The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Thursday, January 18th 2018 (Back In Therapy)


My routine of getting up in the mornings is back into full flow with me not getting out of bed later than seven any morning since last Thursday when I slept in and Barry the Bullet and I didn't bother going to work as a result. I like getting up early at the weekends as well (although snow will be keeping Barry and I from working this morning) and so this could be the start of a long run of getting up early in the mornings. That's the magic key I managed to find to take me out of my insomnia that was so difficult to get out of when I sobered up. Now I find it difficult not to go to bed early and get up early (although I have shown myself that when Christmas comes it is not impossible).

This afternoon I get things back up and running with my clinical psychologist, Dr. Bacon, and so slowly but surely things in 2018 are starting to get back to normal. I'm back at college, back at work, back to doing everything I'd normally be doing. Now I'm back in therapy, or at least will be by the time the sun sets this evening. This is something that pleases me greatly. I think that when left to my own thinking I can get myself into the idea that I'm doing much better than I am; that some of my thinking is healthy and that I'm doing really well and going in all the right places. I am sure that this afternoon Dr. Bacon will point out why most of my recent thinking and behaviour is just bullshit and show me which modes have been active during the Christmas break.

This can be a little disheartening, don't get me wrong. It's not nice thinking that you're doing well only to have it pointed out that this is not in fact the case. The fact that I am prepared for this shows that I have build enough awareness about it to know what to expect. It would be interesting if I could actually spot which modes I have been influenced by over the holiday period but to be honest I haven't really been paying all that much attention. I guess that everything kind of comes to a halt when we celebrate the festive period.

The sex thing isn't something we ever talk about. In fact – we don't really talk about all that much it would seem. We haven't discussed my children either. I haven't seen either my son or daughter in many years and they will both celebrate milestone birthdays later in the year as she turns sixteen and he eighteen. When I think of them I imagine them to be just starting school. That was when we parted company. Bacon has mentioned in recent sessions that there's a chance of us discussing this a little (if only to help me spot some more unhelpful behaviours and demonstrate a little further how current ones came to be and have been strengthened by this) but I don't think that this bears any real significance in me getting better. I don't think that we need to know every shitty thing that has happened before we are ready to move on.

I remember reading Man's Search for Meaning not long ago (was recommended to me from people on this site – the old WQD site, I mean) and the author talking about therapy and his own approach to dealing with clients/patients. He says at the end of the book that there is little point in spending an overly long time looking at the problem for it is just that. We're more interested in looking at solutions. Of course we need to know a little about what the problem is to begin with and how it has developed and so on but at the end of the day when someone going to his or her first golf lesson demonstrates to their teacher their current swing style and stance it is not necessary for the instructor to then have an in-depth discussion and analysis on their background and their relationship with their mother – they only want to help get them striking the ball better and further. They're looking at the future, where they want to be, and looking at ways of making sure they get there in the best way possible.

I think – or at least I hope – that this is the point we are now at in therapy, Dr. Bacon and I. In 2018 we are going to start looking more at my stance and driving technique and how to better it rather than thinking and talking and talking and thinking about how we got to be here.

Lindsay is talking about going to the travel agents over the weekend to look at holiday prices. We were in Spain last October (first sober trip anywhere and first trip for many a year – first trip with a partner ever) and we have something else booked for April to celebrate me turning forty (if such a thing should ever be celebrated) but now she's talking about perhaps getting away again. I suppose we're doing okay for cash at the moment. Me quitting smoking has definitely helped and we've spent nothing since Christmas (have actually tightened up on a lot of things and have started shopping online in bulk) so it's not as if we're struggling really badly or anything. I think that when she starts working (and she's been applying for jobs with the hope of starting as soon as her placement ends in late March and she qualifies) they have to honour anything already booked but if nothing is then we'd have to arrange it around her work. I think this is what she's thinking anyway.

If we plan it for another six months and go at the same time as we went away last year (a week later would actually make it so that it was during term-time holidays and I wouldn't have to take time off college – I'm assuming that next year things will get a little more difficult on that course) then that would work out as being one week away every six months. That's not something that I would ever have believed had you suggested it to me a couple of years ago. I would have laughed at you and then went away into a quiet corner by myself to sulk and convince myself that my life was the shittest ever. Now I don't have to do that – I can book holidays and stuff!!

Therapy first though. And that happens this afternoon.
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Stevie

In therapy.

1127

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Friday, January 19th 2018 (Working Class White Men)


I was hoping that since I talked about my strange sexual situation that fate might have been listening and sent me a referral but it's not happened yet. You know how that happens often!? You don't think about something for ages and then it all comes together seemingly randomly but also as though it was constructed by some kind of power greater than ourselves that knew exactly what it was doing? I was hoping for that but then I wasn't praying for it. Then again – I'm not supposed to ever pray for something that ends up with me being the sole benefactor.

It's been a good week as weeks go. The best week of the three 2018 weeks but then each of them had their moments to be honest. I guess I like being on holiday but I also like being at college and working, not that there has been much in the way of working getting done due to all of the snow but that's for later on. Maybe I just like everything. Next week is the last week of the first college semester but then we actually have a week off before we start the second and so I am looking forward to getting some money earned with Barry the Bullet and really 'eating' into this dentist bill. I was supposed to have an appointment last week but it was cancelled (not by me – I promise) but I'll have another one through the door shortly and after that it'll be one every few weeks until all of the treatment is done and it will be very expensive. Only once all of that is paid for can I have a hope of starting to put money away for any trips to the Canary Islands which is what we're heading to the travel agents tomorrow morning to look at.

When I was in Spain I started to wonder why it is that people choose to live in the places they are currently living. Surely it can't be that they love it there or feel that things couldn't be better elsewhere. I really got the bug to go travelling and see some of the world. Having been back in Scotland now for a few months (well – a little over three months to be exact) I can see more clearly why so many people just stick to what they know and stay where they are. Routine and what we know kicks in and that feeling of being trapped starts up again. Before we know it the idea of travelling and that there might be more out there than what we currently know begins to feel distant again, silly even. That sense that we are supposed to belong here sets in. It's all rather disturbing, especially for someone who has never felt as though they belonged where they are.

Professor Green has got himself into a little habit of making documentaries and I watched his last one on whether cannabis should be legal and it wasn't too bad. Last night there was another one on and it was about working class white people in the UK and what it's like for so many of us. I figured I'd give it a go. Much of it was looking at some guys who had been fucked over when they were young boys (who isn't in Britain these days) and the majority of them had no father figure while growing up and so ended up on drugs or in jail or both, as often happens, but I did like how there was one guy who was currently working for his father in construction but was trying to break into the modelling world. The conclusion was kind of along the lines of the importance of stability in family life. If you have a stable family growing up then you tend to go into new situations with a confidence that people who face tragedy in younger life don't have.

I can relate. I'm almost forty and only feel as though my confidence is starting to build now. This pattern of backing out of things when they start to feel tough has effectively destroyed my chances of ever reaching my potential and ever being what I might otherwise have been. It all started when I was young and none of it was my fault. Here I am though – trying to find my way in a world and society where every man is out for himself and where we are often judged harshly on our past decisions. So few people have any kind of insight into what makes people seem to follow the ''wrong'' paths and get involved in the ''wrong'' crowds when they are younger.

The show does touch on a few things that I feel work against the working class bloke though. For one – there's a guy not long out of prison and he's trying to find work so that he can provide his son with stuff so that he'll lose the shame about his past decisions. His son wants an iPhone. Thing is – we see the kid with his current iPhone all the time on the show. The boy wants the NEW iPhone. The one he has isn't good enough. This whole part of the show unwittingly touches on a much more important and sinister aspect of life and how we will always want more stuff to make us feel superior because we now live in a world where there is no spirituality but since this is not the programme's intention we are supposed to feel bad for the dad who could afford to buy this stuff for his boy were he to go back to selling grass but not while he's on the dole and for the kid who only has last year's phone and not the latest one.

It also never expands on the point it made earlier about the significance of the stability in one's upbringing and how this crazy age of absent father syndrome comes into play after teasing us with that early on in the show. It focuses on people trying to solve their problems by making more money and gives off the impression that this is all that matters in a man's life, which, to be fair given the societal structures we've created for ourselves in most developed nations these days, is pretty accurate. A shame though.

It's a good show though and it held my interest until the third advert break in which I decided it was time for bed.

Now I've decided it's time to stop typing.

