Book of Jamez

55 y/o malcontent, something of a writer

Category: Jamez

  • Lost

    I took a long journey last year but I didn’t physically go anywhere. In October, maybe even before that, I started to get depressed. Nothing new really – these bouts have come and gone before and I just muddle through and hope for the best as eventually I’ll even out and be fine. I even wrote about it in my blog in November as I had a few good days in a row and I thought I was through the storm… but it was just a brief respite.

    It got progressively worse and then dramatically worse, before I knew it there was so much darkness in everything and I was lost. I didn’t have positive thoughts about anything, it was all I could do to smile at people at meetings or at work if I thought it mattered – most of the time it didn’t.

    I committed without fear to doing things in the future when asked – it wouldn’t matter anyway I wasn’t planning to stick around. I said yes to a trip, yes to a family member, yes to a friend – but I knew that it would be over before then. I was a yes man, because nothing mattered – not one thing in the world. (more…)

  • The Belly Button of Thirst

    Contrary to what many may believe I don’t dream about Superman often, but last night I did and it was very odd.

    The last son of Krypton and I were traversing through the universe and came to a planet primarily composed of water. I was being carried in Superman’s arms much like Lois Lane and whispered in his ear that we should check this place out. 

    We lowered into the atmosphere and were flying around looking at the beauty of this planet – water was almost everywhere and sparkled the light from the sky in great colors – it was amazing. We finally found a species there and Superman lowered me to the ground. (more…)

  • Can't Teach An Old Dog…

    During high school, well probably even as far back as elementary school – I had no desire to learn anything they wanted to teach me. It was boring. Time would have been better spent reading a comic book, watching tv or day dreaming about anything. I wasn’t engaged and didn’t see the purpose of learning. I loved reading stories though, loved my comics and the books I managed to get my hands on and thought deep down that someday I would be a writer.

    When I graduated high school with the bare minimum requirements everyone said “You have to go to college”. As a poor foster child there were many grants and available loans for me to choose from. I managed to get into the local college and signed up for astronomy, philosophy and some kind of statistics class as I think it was a mandatory class and I wanted to get it out-of-the-way. I didn’t want to be there at all and barely went to class on sober days, rarely on days when booze was available. Needless to say, I didn’t do well in 1989 in college and soon I was academic probation – so I left, not worth my time.

    Factory jobs for a few years and writing stories on an old Apple computer in my free time when I was stoned or drunk (made for some interesting plot holes). This was, I thought, what life was all about – a factory job, beer and not a care in the world. I was aiming pretty low at the time, but I would have been content at some level to just do that for the rest of my life – but alcoholism got in the way. (more…)

  • Acceptance Is Not Defeat

    I’m not a fan of the part of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous  that talks about Acceptance – mostly because people refer to it so much but don’t look further into the program of recovery found a few hundred pages before it. I agree with the principle of acceptance being the answer to all my problems… here’s the part that I’m talking about:

    “And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation—some fact of my life —unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.” Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Page 417

    This has been true in my life – if I just change my outlook on things and accept them as they are – I seem to have a better day. I used this recently with an attitude I had about work, I was pretty frustrated – it took an earth person (a person not found in the rooms of AA) reminding me that it was my attitude that was hurting me to get me to change my attitude. I still have the frustration, but my attitude makes it bearable and I am then more tolerable to people around me. That’s the key-just accepting things and moving with them.

    Kind of like when you’re sanding wood or cutting meat – you want to go with the grain – you’ll get less resistance and a better end product.

    My boss, nice guy, sent me an article to read from GQ on Stephen Colbert – he said he’d know I’d read it if he saw a blog post on it… so here I am, lol. It was a really great story, the writer manages to paint the picture of Colbert in my mind that seems familiar and yet different. I think this Colbert will be a joy to get to know.

    A terrible thing happened when he was very young, his father and two brothers died.  Many people who have that type of tragedy happen seem bitter or sad – but he just seems to be full of joy. People ask how he can have this much laughter and joy in his life with that big thing hanging over him – he credits his mother who was broken by the incident, but not bitter – she managed to love her son throughout the grieving process and teach him joy.

    He is actively involved in all parts of everything that’s going on and he wants to be. He talks about intention – “the end product is jokes, but you could easily say the end product is intention. Having intentionality at all times… the process of process is process.” I liked that quite a bit.

