How This Is Supposed to Work

Your Sunday morning recovery check-in.

Aug 06, 2023

Hello. I want to tell all of you new Substack subscribers about the purpose of the Sunday newsletter. Its primary function is for me to write out an inventory of my daily Recovery Program, highlighting some of the more notable aspects of it from the week before. At the end of it, I give myself a grade—between 1 and 5, with “1” being spiritually unwell and “5” being an emotionally-sober powerhouse capable of healing the world with one wave of my hand. (I try to keep my ego more in check, though. Because, as we know, having a huge ego is not very sober.)

When I began to do this consistently in 2017, the original routine was very 12-step inspired and began the minute I woke up each morning. Then I had three kids. There’s never a day when I’m awake long enough to complete this before one of them pops up and wants a waffle or chocolate milk. Sometimes I wake up at 4 a.m. like David Goggins and knock this stuff out, but a more realistic day begins after 9 when they’re out of the house at school or at their babysitter’s. I no longer freak out if I don’t finish my morning routine, but I prioritize getting the most important parts done each day. If you want to get into it, here’s a guide to the most important parts of my recovery.

MEDITATION:

Again, ideally, this is done first thing in the morning–before you pick up your phone, brush your teeth, and start to get overwhelmed by your work duties–you find a place to go where you can shut the door and sit down. I like to sit on a real-deal meditation cushion on the floor, but you can stack a couple of throw pillows up against a wall or even use a chair if that works better. Then comes the hard part. Ready? Just sit there. Yep, all those thoughts are gonna continue to happen. I know you want to get up. I know you can’t turn your brain off. But don’t get up. Yes, it is stupid. I know. I get it.

Just let all your thoughts run their course and see how long you can go. The easiest way I learned how to do it was to think of all my thoughts as one big kite string I’d let completely unspool until my kite floated away. You do eventually run out of thoughts as long as you sit through it.

I began doing a minute at a time using the Headspace app and eventually worked my way up to ten minutes a day, every day. Then I switched over to the Calm app and shifted from guided to unguided meditation with bells ringing at two-minute intervals. But both Calm and Headspace have expensive annual fees, but I use Insight Timer if you want a good free guided app. It has thousands of guided and unguided options and better bell and bowl sound options than the other two. Kangse is my shit.

Since I began my meditation practice, these are the most tangible results:

* I barely honk my car horn;

* I don’t get overly stressed about my professional life at all.

* I sleep a million times better;

* I have three extra seconds to process my actions before I do something impulsive or possibly destructive;

* I listen to other people better;

* I'm no longer afraid of death.

(I’ll clarify this last one: I’m more comfortable with my fear of death, and meditation helps me manage that fear.)

And when I don’t meditate enough? I walk around like an asshole with an air horn. Thankfully, I haven’t missed many days in six years, so I’ve had minimal freakouts.

Next up is...

JOURNALING:

I do four different journals per day–one major one and then three mini-ones for each of my children. The main one consists of the following:

First, I read a poem. I usually have a shit-ton of compilations lying around, so I focus on one of those per week and just skim and land on something that seems interesting. Guess what? Ninety percent of the time, they’re boring. But on the days I find something I do like, it’s consistently the best day of the month. It’s even better when I read a poem before I start scrolling through my phone, so sometimes I’ll leave a book on the nightstand and leave the devil downstairs. After I read it, it’s the first thing that goes into my journal: the name of the poem, then the author. My best discovery so far is Thomas Lux. And this is my all-time favorite poem.

After that, I move on to my first daily reader book. Seneca, Tao Te Ching, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Pema Chödrön are in heavy rotation. But my everyday go-to is “A Calendar of Wisdom” by Leo Tolstoy. It’s got four to five little passages from some of his favorite spiritual texts that he painstakingly pulled together and organized during the last decade of his life. I underline my favorite passage from the day and put it as my second journal entry underneath the poem. (You’ll find some of my favorite passages from the daily readers sprinkled throughout every Sunday newsletter.)

After that, I move on to writing out my Fears List. This is like a Gratitude List (which comes next), but instead, I write down whatever I’m most afraid of that very second. It changes every single day and is usually something like “I’m a fraud,” “I’m still heavily in debt,” or “My kids will get a horrible illness,” which then becomes instantly neutralized by making the Gratitude List immediately after it.

There’s nothing special at all about my Gratitude List. I just bullet-point things I’m happy to have noticed or experienced the day before.

That’s the end of my first journal.

