Happy New Year
I just realized that I wrote two posts in 2024 and they both had to do with poop. Let’s turn over a new leaf and try to make 2025 more posty and less poopy, shall we?
How have you been, my people? 2024 was a weird one for sure. I had so many work projects fall through that I was idle most of the year, and I’m not great at being idle. Somehow being busy makes being busy easier, so being idle tends to make me, despite my best intentions, lazy and boring. Also, not having money coming in made me want to avoid spending unnecessary cash, so I stayed close to home for the most part.
I did get to travel to Illinois to pick up my brother-in-law for a road trip to Kentucky to see my great-niece get married. On the way, we stopped in Indy to see beautiful Casey, formerly of Moosh in Indy and presently a kickass sage and all-around decent human. Just like always, we were able to get very deep in very little time, despite not having seen each other for 4 years.
She told me about Recovery Dharma, a group similar to AA, but with a focus on Buddhist principles and meditation, and where all addicts meet together in one group – people who use alcohol, drugs, sex, food, shopping, anger, hoarding, gambling all in one big group of “wise friends.”
“That’s great,” I thought. “For her.”
Fast forward a few months. I had awakened after another long evening of drinking wine and snacking myself into a stupor as I watched Netflix. I thought “Maybe I could use some help with this food addiction problem.” With no meetings in my local area, I attended Recovery Dharma for the first time online.
The Recovery Dharma practice, in brief, is:
- Refrain from addictive behaviors and intoxicating substances
- Develop a daily meditation practice
- Study Buddhist principles
- Attend meetings
- Offer service to others
- Cultivate community with others on the path
- Write detailed inquiries about our addictions
- Keep learning and growing
So in addition to thinking about food mindfully, if I was going to do the program right, that also meant quitting drinking again. I quit publicly on the blog about a decade ago, but that resolve had gradually weakened and gone by the wayside, and many, many bottles and boxes of wine had come and gone since then. I wasn’t thinking of drinking as a problem, but I wanted to follow the practice as closely as I could.
Doing the practice meant sitting on a meditation cushion (ok, a memory foam pillow – I’m not fancy) for a while every day, something, it has turned out, I quite enjoy.
But here’s the thing about mindfulness. It’s a real pain in the ass. You actually have to feel your feelings (eeew, icky, I KNOW) and look at your automatic and repetitive patterns and decide if what you are doing is serving you. All the time. No wonder so few people do it. No wonder it’s helpful to have a group of people on the same path doing what you’re trying to do.
But here’s the other thing. The other day I was sitting at the stoplight on a normal suburban road with trucks and gas stations and electric wires and strip malls. And I was just there. And then the world switched into magic mode, where every glint of light reflecting off bumpers became a beautiful star and where every person in every car was dear and beloved and where the world was filled with perfection, right then and there, 10/10, no notes.
It was like I had become Emily in the third act of Our Town and was finally realizing life while I lived it. Like I had come home into the world, finally.
Of course that revelation faded, but the more I practice, the more I find myself in moments where my thoughts calm and the buzzing in my head subsides and I get some beautiful clarity. These times are like lily pads on a pond. Sometimes I can leap from one to another, but more often I fall in and have to swim for a while. As I practice more, I can trust that there will be another lily pad sooner rather than later.
So as usual, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I think I am doing something right. In the immortal words of Dory, I’m gonna “Just keep swimming.”
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Suebob's Red Stapler 
Excellent. Knowing good. Glad for those bits of awareness
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oh hey, it’s Deana. Didn’t mean to be anonymous.
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Well, hello, friend!
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LOL Now I AM anonymous!
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that sounds awesome. i have started using eft to try to break out of my cycle. i’ll eventually blog on it. thanks for sharing this!
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When I see “eft” I think “electronic funds transfer.” If you ever want to eft me something, I will send you my paypal account name lol.
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Thank you Sue. I have missed your posts! Wonderful insight
Namaste, Gail
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Hello there, lovely Gail! I miss sitting in the row behind you at CSL! But now I have a new CSL and last week there was a 6-week old baby in the row in front of me, so that was almost as good as having you there!
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Happy New Year! What a great post. Unfortunately, Emily didn’t figure all this out until she was dead, so you’re ahead of the curve.
All of the brouhaha on social media has reminded me of the many friends I originally met in the early days of Twitter. Living in Las Vegas has made it possible for me to meet many of them in person. Then I made to effort to attend BlogHer in LA, where I met you and Donna. Those were good times.
I hope you will post more this year. I love your stories.
(((Hugs)))
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I remember my dad telling me, about meditation, that he wasn’t sure exactly what he got from it, but that generally days that he practiced meditation went better than days that he didn’t. I like that idea, and the idea of mindfully going about your day. Nice to see a post from you!
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I quite like the idea of Recovery Dharma. Nifty. Keep swimming SueBob.
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