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Stevie

A working class white man.

1129

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Saturday, January 20th 2018 (Creating a New Identity)


I will talk a little about my Dr. Bacon session in a moment or two after I catch up on other stuff less important. Bear with me. Actually – I can't think of anything interesting so let's just get straight on with it.

Now that we've had twenty sessions (this was actually session twenty one) we are to start thinking about how we are going to bring therapy to a close. Initially when he said this I felt a little shock – perhaps the abandonment of old cropping up – but when he explained why this is the case and how it will work I calmed down a little. We'll be looking at around twelve to sixteen more sessions so there's still plenty time at around one session per two weeks (although I would expect every now and then there to be one session spread out over three or four weeks – when I go on holiday for my fortieth being one possible example of us having to break the cycle) but around the moment that England step out onto the pitch for their first world cup game we'll be in the final stages of things, or not much later than that anyway.

This is done because there have been huge strides made in the year I've had these twenty one sessions but in order to really make the most of the time we have things have to go this way. People tend to procrastinate if they get the impression that therapy lasts for years and years and years. My problem is faltering before I can get my teeth truly stuck into the ''Action'' phase and by limiting the number of sessions we have left dramatically increases the chances of me trying to make the most out of the time we have left. I was a little sceptical when he was first telling me all of this but now I can see his point. I can feel his point. Now that I've had a couple of days to think about what was said during the session I feel more up for it, more willing to give it a try. I only have a limited number of sessions left and so I have no choice but to get in the mood.

One thing he pointed out while we were exchanging thoughts on how the previous twenty sessions have been was how I am different in terms of what I think about my identity. Things like going to church on Sundays (although I have missed a couple of weeks recently) show that I am experimenting and trying new things, trying to discover and explore who and what I am. I think it's easy to think that we have a strong grasp of who we are when we get a little sober time under our belts but we're always changing and developing (assuming we keep doing the work) and so it can be difficult to keep track of who we are.

He says that one thing he feels is definitely gone is this sense of me being defined as the ''alcoholic''' label. This is something he felt was a slight concern at the beginning of our work together – I tended to use the AA way in confusing the alcoholic label as being my identity – but that has significantly reduced now, a year down the line. It is kind of awkward I guess. People get together, in some cases every night of the week, and call each other a label. This is the opposite of how SMART Recovery runs its meetings. They keep away from labels. While this is nothing more than a marketing strategy for SMART I am now of the mind that naming ourselves like this is harmful (although SMART absolutely sucks as a quit drinking strategy and will surely die off before too long) but I do see the relevance in me calling myself an alcoholic for so long as I went around the meeting rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous in those first couple of years.

I think it's important to call yourself an alcoholic in AA when you first join because it helps you break through that barrier of denial. It also made me feel as though I was a part of what was going on, that I was like them. It was also important in figuring out exactly what was meant by the term in that if I take one more drink then I run the risk of not wanting to stop until I'm in trouble all over again. Now though – now I am seeking a new identity. I'm looking to become something much more than an ''alcoholic'' but then I have been for a long time now.

So I am to think about the future for our next session. I've to write three hundred words on where I'd like to be. We're making all of these changes – bit for what? That is what I am to think about for our next session which will be one week on Thursday – the 01st February. I have one or two ideas but that's for another post. I'll give it some thought over the weekend and see what I think. What is it exactly that I wanted to make all of these changes so that I could become? And we're not talking about a job here. Money doesn't come into it. We're talking about values based futures. What are my values basically. Our desires change from year to year – sometimes from moment to moment – but our values take much longer to change and develop. We're thinking about values now.

One interesting thing that we spoke about towards the end of the session was the correlation between the huge rise in social media and his line of work and the rise of disconnection. He says that it's the most common problem of the people he sees nowadays and expected this to rise in future. People feel more disconnected than ever due to the rise of the machines. This is largely because so few people have any insight into the problem of disconnection. Most feel that they are connected because they have hundreds, sometimes thousands, of followers on social media and so they don't recognise the emptiness they feel inside as being loneliness. They feel that they shouldn't be lonely. Studies show quite clearly that teenagers who spend the most time on their computer screens feel the loneliest. They just don't notice it as being that. They think it's depression or something else. I am not surprised in the slightest to discover that Dr. Bacon himself uses no social media whatsoever and never has done. There's an argument for truly healthy people not needing it.

Anyway – I'll go get Lindsay up out of her lazy bed and we can take a trip down town for something to eat and then a little look around the travel agents to see what they have to offer.

Keep up my new identity as someone who goes abroad from time to time.

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Stevie

Creating an identity away from the alcoholic label.

1208.

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Sunday, January 21st 2018 (I Like the Stories)


Anyone outside of the UK likely won't have heard of Stacey Solomon. She became famous for winning one of those talent competitions a few years ago but now works as a television presenter, of sorts, but one thing she's been doing recently is campaigning against body image. She's recently done a photo-shoot and printed both the airbrushed and edited versions of the photographs as well as the real ones with nothing added (or taken away). This has been done as a kind of way of trying to help young people realise that to make new year resolutions to starve themselves and try to quit taking carbohydrates or cakes or chocolate is a complete waste of time as they are all part of a healthy, balanced diet (if taken in moderation). She's an attractive woman and the photos are very pretty, but she's not perfect and the comparisons between the edited photographs and the real ones show this clearly.

This would fit in with Slimming World's ideas about not dieting but getting into a healthy eating habit – which would also go along with what Dr. Bacon is always telling me in that rather than setting goals and trying to reach them it is often better just to adapt our lifestyles in some way so that these goals are not goals as such, more just become par for the course. The reason I discovered this Stacey Solomon thing (besides Lindsay watching Loose Women on ITV – damn those digital televisions that allow you to record stuff and then watch whenever you want to!!) was because we were asked to complete an assignment for tomorrow afternoon and it is to write two scripts for radio : one is to be a sports show and the other is a celebrity news/gossip aimed at a slightly younger audience.

So there is still a task to be done before I can wave goodbye to the first semester of this course I am working through. I've carried out my research and written my scripts but we have to read them out to the lecturer when in class tomorrow afternoon and so I won't really be finished this task until then. After that I am good to go on holiday for a week. We start the second semester the week after that, so – two weeks from tomorrow, the 05th February.

But yeah – all this has once again got me into thinking about this coming date (February 07th) when I will be three years off the booze, two years off the drugs, and one year off the cigarettes and antidepressant medication – and when I'm also supposed to be quitting sugar. Recently I bought a set of kitchen scales that can accurately measure tiny amounts and discovered exactly how bad my addiction to sugar really is. I coupled that with the discovery that we are supposed to only take in around twenty five grams of 'extra sugar' in our diets per day and I was in for a shock. Since this discovery I have kind of gone into limbo mode and not worried much about it. My Detached Protector is running things in that department. It's important I now what I'm going to be doing, however, when the 07th comes around. It's only two weeks on Wednesday (two days after we go back to college). It's right around the corner really.

Stacey says that carbs of all kinds are a par of a healthy balanced diet. Slimming World agrees and it allows chocolate daily if you work their program properly. This was never about me losing weight though. It was about keeping other health problems at bay. I'll have to think a little more about this because whenever I start typing about it here I just end up going around and around in circles – a little lapdog chasing its tail.

The weather sucked last week and this week I don't know if it's to look much better. We had snow that kept Barry the Bullet and me from getting back into the swing of things at work. January has been really slow in many ways. I still at times feel as though I am on some kind of unplanned Christmas break. The only thing missing is the tree. You notice how dull it looks out there now? I've noticed it while out on my walks. The lack of Christmas decorations is noticeable. What's also noticeable are the nights getting brighter. Maybe that's not the best word choice. I still wouldn't say that the nights were bright, but they're certainly not as dull as they were. When Barry and I do get back out to work (most likely this week) then we'll be able to work up until half past four I should have thought. A month ago we were wrapping things up around half pas three. Next month it'll be all the way up to five.

I've made good progress on the walking front so far in 2018. January is now at (not including a walk I intend to take later on this afternoon) one hundred and thirty six (averaging six and a half miles per day – which isn't actually all that impressive but then I haven't walked every day). This compares well with the previous months – those towards the end of last year were none too impressive. In October I managed only one hundred miles; in November only twelve more. Last month saw me creep it up to one hundred and thirty miles but it's still nothing close to my September total of three hundred and seventy three. Yep – 377 miles walked that month. More than an average of twelve and a half miles per day. I do want to beat this at some point this year. I think I can push four hundred miles out of myself one month in 2018.