    He also shares a lesson about “learning to love the bomb” it’s here:

    “I went, ‘I don’t know what this is, but I have to do it,’ ” he said. “I have to get up onstage and perform extemporaneously with other people.” He was part of the same Second City class that included Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello and Chris Farley. “Our first night professionally onstage,” he said, the longtime Second City director Jeff Michalski told them that the most important lesson he could pass on to them was this: “You have to learn to love the bomb.”

    “It took me a long time to really understand what that meant,” Colbert said. “It wasn’t ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get it next time.’ It wasn’t ‘Laugh it off.’ No, it means what it says. You gotta learn to love when you’re failing.… The embracing of that, the discomfort of failing in front of an audience, leads you to penetrate through the fear that blinds you. Fear is the mind killer.” (You’re welcome, Dune nerds.)” GQ The Late Great Stephen Colbert – Joel Lovell, August 17, 2015

    It wasn’t that long ago I was struggling to figure out if I was any good at a new job – seemed every day I was being shown one more thing I couldn’t do right. It was so frustrating that I was almost brought to tears a few times. I was close to quitting and had even talked to my sponsor about finding something different. One day I just gave up, my supervisor came over to point out my failings one more time and I just laughed (which pissed her off a little bit), I was finished and i knew I wasn’t going to be able to ever get this down and they’d likely let me go. From that moment – from the laughter forward – I figured it out. The stress vanished, the fear dissipated and I just did the best I could (which is actually pretty good most days).

    People often say to me – you’ve survived so much it’s amazing. I think it’s not much – not much in comparison to Colbert, or others who have lost or been hurt. We all have our own journeys to make and will leave with scars that help define who we are. I don’t go through life trying to avoid the brambles – I just keep my destination in mind and keep moving trying to do the right thing. The right thing usually means not treading over those I pass along the way, but stopping to offer them a hand.

    Acceptance is the key, laughter and love will help you through it and accepting doesn’t mean giving up.

  • Age Tames the Monster

    I think I’ve gotten over being so critical of AA meetings that are being run wrong or AA’s that are stupid… well maybe i’m not completely over that last part. It’s either I’ve given up on a clear message being delivered in meetings or I’m just tired or maybe errors happen and I just don’t notice anymore because it happens so frequently.

    Tonight for example I was sitting next to a guy at a meeting who was taking a photo of someone at the podium… and I didn’t even notice. There was a time I would have berated the fool loudly during the speakers share… but I didn’t notice, I wasn’t looking around the room for what was wrong (I do that see this post  ). I was rather shocked at myself and then spend most of the rest of the meeting wondering what had happened to me (ok, maybe just a few minutes but it seemed a lifetime).

    When I was new I’d leave meetings that would read non-conference approved material. Or spout traditions as to why this and therefore. I was a strict task master when it came to everything being by the book in AA. I was intolerant of anyone who did it anyway but mine – and I was right, of course.

    I don’t think I care less, I still have a deep love and respect for AA as I understand it, but I realize (maybe) that other people might have their own path that is going to lead them in the same direction – that’s hard for me. I so want to be right… most of all… but also want to think of the world in black and whites most of the time – middle grounds don’t work well for me.

    I’ll use this over used example on my blog – I want to shake your hand if you come to a meeting. Some people will hug me and not shake my hand and I won’t hug back… I’ve told them if they read all the literature AA has to offer they’ll see the handshake is mandatory and the hug is excessive (this is how I encourage newcomers to read the stuff… ), to be fair I only said this in jest to a few folks that hug first and then walk away leaving my hand empty, and hurt just hanging there. Sigh.

    Tonight someone at the meeting summed up the Beatles Let It Be as “fuck it” or that’s what I heard and I rather liked that, and I love and respect the Beatles.

    What matters to me today is if I do what I’ve always done, one day at a time. If I continue to show up early, shake hands, help set up, read the Big Book and the traditions over and over again and make sure AA is there for the next guy… I guess I can do that without being all rigid, but I don’t have to like it. 🙂

  • Flag Fury

    It’s no more the rebel flag; than Columbine was about trench coats or rape is about clothes girls are wearing.

    Its about living in a culture where its ok to hate others based on their religion, gender, sexual orientation, race disability or a million little things that people hate other people for. People hate entire other religions and races because they were taught to. People somehow learn in “religions of peace” that it’s ok to discriminate, they condemn other lives because they are different than theirs. Our entire culture creates schisms between things that are one way and things that are another way – it’s painful, it’s hurting us and we’re letting it.

