On the surface, everything is getting better every day. Inside, the daily rollercoaster of emotions continues to drain my resources. Work is getting better: I’m finally settling into my new role, feeling tentatively confident in what I’m doing, and my supervisor Jan no longer has to roll his eyes at my perceived slowness. Yesterday was actually brilliant, as at the end of the day I was thanked for my hard work in getting the number of live online enquiries down to below 200 (apparently it’s been over 300 for months). I’d finally done something good in my colleagues’ eyes, and the danger of being demoted or sacked seemed to slip even further away. Still, I woke up this morning with the usual jolt of fear, the feeling that tells me something bad is about to happen. I’m about to get a phonecall or an e-mail from them, telling me I’ve made a huge mistake and they don’t want me any more. That fear will not go away. To be fair, I’m still relatively new to all of this and I never expected the anxiety to subside completely before I’d been in the job for at least a good few months. In AA it took at least a year for me to feel comfortable in all my regular meetings. Sometimes I can still feel that anxiety about walking into a meeting room, even now, two and a half years down the line. Will I still be anxious about going to work in two years from now? I really hope not. The mornings, at best, are just about bearable now, for it is the mornings when the fear tends to be at its most active. Every day when I get up it’s like stepping onto a rollercoaster: the carriage slowly starts to move, and as it gets closer to the time when I have to go to work, the ride takes me higher and higher into the sky. The moment I walk into work at midday is the moment when the rollercoaster reaches its peak and begins to descend violently. The next six hours at work see all the ups and downs of the ride throwing me around insanely.

I’ve been taking anti-depressants for a week now, and I’m experiencing all the old questions about whether they really work for me or not. So much so that I don’t even want to talk about it. I know that my sex drive has decreased significantly, so something is happening. In spite of the loss of libido, I decided to do something potentially silly over the weekend: I went to see Gareth. I hadn’t seen him for about six months. For some reason I couldn’t get him off my mind last week. I missed our encounters, our kisses, our cuddles, our wild nights in Hertfordshire, more than ever. So I called him up, and he came to collect me in central London, then drove me through torrential rain out to his lovely warm house in the countryside, where we made love for a few hours until we were both exhausted. My libido appeared to go through a brief revival that night. It was, of course, wonderful. I couldn’t stop smiling. I knew I had never experienced that kind of intimacy and joy with another man. I knew I was in love with him that night.

Whether Gareth is in love with me or not, is probably a question I will never be able to answer. On Sunday I had to leave his place pretty early as he was having friends over for lunch, and I couldn’t possibly get in the way. I haven’t heard from him since, and as always I’m wondering why I should continue to pursue a relationship that only pays dividends once in a blue moon. I’ve always known that he has an incredibly busy life, and I’m slowly coming to accept that he just isn’t the romantic type. He’ll never send me a text message on a week night, he’ll never buy me flowers, take me out for a meal, invite me round more than once a fortnight, watch a film with me. Six months ago I was ready to give up on him completely. But now I can’t help thinking of how things have turned out with my dad: in a similar way, I’ve come to accept that I’ll never see my dad more than once every few months, and there are many things that he will never do with me, not because he’s a bad person. Just because it’s not in his nature to be open with his feelings. I’m happy to be there for my father when he wants me to be there. Maybe I can abandon this old selfish need for the perfect romance and accept the occasional offerings I get from Gareth. When I’m with him, I get to know what love is. It’s such a rare thing, so precious, I don’t believe I can ever exclude him from my life again.

I’ve just drafted my Participant Letter—the letter I’ll send to initial contacts to try to find participants.  After writing that, though, it seemed funny to only have that one letter—after all, what do I send to participants who maybe hear about my research from someone or to people who’ve been recommended as possible participants?  So, I also drafted a letter to send to actual (possible) participants, with a bit more detail about my project, confidentiality assurances, what I need from them, what I’m aiming to do.  I added some language which emphasized their power in participating as I tried to make it seem like they had a great opportunity to shape the outcome of this research and, thus, also trying to make my research sound worthwhile to give them a reason to want to participate.  Ugh.  I like the letter and am happy with how it’s turned out, but who can know how well it will or won’t gather up research interviewees!

If I listen to fellow students, it’ll take me another 4 months of thankless hounding to make any progress.  It’s hard to remain distant from what they say.  I fall into it and start to feel like what they say is truth, like it’s not just their perspective or their experience but ‘the way it is’ for everyone, all the time.  I suppose that’s part of the immersive quality of living and working in an environment—perhaps I’m being immersed in the British pessimism for which this island is so famous?  I’ll tell myself that as a way out of it and cling vehemently to my American positivity.  I never thought it was American as much as I thought it was a result of my mother or my own disposition, but some of the darker varieties are much more willing to attribute it to my national origins, so it seems only fitting that, living here, I should do the same.  What does it matter, anyway?  I am as I am because I am—doesn’t matter much why, really.

Although I guess I only think that in relation to myself, seeing as how my entire project rests on the ‘why’ and ‘how’ behind the way Muslims think of themselves and their own place or belonging here in Britain.

Perhaps that is what we (an American woman and 1.6 million British Muslims) have in common—a need to express or re-express who we are in the face of others’ expectations or assumptions about us.  If I can write about that without sounding too poetically saccharin, I may be able to position my interest in this project as striking right at the core of me and, therefore, being wholly relevant and justifiable.

Although, on that note, it seems ridiculous that we, as social scientists or general inquisitors of the world, should have to ‘justify’ our interest in terms of being rooted in our personal positions in the world.  I can’t be interested in my project ‘for the sake of knowledge’ or ‘because it seems interesting’ or even because ‘theoretically it seems puzzling and I’m into theory’.  All of those answers are still met with eyes which say, “Yes, but there are many things which are interesting or could lead to new knowledge—what is it about THIS project that brought you to it?”  It’s a bit like trying to answer why I like the colour green or what made me fall in love with my soon-to-be husband.  Apparently, I keep giving answers about how tall he is and how he always offers to get me my sweater from upstairs even though I haven’t complained of being cold and, while nice, those are only surface answers.  What is it about his soul, my life, our experiences that made an ‘us’?  I always find that to be relatively unanswerable.  ‘Relatively’ because I try to answer it—I trace my triumphs and losses, I overlay his onto mine, I attempt to draw out some explanatory trajectory of two unrelated paths which then meet—and I always feel, somewhere in the middle of this explanation, that I’m just drawing an impossible picture for people who insist they can see.  And so it is with this project.  Or so it has been up until now.

Today I sit and find myself staring at a possibility which could explain (to others) what it is about THIS project that made me fall in love with it—that drew me to it, that led me to dream it up, that drives me through all the confusion, self-doubt and joy it brings me.

This is a good day.

Some (read: most) days I am pretty sure I am a colossal idiot with no original or intelligent thought in my brain. I tell myself I am stupid and that my opinion is stupid and that both the shape of my face and mop of hair on my head are all stupid as well. Sometimes it’s really so much fun being me. There are very few areas where I feel consistently confident, so when The Bee mentioned today how I should write about one of our favorite shows on the tube, I was (thankfully) reminded that I’m not all that much of a tool because, you know what? I have great fucking taste in television. There are times when I think that maybe we watch too much TV and that our minds are going to mush because of it and would it KILL us to get some sunshine once in a while? Then I remember that we are constantly rejecting shows from our TiVo simply because we cannot commit to another weekly slot because our schedule is tenuous as it is AND that it gets dark at 5:05 around here anymore so screw the sun since it can’t be bothered to work around my schedule.

DEXTER. I’m talking about Dexter people. Please tell me you watch this show and DO NOT tell me that you don’t watch it because you can’t afford Showtime because I’m as cheap as a dollar store christmas card but even I decided we had to spring for the movie package because I couldn’t be without “America’s Favorite Serial Killer”. That tagline makes the show sound worse than it actually is. Actually, it makes it sounds both better AND worse because, let this be said now,  the show is no pleasant stroll through the park. There is often very violent, visceral, gut churning subject matter not to mention imagery but good LORD if that doesn’t make it one of the most original and well written shows out there. Hell, how many cable shows get picked up by a network to run the show in syndication just after the first season wraps? I don’t actually know the answer to that question but what I CAN tell you is that CBS picked up Dexter to repeat it’s amazing first season the summer after it originally aired and I’m pretty sure that doing so secured a whole new set of eyes for the show. Because it’s awesome.

Four seasons in all and Dexter has rarely left an opportunity open for disappointment. Yeah, the 3rd season lost my interest just a bit but that was mostly due to the fact that everything had become so convoluted at that point and the big shocks of Seasons One and Two just weren’t there anymore. Well well well, my comrades in skepticism, you will be pleased to know (if you don’t already) that Dexter BA-RAWGHT it this season. Who knew that “domestic” Dexter would get himself in more trouble than ever before? John Lithgow as the Trinity Killer (more like Quad Killer after last episode’s revelation) has added an amazing degree of crazy to the mix. Lundy dies, I mean SERIOUSLY? Can Deb even begin to catch a break romantically? Girl is doomed. The biggest thorn in my side, and has been the same since about Season Two when she started to get an attitude (and possible reconstructive facial) adjustment, is Rita; Dexter’s dopey, doting, ever-so annoying wifey poo.

She WAS perfect for him in Season One, allowing him to go about his killing in peace with few questions asked along the way. Then she seemed to get a full on make-over (botox and 50’s housewife chic, oh my!) in Season Two and went from the sweet and understanding, good natured, if not a complete doormat Rita, to supreme holder of the bitch-face Rita, and in some regards, rightly so. So, Dexter had his tryst with Lila. It was a bad call on all counts. He took care of that problem though, didn’t he? I have no sympathy for a cheat, but even I had a hard time begrudging Dexter after that one. Rita got all know-it-all and pushy and made Dexter join NA even though no one in their right mind would ever mistake Dexter for a heroin addict. Rita just, well, really sucked and this season she took suck to a whole new level. But Dexter loves her and the kids and if she’s cool with Dex then I guess she doesn’t need to meet the inside of industrial strength plastic wrap just yet.

Dexter is the perfect good guy’s bad guy. Trust me, you want this killer on your team. He has a soft spot for kids, likely because he was left soaking in 2 inches of his mother’s blood for 2 days as a toddler. See? He’s got issues just like the rest of us. His tend to lean toward the extreme and horrifyingly tragic than most of us have been exposed to but pobody’s nerfect. Dexter is more than just cunning as a killer, he is downright genius. The man passed up a medical license to work in forensics as a blood spatter specialist because it’s his passion NOT because he doesn’t have the brains for biology.