I'll be leaving you guys in around one paragraph's time to go to church. It's not an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting this early in the morning – I'm talking about normal church. I went looking for a church last year and found this one I like in November. I've been half a dozen times or so since (and went twice on Christmas Eve – once to the morning service and then again at night for the Carol Singing Service) and have enjoyed what I've seen and heard so far. I like the stories. I'll be in the main hall in less than twenty minutes from now.

It's a rather chilled out way to start off a Sunday morning.

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Stevie

Likes the stories told in the church.

1124

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Monday, January 22nd 2018 (The Facebook Hacker/Script-Writing Tasks)


I noticed the other day that someone had posted something on my page as myself. I don't go on Facebook much myself, it's not really my thing (and to see the people I know squirming for attention makes me sometimes squirm if I'm honest. I'm not surprised that young people fall for it hook, line and sinker but watching some of the adults I know is pretty disturbing to say the least) and when I do go on there is very little happening or has happened for me to take notice. This all changed the other night when I am online and find that I've posted something.

Stevie: ''You know what? Morrisey is overrated!''

For a second I wonder if I might have been drunk and that this was some silly little error on my part but I quickly remember that I don't drink anymore. I don't take anything that in any way alters my state of mind. I'm now what young people call a boring fart! I also would never misspell his name like that. Morrissey has two S's. I know someone who has also recently misspelled Morrissey's name in this exact same way and he is one of my college peers. He'd be my number one suspect in this. Early in the year we were given bands to have at the centre of our first assignments and they were drawn at random. This peer of mine – Fraser – drew out the Smiths, the band Morrissey became best known for (controversial political opinions aside). He and I discussed swapping (I got given Elvis) but the lecturer said no – we had to keep who we were given. Me liking the Smiths and Morrissey became a thing and on the Facebook group chat we all have been given silly names to make it all fun. Mine is Morrissey – spelled with only one S.

The 'me liking Morrissey' thing has always been quite interesting. Kung fu Pandis has private messaged me asking if I'm just trying to stir up debate and get a reaction on my page or is I really have had a big change of heart and several people have commented on the page itself – the first one being our main suspected culprit Fraser. I remember Tess from the old WQD forum and I would discuss this too. Morrissey being a whiny git. For some reason the whole Stevie and Morrissey thing has always been a bit of a thing. Now it's become an online scandal as someone has posted as me on my own Facebook account. It's very interesting.

To hack into my Facebook account though? That creeps me out and I have to wonder if I might be better just getting rid of it altogether. Then I remember that we kind of need it for our work on Boom Radio – the college's radio station we use to create and present material for throughout the course. Perhaps I just ask him about it when I go in this morning. If he denies it then there's little I can do. My password has been changed so who knows what else I can really do. All I do know is that this has taken up more than half of the word count for this post which is the absolute maximum I am going to allow it to have.

The snow is clearing up a little bit now. It's too late now for it to really cause us problems. It needs to start in late November for that to really happen. I'll be trudging through it to get to the bus station to get to college for the last Monday of the first semester and this afternoon is when the suckiest class it. Script Writing for Radio, is its name. It's the only class I feel as though I am not miles ahead with and I think that one of the main reasons for this is that my live show is booked in for during this class. Each student is paired up with someone, and has been since almost day one, and then goes into the studio to go out live on the air. There's no real way of missing it as it's your slot. Something needs to be playing.

It does annoy me slightly that my time slot for this is from two until three in the afternoon as it always interferes with this script-writing class. Usually my partner and I walk into class an hour late and have missed whatever we're all supposed to be doing. We are then trying to play catch up. Sometimes I manage to do it but there are other times when I struggle a little and have to do it at home. Then there's this time when I haven't been into college at all on a Monday afternoon yet this year and so don't really know what is expected of this final task other than what is in the rather vague email brief I received the other day. I am simply hoping that I have done enough because if not there isn't really the time left to go about fixing it and making sure that it is worthy of putting my name to. This afternoon I will be trying to swap my studio time with someone else so that I have the full time allocated to everyone for this class – assuming we're not all in the same boat in which case I'll have my usual limited time with which to complete this task.

When this is done I will probably walk back. Unless it snows again (unlikely now) then I think I will. I've packed my walking shoes into the backpack anyway just in case. It's about nine miles from the college front door to this sitting room in the next town so usually takes around two hours so I should expect to get home around seven this evening. I'll never get close to September's total of three hundred and seventy odd miles I'll help make January a decent little second place to it.

Lindsay and I didn't go to the travel agents over the weekend after all. It's probably a good thing. I like the idea of us getting our own transport. It needn't be too expensive and would certainly help in many ways – especially regarding work. I don't know what it would do for my walking totals though. That's one of many concerns in getting a car. My bus pass only has two months before it runs out.

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Stevie

Very much dislikes script-writing tasks – and people hacking his Facebook account.

1115

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Tuesday, January 23rd 2018 (Sleeplessness)


Next time I'm in college after today will be to start the new semester. How I am looking forward to it. I'll be in class Monday and Wednesday from the week after next as opposed to Monday and Tuesday which has been the case for so long now. More than this I'll have interesting stuff to do. The challenge will be greater. This first semester was far too easy and I've had all of the work for it completed for weeks (actually a couple of months) so am eager to see what comes next. A higher standard required from now on from all of us. This is what I hope at least.

While nowadays I don't enjoy dwelling on the negatives in life with the same fervour and misguided zeal as I did once upon a time when I depended on alcohol to be my emotional and spiritual guide I do now accept that I am in the midst of a sleeping issue once again – a sleeping issue that is the worst I've known in around eighteen months. It sucks. Any sound or light at all will, assuming I can get to sleep in the first place, see me wake. At the moment I feel really tired. Like I haven't had anywhere close to adequate rest. I can feel it in my body but mostly in my head. Right behind the eyes. I feel as though I could just lean back on this couch and drop off. What's the point in that though? What would be the point in me not being able to sleep at night when I am supposed to be but then finding little difficulty in doing it in the mornings when I need to be awake and alert, focused on what must be done during the day?

This was a very regular thing back when I was trying to get sober and for the first sixteen to eighteen months of my getting sober. Sleeping was the biggest issue I faced in the early days. Bigger than the low mood and anxiety. Bigger than the anger. Bigger than the hearing of people in AA telling me over and over that it was action that I would need to put into my life in order to get better when I really wanted to just sit on my ass and be able to think my way out of it. Bigger than all of them was the sleeping issues. I'm not sitting here freaking out. Really, I'm not. I know that this year so far is not a sign of how the whole year, or the rest of my life, is going to turn out. It's been around for the majority of this month so far though, this sleeplessness.

On Friday night I went to bed before Lindsay and couldn't get to sleep. I might have been slightly asleep when she came to bed around half one in the morning but I heard her despite her best efforts to be silent. She likes to sleep with an eye-patch thing that has headphones attached and she listens to medical lectures while she's drifting off (would put anyone to sleep, except maybe me). As I am lying there I can hear, very faintly, the sound of some guy talking through some lecture. My super-sensitivity is causing this to become unbearable. I'm sure she's sleeping but the likelihood of my being able to take the mask thing off or figure out how to turn the volume down without waking her is very small. I end up leaving the room with a pillow and taking up the couch for the night. Then I am awoken every now and then with the cat's bell on her collar every time she scratches an itch. I have a bad night but get up before seven in the morning.

This has carried over the weekend and into the start of this week. I don't really know what to do to stop it from continuing over the rest of the week and into this coming weekend. What did I do before that worked? All I really did (once I'd established that all of the recommended sleep aids more or less just hinder you in the long term) was to get the set up good and proper. Make sure that the bedroom was comfy (ish) and that I went to it at a routine time. I do this now although there was a big break from it over the Christmas period which has undoubtedly lead us to this rather scary and most unwelcome point. I know that it won't have undone my sleeping pattern altogether though. It won't take another sixteen to eighteen months to get my sleeping mojo back. I just need to get a couple of nights under my bedtime belt and all should be good and well.

As things stand (not sure I am able to though) I have to get moving for one last day of college before I can think about how I'm going to sleep. It isn't like in the movies when you have a poor night and so you're about sleeping at the desk during the day. I'll be fine throughout today. Later on I'll feel a little tired and then, assuming this nightmare is to continue for another night (although a nightmare would be welcome right now as it would mean that I would have at least got some sleep) then I should perk up the moment I find myself lying in bed waiting for sleep.

