Six Good Miles.
I had a meeting thrown on my schedule in the late afternoon yesterday, and so missed my personal training appointment. But I am not sorry I did. I really needed to run. I have been running less in the winter, in part to let my body recover from a hard year of constant distance training, and in part because it’s so dark and I hate running in the dark. But yesterday I was able to get out while it was early twilight and made it home an hour later while there was still a bit of gloaming.
I ran 6.3 miles in a shade under an hour. That’s a good pace for me, pretty close to my half-marathon personal record pace. A bit slower than my 10K record pace. But a satisfyingly brisk clip in cool weather, during a time when I’ve been logging fewer miles. I’m hoping to break two hours when we run the Virginia Beach half marathon in March, so I need to get a little speed work in from time to time. And to achieve that, I need to be able to run a 10K in right about 56 minutes. Which, coincidentally, was my time last summer.
While I’m definitely hoping to break two hours this year, I’m not hanging my hat on it. If I do I do, if I don’t I don’t. I’m not going to feel like I’m a failure if I don’t achieve that goal. Time goals are good goals for me because even if I don’t succeed, the value of trying is always positive. I have to work hard for it and working hard physically pays off, even if the goal I set was too ambitious. Time goals are bad goals for me because I don’t want to shackle my self-worth to a clock.
But I don’t think it is too ambitious. Our last half marathon was 2:02:16 (well, BB was 2:02:15 but the difference between us was less than a second; we were holding hands). I think I have the legs to run 11 seconds per mile faster than that race. It’ll be a challenge, but I think it’s a doable one. I’m looking forward to finding out anyway.
On Crimes Atoned For.
I’ve done some pretty horrible things in my life. Things that some people find unforgivable. Things that the law punishes and society condemns. I’m an alcoholic. And I used alcohol to let me commit acts and crimes that harmed others, endangered others, and cost my community and our legal system a lot of money. I did that though overt acts, and through neglect. I’ve harmed both property and persons.
I have also complied with all legal judgments against me. I’ve repaid money where I’ve owed money. I’ve spent a night in jail. I’ve attended mandatory classes and adhered to restrictions from driving for the duration of a suspended license. In sobriety, I have made or offered amends to everyone I’ve harmed that I can remember. I have changed my behavior. I have repeated none of these offenses in nearly eight years.
My question is: how long is it appropriate for uninvolved third parties to publicly use my criminal and amoral past against me? That’s not intended to be a loaded question. For me, the answer is not “never”. An hour after I sobered up? A month? A year? Ten? For some time at least, it is reasonable for people to consider me an increased risk, a threat. When criminals feel reformed, we want that time to start instantly. It doesn’t and it shouldn’t. But I don’t know the answer to when it becomes inappropriate.
I’ve written before that I don’t think that employers should be barred from considering addiction to be an increased risk, and that caution with respect to addicts in recovery is reasonable and should not be considered stigma. I stand by that.
But isn’t it a bit sleazy for someone with no personal relationship to either me, or to the events, to publicly call me out for them, years later? To impugn my employer, who may know nothing of them, for hiring me? Certainly, I don’t think that person is committing any slander – I really did do those things. But aren’t they violating a fundamental precept of the American philosophy of justice? That crimes atoned for are now past. That criminals can be reformed and should not suffer illimitable consequences for acts the law has adjudicated?
Can crimes be atoned for? Can immoral acts be set behind us? Or are we forever bound to them, and do we deserve to have their consequences follow us for the rest of our lives? Are there classes of immorality that are unexpungeable? Because I can promise, I have more to be ashamed of than I have ever written here. I am worse than you know. Does my repentance and reform mean anything?
If it doesn’t, then it doesn’t. But if it does, then why are we polishing the pillories every time we discover the atoned-for indiscretion of another? It may not be wrong – I don’t know – but it’s sleazy. And I think it runs counter to the grand ethic of American justice.
Where Am I?
My relationship with the duration of my life is peculiar to me. I am, now, in what I think of as the “big middle”. The years roughly from 30-65 when I can expect to do most of the main production of my life. Not only the working aspect, but the creative. This is when I write, when I compose. I’m young enough to be ambitious about it and mature enough to resist my urge toward false profundity. I am free to simply create what pleases me.
My professional life is about growth and movement now as well. I am building something, rather than maintaining something I’ve completed. My little demesne is expanding here and I feel confident about my abilities to put something into place here at MECMC that will outlast my stewardship of it. That’s satisfying. Similarly, I am making academic contributions that are at least a little better than worthless. My work is being published in halfway decent journals and cited in fully decent ones. That makes me happy.