Dexter is also the owner of the best theme music/opening titles on television. But don’t take my word for it. You be the judge…

Life in the real adult world continues to be daunting, challenging, amazing and emotionally draining on a daily basis. After three weeks of working almost full time, I still wouldn’t say I’m used to the new working lifestyle yet. The extra workload that I’ve taken on as of last week continues to be troubling. My supervisor, Jan, does not appear to trust me with the extra work yet. Every day for three hours I have him sitting next to me, almost breathing down my neck, watching everything I do in my new role, looking out for the inevitable mistakes. For the first couple of days it was fine, I needed him there. By today it was just depressing. I feel really stupid whenever he’s around, like I can’t get anything right. I’ve realised when he’s not around that I seem to find the work much easier. Him being around makes me nervous and far more prone to mistakes. I wish I could say something to him, ask him to get off my back, but it’s not going to happen. I’m still the newest person in the office, the dogsbody if you like – what I think or feel doesn’t matter. Hopefully by the time Jan goes on holiday just before Christmas I will know the job well enough to be able to do it on my own without a second thought.

Every morning since last Monday I have come close to experiencing a panic attack over this new bit of work that I’m doing. Last Thursday was particularly bad. This morning wasn’t especially nice. I experienced all the classic symptoms of panic: sweating, shaking, dry mouth, dizziness, heart palpitations, nausea. I seriously felt like calling in sick, but I knew I couldn’t.  In recovery I’ve always known that I can’t afford to go down the road of running away when things get tough. So I went into work, faced the fear and endured six hours of my personal hell. I know what lesson God is trying to teach me through this experience: that the only way to conquer the fear is to walk through it. All my life I’ve used every single excuse, every way I can think of to get around the fear. In doing so I have allowed it to stay alive. Now I have to kill it. It doesn’t want to be killed, and so it is putting up a good fight. Every day I face the same battle inside my head. This could go on for months, or years. I just don’t know. As a consequence I remain fairly unconfident in my chances of still having a job by the New Year. It’s not that I’m failing miserably in the job, but I’m hardly pulling off a spectacular success here. Jan could pass on the message to Melanie at any time that I am not turning out to be the assistant I promised to be. I could have my hours cut, or I could be dispensed with altogether. I have no idea how realistic the chances of that happening are, I really don’t.

Now that I’ve promised to move in with Ethan next month I am faced with extra pressure to keep this job. Moving to Waterloo is something I want more than anything in the world. I’ve yearned to be able to leave home and support myself for years, literally years. No one knows how important this change is more than I do. I get the strong impression that everything I want in life is going to come at a price. The tests I’m going through at the moment are obviously the price I have to pay for the independence I’ve felt I so richly deserve for the best part of a decade. If I was a different person, none of this would be a test. For any ‘normal’ person going to work every day and facing potential silent hostility might be a doddle. For me, with my history of severe anxiety and avoidance, it is the biggest test I could ever endure. I have to go through it, there’s no way around it any more.

I can’t help feeling bad for Ethan because I don’t want to let him down. If I lose this job it won’t just be me who suffers: Ethan will have to find someone to replace me in the flat within the next two weeks. We’ve already struggled to find a third person to fill the other room which is becoming available in January. Over the weekend we placed an ad on the internet, inviting quiet non-drinkers to get in touch with us. The response has been sizeable, but so far no one perfect seems to have wandered across our path. Yeah, it’s only been a couple of days, and we have over a month left to find someone. But already Ethan is panicking, and because of that, I’m panicking too. He really wants someone from the rooms living with us – because we haven’t found anyone in AA or SLAA or any fellowship who happens to be looking for a room in Waterloo right now, it’s becoming an issue. I get the feeling that Ethan is an even bigger worrier than me. Who’d have thought!  God, I really hope this all works out. I don’t know how many times I’ve said that this week. I just know that I am facing the biggest challenges of my life right now. I’m scared, and excited, and confused and anxious and pretty freaked out, but I am sober. That has to count for something.

During a conversation with a longtime friend I stumbled upon a truth that had not occurred to me before:  I entered my first marriage not believing in divorce.  When I got married the second time I did not believe in marriage.  “Well, Sam,” he asked, “Whaddaya believe in now?”

 See, back when I was dating Brian I sent an email to this friend that proved to be a great clue in unraveling what went wrong with my marriage a decade later.  I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this man (my motives are questionable, as it turns out, and we’ll get to that later), but I did not feel marriage was necessary.  A walk down an aisle and a piece of paper, I argued, did not determine the durability of a relationship.  And given how everything turned out, you’d think there would be some sort of satisfaction in the “I told you so,” but there isn’t. 

 Still, for Brian, it was a deal breaker.  There wasn’t some deep-seated disdain for the institution on my part; I just felt it unnecessary.  Therefore, I argued further (from the beginning it seems, there was a lot of arguing going on.  We’ll get to that later, too), it was reasonable that I would concede my position and finally agree to marry Brian.

When I say, “Finally agree to marry Brian,” I am confessing, albeit coyly, to the week-long tactics I took in avoiding his attempts at proposing.  First, the engagement ring was hidden in a jar of sand that he brought me back from a beach trip early in our courtship.  “Did you ever look at the sand?” He asked while handing me the jar. 

I saw the diamond poking out just a little bit and I panicked.  I lightly shook the jar and said, “Why?  It’s only sand,” before setting it back on the kitchen counter and walking away.

He tried again a few nights later.  We were lying in bed discussing our future.  It was late, we were sleepy and when he rolled over to pull the ring box out of his night stand drawer it was easy enough to pretend to be asleep.

About a week after his first proposal attempt, he caught me.  It was August and I had a house full of people over to eat chili and watch the first Monday night football game of the season (pre-season, HOF game, the re-born Browns vs. Dallas.  No, I don’t remember who won.).  When the guests were gone and the kitchen was cleaned up, we were relaxing on the couch.  I wanted chocolate, badly.  I got the idea that Brian was giving me a Hershey Bar, so when he pulled the ring out there was no avoiding.  I took a deep breath, smiled, and took a huge leap of faith that everything would be ok when I said yes.  I reasoned with myself that any proposal and acceptance was a leap of faith; different reasons for different people, but still a leap of faith.  I still believe that.

I envisioned a simple and intimate wedding, an elegant elopement.  Maybe we could get married on a beach.  Maybe we could have Newt Gingrich perform the ceremony at the top of Peachtree Plaza.  But Brian wanted a bigger wedding.  Not huge, just big enough to accommodate his whole immediate family.  Immediate family, I learned, means something entirely different to the Irish Catholics amongst us.  But I quickly became comfortable with this concession as well.  His family was open and welcoming and are very easy people to love.  I did not have the wedding dress I wanted or the cake I wanted.  But I did have the man I wanted. 

Or did I? 

I have been told by one source that I seek and require perfection in the people I surround myself with and this is why I am often disappointed.  While there is some evidence to support that, it just doesn’t feel like the right explanation for what is going on here.  I can point to exactly what’s imperfect about my closest loved ones and recognize that I love them despite, or maybe because of their imperfections.  No, this is not the explanation for what went wrong in my marriage.

I’ve also been told by another source that I actually only expect perfection in romantic endeavors and that I want it so badly that I will change my definition of perfect, or imagine it, or convince myself that I’m wrong when I see contradicting proof.  Again, there is some corroborating evidence, but more so to the contrary.  I can readily admit (now, not a few weeks ago) that the biggest thing I can fault Brian with is for not being the man I imagined him to be.  As disappointing as that is for me, it must have been infinitely more frustrating for him to spend a decade not being seen.  But in contrast, I also saw and accepted and adapted to and loved his imperfections.  I knew before I married him that the boy could not communicate.  Correction:  Could not communicate the way one would expect.  I understood the reasons he made it more difficult for himself and I did everything I could to accommodate them.  I acted as a conduit between him and the outside world sometimes, it seemed.  I recognize now that my walking on egg shells was really just one of the many ways I had to ‘handle’ him over the years.  I thought this was a labor of love that I bore in silence, but in reality, I can’t count how many times I told him I was tired of being his bad day.  So, no, this is also not the explanation for what went wrong in my marriage, either.

He pinpoints his disconnection from me at just over two years ago and has pretty strong evidence of his own.  He chose to drive my (brand spanking new) Ford 500 to a hockey game with a friend.  He’d never taken it out before, but I could see why he’d prefer that over his F-150 for parking reasons, if nothing else.  Afterwards they went to a few bars.  He got separated from his friend and decided to drive himself home.  Along the way he ended up driving the wrong direction on Capital Boulevard and hit an F-150 head on while driving my (did I mention, brand-spanking new) Ford 500 between 45 and 50 miles per hour.  The F-150 was estimated to be going about the same speed.  When I arrived at the hospital I didn’t know what I would find because the police officer would not give me any information over the phone.  I was so relieved to see he was alive that I disregarded his words upon seeing me, “You can leave me.  You can have everything.”  God damn it.  I thought it was guilt talking.  Or alcohol.  Or Both.

I have journals and class assignments I wrote during that time that are proof to me now of what I was thinking and feeling for this man who could have (and by all laws of physics pertaining to human anatomy should have) died.  So while he claims our marriage was already over at that point, I do have proof that I certainly did not know it.  I am thankful for these little clues I’ve unwittingly been leaving myself to find all these years later – the long saved e-mails to friends, the journals, even the dated playlists on my iPod. 

All this talk of proof may seem curious, but it’s imperative for me right now.  There have been so many years of being convinced that what I see, I don’t really; what I know, I don’t really.  Some, but not all of that convincing I did to myself.

How do two people who live in such close proximity live so many worlds apart?  I developed a new gratitude for each and every day that I had left to spend with this man and at the exact same time he saw driving a sedan into a full sized pick up truck as a viable alternative to working on our marriage.  With all of my own faults and imperfections, even I can recognize that there is nothing so wrong with me as to warrant that.

I still do not fully know what happened, but I am coming to accept that I may never know everything because at least half of the real answer is locked up inside someone for whom I will never again compromise myself to try and understand.

Ours wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination an unholy union.  Good came with the bad and I will not try and quantify either for comparison purposes.  There’s no point.  I learned lessons from this marriage that will serve me well in life.  I am older and wiser than I was a decade ago and I know better than to say things like never again.  But what I can say is never again like that. 

Life, love…none of it is static.  There is no reason that I cannot live one day at a time.  In fact, there is every reason that I should.

“Well, Sam,” he asked, “What do you believe in now?”

 Simple.  Myself.

When it comes to survival, self-doubt is not an option.

That’s the smallest post i can put up in the 2 minutes i have before November 2009 gets over. This is it for this month.

—-

Life is simple, it's just not easy.

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. ~Sylvia Plath…amen!