No caffeine after six (which, if I'm walking back from college tonight in a bid to tire myself out a little more, will basically mean no caffeine after college considering I won't get back here until around seven in the evening) and make sure I don't go to bed too early. That's all I can really do. Maybe Lindsay is onto something with her night-patch thing that plays boring lectures for her but then I don't want to have to go down that route of depending on something to be there to assist me. What works for some people doesn't work for others and it feels that for me it would be another of those gimmicks that I would have to rely on. What if it was for some reason not there one night? Would that mean it was back to this again all of a sudden?

Sleepless and tired or not nothing escapes the fact that a bus will be leaving from the hospital stance college-bound in half an hour and I should be on it.

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Stevie

College-bound.

1120

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Wednesday, January 24th 2018 (Three Hundred Words On What The Future Looks Like)


It's homework for Dr. Bacon, my clinical psychologist. I've to be thinking about a number of things between now and our next session, one week tomorrow, and this includes where I want to be in the future. Essentially asking myself what the reason for all of this therapy is. I've also been asked to think a little about how we will begin to wind down these sessions in order to bring them to a close. We're looking at between twelve and sixteen sessions before this is all said and done. One of the main reasons for this is to bring an increase in my own motivation levels. When faced with a deadline, when there is an end in sight, there is more of a likelihood I'll put the effort into doing the tasks I am assigned from one week to the next. From now on our work will be very much results-based – goal-focused. I'll be given tasks (like the ones I've been given this week) and I'll go away and do them. This is the plan.

But what's my plan? Why am I doing all of this stuff I am doing? What's the endgame? Why did I choose to do the course I am currently studying? Why not the others I had considered? I spoke over the weekend about how me trying to experiment with things to do is like me trying to figure out a new identity for myself away from the alcoholic label that AA gave me three years ago that I now want to be far, far away from, but what would I like my identity of the future to be like? I've to be thinking about what my values are. Dr. Bacon says that his personal and professional goals will alter from time to time which will often lead to confusion and uncertainty sometimes but his identity remains strong as his values don't really ever change much. They are solid and concrete.

I don't know if I agree with this wholeheartedly as I believe my value system to have changed quite a lot since making the decision to stop drinking and taking drugs but I'm not going to get into that lest being accused of trying to intellectualise my way out of doing my homework assignment. Three hundred words on what I would like my life to end out like in a few years? It's a tricky one when for so long there has been no plan. I lived a day at a time for many years but not in the AA way – it was more in the hand-to-mouth way of getting by for one period of twenty four hours and then worrying about how I'd manage to get through the next when I woke up that morning.

On Saturday night I asked Lindsay for one of her pills. She has quite a lot of medication to take on a daily basis and one of them is Quetiapine and so she gave me one of these when I started complaining about my recent sleeping problems and sleeplessness. She begged that I did not moan in the morning like I did the last time she gave me this stuff as I struggled to get up next day due to the sedative knock out they gave me. I assured her that I would be fine. It's just a little pill I'm taking this time. Then I ended up not getting up until just after eleven o'clock on Sunday morning and ended up missing church and everything. It sucked. I tried my best not to moan about it though.

Ever since then I have continued to have problems either getting to sleep at night or getting up the next morning or both. On Monday morning I was late into college and I was only on time yesterday because the cat was annoying the fuck outta me by rummaging around in one of the wardrobes and rustling a bag of coat-hangers and so I had to get up to chase her. When I'm up I'm up. This morning I'm up by some miracle again and so I am hoping that this is the start of things improving. As much as not sleeping can suck it's the not getting up in the morning that is the worst thing. As long as I keep getting up things'll be okay.

It snowed over the weekend again but now it's looking okay. There's still evidence it's been snowing and it's cold as fuck still but assuming Barry the Bullet and I meet like we're supposed to be in an hour and a half from now then I'll have started the ball rolling with work in 2018. I'm off college next week and so can get out five days – there's certainly the work available for us to do this – and so my determination will be tested. If I can start getting into the routine of work then I can expect to sleep better in the evenings. January sucks – the no question about it – but we're getting to the end of it slowly but surely.

Anyway – enough stalling! How would I like my life to look in the future? Damn – I've gone and rambled on so much that I'm running out of words to post before I reach my daily limit. I keep getting distracted. I am stalling though. I know it. I'm stalling because while it might seem like an easy question to answer (what we want our lives to look like in the future) I find it very awkward. I have no idea. I have no clue as to what my current value system is and Dr. Bacon asked me to use this as a guide. What is my value system? Maybe if I can answer that first, give it some thought throughout the course of the day at work, then I can come back to this tomorrow morning prepared to give it a better, more honest, go than this pathetic effort I have attempted this morning.

If I can figure out where I want to be in the future then it will help me decide what to do in the present. It seems as though this question is coming at the right time for me though, with life beginning at forty and all that.
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Stevie

Trying to figure out where he wants to be in life.

But not doing too great a job at it.

1103

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Thursday, January 25th 2018 (Organised Thus Recommended)


That is so disappointing! Last week I lost a post while trying to save it before I went to post it onto the Ryver and My Way Out forums but ended up losing it and the same thing happened this morning so I have had to type up this one this evening and post it without saving. Sometimes this program fails and so I like to save my writing quickly at the end of every paragraph. I would like to say now that I do not in any way recommend Open-Office word processing. It's been a constant source of frustration for me during the time I've been posting about my sober life and I will be looking for an alternative (Word is not really an option) come Saturday morning. As for the time in between now and then I will have to copy this stuff onto my external drive after every paragraph just to be sure. It's a lot of fucking around just to post some shit on a forum that anyone who looks at will just skim-read anyway, but do it I for some reason must.

In my previous but now completely lost post I was talking about the different routes that students studying radio can take. One of them is the route I am taking where all of the effort is put into getting the coursework done as best as possible. This involves learning the software and how to work the desk and everything from a technical standpoint. This is perhaps where I am strongest. One of the other routes is to go along with a local radio station as they always seem on the lookout for students to go on their Street Team list. By going down this avenue you get to know people in the industry and get to be a little more hands-on. It's quite an attractive sounding way of doing things and is perhaps more likely to result in a job at one of these stations than doing things my way where you get all the practice and get good at student radio but then have difficulties in selling yourself but there are pros and cons to both directions. There is a third route that some students seem to be taking: do everything half-assed and drop out just after Christmas, but we won't worry about them too much now.

So I was standing at the smoking area talking with one of the students that has gone down the Street Team route and is doing a lot of volunteering with Dundee-based radio station Tay FM. It's like a coming together of both worlds: the tech guy and the volunteer; route one and route two; the Street Team girl and the student radio guy. She's chatting away about how little I've been in class this year since I'm finished all of my work so early and well before the deadlines.

Blondie – ''You're really organised, aren't you?''

Stevie – ''I don't know about ''really'' organised.''

Apparently where she volunteers at Tay FM is looking for someone who would be useful at the production side of things in the studio and had asked her if she knew of any students in her class who might fit the bill. They would need to know their way around a radio studio and have excellent organisational skills. I was the first person she thought about and so I am asked to check my emails every now and then as, no promises, but they might try to contact me at some point.

This really is something. I don't mean the opportunity that could come out of this recommendation – I mean the fact that someone would think of me when they hear words like ''organised'' as this really does not suit me. I say this because just a couple of winters ago I had to get someone (a member of the old WQD forum actually) to come to visit me to help me clear out the cave I was living in at the time since it was in such a state I had no idea how to get out of it. It then took several midnight trips over a few nights with English Sara to get rid of the rubbish bags that had built up in there. I was so disorganised that it isn't even believable when I think about it. Remember that I couldn't even organise a house plant to its first birthday (although I'm not doing too much better given that my most recent one died earlier this month at the tender age of eighteen months).

Still though – it really is evidence of a change in my lifestyle when I think about it. To go from not being able to clean up my cave to getting college work done at such a rate that classmates feel I am ''really'' organised. It's cause for celebration, not that I really have any way of celebrating things these days. I guess I can see this a little given that I am already planning for when we go back to college a week on Monday. I am one of four guys who is on air at nine – first show of the new semester – and it's a sport-based show we are to be doing. I'll be presenting the first ever one and so I want to be as ready – as ''organised'' – as possible since we plan on releasing these shows as podcasts on the Monday evenings as well. They have to sound good. They will be evidence of our work after all and so you never know who might end up listening to one of them.