My relationship is still young and new but it has rapidly matured into something that feels stable and solid. I don’t fear loneliness. This part of my life I want to freeze: let’s be young and excited forever. I know that that can’t be the way. But I do love that firestorm of affection that colors everything in riot. This feeling of standing in the swirling center of a field of blazing wildflower, a burning meadow that cannot be consumed.
My health is good. My fitness is decent. My finances are in order and my career is in place. Barring an astonishing lapse in my program, I’ll be sober 8 years next month. I have, on paper, an enviable, accomplished, and privileged life. I am basically content though I struggle with anxiety. I find myself looking around at things. What’s next, I wonder? Not from a place of dissatisfaction, but curiosity. Something is next. I wonder when I’ll find out what it is.
Selling the House.
I am really tired of my house. So tired of my house that I’m going to sell it. I had a lot of difficult things happen that made me not want to live there any more. Now, everything is fixed. And the neighborhood had really improved and I expect to be able to make a little money. Not a lot. I’m just ready to go. Finding another place to live will be daunting but I’ve already looked at some places that look manageable.
I’m tired of having trouble figuring out where to be in ECC. In St. Louis, I had no trouble. I had a house. It was a good house. That was all I needed. In ECC it’s been a struggle. It’s such a different city. But I’ll figure it out. Probably. Sigh.
I’m a little frustrated with the disclosure forms. I had some problems with the house that are all fixed now. But it looks like I have to disclose them anyway. I wish I didn’t. It doesn’t seem right that you have to disclose things that aren’t problems anymore. But the form is unambiguous, so I will. Even though real estate agents always try to get you to lie on those forms. “It’ll be a little tougher to sell if you disclose that.” They never outright say: “Don’t disclose” but they make it clear that they don’t want you to.
I’ve decided to apply sobriety rules. Rigorous honesty and let the chips fall where they may. Maybe I’ll make a little less money, or it’ll take a little longer. So what. I’m going to move forward in life. It’s time to live somewhere else.
First Run of the Year.
Yesterday after work I went out in the 24 degree weather (Farenheit, for you foreign devils reading this) and ran for the first time in 2016. My last run of 2015 was on the 30th, so I took four days off. I didn’t ride or go to the gym in that time either. I just rested and took a few shortish walks. Definitely time to get back to it.
It surprises me how much a few days break will allow my body to both recover and back slide. The run yesterday, only a touch more than four miles, made my lower back ache a bit. My right thigh was tweaky. It didn’t feel great. But I definitely needed it and I was thrilled to get out there, go up and down a few hills, and turn in a pretty good pace for the afternoon.
4.13 miles, 39:21. About a 9:30 pace per mile which qualifies as a “fast” run for me. I was definitely pleased with time and distance and pace and it really feels good to go out into the bracing cold and get some work done. I don’t know if I’m going to repeat last year’s distance. I don’t know if I’m going to keep improving on my achievements. But I’m going to go out and run.
Today I talk with my personal trainer about my fitness goals for the year. I’m thinking, run 1000 miles, bike 1000 miles. I like round numbers and those are some big round numbers. I’d like to run another marathon. At least three half marathons, maybe four or five if I can find the time.
I’d really also like to take better control of my diet. I gained back about four pounds over the winter holidays and I’d like to actually drop down below 180 this year if I can. That’s all down to eating. I eat good healthy foods on a regular basis. But I eat too much of them, and then I eat too much in the way of baked goods and sweetened dairy. I am capable of making good choices. It just requires that I take and enlightened view of it.
When I feel more spiritual about my body, I make better decisions about what I put into it. I have many atheist and skeptical friends who think that that’s absurd, and that I should be able to just look at the science of health and make rational choices based on the best available evidence. The problem is, even in the relatively well-understood world of nutrition and exercise, there’s no consensus at all about what’s “healthy” among scientists. There are broad guidelines but no specific solutions.
And that’s a general problem of using epidemiological evidence for individual decision making anyway: we’re all different, and while general guidelines are good for most people (if they’re well-constructed), we each respond to our diet in idiosyncratic ways.
And so the best way for me to be effective in my health decision making is to adopt a more holistic, spiritual view about it. I know that I feel better and feel more connected to myself and my surroundings when I am making positive choices about my food. For me that means a lot of vegetables, whole grains, lean meats, and milk. And it means not depriving myself of sweets but attempting them in small doses. A half a chocolate bar after dinner.
