Projecting

August 30. Hello friends & my spiritual family. I hope everyone's monday started off great. I didn't have the same luck but fortunately I stayed sober despite myself & my alcoholic thinking. To elaborate a bit, it was a long weekend with very low revenue at the jewelry shop & I bought an expensive electric cigarette for health & conveinence. I ended up spending more on jewelry & that e-cig than I brought in both days being open. Being set back a little financial is something we all deal with time to time & it wasn't what made my monday so bad, it was waking up feeling a bit sick after a long weekend that made it not so desirable. I forced myself to eat dinner before leaving the house & venturing off to Dallas Pa, hoping to find a clubhouse where a celebration meeting was going on for a friend. I got into the area but despite all my efforts using a map, gps, and my phone for directions to find the place it seemed to be nowhere. When the meeting was more than half over I started to walk up & down the street it was supposed to be on & checked every door. Unfortunately I never found the meeting & when I got back to my car there were just minutes left to find it before its conclusion, I headed back home & stopped off at another meeting that was going on in my hometown. I needed a meeting of some sort & to be surrounded by good sober people & it did the trick, my spirits were lifted greatly & my outlook on my monday picked up. I even started to feel better after a cup of coffee & talking with other addicts & alcoholics in recovery. After a day like today it's important for me to write, so I might as well pick a topic to talk about now that my day is up to speed.

I have been thinking alot lately about the future, what will come next, long term goals, and all the sorts of things we think about from tomorrow to ten years down the road. There is alot of good that can come from planning & thinking ahead, but for alcoholics there is a thin line between doing just that and "Projecting" or "Planning With Expectations". There is grave danger in doing either of the latter. The danger comes from dissapointment, depression, or resentment that comes from projecting or expecting certain results. This down & out feeling that can form is nothing new to us, we felt it often when in our active addictions, but it's danger is that it can lead us to a drink or drug & quickly if we are not spiritually fit/involved in a program to maintain our sober & spiritual condition. In my own sober journey I have begun to dream & ponder the future, I have two ideas in business that I would love nothing more than to see work out. I have social goals with people & even some that extend into a kind of perpetual "love life". All of these goals & ideals are things that I cannot achieve by just good behavior & spiritual development, some are affected by finance, luck, and in some cases by another human being having the same ideals as me. If I cling too tightly to any goals other than the spiritual kind, I might be setting myself up for failure. That failure can translate into a relapse if I am not doing what I am supposed to as a person in recovery. I see failed adventures in people's lives take them out to the gin mills & dark alleys over & over again. I even felt some of it during my own active alcoholism, diving deeper into chemicals as dissapointments got worse.

There is a solution however. A healthy way which one can balance valid dreams & goals with the reality that we can expect nothing to be easy or to happen as we wish. The balance lies in spiritual maintenence & growth, mainly through the 12 Steps and equally in the fellowships that adopt them. Working for & with others in service, such as sponsorship or volunteering your time & abilities for someone to get well, ahead, or back on track. Doing spiritual works of any kind will help us ensure that our own shortcomings will not consume us like they did in the past. We can do something about it & we don't have to sacrifice our dreams or goals to do it. I don't intend to personally shoot for the stars with my life, but if I land just short of there I know I can be reasonably happy if I work a program like the many who are teaching me do. Projecting is an unnecessary negative in the whole process of creating & achieving goals, learning to go on without it is the difficult part. It's something we do from the simplest events all the way up to our deepest dreams, I would like to share a few examples in my own life. I had a wedding to attend, I was going alone with no date & no sober friend to stay "grounded". I felt like being around all the couples was going to be depressing in my single status, and that being around everyone with an open bar would make me not fit in staying sober for the event. I projected it to be a disaster & it ended up being just fine. I survived three hours of the event without thinking of a drink, good friends keeping me company the entire time & distracted so I didn't have to notice that I was one of the very few who attended stag & without a date. It was a fun three hours of sober & spiritual laughter spent with good people, but I projected a disaster & almost didnt go. I would have missed a once in a lifetime event for that friend who got married. Another example of projection for me was with my business. I had assumed that a specific weekend was going to be great for sales & that I was going to be able to accomplish some certain things the following week. It ended up being one of the worst weekends I had ever had for sales, and I spent more than I made on improving my inventory. The end result was I had to miss out on some things I planned to do during the week & got my head all messed up thinking I was a failure as a business man. Being the farthest thing from the truth, a week after doing some spiritual work on myself sales picked back up & I no longer felt that way. Again, projecting in both events was something I was better off without.

We are all better off without projecting, even if we are not alcoholic, it does us little good if any at all.. ever. This does not go to say we shouldn't plan ahead or appropriately, or that we should not have goals or dreams. We SHOULD. Being prepared & ambitious about the future is surely a good thing, but there is that fine line between expecting & anticipating. It's through working the 12 Steps in our lives daily & applying them to all the areas we exist that will give us the ability to prepare & dream without projection. To handle it spiritually when things don't go our way or as planned, and never have to worry about resentment, depression, or dissapointment creeping back into our lives & leading us to a drink or drug. That is why we live the motto "One Day At A Time", because it keeps us where we can do our best work. Right Here, Right Now, Today.. Sober & Spiritual. I look forward to growing the skills I need in life to be drug & alcohol free forever, but until then I will do exactly what I need to do today to stay sober & spiritual. As my life falls back together one piece at a time, I hope that we all grow together & our dreams grow too. We can get a little closer to achieving our goals if we just keep it simple & live one day at a time. Good Night.. Good Morning... <3 Jimmy