kaleidescope, posts by tag: recovery - LiveJournal

On my way to the COSA convention in Albuquerque, New Mexico (Evidently. I kind of thought ABQ might be in Arizona, at first.)

It is a little insane to be going here. It cost more than my whole prudent reserve just for travel and hotel. Fortunately we both got full scholarships for the cost of the conference and the Saturday night banquet dinner. But dang.

It is also insane because mainly the reason I'm going is that I am nominated to be on the Board of Trustees. I have never done THAT before! In DA I represent my meeting at the world service level, which means that I get sent (for free thank god) to their conference every year and serve on the committee of my choice year-round. (That would be the one that does outreach to people confined in hospitals, institutions, and prisons, as well as the Diversity Caucus which I'm kind of screwing over this year. But the HIP committee has sent a copy of the DA book to every federal prison in America this year! And with time left to spare before the convention this August.)

What was my point? Oh, that we have a liaison to the Board on each committee so I have at least a vague idea of how it works.

The service structure in 12-step programs is an inverted pyramid, so actually these are some of the lowest positions you can hold. I don't really know what that means, besides the fact that you're we're not telling the meetings or members what to do, we're carrying out what THEY want US to do. Like, delegates from each meeting (or some meetings) come to the world service conference (or whatever their program calls it) and vote on things and bring up issues and then roll up their sleeves and do the dirty work. Ok, I actually have no idea what the board members do in there.

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I was just listening to the 12 Step Podcast over on iTunes, which has some amazing stuff. This particular one was a speaker meeting about the fourth step. I kept accidentally clicking on it, so I figured it was the way to go.

There's a lot in there that I want to crib for a meeting script I'm working on, so already that's a gift. But then the guy went on to say some amazing stuff about alcoholism that I want to bring to debtors anonymous.

See, DA is a slippery little program because it's really easy for people to get confused in there. We don't stick to the primary purpose of the program: helping people not incur more unsecured debt, one day at a time. Instead, we get all up in there with abundance and visions and PRGs and not overspending and not underearning and not time debting and not self-debting and a bunch of stuff that might LEAD us to debt, and is certainly important, but which we confuse with the actual problem.

I mean, i'm in a lot of 12-step programs, and I have never before known TWO people who have had sponsors and worked the steps and been around for YEARS, not getting anything out of it and never hearing that it's because they are in the wrong program. And yet, that's exactly what has happened over the past few weeks to both a new sponsee and a former friend of mine.

It's really made me realize for the first time how important that clarity is. So then I'm listening to this guy at this AA meeting, and he's going on about what it's like for newcomers when they come in and are told, "Just don't drink and keep coming back!" (which is literally not how it works, by the way) and they're like, "You don't understand! Drinking is what I do to deal with being sober! Drinking is my solution to waking up, to being stressed out, to fear, to social situations, to work, to everything! It's my whole entire act! You're trying to take away the only thing I know how to do to deal with life!"

So I was thinking about what it would be like if we talked about that at meetings instead of being in our terminal vagueness about everything. Because I wil tell you, when I first came into DA it was YEARS before I felt like I understood what debting even was. And I couldn't stop doing something if I didn't understand when I was doing it!

So, what is debting? It's my whole act! If I suddenly needed clothes, I'd spend my grocery money on them. If I needed joy or fun in my life, I'd spend the bill money on a $100+ stack of chocolate. If I needed to feel like a worthwhile human being, I'd spend that much money on books that I thought I should read to be important and interesting and right.

If I needed to pay the PG&E, though, or the water, or the phone bill, I'd say, "Well, the bill's not red yet! Why should I pay it when I don't HAVE to?" If I didn't have enough money for rent or for other bills i needed to pay by the end of the month, I'd just shrug and say "Then I might as well spend what I do have!" and go find out what I could buy that cost about what I did have left. And then I'd scramble for more money. I got really good at scrambling.

I rarely had a credit card, but when I did have one on hand I invariably ran it up to its limit, then didn't pay it, then ended up paying many times more than I spent with it. I had a $200 or so card once that I ran up to $750+ with all the fees for not paying it. I even had one in recovery that I figured was "for emergencies and building up my credit". My story about it for years was that I used it once or twice when I lost my job, to buy groceries, and maxed it out and have been paying it off ever since. When I found the old bills for it recently, I discovered that what I actually did was start using it while I had a perfectly good job, buying things that weren't in the spending plan that i evidently wasn't following: $50 dinner out, about $80 at Walgreens for last-minute I-have-to-have-a-big-deal-Halloween crap, and other junk here and there. Groceries came later! I think I did pay it off the first month, but it just set me up to use it when I couldn't afford to again the next month.

And credit card debt has always been the least of my DA problems!

Now, there was a bunch of "overspending" up there. But it's not a separate problem. It's premeditated debting. "Oh, does this chunk of money have to go to pay this bill on time? Let me just get rid of that. I'm sure there will be more coming from somewhere before then maybe."

It is everywhere. In my spending. In returning library books and videos late. In credit cards, in bouncing checks and debit cards transactions - I can't even write checks anymore, because I know that I can't keep good enough track of my money to protect me from losing track of some check that then goes through like 6 damn months later.

It's just like what the AA speaker was describing: it was this integral part of my life that I used to deal with everything, which just made it harder to deal with everything, in an invisible-to-me vicious circle. Like Homer Simpson said, it was the cause of and solution to all of life's problems. It's a process addiction, as opposed to a substance addiction: there's as far as I know no physical allergy to money, but there's the "spiritual malady", the problem of being powerless over this compulsive, self-sabotaging, fatal behavior and constantly lying to ourselves about it. And the only way out I have ever seen work for anyone with these kinds of problems is taking the actions people take when they work the steps, even if they don't call it that.