Not a good day, really. First thing this morning I had an appointment with my doctor, requested because I thought maybe I want to try anti-depressants again, to combat the naturally increased levels of anxiety associated with my job. The doctor ended up seeing me half an hour late, as he always does, causing a great deal of stress as I would have to be at work within the hour. He only gave me a few minutes, just like he always does, in which I had to persuade him that my problem really isn’t just a case of mild newcomer nerves. I got a prescription for three months’ worth of citalopram, which I was on last year. I had thought it might be useful to try something else, something that won’t cause all the unpleasant side effects that put me off citalopram before, but since the doctor was clearly too busy for a proper discussion, I had to make do with what I was given. I really can’t wait to move next month so that I can sign up with a new doctor.

When I was finally out of the doctor’s surgery I rushed home to take the first tablet in the course, before I had to go to work. Maybe it’s an alcoholic thing to do, rushing home in a frenzy to take a pill in the hope that I might feel better, rather than leaving it for tomorrow. With some extra serotonin in my system, I think I felt OK on the tube to Notting Hill this morning. I certainly didn’t feel horrible like I have every morning for the past two weeks. That can probably be put down to the expectation effect, rather than any real chemical action. SSRI’s such as citalopram take weeks to have any real effect, which is how they are not habit-forming.

At work I had three hours of customer service to look forward to – after yesterday’s ‘experience’ they seem to think I’m ready to be let loose on the public properly. I logged on to find about 300 customer e-mail enquiries that urgently needed responding to. The same guy who sat with me yesterday at the helpdesk sat with me again today, offering help when it was needed. I got the impression after an hour that I should be starting to feel more confident in answering the enquiries on my own. My supervisor began to sound tired and bored with my endless requests for help. After two hours, I noticed him rolling his eyes nearly every time I spoke. I began to panic, horrified by the thought that I was being a burden, and I made a few mistakes, choosing to go ahead and respond to enquiries alone rather than risk further eye-rolling by asking for more help.

After three hours I had to take a break just to calm down. I went out to Starbucks, sat down and stuffed my face with sugar. My hands were shaking; I was sure that I’d finally proved myself to be the failure that I always thought I was in their eyes. I’d reduced someone who was supposed to be helping me to eye-rolling boredom. In his eyes, I could be a bit slow, at best. Stupid, at worst. The thought of being seen as stupid is absolutely horrifying to me. I don’t know why.

After using up my paid break I returned to the office where I was allowed to get on with the other part of my job, the bit that I’ve got used to over the past two weeks, where I have to update the website with retailer offers. I’m comfortable with this bit of the job: it’s got nothing to do with customer service, it’s just typing words and numbers into a live website. Of course, two weeks ago I was in a similar place with this part of the job to the place where I am now with the new part. I thought I’d never understand any of it two weeks ago. Now it’s almost a piece of cake. If I can get my head around that, surely I can understand anything. Well, that’s what I’m hoping.

At 5pm Melanie announced to the office that our thanksgiving dinner was ready and waiting for us downstairs. I didn’t know why the whole company was choosing to go to a thanksgiving party, until I got downstairs and saw all the alcohol. About fifty fresh bottles of various descriptions sat on a table in the corner of the room, and the thirty or so employees of the company were fighting their way over to the table to lay claim to their share of the night’s alcoholic refreshment. Melanie and some of the other directors had cooked turkey; with all the booze distracting everyone the food was almost a second thought at this point. I put some meat and potatoes on a paper plate and went to sit on the only free seat in the corner of the room. It’s a really bad space for a party: only one large sofa and a few swivel chairs had to accommodate thirty people with their dinner and drinks. From the moment I sat down I knew I wasn’t enjoying myself. Everyone separated off into their little cliques where they were bound to stay for the rest of the night. Melanie, who I might have felt comfortable chatting to, was busy serving up the food in the kitchen and didn’t look as if she would be mingling any time soon. I forced the food down my throat in three minutes and decided I’d had enough of the party. I had to leave. No one was really interested in socialising: it was all about getting pissed as quickly as possible. I had hoped that tonight would finally be my opportunity to meet the other people in the company, get to know some faces and names outside of the small, uncomfortable little team that I always work in. Alas, I didn’t stand a chance of making a single friend.

I wasn’t the first person to sneak out early tonight. One of the guys who trained with me three weeks ago was out of the door like a shot after forcing his food down in a similar way to me. At least I didn’t have to be the first to leave. Just five minutes of the event was more than enough for me. It’s not the fear of drinking that puts me off these kinds of things: it’s the fear of being around drunk people. I can’t handle it.

As soon as I left I was full of doubts once again about the future of my job. Someone was bound to notice my sudden departure. They could be thinking: what an ungrateful arse, staying only long enough to eat our food without bothering to talk to anyone! With the added pressure of the extra work that I am now being expected to do every day, I’m really fearful about the whole thing tonight. I went straight to the gay step 11 meeting from Notting Hill – I desperately needed to be in a safe place with safe people. There I managed to share about what had just happened, though it was an incredibly busy meeting and I don’t usually manage to jump in when there are so many others needing to speak. I’m glad I was able to go to the meeting tonight, and I’m really glad I was able to talk about all the things going through my mind. As a consequence I felt much better, for a while. People came up to share with me their experiences of dreaded office parties, how we all find it impossible to deal with so-called ‘normal’ people in the real world where getting drunk is the highest priority for most. The trouble with socialising in the ‘real’ world is that it’s all so meaningless. None of the conversation that I heard tonight was of any real interest to me; a few years ago it wouldn’t have mattered as I would have been too wasted to care. Today I can’t ignore the fact that most of what these people want to talk about is utter shit! I don’t want to be judgmental, it’s just the way British society works. As long as you can get really drunk, nothing else matters.

Last night was one of those bad sleeps that I have to endure every now and then, and as a consequence I didn’t feel too good this morning. It took me at least an hour to get out of bed. Almost before I knew it was time to go to work, and the old dread instantly filled me, and I desperately didn’t want to go in. I’ve been given new tasks at work to fill the extra hours that I’ve taken on this week, and yesterday could hardly be described as a success when it came to me learning how to perform my new tasks. I wasn’t looking forward to arriving today, to finding out that I’d be left to get on with the extra work alone as if I had already mastered it. I’m fast learning that my superiors don’t really want to be bothered at the moment, with it being the run up to Christmas and the mass of extra work that this necessarily entails for everyone. I felt time slow to a snail’s pace this morning as I waited desperately for the hours to pass just so I could get to work and get it over with. Time goes strange when I am under pressure – the way it always drags when I need it to pass the most is hateful. I know I’m making it drag by thinking about it so much. The anxiety makes me analyze the passing of time more than I would normally. I’m so anxious for it to be the weekend that I can’t just let the days pass without hindrance. I watch the clock constantly. I can’t help it.

When I finally got to work at noon I was unexpectedly told to go downstairs to man the helpdesk for a couple of hours, so I could get a feel for the kind of enquiries coming in over the phone at the moment. From now on part of my role will be to respond to e-mail enquiries from customers – the idea was to see if I could hack it on the phone first. Since I received the official helpdesk training when I started three weeks ago, I should have been able to handle it today without breaking a sweat. I have no idea if it looked like I was handling the job: inside I was panicking horribly the whole time. I have had a phone phobia all my life – I never use the phone if I can avoid it (and I really mean never) -  taking calls from angry customers wanting to know why their retail discounts aren’t working was just about the last way I wanted to spend today. I can understand why they thought it would be a good idea for me to do this. It would give me a more rounded feel for the business, a perspective on the bigger picture from the other side of things, the customers’ side, rather than the retailers’ side that I have been exclusively working from so far. Even though I did the helpdesk training three weeks ago I in no way felt prepared to answer the telephone today. Around me ten other operators took calls constantly, smoothly directing customers to the answers that they needed, while I sat there staring at the handset in front of me, praying for it not to ring. Some of the people who I trained with were in the room with me this afternoon. They’re lucky: they’ve had three weeks of helpline experience now. Since I started I haven’t answered a single phone call. I’ve got quite comfortable at my computer upstairs, where I can perform a multitude of tasks without ever having to speak to anyone.

I don’t know why I am so terrified of telephones. Is it the threat of hearing someone’s actual voice? The possibility that if I can’t answer a question I will have to deal with verbal abuse? In the world of retail the customer is always right, even if they’re hurling insults at you. At least on the computer I can take time to think about what I want to say, and the abuse, if there is any, doesn’t have the emotional punch that it does when you hear it coming from someone’s mouth.

Anyway, when my two hours of hell were up I was allowed to return to the slightly comforting familiarity of my usual home upstairs, after the person who had been semi-supervising me at the helpdesk told me I’d done well. I refused to believe him: for a start I’d only answered the phone once, after much persuasion and guidance and badly disguised looks of contempt from the other helpdesk operators who all had their hands full.

Upstairs, being allowed to get on with my normal job was something of a relief, just because I now find it very easy, if slightly boring at times. I remain haunted by the possibility that I may be asked to return to the helpdesk from time to time, when they are short of staff for instance. They seem to think that because I did the training I will be as good at it as everybody else. I don’t know, maybe I am good at it, I just happen to feel as if I’m being plunged into the deep end of a very deep pool every time I’m in that room.

Hopefully now that I’ve done the helpdesk once I will be able to answer the online enquiries that I am to be given in my extra hours from now on with some ease. It kind of seems like another string that I’m adding to the bow, another test to be passed. As long as I don’t have to answer the phone again for a long time, I’ll be fine. I’m learning little things in my job every day; I’ve survived two weeks of it now and when I’m doing what I’m good at, i.e. working at the computer, I would say I feel quite comfortable. There will probably never be a day when there isn’t at least one challenge to be faced. I already know what tomorrow’s challenge is going to be: a big after-work trip to the pub has been arranged and everyone is expected to go. Melanie, the American boss, is cooking turkey for everyone to celebrate thanksgiving and we are going to sit down in the pub together and eat it. Part of me is quite looking forward to the occasion. I don’t quite know what’s going to happen. Maybe it will be my long-awaited opportunity to meet the other people in the team, get to know them in a setting that isn’t entirely work-related. Since we’ll be in the pub it’s bound to emerge at some point that I don’t drink. I know the question will come up and I know what I’ll say: ‘I don’t like alcohol’. I certainly don’t owe anyone any more explanation than that. In my experience, 9 out of 10 people are perfectly happy with that answer. It’s the 1 in 10 who are the interesting ones.

