Quoc’s Web Journal

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So, I have been in pain in the past couple weeks…  Allow me to explain this emotional pain I have been experiencing…  I recently was gifted with an individual who sought me out as a spiritual guide…  I just willingly agreed to help him with hopes that he would receive the same opportunity at a different life as I have…  What I learned is that I can’t want “sobriety” for another person more than they want it; it simply doesn’t work that way.

I have been re-visiting my character defects of needing the person I am helping to validate me as someone who does have something to offer in helping save a life…  The truth is that I am not powerful enough to carry another person; I am only powerful enough to carry a message via my experience with hopes that the other individual will take to that and try what has worked for me and countless others…  The gift of getting to help another person is the guarantee that I get to stay sober as a result of helping another; not get them sober!

So, the past few days, this individual has verbally resolved to do whatever it takes to grow spiritually; his actions however told of a different story.  He has demonstrated lack of respect for the power of an insidious disease which wants nothing to do with spirituality as it finds spirituality poisonous and toxic!  I have been experiencing pain as a result of racking my brain in trying to get him to do what I am doing to grow spiritually… 

In calling my great-spiritual guide for help, he shared with me the following:  First and foremost to give thanks for the gift of this individual to teach me and show me the defect of characters I get to work on letting go:

1) Control = trying to control this individual when I don’t get to be controlling and make this person do anything!  I am powerless over that…  All I get is a healthy perspective of the power of this disease that separates me from a connection to spirituality and also the consequences of lack of gratitude for the help that others who have more spiritual maturity give to those in need of help.  What I get to do is pray to God to release control of that individual and just make myself available to assist him if and when he wants the solution to that very thing blocking him from the sunlight of the spirit… I ask God to help me “accept that all those in my life belong to our Higher Power and that person I am trying to help is not my personal responsibility to TEACH, CARE FOR, CORRECT OR CONTROL!  The ONLY responsibility I have to all other people is that which my Higher Power dictates for me!!!”

“THAT RESPONSIBILITY IS TO RELEASE THEM; TO LOVE THEM AND HOLD A POSITIVE FOCUS FOR THEIR HIGHEST GOOD!!!  I ask God to take full and complete care of them.”  What I get to do is model what it is to be a spiritually fit mature and wonderful man named Quoc with hopes that will be attractive enough for them to want what my Higher Power has graced me with.

2) Need for validation…  I shared with my great-spiritual guide that this person’s lack of action and follow through makes me feel ineffective and a bad spiritual guide in turn.  He shared with me that this issue is not about the person I am helping; rather, it’s all about me and my need this person’s “success” to give me validation that I am a good spiritual guide and have something to offer.  I get to ask God to remove this need to seek outside validation in turn for internalized pride and to seek that self-validation from within and from being a good role model and carrying the message despite the successes or failures of any around me.  I get to carry the message and remember that God does not do to me or do for me; GOD SHINES THROUGH ME…  God gets to shine through other people if they choose to let God shine through them.  When I am trying to reflect that light shining from others, it’s but a mere fascade and light from them and not God radiating from within myself!

I had such a powerful moment in hearing these things… So God, I give thanks that you brought this person in my life to help me identify my defects of needing to control and to need validation from others.  I ask that you remove the desire to control others and want of validation of others in return for PRIDE for the work that I have done in growing spiritually within myself… I ask that you remove my need to control other people and do what I think is best for them.  Please do not remove this person from my life until that person has taught me what I am here to learn from them!

The other unresolved parts of my life are this deep sense “grief” revisited for the loss of my Mom…  Mom’s 4 year anniversary of her passing is coming up on the 26th of June… I can’t believe it’s been 4 years already!!!  I can’t help but yearn and want to lay and sit back lazily on that couch in Bellflower and watch TV while the sweet delicious aroma of home cooked chinese/vietnamese food permeates the home… I would hear the clang of Mom’s cooking utensils against her oversized cast iron wok…  You can hear the sizzle of hot water and oil as it hits the hot metal as delicious vegetables and meats are instantly cooked as hot water, oil and food meat the searing hot wok…  These are the things I miss… My birthday is coming up in August…  I want to wake up to Mom surprising me with my annual bowl of soup filled with a chicken leg and noodles for long life and scallions to keep me clever…  I miss the smell of oil of olay that mom puts on her face and skin walking around the house after taking a shower… I miss the especially clean aroma that Mom gets the laundry (especially the bedsheets and pillowcases)… I can never reproduce what she created…  Sigh…

