Well, we have all heard a lot of talk about web 2.0 being the “social web”. And blogs are so web 2.0. Well, I don’t know about that, and I am certainly the most social being that has ever walked the planet in human form. But I figure one thing about blogs is that they can be used to knit up a community. And, well, even if I don’t feel it, I suppose I am part of a community.

If my experience in long-term sobriety teaches me anything (over and over again), there is not much I can accomplish alone. In fact, alone, mostly I am a complete mess.

Why am I going on about this?

This blog has broken new ground. In recogniti0n of - no, in celebration of - my status as a social being, I have started putting links up on this site. Well, OK, you can consider my del.icio.us cloud tag links of a sort, but …

And, the set of categories came out of an ephinany of sorts. You see, I have been thinking about links for a while. And, there is a lot to link to, a lot to show off, a lot that deserves to be seen. And, how to sort it all out, and keep it succinct?

The other day at work, slogging through another day of data slice and dice on auto pilot, wondering how much longer I could survive this job with the “i don’t give a shit” mantra going loud and strong, I got a little desperate. You see, I really can’t afford, at this exact moment, to just get up, go out for lunch, and never come back.

What is it, I thought, that I could do with a pasion? Where does the compass point that will show me a way out of this rut. For I am hungry for work that satisifies, work that simply needs to be done.

I picked up a pen and four words penned themselves with bold strokes. A simple calender, two lines of rough financial scaffolding. I have a plan.

And the headings for the links list you see in the far sidebar was born.

Happy Surfing.

Every newcomer gets this “Do a Ninety in Nintey” thrown at them.

What the hell, I thought, when I heard it, why not just say “Go to a meeting every day”? I still don’t know the real answer to that question, but I do know that doing something every day is a little scary. Feels like commitment, feels like “being good.”

Like flossing, or something your Mom would tell you to do.

But Ninety in Ninety. Sounds like reps with weights, working out in the gym, I thought, real tough. I liked the sound of it.

And it took a while to dawn on me that ninety days was actually just shy of three months which is a quarter (roughly) of a year, which is a goddamm long time to be doing anything.

There is something powerful about doing something every day. And pretty simple. The every-other-day or every-third-day or twice a week thing never really worked for me. Especially twice-a-week, which, I could tell you right off, speaking as a well trained statistician, would never work out as there are an odd number of days in a week, and so that is what, an average of every-three-point-five-days? Asymptotically, maybe, but how do you operationalize the point-five of a day?

And for the others, well, the difference between I did it yesterday and I did it the day before yesterday - be it practicing the piano, working out, or watering the plants - is a little difficult for me to make out. I start counting back days, trying to remember what I had for dinner, what I wore, who I talked to on the way out the door that day as a means of figuring it out. My memory is just not that good and I get sidetracked easily. Next thing you know I am digging in the back of the closet looking for a snapshot that will tell me which beach in Maine I camped at back when I still had the blue ‘67 ford pickup.

More importantly, not-quite every day opens the door for gaming, for bargaining, for making deals. Does two days in a row count for missing if we are doing every-other-day? Perhaps on the front end, but then, what on the back end? Are we on or off? Does this Monday make up for last Friday. If I am extra good, can I skip just this once? And on and on and on. If I were on the up-and-up about this, if the bargain was always fair, if I was always an honest dealer, then this might be OK. But, usually, the point of a Ninety in Ninety is that I am not an honest dealer, bargaining with fair, pure motives. If I were what would I be doing in a tin chair in a church basement drinking bad coffee?

And, on a deeper level, the bright shining beauty of Every Day is that these conversations are eliminated. If I am looking for a bit more peace, a bit of relief from the constant noise in my head, then Ninety in Ninety drops out a large chunk of internal discussion. Gone, just like that.

Ok, Maybe not. Maybe it just makes it clear that that the discussion I hear is just the usual smoke coming from the incessant excuse machine, rather than some kind of real planning, all that what how maybe when but if stuff being something that can be safely ignored.

Either way, there is the potential for a bit less self-involvement, for looking around with curiosity, and actually paying attention to whatever it is that I am supposed to be doing.

So, I want to be a writer. Well, what do writers do? Lots of things, I imagine, but, I would hazard a guess that the defining characteristic of a writer is writing. Maybe time for a Ninety in Ninety.

I found the Official Vermont (Area 70) AA website . Pretty much what you would expect - the Official AA websites tend to be pretty, well … they look like what you would expect if you had put together a web-site in 1935. I guess I am used to this presentation, even have a fondness for it.

Reading the Big Book, you run into this quite a bit, the old language, references, slang. I get a kick out of it, enjoy it, as this book, this program is as much a product of the times as it is the result of anything else. But then again, I’ve read a lot of Sinclair Lewis, and so have a context, even if it is perhaps distorted picture of the time, as novels can be.

And possibly not quite the right time. Babbitt came out in 1922, and was a contemporary novel. But, you can hear that good old boosterism coming through in some of the language of the Big Book. And you can hear, from a different perspective, Lewis’s critique of society at the time, of the attitude that success in business had a virtue to it. You can see this critique in Wilson’s writing as well, though it is focused, necessarily on the alcoholic, the fact that we are drunks suckers for this attitude, and the fatal limitations to this attitude as the basis for a sober and contented life.

It is easy to imagine George Babbitt living in the same town as Dr. Bob. In fact, they probably would have run in much the same circles. And, for both, a solely material basis for living proved disastrous. Babbitts struggle did not involve a descent into the hell of active alcoholism, but it did involve a struggle and a death of sorts. I wonder what the conversation would have been had the two met, and Dr. Bob tried to give George the ’spiritual toolkit’ that he and Bill W. stumbled upon as a way out. I can only imagine, but the language, well, the language would have been straight out of the Big Book.

Step one tonight, at my regular five thirty meeting. After drifting round the cycle into the etherial clouds of the back half of step twelve, it is nice to get back to something simple, concrete. Like stepping out of the overwarm diningroom after thanksgiving dinner, all that food and family and talk, onto the back porch for a bit of fresh air, to look at the day. Cool and refreshing, the air is, and as those first flakes of snow drift down, the first of the winter, it is real, clear and sharp.

The New York Times ran an article by Ron Suskind about President Bush’s faith. A couple of good commentaries (of the many), from warblogging and Greed & Arrogance

I watched Bush explain his faith during the debates with some curiousity, as I stopped drinking a year before Bush did. And, while Billy Graham did not attend to me personally, my sobriety has been based on something spiritual, that could be labeled ‘faith’ … and this is at the heart of sobriety for most of those I know in A.A.

Like most of us talking about something personal, and perhaps hard to express, I came away thinking that he sounded about like anyone else who might be pressed on the matter. You know, stuff about looking for guidance, innocuous quotes from aids: “his faith helps him in his service to people”

But this did not quite jibe with the stronger message, the black-and-white talk of evil, of ‘crusade’. Of the absolute certainty embodied in this endless repetition of ‘resolve’, the messianic tone of his speach. Bush is reported to have said “I trust God speaks through me”. Very unsettling.

Reading the article was scarey.
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