, taken advantage of, exploited. I shouldn't care, it is over now, but I have to admit that it's a little sad that this has to happen.

In a world so obsessed with money it puts me in a sort of moral predicament. I wouldn't want to be paid – it would completely contradict the reasons I started volunteering there in the first place, but if it is only so that someone can make money out of me that they ask for volunteers in the first place then I feel like a mug. Some people have said that to me as they have come and gone through the volunteering staff history of the cafe. They come from the job centre mainly and they are forced to work there to keep their benefits. It's cheaper to pay people benefits and force them to work than it is to pay them a living wage and so the whole idea of volunteering to me now seems ludicrous and exploitative. I'm not sure if I'll ever offer my time again in this way. This might mean that I have become obsessed with money too, getting paid or it's not worth doing, and so be it.

Besides the disaster that has befallen the Charity Shop Cafe, or as I shall be calling it from now on ever since its ridiculous price rises – the Capitalist Shop Cafe – yeah, besides all that, I think that my mood has taken a beating for two other reasons as well.

One of them is my brother and his hold over me in terms of seeing my nieces. I should have thought he'd have known better himself given his past too. He lost his father as well, it wasn't just the older brother of the two that suffered that loss – he did too. Also he lost his niece and nephew when things went tits up with my ex-partner way back almost twelve years ago now. I haven't seen my son and daughter in all that time but he also hasn't seen his niece and nephew. I guess that this type of family loss doesn't seem to matter to him as much as it does me. Or maybe if I was sorted and had two girls of my own while he had no one then maybe I would give as little a fuck about him as he seems to me. This is the way I feel about things at the moment anyway. I haven't seen either niece for over two months now – a new record, beating my previous best of six weeks also set in 2017. Gary seems to be postponing my seeing them. I'm not begging but it does bother me more than slightly.

It's another thing that Lindsay and I have in common – we both have brothers who are incredibly shallow emotionally.

The final reason is to do with my past and my family. They came to me in a dream last night, or at least the house we used to live in did. I walked past this house on the way to the Capitalist Shop Cafe earlier this morning (it is on route just a couple of hundred yards from this cave) and the current tenants were standing at the front door. As I walked slowly by I could see right into the lower level of the property. I continue walking underneath the sitting room. It's a strange design, my old house, in that it's main rooms are upstairs while the lower level has only two bedrooms, a toilet, and a cupboard. The rest of the rooms are upstairs. Fuck – I really miss that house! I don't know why I've started to pine for it these last couple of days. It's not the house I miss, of course, it's my children and the family unit I had back then, that sense of belonging so long gone now.

There are some parts of my life I can think back to and I cling onto a little. Most of it, or at least large chunks of it, I don't want to think about and quickly move past. Those years from 1999 to 2006 are ones I have been trying to cling onto a little more than I'd like to recently (incidentally, one period I simply cannot abide is the period from 2008 to 2014). As I quickly pass the property and glance ever so briefly through that open door I begin to think back again to those years between 1999 and 2006 – as if this door is acting like a strange and mysterious portal into another place and time. Well, another time at least.

For some reason today I am finding that my Higher Power, Mr. God of my Understanding, is unable to remove these thoughts from me as I am asking. Maybe I'm supposed to think about this stuff for a while. Maybe there's a reason related to Dr. Bacon that I'm supposed to be searching through these past memories.

Maybe it's just a warning to me to stop walking past that bloody door.

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Stevie

Avoiding that particular portal.

1129

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Friday, June 23rd 2017 (Enormous Paragraphs??)


Wednesday was the longest day which means that we are officially into summer now but also that the days are becoming shorter. I noticed while out doing that Moonwalk that it doesn't actually get dark at all, not fully, not black like you'd expect the dead of night to be at this time of year, more a really dark shade of blue. The black will be coming back though. At two minutes a night. It'll take its time but sure as shit it'll happen. I used to start freaking out around this time of year. I'd start thinking about how close it was getting to the winter even though we had just that moment entered the peak of summer (although the wet weather we're having at the moment is just typical Scotland and is doing nothing to suggest that we will be getting our shorts on too often over the coming weeks and months). I'm not like this now. I actually think that I'm strangely beginning to enjoy the winters more. Last winter was one of the best seasons I can remember. Cosy nights in with Lindsay; college and charity shop keeping me busy during the days; a trip to Edinburgh to see the Christmas lights and shows. It was beautiful. The cold was there but it didn't bother me like it used to. I had some money. Not a lot, but more than I am used to having at this time of year. The football season is in full flow also during the worst of the winter while it has stopped just now and we don't have the luxury of a world cup or anything this year (under 21 tournament and Confederations Cup will both be over before we know it). This was perhaps the biggest change I've noticed in my sobriety so far. The change in mood last winter to all that preceded it.