Then, if I add in some meditation and exercise, I generally feel pretty good about myself, and I’ve lost weight and been healthy doing that. I think spirituality has deep usefulness in my life, and I don’t need to understand how it works to accept that.
So I think those are my goals. Run 1000 miles. Bike 1000 miles. And try to lose about 10 pounds by adopting a healthier and more spiritual outlook towards food again. I’ll see if I can. I’m confident that the effort will itself be worthwhile.
Ruminating on Goals.
Here it is the 3rd of January and I haven’t decided what my goals for the new year are. There are fundamentally three or four areas of my life that I pay regular attention to in the sense that goal-making is relevant to them. My sobriety, my relationship, my career, and my health. I recapitulated 2015’s progress on those fronts in a prior post. Overall, 2015 was a fabulous year. Now I start a new year, and I don’t feel pressured to make specific goals for it.
Sobriety is simple: continue to grow in my sobriety and my approach to an unanesthetized life. No alcohol. No tobacco. No drugs. This doesn’t feel like a wildly challenging goal. I’ve done the sobriety thing since February, 2008. I’ve been tobacco free since August, 2009. I know what to do and how to do it. It feels comfortable and I feel centered. I’d like, perhaps, to spend a little more time meditating. Maybe doing more yoga. But overall, I want to spend the year sober again. I do that by spending today sober. And I’m sober today.
My relationship is, in a human context, still quite young. We are approaching our third year together. But it is flourishing and we are happy. Perhaps this will be the yea we get to cohabitate. Perhaps not. That’s not entirely up to me (or even to us) and so it’s not right for an annual goal. I don’t like to make goals that depend on the decisions of others. I’d like us to grow in our commitment and affection. This seems likely.
My career, well, here I have some tangible goals. I am going to be taking more fiscal responsibility in my office. It’s going to be a challenge to be in charge of budgets and finances. Not from a dollars and cents perspective, but from an accounting and administration perspective. The systems are arcane and confusing to me. I am going to ask for a raise when I take on additional responsibilities. I might get it. I might not. It’ll be ok either way. I’d like to take on additional persons who report to me. I’d like to take on a PhD in a somewhat postdoc-y role (though better paid and with the option to stay longer with a career ladder). I’d like to publish and maybe submit another grant.
Healthwise, I made such enormous strides last year. And now I feel fit and ready for the new year and new challenges. But I still don’t know what they should be, for certain. I want to spend more time on my bike. Last year I rode a bit more than 500 miles. But I didn’t even buy the bike until May. So I feel like I ought to be able to about double that. I ran 1200 miles. I don’t know that I need to run that far again. Maybe 1000? I want to lose some weight and gain some muscle. I want to take better charge of my diet (as I eat peanut M&Ms).
So I’m not sure what my goals are. I don’t have much time left before they won’t be annual goals, just life goals. And that’s no bad thing. There’s nothing special really, about January 1. Or 3. Or any other date. A goal becomes a goal when I decide to take it on. A life becomes a life when I decide to start living it.
Resolved to Sober Up.
The media at large tends to focus on New Year’s resolutions to lose weight or get fit or whatever. In academics, I see a lot of “submit X many grants” or “read Y many papers” or “finish Z many dissertations”. These are fine resolutions and I hope everyone achieves their goals. Good luck in 2016!
But I see another set of resolutions every new year. AA meetings swell to the rafters every January. Then they gradually deflate over the next month or two. It’s an exponential fall-off. Most people don’t go to a second meeting. Of those that do, most don’t go to a third. Very few stick around for the 90 days we recommend you go every day when you’re new.
There’s a lot of disillusionment that AA doesn’t cure you. That it’s not easy. That people like us can’t learn to drink normally. We are broken, and not fixable. We can only find a new use for ourselves. We flourish in dry soil, while hungering for wet. That feels unfair and impossible in the beginning. It seems like we’re doomed to misery.
We are not. I hope, if nothing else, that reading this blog has revealed that it is possible to have a normal, happy life of freedom and utility while being in recovery from alcoholism. I have all the challenges and difficulties of a normal person, and all the tools of a normal person to cope with them, except the relief of a drink at the end of a hard day. But I have additional tools as well, that normal people generally lack, to confront life’s steep and muddy terrain.