Then I move on to the mini-journals for each of my three children. I usually try to incorporate whatever I've learned from my morning readings into personalized lessons/messages to them, finished off with an “I Love You!” and “Love, Papa xoxoxo.” I’d like to think this will be a wonderful sentimental artifact for them to look at when they’re older, but my handwriting is atrocious. Maybe they’ll make handsome coasters for their living rooms one day.

And finally…

Exercise:

Once daily, I try to add some form of physical exercise, either running, Crossfit, boxing, free weights, or even goddamn yoga. Whatever works. Currently, I’m doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu three to four times per week. It’s beating the shit out of my body, but the benefits for my overall anxiety and sleep have been tremendous.

And that’s it. Anyway, I hope that gives you a sense of what I’m trying to do here. Basically, “She’s A Beast” but for Recovery.

So I list all of those things out here, usually a best-of gratitude list for the week and my most notable fear for the week. But the top portion of the Sunday newsletter is a smaller essay, usually more spiritually focused and self-flagellating than the ones that appear on Tuesday/Friday. I also like to answer any questions about Recovery you may have. If you got one, email me here: ajd@thesmallbow.com

Now let’s log!

DAILY READINGS THIS WEEK

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Readers

* The Hurting Kind by Ada Limon

* A Calendar of Wisdom by Leo Tolstoy

* One Day at a Time in Al-Anon

Daily Journals:

- Notable Fears this week:

* Injuries that can’t be fixed. Climate change. The idea that

–Notable daily Gratitude List:

* Good catch-up with Dev and Rich R and Cameron.

* Fish shopping with Ozzy.

* Good ol’ fun on the mat this week.

* Trying to stay light and easy while the strike still happens.

* Supportive family there to help us survive during the strike.

* Extra supportive TSB readership and new people at the meetings.

* Julieanne’s spot at the lake.

* One cold shower that actually felt relaxing, not as torturous.

* Old Time Hawkey

Favorite poem I read this week:

Instrumentation by Ada Limón

If I could ever play an instrument for real I like the idea of playing the jawbone,

that rattle of something dead in your hands, that thing that beats back at the sky

and says, I’m still here, even though clearly the donkey isn’t here or the horse isn’t

here, just the teeth and the jaw making music like resurrection or haunting or just

plain need. What I like most is that the jawbone is an idiophone, which I misread

once as ideaphone. But an idiophone is just that it makes music by the whole thing

vibrating without strings. I want that. That kind of reeling in the wind. All the

loose dry teeth, all the old bones of the skull, all the world, and the figure swaying

with its stick to make untuned music even death cannot deny.

“Real life starts with self-sacrifice.”

— Thomas Carlyle

MEDITATION PRACTICE: 10 MINUTES PER DAY MINIMUM

NUMBER OF SESSIONS: 11

LONGEST SIT: 12 minutes and 11 seconds

THERAPY SESSIONS: ONE

RECOVERY STEP WORK SESSIONS: ONE

OUTREACH CALLS: FOUR

MEETINGS: FOUR

SERVICE: None

EXERCISE:

4x BJJ, 5x yoga stretches

Total Recovery Rating for the Week: 5/5

Improvements needed: Waking up earlier, praying more.

ZOOM MEETING SCHEDULE

Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Monday night: 5:30 PST/8:30 EST

Wednesday: 10 a.m. PST/1 p.m. EST

Friday: 10 a.m. PST/1 p.m. EST

Saturday: Mental Health Focus (Peer support for bipolar/anxiety/depression) 9:30 a.m. PST/12:30 p.m. EST

SUNDAY: (Mental Health and Sobriety Support Group.) 1:00 p.m PST/4 p.m. EST

*****

If you don't feel comfortable calling yourself an "alcoholic," that's fine. If you have issues with sex, food, drugs, codependency, love, loneliness, depression —whatever-whatever–come on in. Newcomers are especially welcome. We’re here.

FORMAT: CROSSTALK, TOPIC MEETING

We're there for an hour, sometimes more. We'd love to have you.

ZOOM HERE!

Meeting ID: 874 2568 6609

PASSWORD TO ZOOM: nickfoles

CHECK-IN FOR SEPTEMBER: WHAT IS UP?

Tell us all how your recovery program is shaping up:

Here’s a good example:

How am I feeling? Wow, out of control, I am married and yet a met someone and got really excited about them, but questioning everything, why now, why him, what about my marriage, which, to be honest, isn’t that great. Well, this person told me they just want to be friends and of course, I was crushed, and now I’m obsessing over them, trying hard to let go of something that really wasn’t.

Send yours to: ajd@thesmallbow.com

It will be published the first week in September.

We'll donate $25 to the Katal Center each month on behalf of TSB