Saturday, April 4, 2009

E-mail to my sponsor Ed: March 15, 1985

Dear Ed,

It seems like a long time since I last heard from you. How are you sir? Well, I hope. I am in the midst of readying the final draft of my BASIC manual. I have two 6-hour meetings with the developers coming up next week to go over their extensive comments on the second draft. In short, I have mucho to do and not much time to do it. I am trying not to get too stressed out about all of this. I'm going to meetings and asking for help. Being the guy that I am, I have a propensity to pop a few springs here and there, to short circuit occasionally as a result of overloaded circuits. I have to be careful and remember not to take any of this work business or myself too seriously, but take sobriety seriously.

I picked up a guide for doing my fourth step at a fourth step meeting the other night. The guide is thick and full of memory probing questions. It reminds me of the guides they used to hand out in graduate school for people wanting to write a dissertation.

So I'll be writing my "dissertation" soon. At least I want to make start. A lot of people believe the fourth step is not something to be taken lightly. I hope we can do our fifth step together, as you promised, when I get the fourth step done.

I learn a lot from the steps. Patience, love, listening, understanding... Life ain't so hard on me when I practice the principles. I'm less likely yank myself around then I live life according to the wisdom layed out in the 12+12 and Big Book. Oh don't get me wrong, I still get resentments, I still yell at my son on occasion, think about divorcing my wife everytime she doesn't do what I want her to, and I still have stinking thinking. But I'm beginning to realize that I can't go on living with the fears, the anxiety, and the crazy emotions, even if they only crop up at a tolerable frequency. I have to recover, if only to get on with the joy of living, right?

God bless Ed. Write soon.

-Jack

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