Then, I sit her feeling like a big tub of lard from many months of lack of exercise while continuing to pay month after month of my gym membership…  My stomach has finally umbrella’d over all my pants… This includes my fat pants!!!  It’s tragic to think that someone like me who stands 5′5 has gone from a waist size of less than 28″ over six years ago would surpass 32″ at present day!  I feel and look as unhealthy as ever…  Instead of challenging that self-disgust with action, I meet these self-deprocating thoughts and feelings by stuffing myself with more food matched with apathy…

In the last month, I just realized that I have also been stuffing my feelings by aimlessly spending money without regard to my income matching the expense… Goodness knows I still have thousands to pay off from my car repairs made back in January is it?  It is going to take incredible frugal spending for me to financially break even by December of this year…. This didn’t include the surprising additional thousand dollars I spent this past month.  I mean, WOW!!!  I really was spending as discreetly as possible but giving myself a chance to have a little fun in the past month…. How easy money is spent by me…  Sigh…  And this is without any other expenses from vices such as smoking cigarettes or eating out too often!!!  I am just bumfuzzled as to how quickly money bleeds out from my own pocketbook at any given moment…

So, here I sit concluding this blog so that I may commence upon a goal to assess my current financial standing and how to adjust my budget to pay off all debt as quickly as possible so that I incur the minimal amount of interest from the loans on my credit cards… I also am trying to incorporate what Suzie Orman suggested as an 8 month emergency cushion… I always thought it was 3 months… 8 months of emergency funds is indeed a much more realistic and safe cushion to fall back on if I should get in trouble and lose my job… Goodness forbid that happen aye?

Would be nice to make more money… I know my value is worth more than twice or triple what I am currently earning.  Now, how do I get creative in realizing that internal feeling of worth?

Before I go on babbling some more… Let’s stop and get my current budget in order and on-track to being balanced…  I still continue to share gratitude for your continued love and support… I know some of you who read it, but the remainder of the 100 or so blog hits from you folks every other week, I still am totally clueless…

Ciao,

Quoc

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I am finding that many of the men that I meet are deeply profound…  Then there are equally as many men who are sooo shallow that I can barely wade in…  Of course since I live in LA, there are just as many who are just plain ol’ profoundly shallow!!!

Of course there would be those sparse few who have that lovely balance of naivete and curiosity for life, but enough experience to make them wise in decision making…

SUFFICE IT TO SAY, life is in full swing with me… I have been grappling with changing the whole nature of this blog as I have recently discovered that what I have been writing has been breaching a time honored tenet and tradition of a spiritual group I belong to… Again, I don’t even know why I am being so cryptic about it when I have been so blatantly open in past entries for many years…

So how does one undo so many years of a time honored tradition of not “promoting” the very spiritual program I am living by sharing my personal experiences?  Expecially when these experiences good and bad hopefully will help inspire or motivate another person to become a better person?  Goodness knows I have been down many paths that don’t work and can share those with you so that you need not go through what I went through.  Guess I get to pray on this as well as ask those who have a lot more time in the group than I do for their guidance…

This is not the main reason why I haven’t blogged folks…  Between, weddings, sailing, helping others, work work work, and just having an incredibly full life I find myself too exhausted to blog as therapeutic as I know it is for me… Sigh…  What is a boy to do!!!

Last blurb is that I have been suffering from some mild grade of circumstantial depression…  Perhaps it’s stress from a lot of work and new responsibilities… Perhaps it’s because I am about a month away from a very important sober anniversary of not having shoved any mind altering substance into my body…  Perhaps it’s because it’ll be 4 years since Mom died this upcoming week…  Perhaps it’s because I have been “slowly” purging my life of the very clutter that is keeping other people away from my home…  IS THERE SUCH A THING AS EXPERIENCING A THIRD LIFE CRISIS?