Right then. Let's move on. I just wrote, like, a third of a post in one paragraph there. A huge paragraph. I'll try to tone it down a little from here on in.

I'll be heading back to Lindsay's soon (will be there already by the time I post all of this nonsense from another week) and I'm caught in two minds. I want to go but don't want to go. I want to stay in the cave this weekend but of course don't want to stay. I have no idea why I am being like this. It's great to get out of my cave and out of my town for a weekend at least and I'll be returning to my cave for Sunday night this week so that I can be up and at 'em for work on Monday morning and so I only have two nights at Lindsay's this weekend which'll be the shortest break I've had for some time, which I think could also be a good thing as it gives me time to suss out who I am, to be with myself, and all of that shit. But who wants to be by themselves all the time? This week, despite spending Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, and all of today in my own town I did not spend any of this time visiting Gillon, my brother and the neces, or (which is probably most notable as I try to go there every week, just to keep up appearances) English Sara's. For some reason this week I have spent lots more time with myself than I have been used to. There, I've gone and done it again – I've written another enormous paragraph. I need to stop doing that. Any more and you'll begin to wonder if I'm doing it on purpose.

What have I been doing with my time then? I've been sitting through in this town all week and haven't even visited with English Sara. What the fuck have I been doing to entertain myself then for all this time? Sitting wanking myself off? Well, there was a little of that, maybe two or three times over the four days, but that didn't take up too much time. I did a fair bit of reading. I was loving my Russell Brand book ''Revolution'' in which he talks of how we might be able to run our communities in ways that benefit the many rather than the few but I hadn't been getting too far with it and now I am almost finished it. I've done this writing. I've also put a few hours into something else I am writing, something that won't be getting dumped online, an ongoing project I have plucked from the past, something I had started while I was a drinker but haven't looked at since. Something I thought was shit but having looked back over it feel it to be pretty strong. I spent more time this week wishing that I was working rather than actually working. I'll be good to go when the supplies arrive, I keep telling myself. It's been a pretty forgettable week actually. One that has not had much of interest at all.

I can salvage it though. I can get up and go to Restoration. I've tried reaching Barry the Bullet to ask if he's going collecting this evening but he hasn't got back to me. I am really hoping that this does not mean that he is back to being impossible to reach again. It becomes a real chore when he gets like that. Even if he doesn't get back to me though I can still go to Restoration. There might not be much happening but it definitely is good for me to keep one foot in there. It's effectively the only recovery tool I am still involved in (although I do still write here daily and speak to God, the One of my understanding, and I do have an ongoing relationship with Lindsay who is an alkie – so I guess I do have plenty bases covered, but going to Restoration would still be tremendously good for me, especially after such a lonely and uncomfortable week). At least by going this afternoon I would be placed back on Nikki's list and I would receive text messages every week letting me know what the plans are for the following week. Activities run pretty much on a ''first come; first served'' basis and so you have to be on the texting list to be a ''first come''. There may be one or two activities crop up that take my fancy. I have to be in it to win it, and all of that. It's a little over a mile away and so walking is no excuse (but then I've been walking marathons recently so I couldn't use that one anyway) and I haven't seen any of them since I did that big walk in Edinburgh the other weekend so I'm gonna shut up there and get a shift on. Restoration here we come!!

Damn – another huge paragraph.

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Stevie

What's with all these huge paragraphs?

