I can't remember if I talked about this before or not (and I'm too pressed for time/lazy to go back and look), but I took my computer to Johnny Shortstuff's office for safe-keeping while I go on something of a sabbatical from owning a computer. There were a lot of reasons for it, but the bottom line is that given a choice between being productive and absolutely anything else on earth, I'll take whatever's behind door number two. It was a difficult decision, to say the least, and one I procrastinated about for close to a month, but I did it and now it's over and I'm going to give myself until December 1st before I head back up to the church to reclaim it. Not that I won't be going to church until December, but... you get what I'm saying.
It hasn't had the wonderously magical effect that I was hoping it would. In honesty, a part of myself was really wanting God to reward me for being so self-sacrificing by tossing a job into my lap once I finally stopped hem-hawing around and went through with it. But it didn't work out that way. I kinda just cashed in one big problem for a hundred little ones. It's like when I quit drinking: you finally get your biggest distraction out of the way, and now you see all the messes they were distracting you from. In a certain sense, it's annoying because it's kinda like being rewarded for your faithfulness by getting a failing report card. "Congratulations, you still suck."
But in another sense, it's a small movement toward progress and I'm pleased with it. In a television-oriented culture where Jack Bauer can save the world from terrorist annihilation over the course of a single hour, it's hard to believe that taking a month to build up the courage to surrender something I haven't gone without for 15 years makes any difference in the grand scheme of things, but it does. It's a tiny adjustment in the over-arching trajectory of a life that's veered off course and, if I can do it again in other small ways, over the course of time, it'll make a difference. C.S. Lewis talked about a similar idea in one of his books (though I forget the title). He was writing about how the impact of small moral decisions differs between different people; how, having eternal spirits, we're all always either getting better or worse; how what might be some insignificant act of kindness done by one man may be a saving grace for another. It probably doesn't make much sense to anybody else but me, but that's okay. I don't need it to make sense to you, I just need it to keep being true.
I've decided (under advisement) that I should get back to regular 'blogging. I had a good couple months of it, and I've had a good break, and now it's time to get back to work. The pity-party that was October has run its course and I need to get back into the routine of doing good things for myself. I'm not quite back up to biking all the time and eating better, but hey... baby steps, man. Baby steps.
My friend Cliff has an analogy for sobriety that I really appreciate. He describes it like trying to redirect water flowing downhill. If you place one thing in its path, it's just going to run around whatever single object you put down and keep going the way it was going. But if you stack enough stuff together, eventually, you can change its course. And I like this idea. I like dispelling the belief that there's one magic solution that fixes everything. I like seeing my computer sabbatical as being added to a pile of stones in the middle of a river. I like knowing that if I make enough of those little decisions, one day I'll have a nice little dam going. Maybe I won't do it all the time. Maybe I'll get frustrated and quit at some point. But for right now, the perspective is enough to keep me going and, though I may waste the entirety of my future, I won't lose this moment, right now, today. I love you guys. It's good to be back.
See you tomorrow...
No comments:
Post a Comment