I noticed on Facebook that a group chat between the four of us has been started and so between now and next Monday we have to communicate and come up with plenty of content to make up one hour of sport-based chat with as little need for music as possible. It'll be a challenge – an hour is a long time to keep things interesting – but with there being four of us I think we'll do okay.

I've actually discovered that I can just save these writings onto the Onedrive and then collect them from there whenever I fancy. Saves a lot of fucking around. Open-Office is still not recommended though as you really shouldn't have to be doing this just to keep your work. Avoid.

Right – I'm not going to say anymore as I'm getting strict about this word count thing.



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Stevie

Avoid Open-Office if you know what is good for you.

1119

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Friday, January 26th 2018 (The Sport Show)


Already that's been a month since I saw my nieces again. The time builds up, doesn't it!? Boxing Day it was. There was a time, not that long ago either, where one month would have seemed like a ludicrous length of time to go without seeing them at least once. Now it is just something I've come to expect. Things have changed, moved on. Devolved. Before I know it we'll be on the 26th February and little will have changed. My mum put pictures up online of her with them the other day when she was babysitting and so I messaged her asking if she could give me a shout when she's getting them next so that I could pop along. We'll see. She doesn't act with the same urgency to have me there during the year as she does over Christmas. At Christmas there is a need in her to have us all together. It's almost like she's trying to hide the reality of what has happened to her family for one day. That way on Facebook it looks the part. The is a sickness in her that I'm not even sure she's aware she has.

Thinking a little more about the radio show that myself and three of my peers will be starting up a week on Monday when we return to college for the start of the second semester – and chatting to them a little on the Facebook group chat that we have started as a way of sharing ideas and views on what we'll be talking about during each show – I'm going to create a bed to get things up and running. By that I mean that I'll be creating something that will play in the background as I introduce the show to listeners (assuming there are any – it's mostly hypothetical) which will give the show some more substance and interest to kick it off rather than just having a voice as we've been used to up until now. It'll be just a couple of minutes long and will start off with the sound of a ball being kicked, followed by the sound of a net bulging, then will have the music come in.

I'll put it onto CD so that when in the college a week on Monday I can just play it through the CD player. This means I'll be able to easily control the volume levels so that when I am speaking it will be just faint in the background but will come to the fore when I pause to let the (mostly hypothetical) listeners digest what is being said. If done right this will sound pretty cool and professional. The aim of this next semester is to try to push things on a lot more than we have been up until now and really make ourselves sound good on air and so little touches like these will be exactly the sort of thing that the lecturers will be looking out for. I'm getting all excited just thinking about it.

If we are going to be putting these shows online in the evenings after we edit them slightly then I'll have to make the music one of my own tracks. On the radio we can play whatever is on the playlist because the college pays its licenses to the appropriate agencies who then collect money and distribute the royalties to those who's music we use regularly but when putting it out as a podcast in the evening we do not pay these licences as it is nothing to do with the college. It's our own work and so we won't be allowed to play anything by anyone ever. This does suck a little but there are ways around it – play our own stuff!

One of the biggest challenges we will face in the construction of this show – and certainly the challenge I will face as the presenter of the first show – will be keeping things interesting for a whole hour. What we've been doing up until now has been a simple case of short links between songs with the odd little weather report and local news, with perhaps a celebrity gossip thing thrown in there as well, and that's all we've really been taught in terms of show structure. This will be very different. There won't be a song to go to if we get stuck. I'll have to make sure that I, as host for the first episode, can keep things ticking along nicely and make sure that no one topic drags on too long. We'll have to get through a lot of content.

This is where we'll find out about my organisational skills for sure. We'll have to break each show down into segments and keep to this time limit. We'll have plenty of topics to cover if we want to get an hour worth of content out of each and every show without reverting to music and other radio gimmicks. This show will very much be in the mould of Radio 5 Live and other talk shows. Without the visual aid we'll have to work hard on sounding good.

We might sound a little ambitious here but there are plans to extend this idea beyond the college studio and the idea of possibly streaming a live match from one of the local football grounds is something that we are in early talks with local football club Dunfermline Athletic about. Jamie – one of my peers who will be running the show with me – has been in contact with them and I believe is to be meeting someone from their PR department during the week break we are currently on. We'd be looking to perhaps run the broadcast as a Facebook live stream. The lecturer at the college says that we would need at least three people to run it. One would be a commentator; another would be a co-commentator; the third guy would be solely a technical guy who's job would be to make sure that the stream was constant and that the microphones and everything else was working fine. If we get the go-ahead we'd be able to use the club's journalist wi-fi rather than the punter's shitty wi-fi and would get one of their comfortable seats away from the wind and the rain. We'll have to wait and see how Jamie gets on with his meeting before I know what's happening there.

All I know is that we are on air from nine until ten in the morning a week on Monday for the first live show of a sport-based show – the first show of this kind done by students of the college (which is quite unbelievable to be honest) and so we'll have to be ready for it.

Damn that word count again!!

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Stevie

Sport presenter

1161

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Saturday,*January*27th*2018*(Lonely/Not*Lonely!?)** *



I*think*that*sometimes*I*think*I'm*feeling*more*lo nely*than*I*actually*am.*I*say*this* because*I*did*feel*lonely*yesterday*for*a*spell*an d*it*was*a*feeling*that*I*can't*say*I'm* altogether*familiar*with.*This*must*surely*mean*th at*normally*I*am*not*lonely.*The*reason* for*my*sudden*feeling*of*loneliness*was*due*to*a*l ittle*check*on*Facebook.*My*mum*barely* seems*able*to*get*back*to*me*when*I*contact*her*as *it*has*been*suggested*by*Dr.*Bacon,* my*clinical*psychologist,*I*do*as*part*of*my*Healt hy*Adult*training*regime*(building*up*and* maturing*the*part*of*me*that*we*want*to*be*making* the*majority*of*the*decisions*in*my* life)*and*so*often*this*can*feel*like*a*slap*in*th e*face.*I*have*tools*though*and*for*once*I*find* myself*using*AA's*program*as*my*tool*of*choice*in* dealing*with*this*feeling*of*loneliness that*comes*from*feeling*as*though*I*don't*have*a*f amily*that*gives*a*fuck*about*me*if*it* isn't*Christmas*and*so*I*hand*over*my*worries*to*m y*Higher*Power*–*the*God*of*my* Understanding.* *

This*worked*and*allowed*me*to*be*able*to*look*not* at*the*things*in*life*that*I*don't*have* but*at*the*things*that*are*going*well*in*my*life*a t*the*moment*and*that*I*do*have.*I*guess* it*makes*me*appreciate*things.*It's*important*for* me*to*remember*that*everything*on* social*media*is*posed*and*that*what*I*see*is*not*a *true*representation*at*all*of*what*the* person's*life*is*actually*like.*People*with*rich*l ives*do*not*post*on*Facebook,*they*don't* need*to.*I*recall*my*psychologist*telling*me*that* he*does*not*use*any*social*media* whatsoever.*I*don't*supposed*Healthy*Adults*do.*I* know*that*my*mum*struggles*more* than*she'd*ever*let*on.*I*know*that*her*life*isn't *perfect.** *

I*do*feel*upset*about*the*way*things*have*turned*o ut*though.*Making*my*amends*through* AA's*Twelve*Step*program*was*supposed*to*be*my*way *of*clearing*out*the*wreckage*of*my* past*but*it's*not*really*turned*out*that*way.*Like *I've*said*many*time*over*the*past*twelve* months*or*so*since*contact*with*family*has*hit*an* all*time*low:*Things*have*never*felt*this* distant*–*not*even*when*I*was*drinking*all*the*tim e.*At*least*then*I*saw*my*family*from* month*to*month.*This*is*easily*the*worst*it's*been .*With*regards*to*my*brother*it*all*kind*of* started*when*he*got*married.*With*mum.*.*.*maybe*o ur*relationship*has*always*been*this* bad*it's*only*taken*me*to*get*sober*so*that*I*coul d*see*it.** *