A month ago, if you had told me I would be going to see my new home in the centre of London today, I wouldn’t have laughed at you. I would probably have burst into tears, collapsed to the floor and proceeded to have a fit of tragic hysterics. Today, against all previous expectations and beliefs, I saw my new home, and of course I fell in love with it. Not because it’s nice, or cosy – just because it’s going to be mine, in a month from now. It is in an amazing part of town, round the corner from the South Bank and Waterloo station, on the same road as the famous Old Vic theatre and a plethora of fancy shops and restaurants that I will undoubtedly be trying out with eagerness in the New Year. The price for the room is so reasonable, and the room itself is amazingly big, with a view that incorporates all that the South Bank of the River Thames is famous for, including the London Eye, the Imax cinema and the towering industrial chimney of the Tate Modern. I can’t believe I’m going to be living there by the end of this year. I’ve been saying ‘I can’t believe…’ a lot this weekend.

I also keep thinking how it’s all dependent on me continuing to do everything that I’m doing. For the first time since early recovery, I feel like I’ve been placed in the cockpit of a plane, and in order to survive I have to learn to steer the aircraft to safety. Two and a half years ago just having to live without alcohol was like flying a plane – today it’s growing up, taking responsibility, keeping a job that feels like the hardest flying lesson anyone ever took. If I keep doing what I’m doing, I won’t crash the plane. I’ll keep it in the air, I’ll get to dry land and everything will be OK. If for some reason something goes wrong – if I give into the feeling that I can’t go on, if I let go of the wheel and retreat to the familiar safety of my old life, then I won’t get to live in Waterloo. I’ll be a child forever.

It seems as if the past two and a half years have been bringing me to this point. This is what recovery is for. I didn’t stop drinking to be happy, make friends – I got sober to become an adult, find my place in the world. If I hadn’t got sober then I would never have spent all that time working on my sleeping patterns, daily routines, applied for all those jobs, picked myself up from all those rejections. It’s such a cliché, but I wouldn’t be here today if I were still drunk. Everything I’ve done in recovery has been about this moment: it’s made today possible. I keep repeating the fact that this is SO important because it really is. I can’t afford to fuck it up in even the slightest way.

Again, I wonder if it’s all happening too soon, if I’m jumping the gun when I should be waiting a while to save some money, pay off a few debts. If I’m supposed to be waiting, why did I get that phonecall from Ethan on Friday, asking if I was looking for a place to live? It’s well known that things happen in God’s time, is it not? Whether I’d waited a few weeks to move or a few years, I would have had to do it eventually. I’ve lived here for long enough. I need to go to Waterloo and start my new life properly.

What if I lose this job next year? What if my colleagues really hate me and don’t want me there any more? What if? What if? What if? Oh, the doubts are endless. I’m so used to them, I’m hardly listening to them. Behind that wall of fearful noise in my head I see a small child – the scared little boy I have recently started trying to get to know. He doesn’t want to leave home, he doesn’t want to go out in the world and be without mummy any more. It’s my job to become his parent. All of this stuff I’m doing, it’s all completely unknown territory to the child inside me. Last time I tried independence, my three year stint in Norwich failed spectacularly because I didn’t listen to the inner child. I drank my independence away trying to shut those childish, dark fears up. Now I have to ration my income, make budgets, pay bills, purchase my own provisions, clean my own clothes, make my own bed – and I can’t fail. I don’t want to fail. I came back to London from Norwich five years ago thinking it would only be a year or two before something came my way and I’d be able to skip off into the night again. Five and a half years later, a chance has finally come, after hardship and tears that less tough souls wouldn’t be able to weather. I have waited so long for today. Independence is here at the door when I least expected it. It’s the end of a monumental decade in my life; a decade in which I’ve been a practicing alcoholic, lived in East Anglia, studied for two full degrees, had a handful of disastrous relationships, made some incredible friends, got sober and found spirituality. Now I am sailing off into unknown and unknowable waters, for the first time or the millionth time. When I move to Waterloo next month the world won’t change; London will still be the same beautiful, crazy, scary city that it has always been. For me it might as well be destroyed and rebuilt, such is the significance of the changes about to take place in my life. These changes are necessary, I know they are – they had to happen some time, because I got sober and set God’s true plans for me in motion. I don’t know what’s in store for me. I don’t need to know – after all that’s happened, I can’t help believing that God isn’t about to let me down.

I’m going straight to the heart of danger now, looking for safety. I’m about to start, or I’m starting to live a life beyond my wildest dreams. The AA promises ARE coming true. Who’d have thought?

As I said earlier, I am making a transition from painting to photography. It is a fair question to ask why I might do that? I’ve wondered myself at times. The short answer is, I think, that I like to learn and attempt to master new things all the time. This is not to say that I had “mastered” painting but I was able to make work of which I was proud and which I was able to exhibit and sell.

I was honestly a little disillusioned with the showing and selling part of things and that may have had something to do with my making this change. Maybe more than a little, but I think I would have changed anyway. I had actually stopped painting for a year or more prior to taking up photography. The disillusionment was from my naive hope that I would have the opportunity to create and show wonderfully original work that would mean something to people and allow me to say something worth having said. But what I found once I was in a gallery is that they really are just an art selling business. That ought not to have been a surprise but somehow it still was. They wanted a product that they could sell. They would only show and sell paintings that they liked, not that I thought were either good or important. Worse yet, the paintings sold for so little that by the time I received my half of the price, I felt I would be better off with the painting than the money.

But on to photography. My renewed interest in photography started with an attraction to cameras more than anything else. They’re just cool things with all their solid black sophistication, all the slick controls and smooth moving parts. But I wouldn’t have bought a camera just for that.

I have used cameras from the earliest days of my painting career to capture material to paint from. I remember walking around my college town photographing things that interested me and taking the film home to develop and print my father’s darkroom. I was not interested in the camera as a creative tool at all. I wanted a record of the scene and the subtleties of color I saw there. That last hope turned out to be in vain as color photography in that day was complicated and unreliable. I would have done better to have the film developed by a lab but I didn’t know that then.

I’m getting off my intended track. What I want to address is finding a voice as a photographer. One of the things you do in that process is to look at the work of other photographers. It seems that all photographers are obsessed with books on the technical aspects of using a camera. I went through a number of such books but the truth is that photography is not technically all that difficult.

This is my first posting, for my first blog, in my first attempt at finding that… that thing. You know that thing I’m supposed to be doing for 30 years.

This word makes me cringe, but I can’t escape from using it here: That passion (ick) that’s supposed to turn into a hobby that turns into an enriching career. Then you become the subject of a good, recycled story.

“She was an accountant for 10 years. She had the nice house, car, clothes, money to spend. But she was miserable. She loved to bake. She got really into it, and started making cakes for friends and family. It became this hobby, then people started asking for her blueberry cakes, maple syrup cakes. Her sour cream cake is to-die-for, by the way. Now she’s got a whole list of clients and referrals. She works from home, has staff and loves it!”

Here is where a bit of dust is supposed to slough off a sleeping seed in my brain. But for us undecideds, those of us who don’t know what we can enjoy or even tolerate doing for 30 years, it’s a moment of predictable disappointment.

I’ve heard these anecdotes and know what follows. “What’s your passion? What are your hobbies? What are you good at?”

I’ve hobbled through these questions for years. OK, time to fess up. I’m 34. So I’ve known about these Career 101 questions for many, many-a years. I’m not disappointed at the questions really, I’m saddened at the only honest response I have to them.

My answers are: “Aside from the well-being of myself and those I care about, I am passionate about nothing. I have no hobbies. And I’m not really good at anything.”

Earnest career-advice giver: “Come on. There’s something you’re good at. What do you like to do?”

Me: “I like to read. I like to eat. Hang out with friends. Sometimes I try to write.”

Giver: “Ah ha! See. Writing!”

Taker: “OK. So I write. What? Some Fortune 500 company is going to give the corner office to someone who tries to write?”

“Maybe you can start a blog?”

So here it is. My blog. My attempt at making a career out of not having one.

I’ll be blogging about me; about my life, most of which is taken up by a boring corporate job, daily annoyances and self-doubt.

And I hope somewhere inside these self-absorbed entries, there are stories to enjoy. Stories that will help me find my way.

The unexpected twists and turns of life have been good to me this week – very good, in fact. Two weeks after starting work in Notting Hill, I still have a job. Unbelievable, really. Even more unbelievably, I seem to be settling into the job. I appear to be performing well in my new role. It looks like I’m getting recognition for the hard work I’ve been doing – at the end of the day I was called into an empty room by the boss, who asked me if I would like to accept more hours and a permanent role, starting from next week. There was me thinking she was going to break the bad news to me that my services were no longer required. “Thanks very much, sling your hook,” she could have said, but she didn’t. She actually went as far as to tell me that I had impressed her over the past fortnight, that I was turning out to be a valued member of ‘the team’. I was left utterly speechless – I could barely thank her. I’m still thinking somewhere that she must have made a mistake, or that it’s all a big joke, and when I get in on Monday they’ll drop the pretence. Surely they can’t really think I’m that good at my job? No way have I really lasted to this point without revealing myself as an incapable fraud?

My ability to do the job isn’t exactly what I’m questioning at the moment; my personal relationships with ‘the team’ are another matter. I’m quickly realising the extent to which I secretly believe that everyone there hates me. When someone says something nice, shares a joke with me, offers to make me a cup of tea, inside I think they must be doing it to make fun of me. In much the same way I used to believe that people in AA were taking the piss every time they invited me to coffee/initiated a conversation with me/asked for my number. What’s to like about me? I’ve seen so much evidence to prove that I am likeable over the years, yet I still find myself asking that question. I guess I always thought of work as the final taboo in my life, and everyone who I was to come across in the work environment would be so normal, so much better than me that it would be impossible to impress them, let alone make friends with any of them.

Anyway, now that I am quite likely to still have a job in three months from now, all kinds of ideas and opportunities are presenting themselves to me. As soon as I walked out of work today I switched my phone on to find a voicemail message from a good friend in the fellowship, asking if I’m looking for a place to live because he has a free room available in his flat from next month. The rent’s reasonable; it’s in a great part of town; I’ve thought about it all evening, and I think I could manage the cost. God, I think I could actually do it. I could leave home, move to the centre of London, to the place where I should always have been! It would be a dream come true, especially with a friend from the rooms. A few weeks ago I couldn’t even think about such a marvellous possibility.

Suddenly everything is happening, everything is changing, really quickly. I asked God to change my life, and guess what, God is answering. The Artist’s Way says that all you have to do is ask: I guess Julia Cameron is right on that score. If I hadn’t been through the hardship of unemployment for a year and a half, I wouldn’t be appreciating this rapid improvement in fortunes as much as I am right now. I’m finally beginning to live an adult life. I’m considering my capabilities, thinking about what I can do and what I can’t do; I’m making plans and decisions, all on my own. I didn’t need a job to give me an identity, I needed it for independence, and that elusive thing is finally appearing, years after I began to think that I deserved it.

