Book of Jamez

55 y/o malcontent, something of a writer

Welcome to My Little Corner of the Internet

Random thoughts, unsolicited opinions, personal stories, and the occasional rant. I’ve been around long enough to have a few things to say, and apparently nobody thought to stop me from putting them on the internet.

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  • The Trap

    I recently enjoyed a book by Lawrence Block called – A Drop of the Hard Stuff. It’s a story about a former cop turned unofficial private eye who also happens to be in his first year in AA. It centers on one of his childhood friends whom took a different path than he did and ended up in a life of crime and even serving time for something. That friend is also in AA, with…

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  • Programs, Pamphlets and Power

    At a retreat recently a speaker shared something from one of AA’s pamphlets that I either hadn’t heard, forgot about or didn’t sink in when I read it. I loved it when he was saying it and it’s been floating around in my head for a few weeks now. What do you think? P-41 A Member’s Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous Tonight, if I could find one fault with A.A., it would be that we…

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  • David

    I found out that my first sponsee, David R, passed away yesterday. David was a real alcoholic, he struggled to find the answer in AA and was the kind of drunk who’d been in treatment centers and involved with the courts countless times. He was, for all intents and purposes, hopeless – that’s the kind of drunk you don’t think is going to make it and then BOOM they get it and their whole life is…

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  • 12th Annual "Any Lengths" Men's Retreat

    One of the first time I went to my new home group my sponsor invited me to participate in the Any Lengths Retreat committee meeting – what the hell, I thought, I enjoy AA business meetings and the like. At that meeting I started to hear about this retreat they’ve been putting on for 12 years now, and you could hear it in their voices and stories how much they loved this thing and were…

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  • The Journey – Bill's Story

    Several weeks had passed since Bill woke in this dimly lit room, the last thing he remembered before awaking here was his typical night at the bar, nothing out of the ordinary, he’d had too much to drink and the bartender cut him off again. He may have even gotten in a fight with Becky, but those memories were sketchy so he wasn’t certain if that was just what he wanted to do or what…

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  • When I End Up in Prison

    When I start to plan on what I will do when I end up in prison I think on it fondly… maybe I’d get solitary confinement, think of all the quiet time I’d have to read books I’ve been meaning to read, just lie there on a cot and read book after book after book… especially in solitary – all that aloneness, singing songs off key, talking to myself about the secrets of the universe….…

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  • Time

    I had dinner tonight with an old friend – we both talk about the rapid growth of gray hairs in places we still have hair (that’s old) – and his daughter who might be coming out this way to go to college. He now lives in Maryland, but he’s a friend from WI high school, when I moved to DC it was nice to have him there and even though I didn’t get to see him all…

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  • Step 5 – Exact Nature of My Wrongs

    I shared my inventory with my sponsor tonight – I think this is the fourth time I’ve done a 5th step in 20 years. I was raised in AA that, or at least I heard, we do one 4th step and any other inventory is covered in step 10 – this could bring about a ton of debate about what’s right or what’s wrong, suffice to say I can’t go back and change any of…

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  • Rage

    *I don’t know why but this was stuck in my head and had to get out* Another long day at the office, he missed the sun again – in before the crack of dawn and out after sunset, and for what? So that asshole boss can point out his shortcomings again and again. If that supervisor had come to his desk one more time he would have throttled him. There’s got to be a better…

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  • One Year Later

    A year ago tomorrow I moved to Phoenix from Washington DC., can’t believe it’s been a year already, time just seems to have flown by. I feel at home here… it’s not the weather… ok, it’s partly the weather…  They turned on the AC in my apartment complex this week and just a week or so ago turned off the heat as it was too hot … yeah, I don’t miss winter in DC or WI. 

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