April 30, 2008
Gunna Get My Meek On
I am in for an ego obliterating experience. **Derek “Stormy” Waters voice** Know how I knew?
I keep encountering these amazing people online - radical peeps who share similar goals and values - and finding all these ways that I am “doing better”. *long slow whistle, shiftin’ in my seat* Uh, yah. But I’m human. I falter. There’s no way I can stay on this high horse for long. I can sort of see the reckoning in the distance, if I squint, but I don’t so I’m mostly trying to prepare…
There’s this couple that came to lead worship at my church a couple times. They are so… gah, just such beautiful, sweet, honest hippies trying to do their best. They have a baby, 18 months. Since his birth, their focus and “achievements” seem to have slipped. (A very common occurrence for new parents, possibly inevitable, I gather.) They are still AMAZING people, and I am in awe of their art and lives… and yet, I can still easily work up a little lip curl when I read about how he ate at McDonald’s or they shopped at a mega store. I’m glad I’m putting this to words. It’s pretty impossible to ignore what an asshole I am being.
What the fuck is it that allows this mental disconnect? I GET that we’re all flawed humans, and that I’m no better or worse than anyone… and yet I still strive for something near perfection. It’s like my challenge to the world. “Just cuz y’all will settle doesn’t mean I will. Watch, I’ll show you how close to perfect we humans can be, so pay attention…” Sean and I call it efficiency. This is one of MY WORDS. I joke that someday I will get the cliched Old English lettered stomach or back tattoo of “value” or “efficiency”. They’re beautiful concepts to me. Utilitarian. Ahimsa: the greatest good and the least harm. This is what makes me feel that zero waste and a neutral carbon footprint are totally do-able… in my lifetime. But something’s not really clicking in me so that my ego shuts up and applauds all effort without simultaneously judging it. Yes, congrats on remembering to bring your cloth bags to the store, but your hybrid in the parking lot still only gets 45MPG. Fucking foreign economy cars were doing that before hybrids existed, remember? And that’s still miles per gallon of PETROL. *facepalm* See, cuz my scooter, 80MPG or not, still runs on gas, and my backup vehicle is a God-awful gas guzzler that’s almost as old as my parents. But I’m the “better person”?
Sketch comedy is so perfect a medium for me. Ready for pithy, pissy observations, laced with derision. Gag PSAs are actually our focus over here. We have these years-long lists that we add to when we come up with a new, clever way of teaching/mocking “wrong” things. OK, one example… the food “chain”. Sigh. Think 50’s science film, dude in a lab coat, thick black glasses, short dippety-do quaff, and impenetrable deadpan. Black and white time-pocked film with the beeps in-between sections. Long wooden pointer at the ready, Mr. Scientist (who probably just works QC at Dupont) taps the appropriate section of the large chalk drawing behind him. “You see, the plants are at the bottom.” *board tap* “Animals are the second link in the chain and they eat the plants.” *board tap* “Then there’s us, humans.” *proud smile* “We eat the animals.” *looks at board for next step where humans and plants interact, closing the “chain”. His smile vanishes. He looks nervously at the camera for a few seconds, unsure what to say.* (I can’t decide if I want to break convention and go stupid here, showing a casket that makes it impossible for even a human’s remains to be a part of the circle of life, or just leave it open ended.) Cut to a shot of a happy family devouring steak breakfasts or something and a voice over summarizing “That’s how science works kiddies; be part of the food chain and eat an animal right now!” Gah, I need a better final line, but yah. Food chain is a joke and rather than just saying it, I’d always rather make a caricature of it and make people see that ridiculousness for themselves.
In summary, could I be a bigger jive turkey?
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April 16, 2008
Commitment to My Progress
K, there’s more than a few things that I have drafted to write about in here, but I gotta prioritize and go with my gut. My gut says talk about the following…
I saw a blog post recently where this very awesome person mentioned her visual way of tracking her progress. Insert photo of her last month’s calendar, where each day had a large “clean & sober” sticker on it. Wow, I didn’t know they had those. Seeing the photo made me realize how quiet I have been about it. That’s always been my way when I stop drinking for a while. Mum’s the word, outta sight and outta mind. In the past I can see that this was a way to avoid keeping sobriety permanent. I never made a note of the day that I stopped/started either. If I didn’t tell anybody that I was trying to stay clean, nobody could call me on it when they found a drink in my hand! And that’s exactly how the yo-yo has gone since I started drinking in earnest in 1995. It has actually worked well for me this time around because it’s forced me to live into the idea that I must be in control of my thoughts. When I start to think about booze, I immediately tell myself “sorry but that’s 100% not part of my reality right now” and the thought generally disappears. Tight ship, baby. Nothing has leaked in yet. But having Sean to be my accountability partner has been very helpful. I feel that being more honest about it will also be helpful in the long run. I hate to look bad and go back on my word. It’s not the most holistic method of improving one’s life, but the possible embarrassment and shame of showing everyone my failure is a strong motivator… I’m almost 4 months without a drop of alcohol!
Another hard line I’ve taken with myself is probably only 2 weeks solid thus far. Again, I never write down dates because I don’t want to face the failure if I fuck up. Anyway, I’m off celebrity culture. OFF, OMG OFF FOREVER. I never cared for it, but when I got bored I would allow myself to go to a couple sites and just let my eyes glaze over as I mindlessly scrolled through the gossip. Damn, that was hard to admit. I couldn’t understand why I would do that, when consciously I believe that the celebrity culture is poison and don’t even watch or own a TV. In retrospect, just 2 little weeks away from it, I think I can see the lure. It was that mindlessness and the continual updates. No other sites that I visit are updated that quickly. Green news and craftivism and art just aren’t the commodities that the entertainment industry produces. (Or rather, they aren’t valued as such just yet. I see the shift, though. What was once labeled stupid hippie shit is now available in slickly designed packages at your local Target.) And absorbing the antics of someone else’s unfathomably wealthy and unconscious lifestyle does not take any effort. After a hard day’s coding, I could just stare and scroll and shake my head until I was even more bored and had to close the browser tab. See, words are powerful! Even though I’ve been thinking about this lately, seeing the words really rams the point home. I was just making the same bad choice over and over, and there’s no excuse for it and nothing good came from that. So that chapter is done in my life. I look forward to the day when I go to Muxtape and don’t tell Sean “I only heard of this band because some guy in it was dating a ’supermodel’ and then he got caught doing a fuckload of drugs over and over”. Besides, I still hear snippets about entertainers who are using their fame to promote awesome change. Natalie and Alicia could fill a book with their efforts.
So this is my calendar, filled with invisible stickers that proclaim my victory over habits that brought me down. I make the choice again every day to keep drinking and gossip where they belong: as chapters in my life that are over for good. BAM.
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