I tried independence eight years ago, and of course I fucked it up. I was far too young. In a way I could still be too young, but that’s not important now. My time is now. It’s here: God is giving me a chance, and I have to take it. I might never get another one.

Tonight’s SAA meeting was the icing on the week’s cake. Since the summer this meeting has grown at an incredible rate: from just two regular members two months ago it has gone to eight or nine regulars. It’s like group therapy. We all know each other, we all sit round in a circle and we share the truth. The real truth, not the censored truth that might be deemed appropriate for other fellowships. We talk about the fickled, fake gay scene, the shame involved with growing up gay in a straight world; the terror of intimacy, the horrors of drunken shagging, the appeal of oblivion and the price we’ve all paid for it. We always go for coffee afterwards. It’s turning into a little family. It’s certainly my favourite point of the week now. I will always look forward to it. God, it’s what I need. I can share about anything there, not just sex addiction. For two years I’ve looked for a meeting like that. Now more than ever, it’s the sort of thing that’s vital to my recovery.

Everything is going so well in my life right now, I can’t fucking believe it. Thank God I got sober two and a half years ago! I wouldn’t be here now if I were still drinking, that’s for sure. I might have gone for the interview and got this job, but I wouldn’t have lasted more than a few days. As it stands, I’ve now managed to last longer in this job than I did in all but one of the jobs I had pre-recovery. If I were still drinking I definitely wouldn’t have a safe place to go every Friday night, where I can talk about how I really feel and be appreciated and understood by people who’ve been there too. A place where there is no judgment, no cruising, no attitude. Some of the men who go to this meeting are very physically attractive, of course, but that doesn’t really bother me. I don’t need any of them to complete me. I like them as friends, nothing more. To be able to say that, and mean it, is just incredible.

Warning: This post is very melodramatic because I am writing in my state of emotional turmoil. So please do excuse me.

I recall bragging for a while that if I should get rejected by an agent I’d accept it with a smile, simply glad that I took this initiative.

I have never been more wrong.

There is so much emotion put into the process of Preparing-To-Query, then sending out the query, that I now know why some writers break down when being rejected.

I went to campus to pick up my History essay and seeing that I did very well on it I was all optimistic. I thought it was my day. So with much confidence I went to the library to start emailing my first batch of query letters. Three hours later I was still before the computer with icy cold fingers. There was a void in my chest when I sent my last letter.

For half an hour afterwards I wandered the streets. How well the weather reflected my mood. A veil of rain was falling from the gloomy blue sky. In my mind I kept thinking to myself that I probably formatted my cover letter wrong (the query letter, sample chapters, and synopsis). But more than this, I was disturbed by the newness of the stage I had stepped into. I’ve been in the writing-and-revising phase for so long that to move on from this comfort zone is unsettling.

When I wrote the Pre-Querying post I was so certain that what I wrote in this instalment would be brimming with triumph.

But no.

Needing to settle my overly sensitive nerves, I stepped into a coffee shop to get a drink. I sat down and stared at my Chai Latte (my new obsession thanks to Rowenna). I wanted to curl into a ball. The reality of publishing had finally struck me. By querying it meant I wanted an agent to expose my manuscript to the world. Expose my heart. How would the world accept it? Would they love it? Would the hate it? Or even worse—would they not even notice it? I was filled with so much self-doubt. I came to the point where I asked myself if publishing was worth all the effort.    

 Something inside me, in a quiet voice, answered: Yes.

After that I put all considerations of putting an end to my aspirations aside. Silly goose, I called myself, you need to grow up, you need to move on, you need to be strong. Embrace the challenge.

Ah. Now that I’ve put my feelings down into words I feel MUCH better. Yes, writing is my therapy. Now I feel light enough to go prancing about once more. 

Nothing will deter me from Let[ting] The Words Flow!

After a period of about twenty four hours’ panic, I feel myself returning to a state of much needed calmness. The panic was brought on my first inevitable mistake in my new job. I went and put something up on the website that wasn’t supposed to be there (won’t go into the boring details of which kind of things are meant to be on the website and which aren’t) – got an e-mail late last night telling me about the mistake and asking me to spend some more time learning the system with the company’s resident expert, the fearsomely pretty Scandinavian, Kat, who I haven’t really spoken to before. Kat is not just fearsomely pretty, she is fearsome in general, and I wasn’t looking forward to our imminent sit-down. She might be incredibly put out by the prospect of having to give up her time to help me, when she has so many other things to be getting on with. I couldn’t know for sure, I just got the impression that she would be put out. On the way to work this morning I was so sure that I had a massive telling off waiting for me – trying not to think about it didn’t work. Telling myself that they must understand I’m still relatively new and not an expert in the job didn’t work either. Panic built inside, time began to drag in that awful way that it does whenever things are getting on top of me. Delays on the underground caused me to arrive at work five minutes late, which made everything a hundred times worse. When I entered the office, no one was talking to me. Normally there is at least a warm ‘hello’ from Melanie waiting for me. Today she simply smiled and got on with her far more important work. I sat down and developed a horrific rejection complex, thinking that at any moment someone was sure to approach me and sack me for being such an idiot.

This feeling continued for a good couple of hours until Kat finally found the time to sit with me and explain everything I needed to know. It’s no one’s fault that I didn’t know everything before. There’s so much to know, it’s natural that it should take time for every single thing to find its way into my pool of knowledge. Kat didn’t seem angry with me this afternoon, just happy to clear things up and answer all my questions. When we were done I can’t describe the feeling of relief. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to go home this evening feeling OK without having had that conversation with her. It was obviously the latest in a series of tests that I have to go through this week. Having passed yet another ‘test’ at work, I guess I feel like things are back on track. It’s still only been a week and there are bound to be more things that I haven’t yet picked up which will be necessary to know at some point. I wish I could jump to three months down the line; I keep thinking about what it would be like if I manage to still have this job by the end of February. How amazing I’ll feel, knowing I’ve lasted in what is quite a tough job for longer than any job I’ve had before. I’ll be able to buy that laptop, book that holiday, eat in that fancy restaurant without having to rely on friends to pay for me. I appreciate that material riches are not to be the sole purpose of my life: all the personal/spiritual benefits that I gain from working for a living are sure to be equally rewarding. Right now I can’t quite imagine what all the spiritual benefits might be…it’s hard to see past the laptop and the holiday! I suppose just knowing that I’ve kept the job will be reward enough. Knowing I’ve lasted a whole week is pretty incredible, to be honest.

At the end of today Melanie finally stopped what she was doing to talk to me, asking how my ‘learning session’ with Kat had gone. I answered that it had gone really well – an honest answer – and then Melanie mentioned that she thought I had been real quiet all afternoon. I knew what she was talking about – I had been especially quiet, at least until the moment when I’d finished speaking with Kat. When I arrived today I honestly thought I was going to be sacked, and I guess that made it pretty impossible for me to be the talkative person that I’d been developing into earlier in the week. When I’m stressed I retreat into my protective shell, it’s what I’ve always done. Melanie doesn’t know that about me: I wish I could explain it to her, but I haven’t yet found a way of opening up in such a way at work. I still don’t know my colleagues well enough to allow myself to be so vulnerable. Maybe I won’t get to know them better until I actually let down some of that guard…

I can’t stop myself from fretting about how I’m going to ‘open up’ at work. It’s becoming ever clearer that things won’t really feel OK until I have allowed people to get to know who I really am. It’s easy for people like Melanie to show who they really are from the very beginning: she’s the kind of person where what you see is what you get. Me, I wasn’t born with the ability to be myself from day one in any environment. There always has to be this defrosting process: very slowly, the more I know about a place, the more baby steps I’m able to take to let my guard down. At the moment, I could only be 20% defrosted. I’ve only actually spoken to the four people in my team; outside that team there are around twenty other people in the office, none of whom I’ve even introduced myself to yet. I have no idea how or if progress will ever be made on that score.

This is why I wish I could just skip to three months or a year down the line. By then I know things will be better: things always improve with time. But I can’t just skip through the next three months! If I keep thinking about it I’ll just be wishing my life away, and I did so much of that in the past it made me miserable. I can’t wish my life away any more. I have to accept that I am right where I’m supposed to be. I should be thanking God for these constant tests: they’re building my character, slowly but surely.

Am I doing the right thing artistically right now? Am I expressing what I need to express, communicating a feeling that is central to my being? What will the next thing be? Do I really have anything worth saying to the world? Do I have the talent or skill or whatever it is to execute my vision? Will other people want to see or buy my work? Can I make a living or at least some part of a living as an artist or must I continue to work at other things that I hate doing?

Right now, I am undergoing an unusual amount of self-doubt. I have, for the last year or so, been making a shift from being a painter all my life into pursuing photography as an artist. This change has raised all the old questions that I remember from being an art student in the 1970s. I remember from then all the self-doubt and uncertainty about what I was doing and I recognize it in what I’m feeling now.

Becoming a photographer is not like changing from one painting or drawing medium to another. I’ve worked in oil, acrylic, pastel and encaustic with a little dabbling in watercolor on the side but all of those are still painting media. To a great extent, the same issues are present in all of them and I have largely worked through and resolved all of those issues for myself.

Here are a couple of images of my paintings:

Take the pastel above. It’s based on a photograph that I took of a scene in Montana. The photograph was absolutely ordinary and would not be suitable for exhibition in any way but it served as a reminder to me of what I saw that day that I responded to and I was able to create the pastel that communicated what I responded to. In fact, this is the way that I’ve used photography for most of my life, as a way to record scenes for me to work on when I get back to the studio. I have worked from nature in the outdoors as well but it’s not an easy thing to stand by the side of a road working on a painting when you could be in the comfort of your studio.

So, I’ve been working with photography as an artistic medium for only a year or so. Not so seriously at first, but increasingly seriously as time goes by. And I’m struggling a bit with who I am as a photographer, what I want to say, and whether it’s anything that other people would be interested in hearing. I’ll return to this in my next post. For now, here’s a photograph that I like and says what I want it to say:

My dear readers, I try to keep the angst-quotient on this blog to a bare minimum, but this morning I am going to indulge myself a bit. You have been duly warned. Read on at your own risk.

Yesterday morning I received an email from Bob P., a reader of this blog, who wrote this observation:

I’ve been reading your wise blog posts on discipline and your rule for life and the huge amount of reading that you do.  I’m wondering why is this guy not teaching Spirituality at the Phd level at a well known University.  Just from a human maybe false self perspective you could make a ton more money and have some recognition for your reading efforts. Having a chair of Theology or Spirituality of a famous dead person could open up a lot of doors.  Or be a famous monk like Merton.  I’m wondering why is he wasting his life at a bookstore.  Anyway that is my issue.  I know I’m not telling you something new.

