Recently.

I stopped being a muslim, stopped never drinking (with 3 beers over 3 hours) and stopped looking for reasons to remain a bitter and unhappy fucker.

I still occasionally find reasons to be a bitter and unhappy fucker, but less so. I am grateful for this, and so is my little proto-family, as well as the greater kindred. When the rage and dismay rise, it's somehow possible for me to pull it back together within minutes instead of days. I too am grateful, but I don't know who or what to thank for this...my loved ones, my doctor, myself. I guess I'll thank all of us. It has been a long year.

About Islam. When I get especially manic, the centers of my nervous system that organize rational thought get to humming about the Big Questions and I have habitually turned to religious preoccupations to soothe the Great Emptiness caused by the Big Questions. I turn to one tradition or another and like Chris Piepenberg so aptly put, "I tend to yearn for a solid conceptual ideal and upon grasping it find that the ideal is often pockmarked with pragmatic pitfalls" Once that happens, I immediately sever all ties to that tradition and all the kind, well meaning people who welcomed me, a stranger, into their spiritual haven. I should probably admit to myself that no one way to skin that cat will predominate for long. I am to date, still a spiritual nomad, and I may as well claim that this will always be so.

On drinking. I missed Chimay. I missed Stouts of every denomination. I missed freely stopping by a charming little hole in the wall and having a few glasses of beer. I almost never got to do that with Jaime and I am looking forward to it. I am also looking forward to having a beer with my dad, and a cigar with my brother.

I don't miss the wicked black rage, the dark passenger taking the wheel, the "co-pilot" as Micah calls him. I don't missing being told what I did or what I said 12 hours after I did or said it. I don't miss the crusty chafed hollow feeling of a hang-over. I don't miss losing control.

I think I can moderate. I can restrain myself. It will take practice, but practice can't come if I completley disengage from any one specific vice. I do need some insoluble limitations. If I'm buzzing, I should get very nervous. I did actually. I have partied enough for two life times, and wasted enough time on this earth pissing into the wind. Tana said, "the truth is usally in the middle" I like to think she's right. The middle.

I read a funny version of the serenity prayer as I researched how to abuse Vyvanse. It goes like this:

God has granted me the serenity to avoid the drugs I can not handle, courage to do the ones I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.

Here's a favorite quote of my own, I just launched at Dennis the other day, as he faces a tough break-up, and is reconsidering his freedom.

Africa is one of the last places on this earth that a man can be eaten alive by something other than his anxiety.

My Job is a pride guzzling siege (Jerry McGuire quote).

I promote a broken system to people who desperately need something I don't think exists any more. It's exhausting and I feel it gnawing away at me. I see what it's done to all the vets and it doesn't look pretty. A few of them are brilliant but they must feel out of place in a system that promotes blind, silent obediance to a series of pointless cyclical morbid objectifications.

It pays the bills. Other than poisoning my soul and haunting my scant and terrifying dreamscapes, I find it rewarding even.

I keep finding myself in positions I would never have expected to be in. It happens so often I am beginning to stop expecting myself to be in positions at all. It serves me better to go in 4 hour spurts. 4 hours to lunch. 4 hours to home. 4 hours of house work. 4 hours of sleep until I wake up to have a piss. 4 more hours of sleep until I need to wake up and face the day. 4,4,4.

Now I'm just rambling.