    “Racism isn’t born, folks, it’s taught. I have a two-year-old son. You know what he hates? Naps! End of list.” Dennis Leary

    A friend posted an article on Facebook the other day “15 Things Alcoholics Anonymous Can Teach the Church” and I liked it, but I’m rather anti-religion and pro-AA (even though some courts have ruled AA a religion and I can see that). Number 10 in that article is “Don’t shoot your wounded” and it says “Judgment or the perception of judgment is often felt in churches”.  That’s often what I think of when I think of churches – hate, fear, demonizing.

    In some respects this can be considered a true statement. The KKK considers itself a “Christian” organization and they think they teach “Christian” principles. Al Queda, Isis, The Westboro Baptist Church all think they teach their idea of “God”‘s principles too.

    We teach girls how to keep themselves from being raped when we should be teaching boys how to not be rapists. We have politicians that blame and entire religion for terrorists acts that happen domestically and abroad. We focus on the color and stars of a flag instead of the tragedy and how we can do a better job (NRA has great spin department I think).

    I know many old people that hold prejudices that they’d held for decades. It was taught to them when they were so young and now it’s the only truth they can see. This worries me… but then I remember what I’ve seen in Alcoholics Anonymous – where we teach love – where human beings who once were the most desolate of society rose up and became contributing members of society and sought only to help another man.

    Today we should mourn. We should reflect back on the lives lost and the good they had done. We should look to the future and see what we can build now, learning from this. We need to teach a message of tolerance, love, hope to the country.. the whole world.

    Start with me. Start by being open minded to things different that I am. Start by reaching out and sharing my experiences with others, letting them know I’m not so different than they are and we have a common bond.  Start by being a better human being… start by loving, giving, helping.

    But don’t focus on a flag – sure it’s in poor taste, but it didn’t pull a trigger, it didn’t share hate… it just is. It has power when you give it power…

  • Writing

    The earliest things I remember writing for pleasure were stories of Pegasus II and Cygnus with my friend Ted, I think we started talking about them in Spanish class (as we weren’t big on paying attention). We had characters that were partially named after Spanish verbs like “Jorge Dar” was a character. It was our comic book based on ourselves and my practicing religion of the ancient Greek gods. It was interesting to try to write in a way that I found readable – I’m not very good with dialogue still to this day, but I keep trying. I kept writing those stories until I was about 21 or 22.

    Once in a while I’d write a different story – a house fire and all the neighbors come and gawk, the little girls charred doll clutched in her hands and the father drives off in their Buick regal,  I liked that one, don’t know what happened to it; a student struggling to learn something new in class and the teacher who just wouldn’t change the way he taught – it was very rough; the rock and roll band playing in local bars, drinking and causing trouble… stories that kind of reflected what was going on with me and how I lived.

    Then I didn’t write for a good long time.

    In drug and alcohol treatment they suggested I keep a journal and write down my thoughts and actions for the day – I wasn’t a big fan of that idea, it reflected on when my Ma found my diary on my bed and was mad at what I wrote. It was shortly after xmas and I had received underwear, socks and t-shirts (among many other things I’m sure) and I whined a bit… ok, maybe a lot, in my diary about receiving socks and underwear. Her thinking at the time was that I left it our purposefully so she’d see it, but I doubt I was that clever – sometimes I was just a whiny teenager who enjoyed complaining. So keeping my thoughts on paper where someone else could see them didn’t seem like a good idea – I’m often misunderstood. 🙂

    In 1998 I was published in The Grapevine. I had read in the magazine that they needed stories to print from members. So I thought for a good long time and then wrote my piece they put in their wet drunk section. I have that framed as it was the first thing that made it out of my paper and into something else.

    It was 1999 when I started working at Children’s Hospital in Washington DC. I made some fast friends in my department and connected departments – one of those was Staci. Staci is a psychologist, that means she asks lots of questions, and many lunches were spent with her, Christy and others just talking. When I would share stories Staci would listen intently and sometimes she would say “You should write a book.” I never really took her seriously, this was just my life we were talking about nothing that would capture anyone’s attention.

    But that suggestion stayed with me and I started to jot down notes here and there and eventually decided to write where I could keep it always (I remembered not being able to find my old stories) so with the internet being new and blogs not that popular yet, I launched “Jamez in the life” on Blogger in 2005, and I started to write about whatever was on my mind.

