This one’s easy to explain: I take that nebulous feeling of boredom mixed with unspecified unhappiness, and dwell on it.
Step 7: humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
It’s like sitting down to an enjoyable breakfast, only to remember halfway through my eggs that the basement flooded yesterday. There’s a section of my brain partitioned off and covered in black goo and insanity, and reminding myself that it’s there can come with its own set of personal harangues. I mean, there’s got to be more to life than visiting a tar pit of negativity.
Because there’s nothing to do at a tar pit, other than slowly shake my head at the prime real estate I turned into a uninhabitable sinkhole. It’s staring at a problem of my own making and repeatedly kicking myself for it. Nothing definable; the tar pit is far too slick for specifics. And as long as I do nothing about it other than stare and feel bad, it continues to boil and pop, until spilling over onto an unsuspecting public. And their bewildered responses to the scalding only reinforces my self-doubt and depression. That’s my pride-in-reverse self-pity: why is everything so hard for me? Why do I make everything so uneasy? Why can’t I live in my own skin?
What this program is teaching me, and what I need to be willing to do, is take the time-out necessary to cool down my overheating brain. My disease is essentially a car that can’t go above 45 mph, yet I constantly find myself attempting interstate travel.
What works for me today: side roads. Scenic routes. There’s no need to race my brain against reality.
What do I need to do in order to drive around the black tar? Leave earlier. Allow for extra time, and then use that time to right-size myself, whatever that means for today.
Seventh Step Prayer
My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good & bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you & my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here to do Your bidding.
12 the hard way 