If you find yourself, today, January first, 2016, looking to relinquish your addiction and enter a new life of freedom and peace, I can help you. It’s a difficult road, but a simple one. There are no complex turns and secret passageways. There is no trick. No concealed wisdom. It’s all very, very simple.
Go to meetings. Don’t drink in between. Find someone in the meeting who seems to have what you want. Ask them how they got it. What they did to get where they are. They will tell you. I can tell you.
When I started, almost eight years ago, I drank a bottle of 80 proof liquor a day. Sometimes more. I wore dingy red sweatpants every day. I was miserable, and depressed, and constantly hungover. With the headaches and diarrhea and nausea that entails. I hated myself and the people who were supposed to love me hated me. Even while they loved me. I didn’t work. I didn’t take care of my home. I drank. I drove drunk every day, often with a child in my car. I hid alcohol and tried to disguise my drinking. I alienated anything that threatened my access to alcohol. I was dying. I didn’t care.
Now, I have a great career. I have a well-maintained home. I have a kind and loving relationship. I have friends who respect me and family who admire me. I contribute to this society, to my community. I am leaving a legacy of scientific and engineering productivity. I am fit and healthy, having taken up fitness as a pass-time.
Nothing I’m doing is remarkable. Many people, in sobriety and among the normal folks, are more accomplished that I am. Some are less. It’s not a contest. What matters is that I am happy, and I know how to negotiate the formerly-bewildering wilds of life. I can show you how to do the same. So can millions of others, in the meeting rooms and church basements and coffee shops where we congregate.
I can do that because of the work I did in Alcoholics Anonymous. Because I’ve been continuously sober for 2,877 days. Because I worked the steps with a qualified sponsor and took his direction. I did what I was told, letting go of my selfish need to be right, to be in control, to be in charge. I found the people who had solved the problem I was faced with, and I did what they told me to do to solve my own.
It worked. It can work for you. If you drink like I drank, then you can recover like I recovered. I don’t know if it’s the only way. I don’t care. Nor should you. If you’re standing where I stood, then the only thing that matters is deciding to live, or deciding to die. I know the road to life. And in the beginning, I – and my brothers and sisters in sobriety – we can carry you.
The way to freedom is not a fight. It is not a battle. It is not a war. The way to sobriety and freedom is a way of peace. Let go. Give up. Fall down. Don’t worry about landing hard. We’ve already set the net.
Two Last Days.
Well, 2015 is coming to a close. Two more days and then we start a new year. This was a good year. I had some big challenges, there was change, but mostly, I succeeded at what I set out to do, and I feel like I made progress on my major life goals and relationships. The coming year will see more challenges and new hurdles. And presumably new growth and new dreams. But right now isn’t the time for me to look forward. I want to look at this year a bit.
Once again, I spent the year sober. And once again, it didn’t feel like a challenge. I’m grateful for that. I know what it’s like to struggle to be sober, or worse, to struggle to not be too drunk too often. I don’t want to be complacent, but I’m deeply thankful for sobriety being part of the basic bedrock of my life now. Sobriety is the frame, so that my life can be the picture. I know I’m still learning to paint. But my frame looks decent these days.
At work, I was promoted again. I hired a new analyst. I published four papers (I think), and have another under review. I’m learning a new aspect to my trade, managing. I’ve learned that managing and supervising are both skills, and distinct ones. Supervising – and mentoring – I’m pretty good at. Managing is an entirely different animal. It’s difficult and foreign. But I’m learning fast.
In my relationship, well, I’m learning how to be in a loving, stable relationship with a person who’s sane and reasonable. That’s a new thing for me too. I’ve been with sane women before, but I wasn’t capable of participating. And my marriage, well, no need to rehash it here. Neither of us were well-suited to a long term stable relationship then. It’s a relief to be healthier, and a gratifying challenge to stay that way and continue to grow.
In my fitness, I really blossomed. If tomorrow goes as planned, I’ll have run more than 1200 miles this year, according to my GPS. Which probably actually means 1160, but the GPS rounds up, so I’m rounding up. I will have averaged 100 miles a month for a year. I ran four half marathons, a full marathon, and a 10K. I rode my bike another 500+ miles. I went to the gym about twice a week. I didn’t lose an ounce, but I’m stronger and faster and healthier.
So all in all, unless something terrible happens in the last two days, 2015 was a major success. If 2016 is as good, I’ll be fortunate indeed.
The Doldrums of the Dark.
