PoM 218
My taste buds are only a small part of my body.
I will master them…
Alona Dukes...10/6/2021
PoM 219
After struggling through the PoM 213 through 217 offices on “Is Art useful to Recovery.”
I have come out desiring something new, for me.
As a way to meet my need for creativity I desire to create “Amateur art”.
There is no desire for money, fame, or importance…only the desire to create beauty and have fun.
PoM 220
While trying to record some new music today six Blue Angel F18’s, flying at 1200 miles per hour, a mere 250 feet over our heads, were rehearsing for “Fleet Week” here in San Francisco.
God keeps me from taking myself too seriously.
PoM 221
Once I met an acerbic, very talented man, who was in a lot of trouble.
We began to talk and we shared our gifts: Him; his profession. Me; my recovery.
We became best friends for many years.
Then he went back to his old ways and we never saw each other again. It broke my heart.
The hardest part of 12 step is not kicking addictions, it’s getting closer to someone than you are with your own therapist, rabbi, family of origin or even wife, and then someone stops working the program …and you have to walk away to save your own life.
PoM 222
Step 10 inventory:
Four and one half years ago I offered myself a deal: if I would give up eating for pleasure I could do anything I wanted.
I wanted to read books…so I took the deal and I have read over 200 classic novels from Tom Jones and Don Quixote to all of the books by Dickens, Vonnegut, Mark Twain, David Sedaris, James Joyce, Hemingway, and John Steinbeck.
It has been really fun and has given me friendships with some of the great minds of all time including some fabulous women like Toni Morrison, Fran Lebowitz, Gertrude Stein, Jane Austin, George Eliot, Dorothy Parker, Virginia Woolf and Nora Ephron.
But, as John Coltrane would say, ”It’s time for a change”.
I want to renegotiate my contract with myself:
If I will stay out of the food, and work out vigorously, I offer myself to play and write all the music I want…as long as I don’t get too extreme and out of spiritual balance and become involved with the addiction of “artistic preoccupation”.
PoM 223
Step 12 and 1/2: ”Took the actions of love to improve our relations with others.”
Sexaholics Anonymous “White Book”.
To my brother David,
I was teaching a guitar lesson today and I re-realized something.
The reason I have spent 54 years of my life as a private music teacher is because of my relationship with you.
My relationship with our father was competitive, as you so astutely pointed out.
My relationship with our mother was all glommed up with enmeshment.
My relationship with you, as I saw it as a boy, I was a little more experienced and we were both trying to get through a trying experience.
I know you have felt “controlled” as you have said, but also, as when the Teen Director molested us, you were really angry when I wasn’t there.
We were in a ridiculously bad situation, but something good came out of it.
I like the story of Joseph in Genesis 50:20 when he says to his family “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good, so that there might come a great healing”.
You helped create my life…just being who you are.
Your brother,
Steve
PoM 224
My goals are simple today:
Freedom from food addiction
Service to others through writing
Having fun through creating “Amateur Art”
Spending time with my wife and son
Exercise vigorously