    So of course the first story had to be about comic books. I wrote about death in comic books and how one time it mattered and then it didn’t. Then I wrote about a visit to my friend Julie’s (she also always wanted me to write a book) and smoking (as I had recently quit).

    Shortly after that I went to school for a year (just to prove I could do it) and then I began to write for grades and wrote about learning, that was pretty exciting… and I even wrote about the dreaded math… During school I posted 15 to 20 stories a month, usually pretty short.

    I try to get 4 posts a month now and sometimes that’s a struggle. It’s not that I don’t want to write, things get in the way or there are things that I can’t write about for confidentiality reasons and some porn that shouldn’t go here (I did submit it to a magazine though).

    I often have many different stories in my head all rambling around trying to find a place to go and when they coalesce I obsess about them and on occasion can’t sleep until I get them out on paper (or the electronic equivalent as the case usually is – though I did write about a savage beating I stopped, on paper as I didn’t own a laptop at the time.)

    My friend Staci came to Scottsdale this week to talk about some new therapy that she’s really excited about – it includes mindfulness meditation, of which I’m a big fan. So she and her husband had dinner with me and I let her know about my blog, she might even stop in and read a story or two. I hope she likes it – it was her idea after all 🙂 We even talked a bit about her research and meditation being good for you and how it seems so hard to find the time to do it.

    I’m glad I have this outlet – sometimes just writing something out can change my attitude on a situation – seeing it play out across the scenes and help me to see other points of view and become a better person.

  • Ceased Fighting Anything…

    “OK” is just a better answer to any question or request.

    No one is really looking for solutions, creative thinking or honesty – they just want answers and results.

    Less to worry about or care about or try to control or manipulate. Just do the next right thing in front of you and don’t get distracted by thinking or stewing.

    Easy in theory, harder to practice not pushing back, not saying no or “why”. They don’t really want any of that, no confrontation or queries… no rocking boats.

    Why show up at all? that’s what I was taught… suit up, show up, do the deal. Doesn’t matter if anyone else is doing it, you just have to show up and work.

    But I’m tired.

  • Slow Motion Perception

    Yesterday while riding my bike I took a fall. I was on mile 8 of the journey and it just happened. What was really cool about it was the slowing down of time and the intense focus on the different aspects of the fall.

    I first noticed the tire really close to the edge of the sidewalk and thought I should correct that… then I over corrected and started to fall.

    My eyes did a close up focus on the tire, I saw the wheel start to slow down and I was amazed at how slow it was going. I then looked to my left and saw the ground was just hanging there out of my reach but I was getting closer to it so slowly.

    This reminds me of Douglas Adams suggestion on how to fly – He says there’s a trick to it: throw yourself at the ground and miss. He suggests you do this by getting distracted at the last moment by a bowl of petunias, a long lost satchel or a pink towel…and boom you might be flying…. this sadly did not happen to me, I just hit the ground.

    But the entire process happened to my senses in slow motion. Even the scraping of my arm along the sidewalk, though painful, seemed to take an eternity.

    So I began to wonder why that happened, and thought back to a car accident I had been in in 89 or 90 and how that too seemed to happen in slow motion (I wasn’t the driver and walked away mostly unscathed). I found this little article on Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_motion_perception and while not a scientific journal I thought it was quite interesting, mostly because if something happens to me and it’s happened to others then I can relate and it’s suddenly relevant… it would have been much more interesting to be flying or discover I had superpowers, but this article will have to do.

    Slow motion perception is a subjective perception of time in which things are perceived as passing by slower than the normal perception of time. To a bystander watching a life-threatening situation such as an accident, time is moving at a normal speed. However, to the individual in the accident, time seems to have slowed down. As a result, the individual in the accident may be able to think faster and act faster during these events. However, even though individuals commonly report that time seems to have moved in slow motion during these events, it is unknown whether this is a function of increased time resolution during the event, or, instead, an illusion of remembering an emotionally salient event. Research conducted by David Eagleman has suggested that time does not actually run in slow motion for a person during a life-threatening event, but, rather, it is only a retrospective assessment that brings that person to such a conclusion. To bring this into the realm of scientific study, he measured time perception during free-fall by strapping palm-top computers to subjects’ wrists and having them perform psychophysical experiments as they fall. By measuring their speed of information intake, they concluded that participants do not obtain increased temporal resolution during the fall, but, instead, because their memories are more densely packed during a frightening situation, the event seems to have taken longer only in retrospect

    what would be pretty cool is if while in that state of consciousness you realized it and like Tobey Maguire’s enhanced Spider-Man senses in the first set of those movies… we could catch all the items from that tray before they hit the ground… But instead I probably just looked like a flailing idiot at the time.