Earlier this year I started writing something other than a blog or academic papers. I got 35,000 words in – about 100-120 pages in modern typesetting – and set it down in July. I want to return to it. But it’s hard to write. I’m sure there are tricks to it that I don’t know. But nothing works better than simple self-discipline. Which I don’t feel strongly at the moment.
It’s December 21st. Last night was, finally, the darkest night of the year. It’s time to have the sun rise again. But the next week in ECC looks miserably grey and rainy. The entire East Coast is under warm but wet conditions. I’d rather the cold, if it’s to be this dark. I’d rather snow than rain. It’s all wrong. The weather is wrong, because the climate is wrong.
I’m still exercising regularly, but the slow downbeat of the dark has depleted my reserves of will. Though I can see the fruits of my labor, in my fitness and my body. I look forward to the better part of the year: the colder part with the daylight lengthening. I’m eager for winter, when the temperature drops but the sunset recedes. I could do well with a few months of bright, clear, cold.
Soft Stigma: “Good for You!”
I find myself splitting with the general zeitgeist of the mental health movement about “stigma” on a fairly regular basis. When it comes to addiction and alcoholism, I believe caution is reasonable, and does not represent a stigma, when it comes to making major life decisions around the participation of an addict in recovery. My partner, my employer, my family, my friends. All could reasonably decide that my potential for relapse represents an unacceptable risk. I’d understand. I think it’s a perfectly ordinary risk/value assessment we all have the right to make, even if I might not agree with their conclusions.
I also find myself reacting very badly to efforts on the part of mental health professionals to interact with me in a non-stigmatizing way. For a while, when I lived in St. Louis, I went to a walking meeting in Forest Park. It was about a 90 minute meeting that completed a 3 mile circuit while we talked about sobriety. It was an open meeting, and regularly attended by social work and nursing students who, as part of their curriculum, were assigned to attend an AA meeting.
For a while, especially shortly after my divorce, I was very pleased about this. Social work and nursing students trend towards being younger women. I was about three years sober. I thought it was a good chance to meet potential dates. This is not the best use of my meeting time, but it didn’t end up mattering because I never even asked one out. I discovered rapidly that we came from worlds so different as to be completely incompatible.
In the first place, the students would often try to talk about their own drinking as students, and talk about the party atmosphere at school. They can’t get it. Which is good! I’m glad they don’t get it. To get it, you have to have been through hell. But it always felt a little like going up to a NASCAR driver and saying, “Oh yeah! I once drove from Philly to DC on a Friday afternoon, so I know what it’s like to have to slalom through dense traffic at high speeds.” Sure, kid. Of course you do.
But that’s neither here nor there really, and taking a weird pride in being a giant fuck up that no one else can really understand or compete with is not exactly a winning disposition. The one that really bugged me was the near universal, “Good for you!”
This meeting was a regular part of my life, and I talked about my life in it. The years after my divorce were very productive for me, professionally. I won my first federal grants, and published a bunch of papers, and was promoted to principal investigator. And when I talked about any of these things at this meeting when a SW or nursing student was there, I invariably got “good for you” as a response. Said with the lilt you might use with a child who finally figured out how to pin the tail on the donkey, now that you took his blindfold off.
As an alcoholic in recovery, the things I accomplish are often amazing to me. But I’m not so sure they should be amazing to you. I’m incredibly grateful for my sobriety and my ability to achieve things that were impossible to me before. But seen through the eyes of a normal person, these achievements are pretty ordinary. I go to work, I run, I pay my bills, I maintain a healthy relationship. These are basic qualifications. I don’t need a participation trophy*. And I really don’t need a 24 year old student with no concept of what I’ve been through congratulating me condescendingly.
When I get a paper published, or finish a race, or whatever, I like the congratulations I get. And in my community of scientists, I like that the congratulations I get are the same as anyone else gets when they do the same. There’s no difference (that I detect, anyway) because I’m a former drunk. And in my community of alcoholics, we’ve all been through the same desolation, so we aren’t making an example of anyone when we talk about our achievements in sobriety.
But it’s really unbearably condescending to tell an addict in recovery that you don’t have a personal relationship with “good for you,” simply for doing the same things that any other human might do. That’s stigma. That’s telling us: I don’t expect you to be competent to participate in society, so I’m surprised and congratulatory when you do. I’m fine without that, thanks.
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*Race medals are finisher medals. Not participation medals. If you don’t finish, you don’t get one.
Infactorium 