Then, I found a post from Fencing Bear at Prayer, a blog by a medieval history professor at the University of Chicago, who said in part:

Carl McColman over at the Website of Unknowing has a post this week about discipline that speaks to many of the issues that I am struggling with here. Full disclosure: I’ve just started reading his blog a few weeks ago, and I am incredibly jealous. He (like Jennifer at Conversion Diary) is pretty much saying everything that I want to be saying in my blog, but much better than I ever could and without even having an academic degree. Plus he’s published ten books and counting while I, as you know, am still struggling with number two. Which is actually relevant to my frustration about doing my homework. See, here I am, the good student, having gone to graduate school and gotten my Ph.D., having jumped all the hoops and been well trained, and somehow they who have not jumped even one hoop (at least of the “do your homework first” sort) are doing exactly what they want to be doing (respectively, working in a bookstore owned by Trappist monks; raising four kids and writing a memoir about her conversion) while I, somehow, am not.

This historian may have only written one book so far, but it looks really cool: it’s called From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800-1200. Needless to say, I wasted no time ordering a copy. She may be jealous of my ten books, but then I’m envious of her one; I always compare myself unfavorably to those whose work is peer-reviewed and published by academic presses. So I wrote her a comment on her blog about how the grass isn’t always as green as it looks, and she posted a very warm reply, saying “I do want you to know how valuable I find your writing from a perspective outside of academia. You are able to say things that academics find it very difficult to say but often want to be saying themselves.”

Sigh.

Like Fencing Bear, a lot of people have told me they’re envious of me. Nevertheless, like Bob, I myself secretly wonder if I’m wasting my life — working at a job that only requires skills I had mastered by the time I was 23. I suppose many of the monks I work with have similar feelings; some of the older ones entered the monastery fresh out of school, but the more recent vocations have been men who’ve entered the monastery after they’ve had successful careers “in the world,” including engineers, lawyers, and yes, college professors. It’s got a be a jolt going from teaching at the University level to making fudge for four hours a day while praying and meditating for another six. Not exactly what most people would call a significant career advancement. And perhaps that’s the point.

Here’s the crux of my problem: I’ve never taught at the University level, so I don’t know what I’m missing. My C.V. pretty much consists of speaking at churches and retreats (and let us not forget pagan gatherings!), as well as a few continuing education courses. I do know that my friends who teach don’t seem to be any happier than I am, but they do pretty much all have a higher standard of living and are far more well-traveled, not to mention that they’re perched higher on the prestige totem pole than booksellers (monastic or otherwise). Have I dodged a bullet by staying out of academia (allowing me the freedom to “say things that academics find it very difficult to say”), or have I simply buried my talent? Is the boredom that I feel when I have to write yet another purchase order for novena cards and devotional prayer books really any worse than the viciousness of faculty politics or the endless hassle of committee meetings and dealing with unappreciative students?

And then there’s seminary. One of the reasons why I thought Catholicism would be good for me is the fact that I am ineligible for the priesthood, which paradoxically liberates me to simply be me: a lay contemplative, an ordinary guy with a geeky interest in the mystics. I know enough to know that a fondness for Teresa of Avila and Meister Eckhart won’t open any doors in the world of ordained ministry — but I still wonder if I didn’t make a huge blunder by not at least going to seminary and getting a theological studies degree.

Welcome to the angst-ridden side of my ego-self. Am I wasting my talents? Angst-ridden-ego-self says, “You bet!”

But, you know, I am more than just my ego.

So I take a deep breath and remember how, years ago, I made a commitment to write and to pray — not to teach. And with that in mind, the life I’ve designed for myself very much supports that essential commitment. Then I take another deep breath and I ponder all the joys in my life. These joys include: a wife and daughter who truly, in-their-bones love me (and the feeling is mutual); a modest, but very nice, house in the Atlanta ‘burbs; the utterly awesome privilege of working at a monastery, which means I have access to a real contemplative community each and every day. In addition, there is the riches of the larger online Christian spiritual community that I have plugged into, largely thanks to this blog. I’ve got a book that I’m very excited about in production, along with every reason to trust that future books will be written and published as well. And while I may not have ever been invited to spend a semester teaching in London, neither have I been totally deprived of opportunities to travel — and my intuition pretty much assures me that I will find far more speaking gigs as a Christian contemplative author than I ever did as a Neopagan author (and the pagans kept me busy enough).

As I’ve noted before in this blog, when I lead retreats — or even wait on customers in the store — I do get to teach, in that I get to share with others the one thing I am most passionate about: contemplative spirituality. As for research, I can explore whatever I want, and thanks to the work I do, I get more free books than I have time to read. Informal opportunities to provide spiritual direction to others comes along all the time, and I have a constellation of wonderful, down-to-earth friends, who are intelligent and vibrant and not particularly worried about proving anything to anybody.

In short, my life rocks. Every day I get to write and to pray and to hang out with monks and books. It’s such a singularly wonderful life that I suspect any egoically-driven attempt to “make it better” might actually make it worse. When you stand at the north pole, every step you take takes you south. I am keenly aware that I have as much to lose as I have to gain when I consider taking my life in a different or a new direction.

So, why then, do I get so triggered when a well-meaning guy like Bob asks me why I’m wasting my life, or a University professor marvels at my accomplishments “without even having an academic degree”? Because I’m human, which means I’m proud and insecure, which means I’m the type of person who agonizes over the road not taken.

And if I had gone to seminary and become a priest, or pursued a Ph.D. and launched an academic career, I suspect I’d be just as haunted by all the other roads not taken — one of which would have been the road of a modest career that enabled me to pursue my spiritual and creative interests entirely on my own terms.

At the end of the novel Lake Wobegon Days, Garrison Keillor notes that “Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.”

Wise words there, even if you have to read them three times to make sure you get it. And on my better days, I am smart enough to see that I am right where I want to be. I’m smart enough to love my unusual little life, without judgment or regret. And then, on my less-centered days, I wonder about what might have been, or what ought to be. And who knows what tomorrow might bring? If I pursue a Ph.D. or run off to seminary at age 65, I won’t be the first person nutty enough to do so. All I hope is that, if ever I do return to the classroom (on either side of the podium), I will be driven by the desires of my heart, and not just some egoic need to prove myself.

Meanwhile, until I have that knot untangled, I know there are a lot of people who need to read books by Julian of Norwich or Bernard McGinn or John of the Cross. And I happen to know a wonderful bookstore where you can get just those books.

“Now, there’s the God they taught me about at school. And there is the God that’s hidden by what surrounds us in this civilization. That’s the God I met.”
Joseph Kittinger.
First Man in Space – Skydiving From The Edge Of The World

Is there anybody in there?

“After 20 years, you analyze a lot. You remember people, heroism. “The Miracle of the Andes”, that’s what they called it. Many people come up to me and say that had they been there, they surely would have died. But it makes no sense, because until you’re in a… situation like that… you… you have no idea… how you’d behave. To be affronted by solitude without decadence or a… single material thing to prostitute it elevates you to a sprititual plane, where I felt the presence of God. Now, there’s the God they taught me about at school. And there is the God that’s hidden by what surrounds us in this civilization. That’s the God I met.
Joseph Kittinger.
First Man in Space – Skydiving From The Edge Of The World

Lyrics to In A State : By Unkle

My mind is in a state
‘Cause all i seem to do is tempt my fate
Well i try every space
But all the while we’re crushing at the gate
This time, this time
Reality struck me between the eyes
My mind is in a state
‘Cause everything i miss it comes too late
So i try and disappear
But there is only one way out of here
This time, this time
Reality struck me between the eyes
My mind is in a state
But all i need to do is change my pace
And i know there’s fear to face
But happiness is firm in its embrace
This time

Time moves on, things change always, and it is all, all of it, all right. I still have a job, exactly a week after I started. Didn’t expect that, but it happened. The fear continues, wrapping itself around my midriff every day like a tight, murderous straitjacket. The time comes to leave home and every single day I don’t want to leave. That fear is the past; with every minute that passes of me not giving in, it loosens a little around me. I keep going to work, and I keep getting better. Today was…OK. Found myself settling more into the work, which is endless but intelligent. Conversations developed tentatively; people who were scary last week weren’t so terrifying; I opened my mouth and out came words that reminded everyone including myself that I am normal. I’m starting to hope that I will keep this job. It is far from exciting work, but it can provide me with opportunities. Chances to progress, learn, achieve. I can go on holidays next year, buy things I need, move into my own place, all if I keep this job that found me quite by accident.

Everything hangs on me keeping this job. Frightening as that is I feel quite OK about it tonight. I’m finding the concept of going into work every single day increasingly less frightening, and because of that I think anything could be possible. At the moment I need anything to be possible. The hardship involved with living at home gets harder to justify. I had to spend Saturday night pacifying my mother’s latest temperamental outburst; she has these every now and then, not very often any more, but when it’s there it’s almost intolerable. A neighbour above us had dared to play their music loud after the 9pm watershed and mum was walking around screaming at the ceiling, literally howling. It was disturbing. I went into 4 year old mode and weakly begged her to stop, like I did those times when I really was four and she lost it in a similar way.

Her tempestuous tempers don’t last. After five minutes or an hour she is always calm once more, as if nothing has happened. On Saturday, for the first time I pursued the conversation with her about how it’s unfair what she does sometimes. I can’t let her get away with abusing the environment in that way any more. When it happens I’m really the one being abused. Because nobody else is listening to her – the neighbours certainly aren’t – so I end up taking the brunt of the verbal violence. I asked her to consider what she was doing, quite forcefully because after twenty-seven years of trying to ignore it I felt it really needed to be resolved there and then. Her response, as expected, was to tell me to shut up. Well, I tried.

Things will be better when I don’t live here. They were better when I lived in Norwich for three years. When I was far away with my independence, I wasn’t so affected by the violent fluctuations in her mood state. This is why me having a job is so important. If I can support myself, if I can get out and get on my own two feet again, it doesn’t matter what she says or doesn’t say to me.

However it is sad to think of her being here alone, with no one hearing her. When I’m away she doesn’t have a person to talk to, to lay stuff on…that’s why the outbursts happen. All the time she is just storing feelings up, very painful feelings I’m sure, and they all have to come out at some point. I wish she had a place to go like I do. She has the disease, whatever it is, like I do. I don’t know how to help her. She doesn’t drink, I don’t think AA would be the right place for her. Maybe Al-Anon. But I can’t picture that working either. She’s never shared in an adult way in her life. It’s all vitriolic bile; very, very angry, with a profound lack of insight. I see the disease in so many people in the world outside AA, and with most people it hardly bothers me any more, but when it’s my own mother, it is heartbreaking. I mean, what am I supposed to do? I’m too emotionally involved to try and therapize her. There are no friends, no relatives. Nothing. She is where I was a long time ago. As with every question that doesn’t have an answer, I can only pray on this. God helped me – I’d really like he/she/it to help mum as well!