Well, either way, I wouldn’t have been able to do all this without your unconditional love, support, thoughts and prayers…  May your journey be as interesting as mine is going…

You may reach me via e-mail at quoclam@gmail.com.  I have a blackberry now and able to receive messages and reply very quickly.  I find most correspondences from viewers here asking me about different points of interests like directions to the Hollywood sign… Again, who knows what purpose this blog site serves… Heck, I have been doing this for so long, it’s just become a rather regular part of my life to share those highlights with you…

I strongly support you in finding me in my new hobby and “addiction” facebook…  JUST LOOK UP “QUOC LAM” and friend me.  I think there are few enough Quoc Lam’s on facebook for you to easily find me.  Don’t take it personally if you do request to be a friend and I ask “who the heck” you are as I do truly have over 600 friends I have actually met and know personally!  Very very cool!

Until I check in again… Don’t forget to pause in the pursuit of happiness just to be happy!  See you here, on facebook via e-mail or heaven forbid I get to see you the way that we used to… IN PERSON!!!

Always in love & service,

Quoc

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So, I’ve had an incredibly full day!  Work has been relentlessly mundane, repetitive and monotonous…  It’s not work that hurts one’s brain, rather the kind of work that causes for me to run from boredom!!!  I also do not enjoy cleaning up after a mess… I am more of a pioneer and creating new ideas and building programs from the ground up rather than working with a fixer upper!

However, when one is dealt ONE hand and only have one deck of cards to work with; then I get to do the best I can with the resources I have…  I get to be adaptable!!!  Other than this, work is work!  I am grateful to have a job… Multitudes of friends around me have lost their jobs with great challenges in securing a new job!

So, the real highlight is getting to go to 2 meetings back to back in the evening to support my two closest friends who were each sharing at separate 12 step meetings.  It was wonderful to see them; know their story; hear the wonderful highlights and be filled with so much gratitude and love for these fellas that I welled up with tears in sharing my gratitude for them!

I had a very very very unexpected surprise and blast from the past!!!  My elementary and high school classmate and long time friend (and at the time rival and competition) Steven Johnson sent me a message via facebook and asked me to be his friend!  He prefaced it with a statement about me hating him when we were younger in elementary and high school…  I remember feeling as if he were competition… He seemed like the perfect example of what a typical american would look like and live like… I think there was a deep sense of envy… He was intelligent, smart, extroverted and very very talented… He sang, was part of all the smart clubs and associations as well as made friends easily… He always made attempts to be my friend…  I can’t imagine why I acted so adversely to being his friend way back when… Again, the only thing I can attribute it to is my prideful asian side feeling competitive and very very very threatened by my perceived greatness about him.  Either way, 25 years or so later, I couldn’t be more grateful to have a reunion after losing touch with each other for so long!!!  I hope to get to catch up with him and hear about his life and what has gone on in the decades we haven’t seen each other!

I will conclude with some thoughts from the two 12 step meetings I attended…

- Regardless of whether I believe the 12 step program works or not; the idea is if I do the work and do what is suggested: go to meetings, be of service, complete the 12 steps… Stay clean and sober, trust God, be of service and clean house…  Then the analogy is very much like being in a barber shop long enough… The end consequence is I will end up with a haircut… Very much the same way with going to the gym… If I hung around there long enough and exercise… Whether I believe that I will get fit or not, the result of taking the action will yield the results of being physically fit… In order for me to stay spiritually fit, there are a series of things I get to do to exercise and flex and grow that my Higher Power and in essence end up spiritually fit!!!

- My Higher Power (God) does not create wreckage and create consequences (negative) for me… My Higher Power only believes and opens a space for love and light!!!  When negative/bad things happen, then it’s because I am blocking the sunlight of the spirit or it has to do with life happening; not God creating some obstacle or punishing me…  Mom died because of her cancer, not God… Dad died from Lou Gerhrig’s disease; God didn’t take my parents away… Rather, God was there to receive them when they made the transition!  Very much the same way with me; if I get into an accident, it’s because someone made a mistake…  God only gives me a different way to live life and have tools to live life on life’s terms!  I get to choose!!!