1190

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Saturday, June 24th 2017 (Writing Rules and the Importance of Being Idle)


That's two weeks passed already since the big walk thing I did for breast cancer (I mostly just did it for myself if I'm being honest but the charity was a nice touch) and I'm going through one of those spells where I think that life is short. Sometimes I think the opposite but at the moment it is short. Usually this kind of thinking can effect my thinking and behaviour – if it's short then I should not waste any time – but I've just thought about the fact that this coming Friday my house plant will reach the ripe old age of one year old and this makes me think about the past year. What an awful lot has happened in this one single solitary year. A whole college course, a relationship, a volunteering position. All of this in under a year. Now I am thinking that there is much that can be done in a year, in two years, in five, ten, twenty years. Wow! Now I am back to thinking that life is long again.

I suppose it's a little like the old ''glass half-full; half-empty'' carry on. Maybe I just have to admit that I do enjoy wasting time sometimes, and I'm not just saying that. Maybe I am okay with the fact that often I am lazy. There's nothing wrong with that I don't think. It was Noel Gallagher who said that ''He who loafs last – loafs loudest!'' (or more it came up on the big screens when Oasis would play live The Importance of Being Idle – which I may post here actually as it's been a long time since I heard that particular song or anything by that band which obviously includes that song) and maybe that's a philosophy I can relate to. Maybe we're all just equally lazy but in different ways. I think that to write over one thousand words in a journal every single day for all this time now shows that I am in some areas perhaps not all that lazy at all. No one else has come anywhere close to it on any forum I have ever been a part of. If I run completely out of things to say then I'll stop doing it but I am hoping to get to the end of the year as it is. I missed a few days last year but will not be making that mistake this. Then next year I hope to start toning it down a little, reducing my writing by a couple of hundred words per day at least. I may give myself a few writing rules to stick by. Perhaps like I am not allowed to ever write on Wednesdays or Fridays; that I have to keep to a 750 word count Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday; but that I can write as much as I want on a Sunday. Those would be cool rules. I might go with them. I'm going move on again though because I'm doing that weird thing I was doing yesterday where I ramble on and on and the paragraph becomes unreasonably long. Moving on.

For the time being there are no rules. I can write as much as I want to each and every day but I try to keep it under the ten thousand characters that the My Way Out forum has as its limit – which I don't mind breaking during posts dedicated to Dr. Bacon sessions – but try to keep it to one thousand words though. Next year I will do my utmost to implement the changes and rules stated in the above (incredibly long) paragraph. But yeah – life is long!

So if I live for my ''three score and ten'' then I will have......just let me get my calculator out for a moment......let me see.......I should have 11,250 days left of this life (or around eleven million words in this journal unless I change to the rules I am planning to). That's eleven thousand, two hundred and fifty days. Christ – even writing that out feels long. Surely if this is the plan then I can afford to loaf for a couple of thousand!? In saying that – I've been sober now for 866 days and it doesn't feel like an incredibly long time. That's nearly a tenth of what I might have left. I suppose that there are all kinds of factors to think about too. How many of these days will I spend less healthy than I presently am? That's scary! It doesn't feel like I've been sober all that long but for some reason it feels like ages since I last smoked a cigarette and like years since I last toked on a spliff. It was just nineteen weeks since my last fag (cigarette) and it's coming up on seventeen months since my last joint – smoked the night I played my first and only sober gig.

So – what happened last night? Did Barry get back to me and we go out on a cash collecting mission? Did I keep to my promise and leave the cave the moment I stopped writing my post yesterday Restoration bound? These would after all be the smart things to do, so no, I didn't do either of them.

This morning I will be heading to the post office to collect our latest batch of business cards and I'm gonna have to pick up some squeegee rubber as well if I wannna go to work on Monday (which is debatable but I know that I really should) as the online ordered stuff won't get here until late next week. If I walk the distance, say, from here to the post office depot and then into the town for some breakfast, then all the way round to the only shop in the whole of Fife that seems to sell squeegee rubbers (and they must know it too as they overcharge something terrible) then it'll add up to a fair few miles. This'll hopefully motivate me to get back out there and start walking again.

Last night Radiohead put on a top class show at Glastonbury. It's the far inferior Foo Fighters on main stage tonight but I might watch them as I think Lindsay is a fan.

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Stevie

Has got to reclaim his mojo........gotta find it first.

1087

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Sunday, June 25th 2017 (Pyramid Foos)




It's been one heck of an uninspiring week followed by a very similar weekend. I think I've been driving my girlfriend up the wall with my boredom. The good thing about boredom is that it makes you move, or it does in my case, and so I've looked online for dudes who are looking to start up musical projects in the local area. This perhaps saved me from eternal mind-numbing boredom eighteen months ago.