    I think having Saturday Night Live do a skit series where one of their actors plays Neil Degrasse Tyson and uses physics to explain this kind of thing and then end it with “and you basically are just flailing around like the evolutionized chimpanzee you are.” or something… then he could show up and discuss other things that annoy people – like when i’m going leaving an intersection and still catch up to traffic that was doing 45 mph when they passed me “Why does this happen Neil?” we’d ask and he’d go into some long boring explanation of speed and relativity and we’d be all amazed. While he’s talking the camera would catch up to the car in question and we’d see some idiot texting or something instead of paying attention and the Neil could say… “but in this case we just had an idiot”.

    I got back on my bike today and rode it to the shop for it’s scheduled tuning… my legs are sore and I can’t grip the handle bar with my right hand (or turn my house key, or a few other important things) but I got the bike there and walked home. I plan to ride it again and I’ll probably take another fall or two before I die some day… but next time I hope someone or something distracts me and I can just fly awayIMG_0403

  • Fire Hot

    So I’m cooking things… well, I’ve always cooked things – soup from a can, tv dinners, pot pies, grilled cheese, pizza… that’s cooking right? There was also rarely a need to cook anything – my Mother cooked, my Ma cooked, my ex-roommate loved to cook – but I’m not the best person to cook for (picky eater) so they didn’t get to cook with the flare they all had really… But now I”m trying to cook other things.

    My fire alarm in the apartment is extra sensitive and seems to go off on anything – I have the fan on the stove, the bathroom, two fans blowing out the window and both windows open and still that thing is going off… I swear its not really smokey… well maybe a little but come on… I’m learning here.

    In the morning instead of some really great tasting cereal I’m making 2 eggs, sometimes i put em in a tortilla. I have difficulty with the yolks, I like it to be runny but not raw and I have issues flipping the eggs just right and sometimes I’ve not had them cooked where I like em… and if I break the yoke then I just try to scramble em… eggs are hard and I’m not a fan of hard eggs.

    I’ve been cooking steaks for myself too. Between YouTube, Wikipedia and my old roommate Gary it’s been going ok. The first few steaks didn’t turn out quite right and I stuck em in the microwave cause they weren’t done… then they were too done… but I’ve gotten better, they’re very flavorful and not well done (which is how I used to like them 18 years ago or so… ). I’ve had frozen veggies with the steaks, mostly I love Green Giant Buttered Corn… omg so good (don’t look at the calories on the box or the sugar count, just eat it) but sometimes green beans, peas, and mixed veggies (no fuckin’ lima beans in my mixed veggies… those things are nasty).

    Tonight I was cooking and it was a rather thick steak – I think that’s part of the problem, thinner steaks might be better to start with to get em how I like – and it wasn’t done quite right. I’m reluctant to do the microwave thing again after the last time. The pan I fry em in is safe in the oven up to 400 degrees so I thought that would be a good move. I placed the pan with the steak still in there in the oven after preheating it… great idea. But my mind saw that handle and decided to grab it… thus the title of this blog “Fire Hot” … ouch, burned my hand a little bit. On the bright side my reflexes are great… dropped that thing like a hot potato … which then splattered grease on my legs, my kitchen and my arm…. yeah… great cooking night tonight.

    I think next I’m going to branch out to chicken… my ex-roommate used to make chicken breast all the time and I loved those.  I’m not a fan of sauces, so i’m not likely to branch out there or do anything that has nasty stuff in it (Nasty stuff includes but is not limited to: mushrooms, mayo, asparagus, dressings, soy sauce, cheeses that smell like feet, Chipotle… oh sorry, I was listing nasty things and that just came out).

    Maybe I should take a cooking class, just for some basics… I don’t want to try out for Top Chef (love that show, couldn’t eat any of that stuff) but I’d like to have a better understanding of what I’m doing. A class isn’t likely to keep me from grabbing hot handles and at 44 if I’m still doing that it’s too late for me.

    Anyway – Note to self: Fire hot