- Lastly, one of the speakers tonight shared of recovery… Recovery as defined in the Webster’s Dictionary is:  “being in the process of overcoming a disorder or shortcoming <a recovering alcoholic>.”  It doesn’t talk about ascertaining anything… What I personally believe it to be partly is an opportunity to shed those parts that don’t belong to Quoc I get to let go of in order to expose the authentic and true Quoc…  In recovery, it’s more like discovering that part of me when I was much much much younger and not covered in the ugliness that life may have brought into my life and covered all those parts that aren’t Quoc… We get to chip away all the parts that aren’t Quoc to create that perfect and beautiful manifestation called Quoc, a wonderful sober gay healthy mature man!

Cheers,

Quoc

Don’t be too alarmed… What I mean is that I am recuperating from being beaten up from my insane, warped, self deprocating and self loathing mind!!!

So, the time is 11:13P…  Here is the miracle!!!  I started writing this blog shortly after making dinner for myself and hopping onto facebook in an effort to find yet another means of escaping that which I call “KFCUK.”  Unfortunately, the tuner as well as the volume to this station in my head is more or less broken!!!  Today, my head hasn’t been able to ignore that crazy talk…  It lead me to a shady place, but thankfully didn’t take me anywhere near the really dark scary place that usually leads to relapse… Thank goodness!!!  Well, let’s give you the play by play…  If not for you, this is a great reminder for me as to how sometimes we have bad moments in our days and lives!!!  It’s a natural part of living!!!

Here we go (briefly)…  I have been trying to recuperate from an injury I sustained as a result of going on that darn ride Tatsu at Magic Mountain… My back is stiff from my neck all the way down to my tail bone!  It’s thrown me for a little bit of a loop what with the pain and the limited movements as a result.

Anyway, I have been resting up for the past couple days…  I have used it to sleep and do minimal outdoor activities.  I have limited it literally to 2 lunch dates with a couple friends and then my evening meetings.  Well, this afternoon, my head decided to kick me in the head with the force of a horses hind legs…

I started feeling guilty about not having taken care of the paperwork that I set my goal to do during my time off… I was looking at unfinished laundry and dishes… I was looking at a messy bathroom… I was feeling out of shape, heavy, bloated and ugly…  I started thinking about the last guy I hooked up with and how I haven’t received a correspondence from him to play and how that might be linked to me being out of shape… Then I started just feeling undesirable…

Instead of reaching for the telephone and calling and being of service, I reached for the internet and went on-line for the first time in many many many many months!  I don’t even remember the last time I went on-line?  Could it have been 9 months ago?  I wouldn’t be surprised!  I let myself meander over some of the posting for sex hook ups…  I then placed an ad… I thankfully received no replies and followed up with coming to my senses and deleting the ad…  By that time, it was time for my meeting… THANK GOODNESS!!!

I was feeling ugly, broke, out of shape, and unorganized!!!  Sigh…  The operative from this last statement I made is “feeling.”  Feelings indeed have a beginning middle and end… Thankfully, this time I have no shame in not only sharing about it at a meeting, I am posting it on here on this blog as well as I called a few people and shared honestly about it… I know that these actions were not healthy for me.  I know that the negative self talk I gave myself certainly stemmed from being alone at home for far too many minutes… Then the negative self talk started with focusing only on the negative about the debt I incurred resulting from the car repairs made… Then I thought about barely being able to keep up with the bills without that darn debt… Then I thought about how messy my home is… Sigh…

Instead of springing into action, I was so darn focused on my default mode of just acting out and escapism…  All of these insane actions had nothing to do with wanting to get loaded or needing sex… It was about:

1) Needing to feel financially secure… Which I am… I am making payments and keeping up with my bills… I have a time schedule to have all debt paid off by end of the year…  I am looking for other employment that may lead to more money…

2) Beating myself up for procrastinating and keeping a very messy home… I am doing the best I can and goodness Quoc, I have been in pain because of my back… It’s okay to take a moment and rest up… Things are being taken care of.  Yeah, the paper needs to go and perhaps having the paper around goes deeper than just having clutter around rather than the comfort of having clutter around me… Or perhaps some defense mechanism by creating clutter so that I don’t feel inclined to invite people over to my home…  I get to continue working on this, but realizing this is not a major major problem as my bills and other priorities and deadlines are indeed being met.

