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.....

Oh Lord it hard to be Grateful when you're entitled in every way!

So I think I found a Home Group here. I went to a CA meeting parentheses Cocaine Anonymous close parentheses really talk to text you're going to make me type it okay I'll leave it in for now anyway....

The CA meeting was irreverent and fun much like the NA meetings I enjoyed most when I first got clean. There were a few actual authentic moments. It felt good and I really needed that because I dreaded the  meetings of the other Fellowship.

The other Fellowship is what we call AA. Sometimes AA can be great but when you're going to AA in a treatment facility and it's the same people sharing the same stories over and over again... it's.... Gastly.  Somber serious glum passionless except when  hijacked by people who are frustrated storefront preachers expecting applause when they finish.  Shout-sharing their bumper-sticker sermons. Never sharing anything real just play-acting,  recovery karaoke parroting things they've heard others say.  It's Kabuki. Nobody's getting any help it's a pantomime they're dead people walking. I read a book, text friends, play with my phone, I do anything to get through that hour of misery, seething with resentment watching the clock, waiting for them to sign my form so I can leave.

Speaking of frustrated storefront preachers.... this reminds me of Paul writing to the Romans, the end of chapter 1 beginning of chapter 2.... I'll give you the cliff notes:

Paul goes on and on about how bad the Romans are all the bad stuff they're doing, a laundry list of sins misdeeds, horrors and then chapter 2 verse 1 he flips it on them, it was a setup.  He gets them feeling all righteous and indignant and then he pulls the rug out.....

Who the fuck are you to judge them?

Granted I have the New Urban translation.  But that's the sentiment. 

here's the actual verse the English Standard Version
"Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things."

Who the fuck am I to judge these men and their meeting?  All they did was show up in a room just to stay sober for an hour and my elitist entitled ass doesn't like how they do it.

These men didn't invite me to the fucking meeting. But you know what they did do?  They welcomed me.  Why? Because I said I wanted help. 

I had nothing and now I have a roof over my head, food in the fridge, access to free healthcare, therapy, psychiatrists, medication (free), classes on addiction..... and 7 days a week, a short walk from my free housing, a room full of men join together for 60 Minutes and do their best to get better and help each other find a new way to live.  And I'm welcome to join them if I'd like.  They don't even ask me to put down by fucking book and show them some fucking respect.

And it gets worse several nights there is a choice of a different room full of men so if I don't like one of them I can go to the other.

Is Tony Robbins the guest speaker every night, No.

Is every meeting here an epiphany? A bright blinding light of insight into my own psyche leading me on the path to new understanding of my addiction? No.

Do I need to shut the fuck up and be grateful every minute I'm here and not in an condemned house with no running water and no electricity that smells of shit and urine and body odor and the rotting smell of a dead animal underneath waiting for someone to come back, maybe with the drugs I'd given them money for....so I can get maybe 30 minutes of reprieve from the miserable existence I put myself in?  YES!

It's hard to keep it real when you're comfy and safe.

What's the word in German for entitled douchebag? oh yeah "schweinhund"

But on the bright side the CA meeting was really cool last night. 

I'll keep coming back.

A little fun for those of you reading this blog click on the link of the word "Gastly" above for my favorite use of that word ever.  And I think the first instance of white people problems ever depicted in the movie 1958 Auntie Mame.