Before I get into that I'd like to mention a little of what happened last night. I knew that if I walked there, sat through it, then had to walk back, that I could still be back in time for the Foo Fighters kicking off their set on the Pyramid Stage (in my case from the couch and not the crowd) at Glastonbury. I was so bored today (it's not that I want to single today out as being particularly boring. I think it's more a case of the boredom from Wednesday onwards slowly building into a crescendo of boredom around about today) that I thought of this wild and crazy idea. I'd been out and about, sure. I'd been to the post office depot to collect business cards so that Barry the Bullet and I look at least semi-professional when we return to work on Tuesday (I'll explain why it's not Monday in a moment or two), I'd been for some lunch, and I'd been to the big store to purchase a rubber for my squeegee. We have some coming through the post but they won't get here until around Thursday.

Still though, I was feeling highly susceptible to boredom and it was attacking me on more fronts than I had defences for. I desperately needed something to do. I figured I'd go to the meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. This was a meeting I used to attend every week (almost) for a great many months. It's the meeting I chose as my last before I went off on my ninety day abstinence and it's the meeting I chose as my return after I was done with that plan. It's where friends are. It would be safe. This wasn't the meeting of my choice this time though. I had been building up to going to a meeting ever since the boredom began. I had briefly considered going on Thursday and the again on Friday (there's a new meeting started up at the Glenwood Centre just down from where I stay) but I decided against it both times. To be fair these were both just fleeting thoughts. Last night I was more driven to go, anything to stop this feeling of boredom and nothingness.

So I grab my things and make way for the meeting. I haven't been for a while again. Just like that the times builds up once more. It's been four weeks already since the convention and six weeks since I was last at this meeting, or any meeting, and so perhaps the time has come to get back in there. I should probably do more to keep my feet in the door, maybe promise I'll force myself to go to a meeting (and to stay in it right until the end – something I haven't been able to do since mid-February) once a month. Tonight I'll end this and stay for the whole meeting.

I arrive there around five minutes after starting time. Everyone is already inside the building. There's no one standing out on the street. They'll be going through the many readings they like to do before things get started. This meeting isn't well known for its punctuality either and so it's likely they've just got started. By this time I had long since made up my mind that I wasn't going. It's not that I spent the twenty five minutes it takes to walk from Lindsay's to the meetings trying to talk myself out of it. Not at all. I had been keen and willing, armed with my fifty pence to drop into the little bag that they pass around at half time. It was just a case of arriving at the main gate being enough to make me think against it and about turn.

I spend the twenty five minutes walking back trying to figure out why I might not have been able to spend the evening with my ''friends'' and trying to justify my decision. There are obviously many reasons I decided against walking through the gates and into the meeting but perhaps walking in after it had started would have placed all eyes on me and it would have been uncomfortable. I might also have been frightened of the obvious judgement I would have received. Maybe it was that I started to think about all of the people who might be there and it put me off. I've always said that it would be great if they put up online who was sharing at each meeting so as to avoid some of the very worst shares out there (and there are some absolutely and truly shockingly bad and unlistenable shares come from the top table sometimes and I am keen to continue to avoid them) but not knowing who it would be I had to conjure odds in my head and the odds of the sharer not sucking were probably fifty-fifty – not a risk I was willing to take.

There's also the fact that if I am only heading to a meeting because I am bored on a Saturday night then I am just as bad as the worst of them.

There were a couple of things I wanted to talk about – like searching for musicians in the local area as a way to alleviate the mind-numbing boredom that was attacking me on all those fronts that I was talking about at the top of the post – but the word count is getting such that I might now wait until tomorrow to delve into that nonsense. Not because I am getting prickly about word counts again but in case I don't find anything to talk about in tomorrow's post due to another incredible bout of boredom.

The Foo Fighters put on a great show.

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Stevie

Fighting the boredom.

1066

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Monday, June 26th 2017 (Peasant Sponge and the King Cloth)





It's a thing where doing the dishes is a little more difficult without the cloth. I'm a cloth guy to be honest and fine the sponge way of doing dishes to be a chore. The sponge – when in the context of washing dishes – is more like a little peasant whereas the cloth is King. That's all I've really got to say about the matter to be honest. I'll go get what's needed at the shops in a little while and Lindsay will just have to do any dishes that crop up in the meantime.

