Less than zero ... accountability

Jay Leno said his model for work was "show up, tell joke, get check, repeat."

I like that, I aspired to that.   Recently I was able to organize my life to pretty much that simple formula.  With one addition. 

My life became "show up, give tour, get paid, get loaded, repeat."

I had organized the rest of my life so no one expected anything of me.  I had no real friends or family left.. no acquaintances even. 

I briefly dated a blackout drunk but that ended when she attacked me post hernia surgery and she got arrested for domestic battery and resisting arrest about which she remembers nothing..... humph maybe alcohol would be a better choice of drug, no memory of your misdeeds ... but I digress.

It was as close to zero accountability as I could get.  All I had to do was show up five or six nights a week;  "work" 3 to 5 hours and make a really good living for what was basically part time work. 

To be completely honest  this "work" was very easy for me.   I occasionally rolled in having been up for 2 days without sleep and still got 5 Star reviews and made great money in tips.  Sometimes I made more those days than I made on days when I was fresh as a daisy. 

Even at 40%, I told myself over and over again, I'm still better than most of the people out there when they're at 100%.

Honestly I'm a good tour guide. But I'm also a professional stand-up comedian who majored in history and political science  who as a teenager trained as an actor at the Folger Shakespeare theater and later ran an advertising agency and was a professional corporate trainer and a radio personality all before turning to stand up.

That's a lot of overkill for telling ghost stories to drunk tourists in the French Quarter.

I do have many skills, many abilities.  I have a great deal of knowledge and experience and expertise... and what do I choose to do with this vast reservoir of talent..  this huge storehouse of potential?

As little as fucking possible.

I give great tours. I'm one of the best in the the city at what I do but to put that in perspective that's like saying I graduated from The Culinary Institute of America,  worked my way up thru the ranks at an Emeril Lagasse restaurant both back and front of the house worked front of house as captain and Maitre d at several restaurants of three and four stars and now I am I'm one of the best Lucky Dog vendors in New Orleans.....the bar is not that high.

I've been thinking that my job choice is a cop-out that I should do more I should reach for more of my potential.  

But now I'm thinking work is not the area where I need to be pushing the limits of my accountability. 

Perhaps I should start with the simple.  Making a homegroup once a week and 90 meetings in 90 days. making a phone call once a day to a few people in recovery.

Reconnecting with friends from the past they're still out there.  There used to be a dozen men who told me they love me every day and I said the same to them and we all meant it.

I think my level of accountability needs to come up in all the other areas of my life. 

I'm very lucky I have found a job I do well that is fulfilling.  I enjoy it. I make really good money at it.  I can work pretty much when I want and it leaves me lots of time to pursue recovery.  And the time to engage in rewarding outside activities;  time to rebuild my relationships.

Instead of seeing it as underachieving and failure to reach my "potential".  Maybe this is a great opportunity to keep it simple....  To appreciate the amazing gift New Orleans has given me ... a job and one I'm good at, one that's in season year-round and that earns me a good living.

I just need to change the Jay Leno model a little bit to something like this maybe:

Show up, give tour, get paid, go to a meeting, go to the gym, go out to dinner with friends

show up, give tour, get paid, go to a meeting, go to the New Orleans Museum of Modern Art,

show up, give tour, get paid, go to a meeting, Go grab some cool kids in recovery and check out the Parliament Funkadelic at Tipitina's on December 30th (who's down for the P.Funk?)

show up, give tour, get paid, go to a meeting, go to a Saints game AND OR boycott a Pelicans game cuz it's the stupidest name in professional sports  I'm a "pelican't"

You get the idea.

And I'm not trying to minimize how absolutely fucked-up I was and am.

At the end there I couldn't even show up, give tour and get paid because the place I was working with started to make changes and I couldn't handle changes...not any changes the slightest little change and it rocked my sad precariously balanced pathetic world.  Everything was falling apart and I was barely holding on.

They had  just cancelled my contract two days before the chest pain started. 

But like everything else it all works to make it better if it doesn't kill you.  Not only did it not kill me it made everything better.

It made me stop and get help.

So I will keep moving forward getting better everyday.  Heart problem behind me at the moment don't need another stent working everyday to reconnect to the strong recovery family I've had for years.  New Orleans is my town I'm going to make it my recovery bitch.

I only have one lucky dog joke here it is:

What did the Dalai Lama say to the lucky dog vendor?  

Make me one with everything.....