Quoc’s Web Journal

12,398

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