I'm watching one of those morning discussion shows and it's talking about who is to blame for the recent high-rise tower block going up in flames the other week resulting in a bunch of deaths and a media frenzy – at the moment they are blaming austerity. One guy is taking about the lack of community understanding from housing ministers and local counsellors. He's mentioned how to even call a local council a local council is now outdated as they are nowadays little more than someone you'd phone about your bin. I can relate to this. The PAS events held recently in my town which aim to work with residents and members of the local council to find ways of improving life in the area went well but the council employees in attendance seemed to contribute very little to the cause. They didn't have much to offer at all. They didn't even seem able to offer up any insight into the way things work from their end. They seemed quite clueless, like they were only there to show face and provide a presence.

So today there are a few things happening, and a thing or two that should have been happening but no longer is. One of these is work. I'm supposed to be cleaning windows right now but am writing here instead. What's that all about? One of the reasons is that Barry the Bullet seems to have gone into some weird hibernation period as he often does and every time I try to contact him I get the message ''User Busy'' and so I can't reach him, but even had this not been happening I still wouldn't be working on this day. I was to be supporting Lindsay with her latest meeting about her son.

There's a thing they do, the court systems and child welfare bring into place when things aren't going too well. It's called MST – Multi-systemic Therapy. This is how they promote themselves on their website:

''MST is an intensive family and community based intervention for children and young people aged 11-17, where young people are at risk of out of home placement in either care or custody due to their offending or having severe behaviour problems.
The key goals of MST are to break the cycle of anti-social behaviours by keeping young people safely at home, in school, and out of trouble.''

There was to be a meeting this afternoon with everyone involved to discuss what was to be happening and how the situation is progressing. This has been cancelled this morning but I understand that this MST has put forward some procedure so that Lindsay's son is to be removed from his current residence (his grandmother's home – his late father's mother, quite a repulsive woman from what I can gather but then I'm a little bias) and into care of some sort, whatever that means. I don't think that by ''antisocial'' it means that he's out fighting in the streets of a night – it more refers to his school attendance which has dropped from fifty per cent for the term at the start of the year to just under forty per cent at latest count. It (the school) has dropped most of his subjects from his weekly timetable in a bid to get him the basics but we can all see now that not even this is achievable. The next move is to get him off and into care. Quite what this will mean I have no idea but I guess that all will be revealed soon.

They also claim on their website that they do this:
''They work intensively with parents and caregivers to put them in control
The therapist works with the caregivers to keep the adolescent focused on school and gaining job skills
The therapist and caregivers introduce the youth to sports and recreational activities as an alternative to hanging out''

My experience of these people is limited to say the least but certainly I've seen nothing to suggest that anything they say with regards to these points is true. The school attendance is lower than ever and he barely engages in any activities beyond his X-Box. The MST is more than likely just a bunch of overpaid oafs who have no real emotional investment in this boy or any of the others boys they work with. We'll see in due course. It always seems to come back to the fact that Lindsay is an alcoholic but, as I've said many time, she may have set the ball rolling but what is going on right now has nothing to do with her. It's been out of her hands for more than two years now. It's gotten much worse since she's been off the scene and that tells its own little story.

''After 30 years of research and 18 studies, MST repeatedly has been shown to:
Keep kids in their home, reducing out-of-home placements up to 50 percent
Keep kids in school
Keep kids out of trouble, reducing re-arrest rates up to 70 percent
Improve family relations and functioning
Decrease adolescent psychiatric symptoms
Decrease adolescent drug and alcohol use''

Right – that's me pushing the one thousand words again and I haven't even mentioned about my searching for musicians in the local area. Needless to say there have been a few replies and I'll be meeting up with a few of them over the coming two weeks or so. I've been here before of course and they never seem to come to anything, these meet ups with fellow music payers, but anything to take away that horrible boredom.

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Stevie

Meeting musicians.

