Still here... for now

Howdy, dudes.  Yes, I'm still alive!  Still fighting the good fight.  But most of my writing is elsewhere these days, and well, it's more private.  Since my career, painting, is growing and taking up much of my time, I still do daily writing in order to preserve and hopefully expand my sanity and spiritual life, but it really is not very entertaining reading, even for me.
      Last summer I had my first big gallery show in Toronto, and it did well.  So, I'm not here much any more and I have to spend my precious morning time doing stream of consciousness writing, similar to the "morning pages"  method prescribed by Julia Cameron in her useful if a bit misty-tinkly-woo-woo manual for blocked artists The Artist's Way.    Interestingly enough, she is a recovering alcoholic and addict, and her method of "artistic recovery" seems to mirror 12  step work. I'm not saying she stole it, but it does have a lot of parallels.  If it helps more people, more power to her.
     Yes,  I'm still active in OA (a twelve step program for those who have addictive habits of using food as a drug rather than a necessary substance).  I have to be, in order to keep my life. Not just healthy, perhaps keep my life period.  Who knows where I would be today if my therapist hadn't shoved me towards it?  Blocked?  Hermetic?  Dead?
   But I am spread pretty thin.  Even if it is much, much better, life is not all sunshine and roses.  I still have to "work my program".  I have to phone my sponsor weekly, I still have to pray every morning to whatever life force of the universe there is that can help me keep going.  I have to write, and I have to daily tell myself that I am powerless over food without the help I've been privileged to find. 
    Otherwise, on the net  I have a website and maintain a Facebook presence to promote my business.  And right now I'm doing a business tax form rather than my usual personal income tax form.  That's a step, with it's own headaches... I have issues with money which more and more seem to be emotionally and mentally linked to the unhealthy patterns I am compelled to with food.   I'm still going. I'm still a healthy weight, and amazingly enough, I'm in good physical shape, despite having started into some heavy menopausal symptoms over the last year.
       If you're reading this because you're struggling with weight and food or bulimia, keep going, find an Overeaters Anonymous meeting.  And be good enough to yourself to attend 6 meetings before you say it's not for you.  It could save your life.  What have you got to lose?  
     Pizza Hut will still be there next month.   Cheers. 
 

Fascinating...

Yeah, and I'm Spock too... hardly.

What I find interesting is that it is almost exactly a year since I last felt the compulsion to post.  And in almost exactly the same circumstances. Oh my, does that make me predictable?  I think it speaks to how our lives can run in seasonal patterns.  We haven't come that far since our medieval peasant ancestors...

One year later,  and the morning after another midwinter choral concert.  It was a great time, and I'm feeling the predictable letdown.  I was in a sextet created just for the evening and I miss it so already.  The studio after having a great fall, and so much progress in the last 2 years is feeling bleah again.  Winter blues.  I think I need to get out of town for a couple of days.  I'm considering going to TO to visit my gallery representative.

YES!!! I have a gallery rep! I'm working in the studio five days a week.  I was a featured artist on a national show in the fall, and I've got a gallery show in Toronto in the spring.  Life is still a fucking bitch sometimes but at least I have a life now, so much more than I had years ago when I started this project.  I was considering deleting this blog, but really, when I look back at how much my life has changed, I don't think I will. Even if nobody reads it, it reminds me of how much my life has changed since I joined Overeaters Anonymous almost 10 years ago (March 2002).  And yes, I am still a healthy weight.

I have to run, ironically to get groceries,  before the university students come to on the morning after and flood the market, but I will return soon, because I'm feeling the need to write.  Cheers!

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

Typical drama queen... it's not that bad, but that phrase is in my head due to a beautiful arrangement of that old Paul Simon song by my friend Jack, the interim director of our community choir...

I am feeling a little dark. Last week I was very excited about my new work schedule in the studio. I'm not a morning person but I realized I would get more work done if I came in in the morning. Besides, our adolescent puppy gets me around 7 anyway, so why not? I pull myself together, and after a couple of cups of coffee me and Bela (the dog) are off to the decrepit 60's dentist's office that is my studio. Last week I was high on how much more time I was getting in here. This week, the feeling has retreated to "same old, same old".