The girl in the low cut frock, great tits, party girl, doing drugs in the toilets to get by. 
“Look at me Look at me!” she cries, hoping that no one will notice how empty she is on the inside.
Desperately lonely; desperate for approval, validation.
Just maybe if I am lucky enough and someone gets close enough, they won’t hate what they see.
They can take the blackness away.

Thank you cancer, for I can no longer be that girl.

My body has gotten tired of my mind and taken over the game.
No longer do I have the exterior to get noticed.
No longer can I enter a room confident of attention.
No longer can I wait for someone else to rescue me.
Maybe now that the fakeness is on the outside, I will have the courage to confront and accept the real me, without fear or loathing.
But what will I do if there is nothing of any substance or value?
Maybe it’s all fake?
I am an illusion through and through.
A mindless vassal, made up only of the reflection of others.

Nowhere to hide in therapy…
Dare I let my emotions take over from my intellect?
Relinquish my control on the game?
The stakes are high can she do it?
Be vulnerable; put herself out there, for even more rejection.
Finding my strength, in acknowledging my vulnerability.
Somehow, I will find the courage not to care about the rejection, my soul no longer diminished by each encounter.
Chip
Chip
Chip

Afraid of failure,even more afraid of success.
‘Cause god knows what I would do if somebody actually did love me.
That would be a challenge to accept.
Much more comfortable to yearn for the unobtainable, keeping myself distant from those around me.
Protecting myself the only way I know how.
Showing only the strong, cool, confident, me.
Can’t let anyone smell my fear.
But again my body has rebelled, fighting against my mind, allowing the tears to flow, when I least expect it.

Insight is easy, but change is hard, so much harder.
I have hope and sometimes on a good day, when I am not too busy beating myself up,
I can believe that salvation lies in the struggle, not the destination.
What matters is not forging ahead on the path in front of everyone else, but….
taking the time to hold the hands of those who walk beside me, those that are just like me, but not like me. 

Moment by moment embracing life.

Enrichment lesson No 13: It is our choice as to whether we travel our path alone.

¿De qué trata?: Basada en dos historias reales, la última película de Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle 1993, You’ve Got Mail 1998) Julie & Julia 2009 narra la historia de Julie Powell (Amy Adams), una joven que siente que está desperdiciando su vida y que decide dedicar un año a preparar todas las recetas de “Dominando el Arte de la Cocina Francesa” (Mastering the art of french cooking), clásico libro de cocina de la célebre cocinera Julia Child (Meryl Streep) Así, Julie decide aprender a cocinar a su manera con la legendaria cocinera Julia. Durante el año que supone su experiencia como alumna de Child, escribe cada día sus experiencias en un blog que ganará múltiples adeptos.

            Si bien Nora Ephron no es santo de la devoción de casi nadie, puesto que a pesar de alguna película interesante no ha dejado una gran marca en el séptimo arte, no se puede objetar que el atractivo reparto y ese toque de dulce comedia que inspira la película es una poderosa razón para acercarse a ver Julie & Julia. Lo mejor de la película son sin duda sus actrices: Meryl Streep y Amy Adams vuelven a juntarse tras la fuerza que ambas demostraron en ‘La Duda’, haciendo que Julie & Julia tenga dos de las mejores interpretaciones femeninas del año, dándole un punto a favor para no ser otra comedia del montón. En cuanto a la parte cinéfila se refiere, subrayar el realismo en cuanto a localizaciones y temporalidad se refiere.

            La película además posee una narración curiosa, pues cuenta dos historias paralelas y entremezcladas muy parecidas, las de Julie y Julia. Pero no en el mismo tiempo, pues mientras una trascurre en 1949, la otra sucede en el 2002. Más que una comedia romántica, Julie & Julia es un manual sobre la superación personal y el alcance de metas imprescindibles para nuestra satisfacción. En este sentido, se presenta la historia de Julia (Streep), que en los años 50 y siendo extranjera allá donde iba (países o aprendizajes: mujer americana en Europa), superaba las trabas de los prejuicios con tal de exprimir hasta la última gota de su creatividad y de su vitalidad, lastrada además por su incapacidad de tener hijos a los que alimentar. Y en el Nueva York, post 11 – S, Julie (Adams), una treintañera más, perdida en la insatisfacción de una generación destinada a lo superficial, a lo práctico, a lo acomodaticio, que encuentra en el legado de Julia y en su vivaz espíritu, la brújula para reorientar sus pasiones, sus ambiciones y su ansia de vida.

          Y aunque hacia la mitad del metraje este se vuelve excesivamente repetitivo y no aprovecha historias ya presentes, Ephron tiene tal pulso emotivo en lo dramático y en lo cómico durante la primera mitad, que todo se perdona, más contando con dos actrices tan extraordinarias como Adams y Streep, que asumen el timing cómico y la sensibilidad de la historia. Tal vez Un poco menos de duración no hubiera estado mal, ya que al película se llega a sentir un tanto cansada, desluciendo grados de ese sabor que la sustenta.

Al grano: Lo mejor es ver esta película con el estómago vacío porque al salir de ella, estarás deseando degustar una buena comida o cena. Y para terminar una pequeña frase repetida por Julia Child: ¡Bon appetit!

* * * 1/2  de 5

I went to a business workshop. I expected to get information about furthering my business, but while I did get some useful tips, I found myself doing something even more important in the long-run: using self-empowerment and the ability to make and stand by a decision in a heated situation. I was given an incredible – almost textbook – example of how beautiful it is to become strong in one’s own self, and why it is central to decision-making.

This was a sales workshop marketed as a one-day training that would take a business to the next level. Instead, it failed to deliver on its promise and it challenged every person n the room to choose what they would in fact learn from the day.

Advanced personal growth or business workshop environments are unique: a group of people interactively respond to the speaker, speedily learning lessons individually, in groups and in pairs. Truly gifted speakers have the ability to lead everyone in the same direction while simultaneously crafting the exercises in such a way that each individual finds her or his own answers. And the energy in the room is usually raised higher and higher so that transformation becomes possible (a discussion for another time, but one that is central to true change).

However, while advanced workshop techniques were employed to a degree, the workshop was not of a high caliber. The speaker tended to speak harshly to us, to give us incomplete instructions and then become impatient with our lack of responsiveness. It was awkward. Just before lunch we were invited to “play a game”! The game we were to play in fact during our lunch hour, was to sell as many people as possible the opportunity to attend the next such workshop given by this speaker! We were to collect money, or checks, or even credit card numbers!

We were then given a football-locker-room-type rah-rah let’s-go-get-em speech and sent out the door, without being told why we were doing this, or even how we were to do this – talk to waitresses? phone a friend? We weren’t even told if this hour would serve as our lunch hour as well!

We went ahead and assumed that it would.

I have been to many personal growth workshops – some of the best: Peak Potentials Business Seminars, Jack Canfield’s 7-Day Seminar – and because of the group mentality, the heightened energy, the expansive feeling of opened mind and heart, there are often difficulties with holding one’s emotional and mental balance. There are two main workshop challenges, and I have experienced both, multiple times.

First, there is the financial decision-making challenge:  when workshop attendees are in this heightened emotional state, emotions win the day, and one goes with the emotional flow in financial decision-making. It’s a beautiful flow and should definitely be moved with, but the tricky part is when you can no longer access any of your day-to-day mental moorings in order to balance out and “ground” your decisions! Instead, decisions are made solely because they “feel right”. No thought is given to whether this is the right time to buy, or whether they may be questions that one could ask about alternative methods of payment, etc. This can result in something like buying a product because everyone else is, or because the trainer has convinced you that if you don’t buy it, you are giving up on yourself. 

Then you get home and find yourself hundreds or ten’s of thousands of dollars in debt, and lacking in that workshop-inspired high energy that you now know you need in order to stay on this new path and find a way to come up with the money!

I have found myself in exactly this kind of situation in the past. The problem of “ungroundedness”.

The second difficulty is self-doubt. I struggled quite painfully with this in the past. Here is the setup: the workshop leader offers you a deal to continue on with this self-growth – and you now know that this stuff is powerful and feels terrific, and if learned and embodied would change your life for the better forever! And you’re right. But you also know that you can’t afford the price of the item, or the workshop or the event that s/he is offering.

It is then that the internal war begins!

“I can’t afford it! Yes, but I have just learned that if I bust past my fears and go for it, I will get what I need, so can’t I apply that to bringing more money in to cover this? Yes, I can, but will I? I don’t know for sure that I will. But if I don’t take this leap of faith for myself, for my betterment, what do I do to move forward? Won’t I be nixing my only chance to move into the wealth, the personal growth, the empowerment, the change that I really want? Aren’t I just saying ‘no’ to myself, to my dreams? But what if I can’t come up with the money? Then I’ll be in worse shape than I was before, and I won’t only be unable to pursue my dreams, I’ll be unable to feel good or think clearly or even plan, because I’ll be panicking about money!”

The confusion turns to self-doubt which then turns into self-punishment.

Workshops that I have attended – and I would argue that this is true of all or almost all of them – either presuppose, or ignore your ability (or lack thereof) to think clearly, powerfully, self-supportively and in a grounded way for your own lasting betterment. They presuppose that anything they offer is for your betterment; therefore there is no need to worry about whether or not it is going to be for your betterment at this particular time in your life. Of course, it is true that the responsibility for your life and your decisions is your own, but it is equally true that with acknowledged power also comes responsibility to the people over whom you have the power: Some effort should be made by the workshop leader to guide the student. After all, if the student knew how to do this stuff, s/he wouldn’t be taking the workshop!

The result of this lack of attention to those particular attendee needs is the littering of the path of self-betterment with the metaphorical bodies of those who have seen the light of their own potential and then given up on it, now convinced that it was a hoax, a clever way to bilk them of their money.

I find that situation intolerable. Intolerable because the light of self-improvement is a true light, and when people give up on it – giving up on themselves – I find that a terribly sad situation.

So…the sales workshop… I chose not to sell this man’s workshop over my lunch hour. I felt that the exercise was not at all in integrity. How was I to suggest a workshop to people I knew when I hadn’t even completed it myself? Was I to put my reputation out there for the sake of “playing at 100%” – a workshop “rule” we had all agreed to - even though to “play” meant that I was lying, saying to people who trusted me that “you should really take this one-day workshop!”?

No. I couldn’t do that.

In the past, the chasm beween my deep feelings about this execise, and the need to follow the leader, do the exercise as instructed, and trust that it was for my betterment, would have caused a major upheaval in my emotional body and in my mind! I would have sought support and approval from as many people as possible to get the sense that I was seeing things “correctly”. That I wasn’t somehow “wrong”. That I wasn’t somehow being “mean”, or less than “good”. I would have been having that raging internal war, and I would have felt torn apart by indecisiveness.