Ok, I just needed to write about that and this was the easiest place to get to on my phone to write about it! Thanks for listening ;)

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I think that the reality is that it's never, of course, the occupation affecting my self-worth. Or the work. Or whatever. It's me. Either it's me shaming myself for the business I am in or the work I am doing or whatever, or else it's me staying in an emotionally abusive workplace. Really, it's either the former or both, if something job-related is "affecting my self-worth."

But either way, no! I love my jobs! This is a great question because I haven't posted about my new jobs yet and I was just thinking earlier about how affirming and joyful the work I am doing is.

One of the best things is that my "day job" (as I call it, I suppose because I can do the other stuff anywhen) is so laid-back and so flexible. My actual job title is "youth substance abuse counselor," but basically I co-facilitate a queer youth group once a week and the rest of the time I hang out. And answer the phones. (which, frankly, involves a certain amount of ADULT counseling, because parents who have not dealt with their own addictions/abuse call us in full freak-out about how bad their kids' lives are and how much trouble their children are in - often from the school or the sheriff's office or somewhere!) And occasional administrative tasks, which I tend to turn into vastly-scoped projects for my own amusement. ("Go through the resource binder and find the youth-specific resources, please!" "Why, sure I'll revamp the whole entire binder and make it three times as large!" "OMG WE LURVE YOU!")

Plus, because everyone here is very nice and supportive, AND because my predecessor was horrible and had no boundaries (like to the point of hitting on all the fathers who were bringing their kids by... *shudder*), they adore me and are overjoyed by everything I do. (Oh yeah, and also because I do awesome work.)

PLUS, it is an excellent place for me because it is very inspirational in my writing. Like, I go to trainings about different issues for people working in the recovery field, I read stuff about working with bipolar adolescents, I see the questions we ask kids and their parents and the kinds of answers we get and think a lot about what might work better and about the trends and connections I see... and I get to learn from (and about) the kids in the queer youth group and get more inspired there. For example, one of them has nieces who he thinks are being sexually abused, so I offered to bring him some information about how to talk to kids about sexual abuse - which is going to go into my Facing Abuse book - which turned into tons of research and tons of sparks in my brain and will hopefully also mean a lot of support and personal transformation for him, and hopefully lead to us talking about these issues in that group as well, which will hopefully lead to us having other discussions about things like setting boundaries and letting go of shame and such on other nights! You would not believe how much my Facing Abuse blog has grown since I started here.

And then my other job inspires me just as much. I read blogs (that have like 5k visitors a month, and allow comments, and allow commenters to put their own web addresses in so their name links out) and post comments (about whatever, and then the place I link to pays me) and it is really easy and it is so much fun to read all these blogs for money. And so many of them are about celebrities, which is a HUGE inspiration for writing about abuse and addiction - not so much recovery. Like, my god, apparently the reason Amy Winehouse has impetigo or whatever, a huge swollen-face situation, is because a waitress told her to put out her cigarette and pissed her off and so she put her cigarette out ON HER OWN CHEEK and then tried to cover the burn up with makeup. *covers eyes in despair* I mean, MY GOD.

And I can do that at my day job. It takes like an hour or two per day, for which I get about $22. Which adds up to a goodly chunk of change after a month. So instead of underearning here (at about $395 take-home per week) I get about $650 extra near the beginning of each month to fill out my spending plan (to about $415 each week) and to go toward paying down long-term debt, (i.e. anything that will not result in my utilities being shut off) and (once I have paid off the short-term debts I incurred in between jobs) put aside some $500 toward buying a house. I figure by November I will have enough saved up to satisfy NACA's requirements and have a way better credit history in place. (They want each buyer to save up whatever amount more they will be paying per month; we're looking to get a 4plex and rent out the other units and not pay rent, but NACA iirc still wants to see savings to cover things like a delay in renting the place out or a gap between tenants. For some reason I have decided that the desirable amount is $3000, but it really depends on how much the mortgage is.)

Plus I am doing lots of things toward my own work. Obviously, much writing. I am so excited about not only having the inspiration and motivation to write more of Facing Abuse but also the TIME TO DO IT. And I am waiting to hear back from an agent who asked for my Meal Planner book proposal. And I have $40 a week for savings/investment that I can put (occasionally, because I also want other savings and things) into my grocery business. And I had a really fun idea for a small clothing line I want to sell, which I will look forward to posting about this weekend or early next week. With pictures!

*HEADEXPLODY*

It is very, very confusing to have a non-workaholic job. Like, they told me when I interviewed here that they wanted someone who could handle downtime. And I was like, you know, I am great at finding projects to do. And they said that is great but also, there will be a lot of times when there is really NOTHING for you to do. And I was like, do not worry. I can amuse myself. Which clearly I can, and I am delighted to have the opportunity to do it. But (at this early date (I've been here for maaaaybe 6 weeks)) it is still scary! I still trip myself out about how I am going to "get in trouble" for "playing on the internet" or reading or whatever, or how my coworkers (who do a lot more counseling, one on one and presenting groups to schools) will resent me for "not doing anything." But it is all crazy thinking. And then I think about how, maybe at the end of the fiscal year, the funding is supposed to change so that I get to do more groups and presentations. And I am like "nooo! I like it the way it is!" But I have plenty of time to savor this and experiment with what I want to be doing with my time.