I*wasn't*on*social*media*for*anything*to*do*with*f amily*bullshit*in*the*first*place*–*I*went* on*to*check*for*any*developments*in*our*group*chat *about*our*sport*show*that*will*be* starting*when*we*go*back*to*college*on*week*on*Mon day.*First*thing*–*nine*until*ten*every* Monday*morning*–*will*be*myself*and*three*of*my*cl assmates*and*we'll*be*trying*to*run*a* full*hour*worth*of*content*away*from*the*norm*of*p laying*lots*of*music*while*filling*them* out*with*little*links*in*between.** *

I*am*quite*lucky*actually.*I*was*originally*paired *with*one*of*the*women*in*the*class*to*run* my*show*on*Wednesday*afternoon*but*the*guys*who*we re*to*do*the*sport*show*wanted* me*in*for*my*older*insights.*I*am*twice*the*age*of *the*other*guys.*This*gives*me*an* advantage*when*it*comes*to*certain*elements*of*a*s port*based*radio*show.*The*lecturer* said*that*this*was*okay*and*so*I'm*in.*I'm*part*of *the*four*team*sport*show*on*a*Monday* morning.*I*also*get*to*keep*my*Wednesday*afternoon *slot*with*Evana*and*so*I*get*to* present*two*shows*and*am*actually*the*only*guy*in* the*class*who*finds*themselves*in*this* position.*Sweet!!*This*means*that*I*get*to*work*on *both*types*of*shows.*

The*sport*-based*show*which*will*be*largely*talk*based*and*ai med*at*a*particular*demographic,*more*of*a* specialised*effort,*as*well*as*getting*to*hone*my* skills*in*the*generic*link/song*based*radio* presenting*shows*that*we've*been*doing*up*until*no w.*It's*a*good*position*to*be*in.** * Lindsay*had*a*problem*with*her*placement*earlier*i n*the*week*as*she*made*a*mistake*on* the*ward*with*one*of*her*patients.*This*ended*up*w ith*a*doctor*being*quite*snippy*with*her* but*it's*fine*now.*It*can*seem*a*little*like*the*n ever*-ending*placement*at*times*but*that*is* her*now*at*the*halfway*point*of*the*sixteen*weeks. *Eight*more*weeks*to*go*and*she's* (finally)*qualified.*I*don't*actually*know*if*we'l l*be*better*off*or*not*when*she*graduates*and* starts*working.*Since*she's*only*going*to*be*contr acted*part-*time*we'll*be*lucky*if*what*she* earns*is*more*than*what*she*is*getting*at*the*mome nt*when*factoring*all*of*the*extra* things*we'll*have*to*start*paying*for*that*we*don' t*at*the*moment*as*two*students.*But* then*I'm*not*actually*sure*if*I*am*counted*as*bein g*a*part*of*this*household*since*the* council*have*yet*to*get*back*to*us*about*the*appli cation*form*to*add*me*as*a*tenant,*to* make*it*a*joint*tenancy.*They*can*be*quite*slow*at *times,*the*council.** *

Speaking*of*AA*(which*I*wasn't*really*but*I*did*me ntion*at*the*top*of*the*post*one*of*their* tools*in*the*God*of*my*Understanding*and*how*I*use d*it*yesterday*to*get*over*feelings*of* loneliness*brought*about*by*not*feeling*as*though* I*have*a*family*around*me*–*ever)*I* haven't*been*to*a*meeting*since*Christmas*Eve*and* there*is*one*on*tonight.*I*can't*see*me* going*though.*So*already*that*is*five*weeks.** *

According*to*the*group*chat*on*the*sport*based*rad io*show*we'll*be*kicking*things*off*with*a*Kasabia n*song*and*then*changing*it*later*so*that*we*can*p ut*it*out*as*a*podcast*and*we're*working*on*a*stru cture*over*the*weekend*and*early*next*week*so*that *we're*good*to go *a*week*on*Monday*and*have*plenty*time*to*gather*i nformation*and*pay*attention*to*all* of*the*sport*headlines*next*weekend.** * Anyway*–*the*word*count*again!*I've*gotta*go.
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Stevie

Counting*words.**

1118** * * * * *

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Sunday, January 28th 2018 (Sunday Morning Coffees. . . . With Sugar. . .)


I didn't go to the AA meeting last night as I probably should have done. It's good for me to stay connected with people and the fellowship is as good a place as any to meet people and interact with those I've already met. Unfortunately there are so many things about it that keep me from being enthusiastic about going back. One of them was my former sponsor bumping into Lindsay again which happened through the week last Friday. I can see from his social media that he works at that centre just along the road from our local shops and so he has crossed paths with Lindsay three or four times now since he started yet each time he has been very ignorant. I understand that he could have been busy the first time and in a rush the second, but the fourth?

It's long past the stage where I look back and wonder what I ever saw in that guy that made me want to go along as a sponsee of his for the better part of eighteen months. If anything it shows how far I have come but in saying that I think he has definitely changed for the worst since becoming a father. It's like this is the ultimate ego trip for him. He's not handling it well as is coming across as being even more arrogant than he was before, and that's saying something. It shouldn't put me off going to the meeting last night but it did make me think about all of the negative aspects of people in the rooms and how, essentially, I would just be surrounding myself with people who have a wonderful program that could potentially change their lives for the better yet choose not to allow it to and just abuse it instead, waste it. When I'm this judgemental I am probably all the better for not going to the meetings where there is an almost unlimited scope for judgemental thinking from me and it's just too frustrating, too exhausting, to handle right now. I'd be better saving it for church this morning.

And so I have done. I'll be going in a little while and looking forward to it. There isn't much chance to actually meet people at the church though since I don't actually ever stick around to have tea and biscuits afterwards. I simply arrive for it starting and leave when it ends. I'm like some weirdo who just shows up one minute and then is gone the next. I don't mind this but at some point soon I would like to try to communicate with someone. This is exactly the sort of thing I reckon Dr. Bacon will want me to start doing very soon. I see him again on Thursday this week and we'll be looking at my three hundred words (that I have yet to write) which look at what I would like my life to be like ideally and also looking at how many sessions we might be having before we think about wrapping it up. I am still a little worried about this but am just continuing to assume that he knows what he's doing and trying to accept that this is not happening because he thinks I'm a lost cause or can't be helped and suchlike. I'll try to write these three hundred words on the future tomorrow in my post. No more stalling.

There are other things I should really be thinking about as well. One of these is the sugar thing. I have to come up with a definitive plan for this. It'll be my birthday (sober birthday, that is) in a little over a week and so I will be undertaking the next challenge which will be a severely limited amount of sugar in my diet. It looks as though the recommended daily allowance for sugars in adult men is around 30 - 37.5 grams. This obviously does not include the free sugars found in fruit and milk and so on and it does sound like quite a lot of sugar to be fair, but I know that it isn't all that an awful lot as I've been weighing it out recently since purchasing that set of scales just after new year. The thing is – when I don't take sugars in my coffee I won't actually be taking in more than this total anyway. It's the sugars in the coffees that are the biggest problem for me at the moment (I'm on y third cup already this morning and will likely have another three or four by the time I go to bed – no wonder I freak out about not sleeping to much all the time, eh!?) but once that is sorted I will feel a lot more confident about all things relating to sugar intake.

I guess it's the treats I have to worry about. What will it be like when I'm on holiday and I can't be bothered weighing out and trying to fathom how much sugar is contained in whatever it is the buffet has to offer? That would be a nightmare but over time I will establish a routine of sorts. I'll know what I can and cannot have without having to give much thought to it. I'll also learn over much time how often I can and should indulge. It's all a learning curve that will take time to master like anything else. It was quite easy with the drink and the drugs and the nicotine – don't indulge EVER!! This one is a little more complicated but less limiting and more choice-based as a result.

One week from today and I'll be looking forward to getting into college to make a start on the sports show and so I'll have to take down plenty of notes when it comes to the sporting events of next weekend – especially football. This is a good thing since a lot of my time is already taken up by my devotion to the beautiful game. I'll also have to start following our local ice hockey team a bit more closely as we'll be talking about them in the show as well as the local football teams. I haven't seen or heard anything from the hockey team since Lindsay and I went with her brother and his wife to Edinburgh on Hogmanay to watch my first ever live hockey match. This will have to change after this week too and I'll have player's names and positions to note down and memorise.

Shit!! That damn word-count rule. . .

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Stevie

Reached the word count again. ..

