Number Forty-Four
This Was the Year That Was — Part One
Wow, this is only my 44th story posted on Medium in all of 2020. I often posted that many in a month when I used to write on another platform, Cowbird.com. From 2012 through 2017, I posted in excess of 2,000 stories there — an average of 400 stories per year. My stories averaged 1,000 to 1,500 words in length.
Yeah, that was back when I was writing like I was running out of time. I was big on living each year like it was my last — an idea I got from Stephen Levine’s book on that subject. It got harder to buy into that way of thinking, as each year made way for another. That approach had it’s time, then yielded to a new way of looking at life.
These days, I have slowed my pace down, in many ways, and quite intentionally. I’m pacing myself, as I work at doing what I need to do to try to sustain life to the age of 100. I have 34 years to go, so I’ve decided to walk, not run, on my journey to triple-digit longevity.
I’ve shifted my focus from writing like I was running out of time, to writing only when I am moved to do so. I didn’t want writing to become just another thing I did out of habit — which it was becoming. I was writing because I felt like people expected it of me, not because I was truly driven by an inner voice with something to say. That’s how it had been when I started out, in 2012, but sometime between when Cowbird folded up shop in 2017, and this past year, that driving inner voice had become but a whisper.
Don’t get me wrong, I still write, just not in this form, or for posting purposes. I’ve largely been focusing on exercising other parts of my brain, especially since the beginning of the pandemic. It’s just felt like what I’ve needed to do to get through 9 months (so far) of a quarantine period.
I started out in a mental frame of mind not unlike what I would go into at the beginning of a long cruise when I was in the Navy. That has helped a lot — but the longest cruise I ever went on in the Navy was 7 months. Granted, things seemed to be loosening up a little, a few months ago, and I started getting out to the store several times a week, and began to feel like it would all be over soon. I even got as adventurous as getting my hair cut — by a young trusted friend who had just opened up her own shop, which I knew she kept clean and safe.
However, as this virus has taken a turn for the worst, and is now the worst it has been, I don’t go out at all. We’re letting them deliver all of our groceries to our front door. I do what I’ve been doing from the start. I sanitize everything, every single package, every grocery item, before it goes past our front dining room, which we never use as a dining room. It is now our sanitation station. Then, I carefully wash my hands.
What has helped to keep me from going bat-shit crazy during all of this has been a number of positive developments. The number one danger of being quarantined for such a long period of time is a sense of isolation. That hasn’t happened for me yet — not by a long shot. Dude, I am more connected with more people in my life, today, than I have ever been, probably in my entire life.
I have weekly hour-long sessions with nine different people that I am sponsoring in a12 Step program, in addition to the two sessions I have with my own sponsor. I’m going through the 12 Steps using two different vehicles, a Step guide that uses that program’s Basic Text, and another Step guide that uses the first draft of that Basic Text, aka the Grey Book (many people are finding the Grey Book to be a more valuable tool than the finished Basic Text, in terms of helping one get in touch with the spiritual and emotional side of recovery. It’s more raw, and much more real. It gets straight to the heart of the matter, in a refreshingly unvarnished way).
Five of the people I sponsor are in the United Kingdom, one is in Texas, and three are from Virginia, where I live — but all sessions are done either on-line through Zoom, or on the phone. I’m not taking any chances, physically, with this virus. I have several high risk conditions, and my wife has more than I do. I want to live!
I had just made my way back to the rooms of this 12 Step program a little over a year ago, after many years away from it. I had been very involved with putting together their Basic Text, and the preceding Grey Book, 40 years ago when I first went there. That was just a matter of being in the right place at the right time, with a valuable set of skills (typing, writing and editing) for such a project. Those skills got put to good use those first 4 years of my recovery.
One of the last things I worked on, during those first 4 years clean, was the history of that fellowship. Back then, it was difficult to get many people interested in it. A funny thing happened during the 35 years that I wasn’t there — history became something everybody loved. I’ve also discovered, upon my return, that I am very much considered to be an important part of that history. Who knew? While I was gone, the program grew from about 2,000 meetings in about 5 countries, to close to 80,000 meetings in 160 different countries.
I have to admit — I felt a bit like Thomas Jefferson in the show Hamilton, when he returns from years in Paris, having missed the entire Revolutionary War, singing, “So, what’d I miss?” as he strolls back in, still remembered for his work on the document that launched that revolution (the Declaration of Independence), but having never been a part of the fight itself.
I was a little tentative at first, not sure how people would feel about a guy who missed 35 years of an organization’s growth. So far, I’ve experienced nothing but an open-armed welcome back virtual hug from everyone I’ve encountered. Many from back then are still around and happy to see me back, while many were not even born yet when we were writing the book that would help to save lives. We used to think about those not even born yet while we were putting that book together, often invoking them to inspire our work — “so that this way out of hell might be available to those not even born yet.”
At the first meeting I attended, back when they were live and in person, I was hoping I could just be anonymous for a little while, just be another member, not a historical figure. Unfortunately, a guy who remembered me speaking at a “predecessors” speaker jam five or six years before, recognized me, so my covers were blown from the start. I often felt more uncomfortable than not in the local meetings I attended those first 6 months. I apparently had the longest time in recovery in the area. They make a much bigger deal out of “time” than I am really comfortable with. But my spirit told me I was there for a reason, so I kept going back, as awkward as it felt for me.
The week before my new home group was planning to celebrate my 40th anniversary, I began my quarantine. That was early March. I would not be able to make it to my own celebration. Then, the church we met in closed its doors anyway, so it wasn’t going to happen at all.
Instead, I found a meeting on the Zoom platform, that was beaming in every night from Seattle, Washington, where, if you remember, the virus first struck in this country. There, they insisted on celebrating my anniversary that Saturday night, with me telling my recovery story.
That was at the end of the week in which the entire world, just about, had shut down and gone into quarantine. Being on line, more people who meant something to me were able to attend my celebration, than ever would have been possible, live and in person on a week night in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
See, this is the problem when you haven’t written like this for awhile. I’m already at 1500 words, and I feel like I have so much more to say. So, I’m going to wrap this up here, and if I feel so moved, will continue my story tomorrow — or maybe even later today. This is long enough for one posting.
Thanks for reading, and keep coming back!