And I'm on the downhill slope from a high. We had our big choir concert on Saturday, and the group show at a local gallery closed yesterday and the participants had a nice dinner at one of my favorite higher end restaurants. So of course today I'm bummed. And it's 1130 and I wish I was eating lunch. There is a piece of two day old anchovy pizza trilling its siren song from my fridge, a 20 minute walk away. Again, typical! I knew the slump was coming, but it doesn't make it hurt much less. What I can do it remind myself (one minute at a time) that it will pass.

And I had the most incredible rush of grudges and resentments as I was setting out my paints. I'm guessing they tend to flood into the "now what" vacuum in my brain. So, in the face of hating the entire world, I had to dredge up my gratitudes, for the second time today. They came a lot slower than they had when I said my 12-step prayers a few hours before.

A ray of hope has come as I see that my recent goals have been realized and I may be on the verge of achieving one that I had only hesitantly dared hope for. So I need some fresh ones. That is cool.

Sometimes walking the walk takes you through rough terrain. But for me it all comes back to the food. If I can't put the food down, I'm crippled. I was an artist with a block that had even come back to haunt me last year, and I had to really work my recovery to not binge after a really bad episode a year and a month ago. And the recommittment got me back into the studio, better than ever before. And that was one thing that I didn't figure on, one of the gifts that I couldn't predict, but it figures that the unmanagability of my life extends way beyond the food.

Ok, back to work. Cheers. Just watch out if you see me and the dog trotting toward you about 1 pm --- I've got a date with them anchovies!

Shocking Revelation!!! Recovery is MORE Than What I'm (Not) Eating...

You know, deep down in some part of my psyche this is still a shock. For over 40 years I equated my success in life with what I did, or didn't put in my mouth. I believed in the old saw that once I lost the weight, life would be perfect and I would be happy. As I look back now over the last seven years since I entered the planet of the thin and "perfect" (hoo boy, how thick am I???) I can see many times when I was still miserable, but I was thin, dammit. It continues today, but I think the misery is slowly, slowly thinning. No pun intended, but maybe it's apt. For the past 5-plus years, I've believed that the size of your weight problem is directly proportional to the depth of your pain. The only way I have been able to stay at a relatively stable and healthy weight seems to be by tackling the emotional misery I've been living with.

I think I used to mention my bed frequently when I began this blog. Even after I entered into twelve-step programs (yup, plural, I've been in a few different ones, although Overeaters Anonymous is still my main focus), I would spend a lot of time in a semi-depressed state where I wasn't binge-eating, but I was still spending a lot of time in bed either sleeping or reading, watching tv, hiding from the world, and hiding from my feelings which were usually some variation of "Ugh, I hate myself".

I still wake up some mornings with a variant of that thought. For a long time it would be expressed as "Ugh, morning. I want to die" or, "Just let me go back to sleep, God" or my favorite: "Ugh, I hate my life". Well, one morning it struck me that I didn't actually mean that last one. I like my spouse, my house, where it is, my friends, my pets, even my cramped little bedroom which is certainly cozy and warm on cold mornings unlike the drafty big one we had in our last house. I like my work as a painter. I even like my studio in a rather run-down building on a slightly seedy block. I like zipping around town on my scooter. Needless to say, I love my bed. It's just so comfy. So, what's left not to like? Basically, me. That's about the only significant thing left.

And that came floating back to me last week when I was attending the fourth in a cross-program 12 step study lecture a a local hospital auditorium. It was being conducted by a well spoken and charmingly self deprecating recovering alcoholic. We were looking at step 4, the "fearless moral inventory" step that strikes fear into the heart of almost every desperate searcher that ends up in those rooms. And it really is "ends up" isn't it? By the time we get to OA, AA, NA, any one of those A's, we're desperate. They call it "the last house on the block" because we've tried every diet, trick, every fad, every fix we could buy, and it hasn't worked.

Anyway, the AA guy was talking about warped thinking and how, in AA terms, being sober is about more than just not drinking, or not gambling, or not binge eating or not starving oneself. It's about, well, sanity. And I'm not sure how often I am truly sober, not running away from one uncomfortable thought or other. The last month or so, I think I have been running again. It's very uncomfortable, but at least I'm not back in the food --- yet. But I'm aware that I'm sort of miserable for a good chunk of my waking time, and even some of my non-awake time. I usually wake up for a bathroom break sometime after 4 am and I'm often aware that I'm in a fog of foreboding. The same foreboding I seem to develop a convenient amnesia about during the day when I might actually be able to deal with it.