1135

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Monday, January 29th 2018 (Clean Running Water)


I was looking through the new deal that Manchester United forward player Alexis Sanchez has and how much money he will be making from this. This took me on the website merry-go-round that so often happens if you allow yourself to become distracted and you end up going from one site to another and before you know it you are lost. I ended up on a site that was comparing all of the top earners in football and showing you how long (or not) they would have to ''work'' to get this and that and the next thing. Two days for the new top of the range Audi motors and three days for a small private island. Almost nothing is out of price range just after a few days of slogging it out on a training field for a few hours midweek and then playing your match on the Saturday.

The most staggering and eye-opening thing about this website was the knowledge that for just a few days of work one of these footballers could afford to pay for one million people in lesser developed nations to have clean running water. This begs the question – why would you not? If you had the power and money to provide this then why would you not just do it? Why, if you have so much money that you and your subsequent generations will never be able to make use of it as it simple is so much money, would you not set up a sort of direct debit scheme where every month one million people in a third world nation get clean running water? I just don't quite get it. Maybe someone out there has some knowledge of why this would not enter someone's head. It's entirely possible that there are many reasons I don't know about that make this kind of thing impossible, like maintaining the wells once they are built and when they break down as I'm sure they will at some point, but from where I sit I can't for the life of me fathom why more isn't done by people who have money to provide for those who do not.

There's something amazing about the whole situation though as far as I can see (which is, admittedly, never too far) and that is that we, as a species, have probably always wondered what the limit of human capacity is throughout our history. We probably wondered back in the stone age what we might be capable of were our basic needs such as food and shelter met without having to rely on survival instinct constantly and have so many threats around – things trying to hurt us and eat us and bite us and so on. Then, when we began to master the art of overproducing food and so could create and sustain communities and settlements, we probably started to wonder what might be possible of our species if we could go a step further. Now we reach the twenty first century and we have most of our needs met and we can see clearly what the limit of human capacity is. We worship the dollar and look out only for number one. Everything is about status and trying to be seen as being better than your neighbour. It's a tremendous disappointment in the end. Surely our ancestors had something much more than this in mind when they went through all their past hardships!?

I'm up early enough to actually make a go of it this morning. I still feel as though I am half sleeping but I'm game for getting out there and giving working for a full week a go. I'm not in college at all this week (it's a remediation week for those who still have work to do from the first semester) and so all week this week (assuming that the weather stays fair which in Scotland is never a sure thing by any means) I will be out working all week. So far this month has been lame with not much work done at all, either with Barry the Bullet cleaning windows or in the classroom at college working on assignments and radio broadcasts. This also means that I haven't been as connected to my community as I am when I am out of the house all the time and mixing it up with my fellow man and woman.

On Friday Lindsay and I are going to watch Strictly Come Dancing: the Live Show at the Hydro in Glasgow (it was one of my Christmas presents to her that I am now regretting. . . I'm only joking, it'll be fine) and so we're looking forward to that. There will be a few things happening this coming month that will inspire me to get out to work every minute that the God of my understanding sends as Lindsay's birthday will be in February, as well as my oldest niece's birthday, and that's without mentioning Valentine's Day. A few things to suck the money out of my wallet I'm sure. This is only possible if there is money in my wallet to begin with.

There's actually a rather expensive dentist appointment coming up the week after this that will set me back a couple of hundred quid as well. Even if I can pay for that with the hours I get this week cleaning windows then it takes the pressure off. If we don't get into a working routine soon then the phone will start ringing and the pressure will be on again at work. It is quite stressful, work and money. I can remember it being much more stressful not having either though.

Barry the Bullet was saying on Facebook the other day that he's been missing getting out to work regularly (which is odd given the number of days he slept in or didn't come out for one reason or another in the last twelve months) and I get what he's saying. I've actually missed the work this last couple of weeks as we've been waiting on the snow to turn to ice and then just fuck off, as it now has done. I think that part of my poor recent sleeping pattern is down to not having a tired mind through regular college work and window cleaning responsibilities. I shouldn't take any of these things for granted because I do actually really miss them when they aren't in my life.

Stressful though they may be it's certainly more stressful not having them.

And it must be even more stressful still not to have clean running water.

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Stevie

Thankfully has clean running water.

1131

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Tuesday, January 30th 2018 (McCalling Davina)


There was a show on the other night (I actually have no idea which night it was on since Lindsay just records everything and then watches whatever takes her fancy – all I know is that it was played on our television the other night after Manchester United, complete with first start of new signing Alexis Sanchez, defeated little Yeovil Town in a convincing/but not so convincing FA Cup fourth round display – so this would have been on Friday night) and she was talking about her life and struggles. Lindsay's a big fan so there was almost a ''No Talking'' policy going on throughout the show although when we were talking she would pause it and it wouldn't start back up again until she was sure that that particular talking episode had well and truly ran its course. It took around ninety minutes to get through the one hour show and that was with her skimming through the adverts.

Davina McCall and I share some vague similarities. We both have a past where drink and drugs has played centre stage. We both also lost a parent when we were very young (my father to death; her father walked out on her) and both of us found that our remaining parent couldn't tell us anything about it. We were left to deal with figuring out this loss ourselves. You can actually tell by watching her talk about certain subjects, or at least I think I can, how she has similar parts of the ''alkie/druggie'' sickness and once again I find myself watching a celebrity with a former addiction who is still, years into recovery, displaying some of the behaviour that one would hope we would lose when we start to work on ourselves. It's discouraging but then it's good for me to remember that no one is perfect and this is, for all of us, an ongoing process.

The way that Davina and I handled our disappointment in early life seems very similar though. She doesn't seem too happy about this subject never being brought to her attention. I still feel resentful to my mother for this. In fact – since talking about this with Dr. Bacon a few times last year and since Christmas I have found myself getting all the more pissed off about it. My mother seemingly used me emotionally this Christmas so that I would go around to hers for Boxing Day dinner so that her social media looks good to other people. The pictures make it seem as though she has managed to keep her family together. Her Facebook friends will see her fake life and some of them will be deluded enough to pass it off as her real life.

The truth is that her real life is nothing like this. What she's also doing with these pictures (and I've seen them) is making it out as if myself and my brother have our families together. It's all bullshit though. The truth is that we've never been further apart, ever, and no one is actually fighting for it. The family is falling apart to the extent where I am seriously considering that move to Sunderland with the intention of never looking back. What is there really to stay here for? I guess I'd have to think about Lindsay and she would have to make some choices about what she wanted to do. There's a lot going on with her own family at the moment and so it's no surprise that I continually stall when trying to do Bacon's homework assignment and think about what the future might hold.

One thing that Dr. Bacon and I did learn through talking about my mother and how emotionally unavailable she was throughout my upbringing was how she might have developed quite a powerful Detached Protector herself. I told him the story of how, through sponsorship with AA and the Step Nine amends, I had finally, after all these years, mentioned to her what it was I needed from her. I needed to know about my dad and what he was like. She said that she would sort this out and explained that there were things of his in the attic of the house she owns but rents out to a family. If I went to the door and organised a date for picking up this stuff then she would meet me there and we would sit down and talk about this stuff for the first time since dad's death way back in 1983. Dr. Bacon found it very interesting to hear about how my mother went about this in handing the responsibilities of arranging this over to me and it never ending up happening.

There's no doubt that my mother knows that I would have liked this chat but her cowardice got in the way. I think if I was to be saying this to her face right now as opposed to writing it online in a place she'll never stumble across it that she would possibly begin with the tears. It shows where I've learned my trade. She isn't comfortable in showing emotion and vulnerability without it turning into sympathy seeking and a search for pity. It's the sign of someone who is emotionally far more fragile than she would ever want anyone to see.

This is why I look at the Facebook pictures from Christmas and just let her go on believing that her family is safe because we all turned up for one day in December. What am I going to say that will make any difference? Fuck all really. There's fuck all more I can say or do. I know how insecure she is. Not just in the way of looking in the mirror and thinking that she's a bit overweight – but actually being insecure about who she is as a person. That is why I'm sure she needs to go putting all this shit online in the first place even though she'll be sixty in a little over a month.

Do I see the point in resenting my mother any longer? No. Do I have the time and energy to be doing so? No. Does this mean that I'll magically stop resenting her? Of course not. It doesn't really work like that. I have to find a way of getting over this and getting through it normally which is usually something that you would think only time can do. I'll just have to get used to her not being a part of my life and accept that fact that she could not give me what it was I needed from her.

Davina's mum was a big drinker and died too young. My mum doesn't drink all that much but over the next few years I can't see myself seeing mine any more than Davina sees hers.

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Stevie

Resentful.