3) Feeling incredibly unattractive… This happens on a daily basis where I would feel good looking, then butt ugly, then fat, then healthy…  It’s all relative… Today happens to be a day where I just don’t feel as sexy as usual…. And I didn’t help matters by going on-line to meet people for superficial encounters… Something that wouldn’t lead to anything deeper which is what I really want and also which is also a venue from cyber land where people are looking for fantasies rather than real life intimacy!!!  I put my foot in it by going on the website…  Instead, I am thankful, I followed it up by deleting the website and going to a 12 step meeting and sharing honestly, then came  home to eat and enjoy some real good friendship exchanges on facebook and that literally turned my frownie upside downie!!!

So, there we have it…  The mind of a crazy alcoholic… How quickly I could’ve fallen into the trap of relapse… And it wasn’t even over sex or drugs… However, it was the crazy warped thinking that causes me to want to use a familiar prop that creates for an instantaneous high and pleasurable experience; when in reality, it will lead to destruction and mayhem!  It’s not about the sex… It’s about creating security for myself financially and feeling attractive in more ways than just focusing on the physique!

Good night…  I have lots to do peeps… I am thankful I survived over nine and a half months clean and sober, one day at a time!!!

Cheers,

Quoc

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Family at Six Flags Magic Mountain (Valencia)

So, I went to my 12 step meeting tonight… We get to read out of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous on a weekly basis…. Tonight, we read out of the chapter that addresses steps 10 & 11!!!  Because I don’t have a lot of time and without going too deep into it… 

Here is what I got out of the meeting as it pertains to the day spent at Magic Mountain with my family…  The Big Book mentions that I will recoil from things that harm me like a hot flame…  That when faced with indecision, I ask for God’s help, then relax and take it easy… I don’t struggle!!!  I do my part and then trust that the results will be taken care of…

Point and case of what NOT to do!!!  I went on Tatsu the crazy dragon ride a few years ago at Magic Mountain and ended up screaming so hard and straining myself so much that I lost my voice and gave myself whiplash and ended up unable to go on any more rides for the rest of the evening…  Unfortunately, I didn’t learn from my lesson from a few years ago!!!  I was reluctant to go on it; however, the ride looked so tempting as we waited in line at the Roaring Rapids ride that I just had to give it another go and train myself not to freak out and tense up to the point where I would end up giving myself whiplash and a major headache again!

I thought I did great on the ride…  I did scream the whole time, but not like last time when I screamed out of sheer terror!  I unfortunately unconsciously tensed up big time and found myself hurting from the neck shooting all the way down to the bottom of my spine!!! MAN!!! 

TWO LESSONS HERE:

1) Learn that I had a bad gut feeling about riding Tatsu again considering my physical health and ability to take the insanity of going on the ride as one does hang from the ride for periods of times!!!  I needed to be in better physical condition to do the ride…  I should have recoiled from this ride like a hot flame!!!

2) Instead of doing my part by enjoying this ride at the amusement park and trusting that the harness and clamps would hold me down and in place; instead, I chose to push and myself up against the seat (consciously or not) that I would end up straining my back muscles all the way from the top of my neck to the bottom of my spine!!!  LOL…  I find it amusing that all I needed to do to truly feel ok on the ride was to do as the Big Book would suggest any life challenging ride I would be on… Trust the process and relax and take it easy and NOT struggle!!!  The TRUTH is if I was truly strong enough and struggled hard enough, the pressure I put on the harness would have broken the harness off; consequently, causing me to fall out of the ride and be hurled in to the air!!!  THE SOLUTION IS TO HAVE FAITH, TRUST THAT I WILL BE TAKEN CARE OF AND SURRENDER AND RELAX.

Instead, I spent all of today, Monday, May 4, 2009 popping Advils, laying back and relaxing and taking it easy so that my back may do it’s work to heal and mend itself!!!  There are many lessons to be learned on so many different levels…  That is for me to get to experience… I would like to share a few pictures with you though from the adventures me and my family had at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, California…

The full album is actually posted in a photo album in my facebook page!!!  Very cool, that was my first facebook album posted!!!  They are brilliant in their ability to allow people to stay in touch and post media so easily!!!  The detriment about facebook is that it has caused me to share most of my feelings and thoughts there and therefore, remove myself from posting on this blog as often…  Either way, please enjoy!

Cheers,

Quoc