1067

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Tuesday, June 27th 2017 (The ''Per Item'' Calculation)



It's pissing down with rain but I make way to the meeting point to hopefully get out to work with Barry the Bullet at some point. This is taking forever, seemingly, to get into a healthy working routine. I walk down in the rain, wait at the meeting point (town centre outside Gregg's), receive a text message from him to say that the rain is getting even worse through his end, notice that it is doing the same out there (the town centre where I stay is indoors) and so cancel the day (it's not going to be getting any better today, trust me) and tell him I'll see him at the same time tomorrow. Then I walked back up the road in the rain and now I'm sitting back in the cave wondering what the hell I'm going to get up to for the remainder of the day.

On route to meet Barry I did notice a couple of things going on upstairs in this closed-minded, turbulent little collection of conscious and unconscious thoughts that fits snugly within the confines of my skull. I noticed one or two little resentments popping in there for no apparent reason and without any noticeable triggers. The first was the most prominent – the Charity Shop Cafe. Why has it put its prices up? Did it really have to go and do that? Lindsay and I were at lunch yesterday and the place we were at sold filled rolls at only ten pence more than the charity shop now charges. Their big breakfast deal is a pound eighty more but you get twelve items instead of seven and so when you work it out per item the charity shop charges fifty seven pence per item and the other place only forty nine!

This is quite an eye-opening calculation. But it's even worse when you consider that the charity shop does not have to pay any wages to its staff! It's mind-boggling how we allow it to happen in our community. I guess I'm the only one who's made the ''price per item'' calculation. Most people would likely just say that I am thinking about things too much or that they don't have time to be thinking about things like that (which I'm sure Dr. Bacon would say was them just trying to overcompensate by putting me down to make themselves seem more important – ''I have better things to do with my time than to work out silly little sums like that!!'') but I wonder what could be more important to someone, anyone, than what is directly affecting their community.

I've said it before and I don't mind saying it again: I don't mind giving my time to a worthwhile cause and if it's helping the local community but I don't think that's what's happening now. I think that the charity shop is now exploiting its workforce to make money and this I cannot do. It's twenty first century slavery and it's coming fast. Get people to work for you for nothing.

I'm walking down town and I'm thinking of the new chair who has created all this fuss and made all of these changes and I'm not able to think loving thoughts about her. It's my resentful self calling the shots. I'm getting unnecessarily rude. She's far from being what you might call an attractive woman and, like me, she seems to have this condition where something like repressed anxiety and low self-esteem causes her to often say and act in ways that are rude to people without her probably really meaning to be. She's unmarried but likely not through choice (she's a really ugly woman and this is not just my opinion, trust me) and it wouldn't surprise me if she's experienced a lot of bullying in her life. Now it's she who is doing the bullying, bullying a community that she does not come from and knows nothing about. I find myself focusing on all of these unlovable parts of her rather than searching for something positive as I know I must try to and am supposed to, or just changing this internal subject altogether.

I know that she is probably just doing that which she believes will generate for her the greatest respect and most of the other volunteers won't be able to see what is happening because are stuck within the walls of the charity shop in the same way that AA old timers are stuck in the rooms. They're retired now and so what else are they going to do to feel part of a community? It's not helping the bigger picture though, it's just simply putting themselves and their loneliness, their need for connection, before it.

Rather than continue to think about this I try to concentrate on the future (I'm still not great at living in the moment). Lindsay says that some of the charity shops in her town have signs up looking for volunteers and so I could move swiftly onto another voluntary venture. I don't know though. I don't know if I trust them anymore. In fact – the way things are now I don't know if I'm interested in charity at all anymore. It seems like they are just businesses but with a few extra perks.

I try to make an appointment with my doctor but they now have an automated thing asking me to pick from four options and so on but I don't have enough credit in my phone to risk all that shite so I'm going to change my doctor just now. It's quite far away anyway and I would probably be better off changing to the closest surgery which is only ten minutes walk from here. Interestingly, the first option on the automated system is ''If you have a life threatening condition....'' which makes me wonder about the despair that must be felt from someone who does actually have a life-threatening condition and calls her doctor to find a machine at the other end. Another little money saving tactic which does not serve the general public.

How much longer are we going to continue to let them get away with this for?

Probably forever as we've done a pretty good job so far.

I guess we've all got much better things to be doing.....

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Stevie

The word ''community'' will one day soon be removed from the dictionary.

1085