1161

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Wednesday, January 31st 2018 (Three's a Crowd)


Thank (the) God (of my Understanding) that January is over and done with. I definitely get the January Blues, assuming such a thing exists, and find it to be a difficult month to get through – likely because I have not been very productive at all during it. I feel as though this year has started off as perhaps the slowest of the years I've been sober but I do distinctly remember last January being quite slow to get moving too. February will be when 2018 kicks off with a bang, when it starts to find its feet and take shape. I hope.

There was something else I wanted to discuss in yesterday's post but that damn word count came along and ruined my chance to – so I'll talk about that just now before we go any further and I get sidetracked. It was something else that Lindsay and I were talking about during the Davina McCall interview that was on (nearly a week ago now!) Friday evening. It was about her son. Lindsay's son, Leon, who will be sixteen later on this year.

For anyone who doesn't know anything about this scenario (which is probably everyone that's reading at the moment) Lindsay's son was taken from her care a couple of years ago when she had a drunken fall that ended with her being hospitalised with a brain haemorrhage (which was pretty serious and resulted in her taking a year out from her university studies) and he went to stay with his grandmother. This is not Lindsay's mother (she died in 2014) but is the boy's father's mother. She's in her seventies and has not been able to look after him at all. Since he's been living there he's dropped out of school completely and hasn't actually been in at all this whole term. He's not spent one single day in school in this final year of his education.

He's also stolen plenty money from his gran and has basically turned into a little shit. Now the tide is turning and it seems as though social workers are beginning to reverse their views on what should happen and what is in Leon's best interests long term. One of the social workers who has been in involved in the case since the start even mentioned something about him moving back with Lindsay full time by March of this year. I am pleased to hear that Lindsay is using her head on this one. It would be easy for her to go along with this and agree it to be a good idea. This way she would be reunited with family for good and the toxic grandmother would be out of the equation. Where would this leave our life though?

Would Leon steal from us? How would Lindsay and I go about encouraging him to get on with his own life? Leaving school with no interest in education or work would make his arrival a very interesting one for a whole host of reasons, and not many of them good. It seems as though the social workers have made some tremendous mistakes in all of this and a boy who has been removed from his mother's care one year will be returned a couple of years later a different boy altogether. The deal is that I will have to meet the main social worker who is dealing (very badly) with this whole situation so that she can judge me and then, assuming I pass her standards, will meet Leon himself before us all then determining how we should proceed next. Basically – when should he move in with us.

I think that this illustrates one or two of the problems we face as a society and one of the reasons I went to college in 2012/13 to study social care. I wanted to know why our care system is so poor when it should, on paper at least, be very strong. I came to realise that it is the people who work in the field who are the problems and the main reason being that anyone can come off the street and study social care. Then, as long as you have the qualifications (which are really easy to get when compared with other qualifications of the same level in other subjects), you can walk into a job. It is also one of the career paths where being a woman is a tremendous advantage.

The thing is – many people take on jobs that they are no good at whatsoever yet they decide to do them because the financial and status related benefits to them personally outweigh, in their eyes, the potential damage that they will cause. They want the money and status so they take on the job, even though they know in their hearts that they are not suited to it and that someone else could do it better. Once in the job it is then almost impossible for them to lose it, as Lindsay and I will find out when we go through with the long and complicated complaints procedure against this Elaine woman who has been the cause of so much damage here.

Leon now does not go to school and steals money. He's in trouble, there's no doubt about it, and the other kids he still has as friends in the scheme he lives will be moving on soon to college and university and so on leaving him pretty isolated. This is what they are saying anyway. Now he will be uprooted once again and moved in with his mother again and her partner.

Hey – it might all work out fine. It probably will in the end, it usually always does, but in the meantime, until it starts working out fine, there will likely be a lot of uncertainty regarding how this will all pan out. March is far too early. That is one thing that most of us seem to agree on. I'll have to meet him gradually and Lindsay admits that she too has a relationship to develop with him all over again given how long it has been since they lived together and spoke with one and other without a social worker present. Baby steps will then follow. . .

The life of alcoholics and problem drinkers, eh? Kids tend to get dragged down with us. Now that we are sober though there is a need to try to do our best not to fuck this one up. To take it super slow. There's a lot at stake after all.

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Stevie

Wondering what 2018 might have in store.

1122

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Thursday, February 01st 2018 (January in Numbers)


The number I should really be thinking about at this moment in time is the number 300. That's as many words as I'm supposed to be writing, or rather – should have by now written!, about my hopes and aspirations for the future for my clinical psychologist for when I see him later on this afternoon. I'm going to look at the numbers from the recent past first though (I like stalling after all) – the numbers that made up the month of January.

Days Working: 2

That's tremendously poor but it's the way it's worked out. I worked one day a couple of weeks ago and then again yesterday after a poor start to what was supposed to be an excellent working week. The plan is that I will try to make this month better and more productive in every way possible than January was and with regards to working this should definitely not be an issue. I'll be half way to equalling it by the end of today! It's really important I force this issue and get out to work enough that a pattern begins. I cancelled the dentist yesterday since I won't have the two hundred quid lying around and would have had to take it out of the bank or Credit Union, which I'm not doing. It has to come from money earned from cleaning windows and so far I don't have nearly enough. This'll change in the coming weeks, I promise. I also believe my sleeping will return to 'normal' once a decent working and college routine is established.

Days at College: Not Many

To be fair there hasn't been a whole lot for me to be going in for but with the second semester starting up on Monday I expect to be in class for the full days on both Mondays and Wednesdays, plus a little extra if needed from time to time. Along with work – this is one part of my life that I really look forward to getting back into and in a hurry too.

Miles Walked: 226

That's more like it! This is actually quite a decent little total and is the second best month I've managed since starting this up last February. On Monday I walked seventeen miles which turned out to be the longest walk I've done since September 30th. I'll have less days this month to compete with such an impressive mile total but plan to keep going strong in this area, maybe just not beat this one.

Sugar Consumed: Lots!

This is one area that I actually plan on greatly reducing. Just one more week to go and things will be changing up in my diet. I've already reduced the amount of sugar I take in tea and coffee and don't bother with sauce or anything like that with my dinner. Still though I am over my target some days. It doesn't take much to be honest. I'll have to go through quite a gruelling schedule of actually weighing out and measuring and working out how much I've been taking from one day to the next from next Wednesday until I get good enough at knowing how much sugar is actually in the things I am likely to eat and portion sizes in which case I'll be in better control of it all. To get things started off though I will have to go about measuring out everything so that I know for sure.

So with that out of the way I can perhaps concentrate a little on this homework for Dr. Bacon, my clinical psychologist, which is actually due in this afternoon when I next see him at our appointment at half past three. I don't have anything written despite having two full weeks to come up with something. It's not that I'm too lazy to write (most will already know this about me given my commitment to this cause and how I type up something in here every single day) – it's more that I have no idea what I am supposed to be writing. It's meant to be about my hopes for the future but I just cannot think at all where I would like to see myself going.

At the moment anywhere is possible. As soon as I start picking some doors to go through there are others that begin to close. Life begins to seem a lot more limited. I just do not know. What do I see in the future? What even do I see myself getting at the end of my studies? This is also something I just have no idea about. I'm still just running with an idea that one of the lecturers said to us back at the induction in August:

Lecturer – ''Even if you don't end up working in radio, or even in the creative industries at all, you should still complete the course and get your degree. When you have a degree there are all sorts of opportunities open to you.''

I shouldn't quote him on that but it was something very similar. I don't even know why I chose this course in the slightest. At the moment I am just concentrating on getting through what is put in front of me. If thee is work to do for college then I'll put the effort into getting it done. I won't be thinking about what comes at the end of it all. Perhaps this is a big flaw in my thinking. Dr. Bacon seems to want me to think beyond this. He wants me to start thinking about what all this is getting done in order to achieve. He wants me to commit to something whereas I am still playing it safe, keeping my cards close to my chest for fear of looking rather than placing them on the deck to reveal all and show my vulnerability. I guess I'll just have to walk into that session this afternoon with my homework undone. I wonder if this is what he means by me not having done the hard parts.

Thinking about the future still holds for me great uncertainty. I can't really see past the next few days, maybe a couple of weeks. When I think too far ahead I just lose focus. At the end of the day I just don't really know which direction I'm heading in and whether or not it's the right one. I just don't know.

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Stevie

Doesn't know where in life he's headed.

1106