I've got work to do about this, it's time to stop this before it, to put it bluntly, bites me in the ass. So, now I grab another cup of coffee, go offline, and deal with this bucket of crap. I'll eventually be back here to post what happens (in a nice distilled sanitized way, I'm sure) but I have to do the first part in private. However, before that, I have to contact my sponsor, who've I've been playing dead with. MIA. Or in other words, hiding from. Thank God I've got a local food buddy that I talk to 3 times a week.


















She's got about 3 more times the years in the rooms than I have, and so she's been nudging me (ok, last time we talked it was a shove) about dealing with it.

Apropos of nothing except love and joy, please enjoy the photo of our new puppy (at present gently snoring beside me on the couch).

Still Here, Still Trudging the Road to F'in Happy Destiny...

I haven't posted in so long I can't even figure out how to get the font right, but really, that's not important. The important thing is posting. Something. Period.

Gakkk, I'm falling into William Shatner-speak. You know. That. Self. Important. Cadence.

Jian Gomeshi (on CBC Radio) does the same. Thing.

Anywaaaayyyyyy.... I'm back. I know, it was before February that I last wrote here, but what an interesting 6 months it's been! I'm still abstinent from binge eating. I've lost a little weight, I'm at least 10 pounds lighter than I was in January, but I can't really remember current details because other than this morning, I can't remember when it was between now and then that I last weighed myself. It's ok to be free of that crazy compulsion to weigh myself often.

Another odd thing: I've been not eating desserts or candy now for something like 3 or 4 months, again a little on the fuzzy on the exact time period. All that, my friends, is a freakin', well, MIRACLE. And I'm pretty cool about it, most of the time. Ok, I did wonder this very evening if I was ever going to eat my favorite brownie again, but decided not to go there. This abstaining from eating sugary stuff wasn't caused by so much a crisis in my abstinence from bingeing, it was caused by a desire for some peace of mind.

I've got some friends in the Program (OA) that refrain from eating much sugar, and I always pooh poohed it as extreme. But there was one day in the spring that I realized I was obsessing most of the afternoon over an ice cream cone. Not a really special one, just an ordinary Dairy Queen medium (or small, even more mediocre) dipped cone. For whatever reason, realizing how obsessed I was made me decide to take one more step back from boarding, or perhaps "being run down by" is more appropriate, the train to Crazyville. One. Day. At. A. Time. For today, I'm not eating dessert. Maybe I will tomorrow. The first week was somewhat difficult, but not as difficult as I had feared, and most days it's been pretty easy. You know what keeps me doing it, or not doing it, as it were? It's another one of those things that has made my life simpler. No hemming and hawing over amounts and should I or shouldn't I....

Jeez I gotta go to bed, I'm swimming at 8 am and it's midnight. I'll write soon. It's good stuff. Honest.

WTF?!? This is Actually Working?

This has been as good a month as last month was bad. Well, December wasn't all bad, mostly just Christmas. Too much time in Crazytown, except Crazytown was me. "We have seen the enemy and they are us", isn't that the ancient quote from Pogo (don't bother trying to remember it if you're not a boomer)? But it did force me to actually go back to square one with my OA work.

Got myself a new sponsor, a young woman in another city hundreds of miles from me whom I have never met but found through --- get this, if this isn't going to some good lengths for sobriety --- the sister of a really strong sponsor of some people in the program I really respect. I had heard the inspiring sponsor speak at a celebration and met the sister at a retreat and they both had this look in their eyes. Really wide eyed, maybe enough to scare someone else, I dunno, maybe they were born with it, but their eyes looked so damn... clear. I wanted that. I didn't want to go back to Crazytown no more. I told Sister I needed a real Big Book thumper, I was desperate. Sister couldn't sponsor me, too many sponsorees already, but she found this other woman for me.

So, new sponsor (she just sounds so young and perky, tells me "no worries", I'll call her "Sponsorette") has got me starting the steps over with her. Yup, after 6 years of being in OA ---actually, it will be 6 years this week,yoiks --- she e-mails me step 1 questions. After a month, I'm not finished step 2 yet. But I don't feel like I'm really back at square one. I've received so many damn gifts in OA, that I don't regret... any of it? Is that true? Poking myself... hmmm... seems so. Sure, maybe I would like to take back some lunkheaded claims I've made in the rooms, but not much. It was just part of my process. And although I'm back on Step 2, I feel so great to be here, because I've got 37 days of the cleanest abstinence I've ever had. What's the big difference?