Is that because I was stupid? Or ignorant? Not at all. I didn’t know where on earth to put my decision-making feet! I had no rules of my own, no sense of which of the voices of my heart and head to put first above the others, and being a good “follower” – a good student of personal growth – I went ahead and followed the exercise, trying to learn what the leader wanted me to learn.

That is no longer the case. The “good girl” has retired for good.

When we all returned to the workshop after lunch, we were asked to raise our hands if we had not even tried to sell. I of course raised my hand.

When asked why I had not even tried, I told him the truth. I said that it felt inappropriate to do the exercise. And here is where the conversation got interesting. The speaker insisted that this was proof of my “little voice” (a phrase of the amazing Blair Singer, of Sales Dogs) – the “little voice” being that voice of doubt and fear that stops us from moving forward in life – getting in the way of my playing the game at 100%. I insisted that the game in and of itself was not one I would ever play, so it had nothing to do with being fearful of selling.

Neither of us could convince the other of their point of view. But these moments were fantastic for the insight they granted me later. Now, let me tell you that at the time I was livid because I hated the speaker’s insistence that my behavior was proof of some hesitation or fearfulness; that there was something “wrong” with me. I hated not being understood. And I really hated that he would not at any point admit that perhaps it was setup of the game itself that was wrong, not our reaction to that context.

But I was able to tell him exactly what I thought, I was able to do it calmly – yet without pushing down my emotions; rather, mastering their delivery through my vocal tone and my physicality – and I didn’t doubt myself nor leave my point in the dust just to behave or to ”keep the peace” in the room!

This was self-confidence and empowerment – reactions borne of strength rather than fear; self-knowledge rather than blind reactivity.

There was no confusion, no self-doubt, no emotional self-hatred. And in fact, after a few minutes of this, some of the guys in the room actually joined me, telling the speaker that they agreed with what I was saying! This was the justification that I would once have bent over backwards to find beforehand – and here it was, unlooked for and coming to me like the grace of God!

Eventually, the speaker made his point – that he had given us the exercise to show us what our “little voice” says to us when we come up against doing something that frightens us. But I had not in fact balked at the exercise out of fear of a “new” experience; I had chosen to honor the balance between my own feelings, and my own past experiences and understandings of what is right and wrong for me, and I had chosen not to play the game at all. But because his view was myopic – “everything that happens after this ‘game’ is related to that game”. He could not see that there was an option of deciding to opt out of the game itself.  He was unwilling to hear and respond to what many of us were saying to him. As a result, the trust between speaker and audience was broken, at least for me. For some of the students in the room, they had benefited from the experience, and that is a good thing! For them, this workshop experience was a good one. They gained self-knowledge. One of them even said that from the resistance in the room he had learned the lesson the speaker was trying to get across! So it goes!  It is never one-size-fits all when it comes to learning styles, and how and when each of us learns.

However, my point is this: one must stand in one’s own truth. Knowing what that is, is key, and holding one’s ground in the midst of disagreement and situations with built-in power structures (like workshops, or classrooms, or boardrooms or even bedrooms) is an artform that can be learned, practiced, and mastered. Even for those who currently feel terribly disempowered. I know, because I was one of them!

So, even with the speaker’s explanation which I could now see from his perspective, I knew that this was not an exercise nor a justification I would ever swallow, and I knew also that a good workshop leader would have been more skillful in handling such divergent points of view.

Fabulously, one of the men came up to me and told me that he really liked my energy, and as a woman this was a surprise. One of the fears women carry is that when standing in their strength they will be disliked by people of the opposite sex. Well, apparently not!

So, not in fact “unladylike “to stand up for myself. Not in fact “mean” to stand up and say what I felt. Not the end of my world to know that this speaker – this sales trainer – and I will never work together, and that he will in all likelihood continue to think that I am just “resistant”.

When it comes to workshops, it is absolutely crucial to keep your own feet on your own personal ground. I call it “Workshop Survival”, but it can happen in any kind of group. Workshops are particularly intense because they use intensity of time, energy and emotion to move people into new spheres of experience. This is a wonderful, necessary thing! But the onus to care for the workshop participants is not one that is often met, and the participant is left to swim in new emotional waters without fins, a life jacket, or a view of the new shore.

Being able to stand one’s ground – even with one’s own self! – seems so difficult at times. But try to remember that it is what many of us did as children. Do you remember the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes? It was a child alone who had the courage to say, “The Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes!” while everyone else nodded and smiled and congratulated the Emperor on his exquisite taste in garments.

Reclaim your childlike nature and speak your truth! You never know who will come up beside you, take your hand, and walk that path with you a while, supporting you with the approval and kindness that you thought you had to give up to be your strong self. And you never know how strong and empowered you will feel for facing that fire of potential disapproval that you once ran from.

To Your Own Possibilities!

Lori

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Well, so far I’ve survived three days on the job. I am by no means comforted or encouraged by that. I am experiencing levels of anxiety more intense than any I have had to endure in sobriety. I’ve managed to turn up for work on time three days in a row, I’ve picked up the important basics of my role and what I need to do, but I haven’t exactly made friends and I’m almost as anxious today as I was on Tuesday. Of course I was prepared for it to still be difficult by the end of the first week. I’ve never worked for a living in sobriety; I’ve never worked in the world of retail promotions at all; I’ve never had to wear shirts and ties and smart shoes to work before. There is an awful lot to get used to – I shouldn’t have to worry about endearing myself to my colleagues at the same time, but I am worried about it because the boss keeps bringing it up. My boss, Melanie, is a loud, vivacious, lovely, scary woman who likes to have a loud, vivacious, lovely, scary team around her. I am never going to be loud, vivacious or scary; I might be lovely sometimes, but under the circumstances all I’ve been able to do is say ‘hello’ to people and get on with my work silently. Melanie was kind enough to pull me off the helpdesk last week and bring me upstairs to the IT/admin role that I seem more suited to, and all week she’s sat next to me, giving me the support I need, encouraging me to be more talkative, to bring myself into the team more. The trouble is that I don’t know if I really want to be ‘part of the team’. I’m not in this job through choice: I’m doing it because I have to make a living. I’m not working with these people because I like them. I don’t know any of them. I’ll probably get to know them as time goes on, but for now they’re all a bit intimidating; they’ve obviously all worked there for much longer than me, so they know the job a lot better than me, and they know each other a lot better than they know me. The world I find myself in at work is on the edge of sales, a world I never, ever saw myself in. My role doesn’t directly involve any sales, but my colleagues are essentially all sales people, selling the company and what it does to retailers in the United Kingdom who might be interested in what we have to offer. They’re all on the phone practically all day, speaking in that confident, assured, glitzy way that all sales people do, while I support them by completing all the admin tasks they’ve asked me to do. If I’m not doing my job properly then they can’t do theirs, therefore I am really in sales too. And I don’t like it.

I can do the job, there’s no doubt about that. It’s all the stuff surrounding it that I’m going to struggle with. The social side of things is the main challenge. I already said that my colleagues intimidate me: that’s because they’re all better looking and better dressed than me, and I’m sure they’re much cleverer than me too. I’m supposed to be fitting in with them, but how can I when I only have two good shirts, one pair of good trousers and one pair of nice shoes from which the colour is quickly fading? It’s not just the exterior facts that are bothering me, it’s the personalities as well. I’m in an office with about fifteen people, only two of whom are women, none of whom seem to be gay (apart from me). I hate making the gay thing an issue – it’s years since I’ve even had to think about it – but of course it’s an issue in an environment as important as the workplace. I don’t really know any of my colleagues yet, so it’s hard to say whether homophobia is going to be a problem. In this day and age it shouldn’t be. But you just don’t know.

I can think of so many reasons why this job isn’t going to work out, hardly any why it might just work. I’m gay, I’m shy, I’m sensitive, I have an anxiety disorder, I’m not a sales person, I don’t understand much of the language that my colleagues in the sales world use. The only thing I can think of in my favour is that I know how to use a computer – the only thing I need to know for my job. I wish I could just be happy with that and forget about all the other stuff. Fretting about all those peripheral issues is only going to make my job harder, I know. It would be nice to be able to go into work and chat with people, have a laugh sometimes, though. I get the impression on the whole that their way of having fun usually involves going to the pub at the end of the day. Again, I knew this would probably be the case: in AA I’ve heard so many people complain about their colleagues’ refusal to budge from the pub as the only way of socialising. Some of them will probably be going out tonight, it’s Friday after all. I doubt I’ll be invited, I mean no one’s even had a conversation with me yet. Why the hell am I so sad about that? I don’t even like going to the pub.

I’ve experienced the same sadness in AA, when people have gone to restaurants and coffee shops without me. It’s not about where they go, it’s about being invited or not invited. If I was offered the chance to sit in the pub with my new colleagues I’d take it, mostly because I know it would be a good way of getting to know them, without the pressures of the workplace distracting us. If I could manage to fit in and make friends in AA, surely I can do it here. The trouble is, work’s not really like AA. My colleagues aren’t invested in my well being; it’s no skin off their noses if I fail in the long run. In AA people want to see you do well. I don’t know if the same can quite be said for a bunch of people in the world of retail promotions.

I haven’t forgotten how hard it was to settle into AA two years ago, make friends, feel at ease in those rooms. Most of the evidence suggests that this is my problem, and nothing to do with the environment that I happen to be in. Whether I’m at work, in an AA meeting or wherever, I tend to feel anxious in the beginning. It’s just the way I am. I wish I was more encouraged by that knowledge right now. If I knew what the future held, I might be able to relax. Unfortunately I can’t know what the future holds. I can’t know whether I will be still in this job next year or not. All I can do is try to keep the job, one day at a time, and that’s fucking hard. I’d hate to lose this job for being ‘too quiet’ – for one thing I can’t afford to go back to unemployment. But if I do end up losing the job I don’t know if it would be such a terrible thing. Maybe I’m just not cut out for it. But then another part of me knows I have to be cut out for it. Why else would God have put the opportunity in front of me?

I just want to know what’s going to happen! Two years of recovery should have taught me to apply the ‘one day at a time’ principle to everything, yet when it comes to working, obviously I have no idea how to stay in the moment. I don’t know how to let go of this anxiety. Every time I try to, my head just comes up with a million reasons why I need to keep worrying. I’m driving myself mad, torturing myself, and I can’t stop. It’s Friday; in seven hours from now the week will be over and I’ll have the entire weekend ahead of me with nothing planned. No work, no more stress until Monday. Seven meager hours feel like seven years at the moment. The last time I experienced time dragging by like this was at school.