Oh shit, I don't know... desperation? I didn't hit a new bottom, but I possibly hit a better bottom, which forced me to really look at the spiritual foundation of my programme. I was tired of all the games I was playing with food. I realized a couple of weeks ago that I had been doing much more "white knuckling" over the last few years than I wanted to admit: agonizing, obsessing about food, playing little games, tweaking the food this that and the other way. To copy from someone in the rooms (all my best lines are plagarized from there...I plagarized that from someone there!), it is not possible to deal with the problem of food by playing with the food. The recovery has to come from another area of my psyche, or in other words, I really have to work on my emotional and spiritual recovery. Particularly the latter.

Here's what Sponsorette has me doing:

• Getting down on my knees and praying (serenity prayer and 3rd step prayer) EVERY FREAKING MORNING FOR TWO WEEKS!!!! Go figure, I'm still doing it after 5 weeks, don't plan to stop anytime soon, but it's one day at a time so I won't predict..
• e-mailling or calling her (leaving message etc) EVERY DAY! With the goal of actually talking once a weekActually that bit was my idea. My last sponsor was a wonderful woman but our relationship was too loosey goosey and I need more help.
• working on those step questions
• sent her a detailled plan of eating
• going to 2 meetings minimum a week. That was my idea, I've got 2 I really like, plus I tried a phone meeting for the first time this month. Not as good as F2F meeting but a reinforcement. It's in the early morning so I can listen via speakerphone as I try to wake up.

Anyway, it seems to be working. In spades. OH YEAH, I DID TWEAK MY FOOD PLAN ONE MORE TIME: no snacks. 3 meals a day. That's it except for beverages in between meals. That was a tough one to consider, but I tried it for a day, then another, then another... it has made my days so incredibly, stupidly simple. Have lunch. Then the kitchen is closed until dinner. Dinner happens, good dinner, maybe some dessert, and then, kitchen closed. I did not WANT to do this, I was forced to; Because I have had, particularly over the last year, such maddening trouble with shutting the refrigerator after supper. One little snack. A little nibble more. Oh just a taste, what the heck. Yes, all the hackneyed, cobwebby excuses came out of the closet. For the longest time i felt eliminating snacks was too draconian. But I simply got too desperate to hold out any longer. The late night snacks were getting bigger, leading to WTF binges. So. I had to. I was given no choice.

And the most amazing thing has been happening (well, you can easily guess, it's not that amazing): I have had the most peaceful month. Life has turned on a dime. I think it's the daily work, the reaching out to my sponsor, reading the daily readings from For Today and Voices of Recovery and considering that in order to have consistent recovery, I have to work on my spirituality, and look at placing my trust in a power greater than myself. This week it's called my higher power. Next week, who knows. Some days I call it God, but only in the vaguest terms. And I'm diving into the Big Book again, trying to glean new gold from those old pages.

So be skeptical. I would be. Damn, there is still half of my brain that is still skeptical, but maybe that's the sick half. For today, it seems to be working.

Oh yeah, just one more scary/spooky thing... I got back into the studio this month. Hadn't been there for months, I had been working on home reno, and it just wasn't coming. Now I've been there 4 & 5 days a week for the last 3 or 4 weeks. Suddenly it's flowing, and the fear is most times lifted, it seems easier, there's a new confidence, the old scary mean voices are much quieter. I think it's all related, oh who knows, I'm just going to ride this wave as long as I can.

Cheers.

Gotta Love this *&(^%$#@ Going to Any Lengths Stuff

The holidays were not very good for my food.

Cooked too much, ate too much. Actually, they weren't horrible, perhaps I'm just more aware of how weird my eating gets when given the slightest opportunity. It wasn't until the morning of the 26th when I was eating cake and pan rolls for breakfast with a chaser of jellybeans that I said to myself, "ok, this is nuts."

The book Alcoholics Anonymous calls the disease of alcoholism "cunning, baffling and powerful" , and I think it applies just as well to eating disorders, which in my case is binge eating. In this case, I think my disease uses the lamest most hackneyed excuses to get me to eat, like:

I'll have just one, and stop. (Since when have you been able to do that?)
I have to taste it to see if it needs more...something. (But why do you have to taste it 13 times?)
They'll be upset if I don't have one. (Will they even notice, and if they do, what does that say about them?)
It's not what I usually eat but they haven't got what I usually eat... (Heaven forbid you die of starvation before the next meal)