From Beyond Hell, Above Heaven:
Heaven Nor Hell
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Monthly Archives: December 2015
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
– John Milton, Paradise Lost
RIP Lemmy
Born to lose. Lived to win.
https://youtu.be/eBIa0o36pPo
My Top Ten Songs
I’ve been using the site Last.fm to track my listening habits since April of 2004. While my current username has mostly been scrobbling tracks since November of 2009, I never really finished scrobbling to my old username until June of 2011.
Since opening the account associated with my current username, below are my top ten most played songs; links open the track in Spotify.
- Billy Talent – Saint Veronika (35 plays)
- Metallica – …And Justice For All* (27 plays)
- Billy Talent – Viking Death March (27 plays)
- Alter Bridge – Blackbird (26 plays)
- Slipknot – Dead Memories (25 plays)
- Muse – Supremacy (25 plays)
- Muse – Hysteria (24 plays)
- Billy Talent – The Dead Can’t Testify (24 plays)
- Muse – Follow Me (24 plays)
- Thom Yorke – And It Rained All Night (22 plays)
* This song is artificially elevated to #2 status as it would appear at the top of my library and start playing by default on my Android phone… which I experimented with for almost a year. My #11 is Alice In Chains – Would? and should actually be my #10 song.
7 x 7 = 49
I made it through Christmas Day dinner unscathed. It was a family dinner with a dozen other people, the majority of them indulging in alcohol at some point in the evening.
There was the fridge full of beer, the bottles of wine on the table during dinner, the after-dinner licquers… all of which I had partaken of last year. This year, I would not.
It wasn’t even all that tempting; I didn’t have any craving for the alcohol around me. It was really more socially awkward for some people than anything else. Others didn’t bat an eye about it. There were plenty of soft drinks and bottled water available and even more great food!
My oldest son would pour himself a can of Guinness which mesmerized me for a moment but only because it’s visually stimulating to watch the frothy stout slug out of an upside down can and then settle out. And the lighting of the Drambuie-soaked plum pudding caught everyone’s attention.
I don’t know the scientific explanation, but fire made it good.
I made it until 9:30 and then left to bring my oldest son and his girlfriend home to spend some time in my chair with my journal before retiring for the evening.
Today is Day 49.
The Written Word
I haven’t written anything since the 20th, Day 43. Between this place and my handwritten journal, I haven’t connected with myself in over 3 days. I actually had to write it out to figure out what Day it is.
Skullmuggery
Hey, I am still working on getting through my first cup of coffee so fuck off. LOL
Anyway, I’ve been dealing with the effects of a flu for the past few days which has not made me overly introspective. At the same time, I started physiotherapy for my shoulder and the exercises are pretty tough; my shoulder and my entire back are a complete mess after doing them. Add the muscle pain and joint ache associated with the flu and… well… I’ve been in a particular little slice of Hell for the past few days.
Well, it’s Christmas-fucking-Eve. December 24th. Despite the fact that I haven’t spent a penny on alcohol, my bank account is still running on empty.
I’ve funnelled all of my limited resources into this friggin’ holiday… and so soon after returning to work. My last paycheck was about ¾ of what it normally would have been since I was on short-term disability leave but with all of the same expenses. I had to get another damn payday loan to buy gifts after all that.
I hate payday loans.
Having spent what I have, I have nothing left until New Years Eve. There isn’t a lot of food in the house and I’m all out of painkillers for my shoulder. But at least I’m almost out of the woods with this flu.
All of this sounds a bit “bah humbug” doesn’t it? Really, I’m not that cranky. I’ll make it through. It’s Christmas time and I’m relaxing right now. I don’t really have anywhere I need to be and having nothing that I really need to do right now. I have as much wrapping done as I can do right now and I have a bowl of Mac N’ Cheese in me guttyworks. It could always be worse.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
The End Is The Beginning Is The End
Writing is hard.
Well, for me, I always try to write honestly and on a subject that I know something about; writing becomes hard when I’m trying to force it.
I have always believed that there is so much that can be learned about the present and the future by studying the past. It helps to know where you once were to understand where you should be going… where you need to be going. This is why I am doing this, writing about myself so that I can try to avoid making some of the same choices that got me to where I was.
From what I can remember; I used to spend a lot of time trying to forget… to ignore that a person even lived inside this skin. I drank a lot; I lived like escaping into the bottle was committing some kind of poetic, slow suicide. It was the most cowardly method and it seemed appropriate for a coward; a passive allowance with no heady commitment that comes with a firearm or a blade.
Are there a lot of insights that I can take away from what I can remember? I’m really not sure. I’ll keep writing and I guess we’ll see.
The process of addiction is generally a long one and rarely can one moment along that journey be identified as a watershed moment, changing every other moment that happens after it. In contrast, initiating the process of recovery is often the exact opposite. Often, one single moment will tip the balance toward recognition that there is a problem and that something needs to be done about it. Maybe it’s losing your job. Maybe it’s having your husband or wife leave you. Maybe it’s being arrested by the police. Maybe it’s suffering an overdose.
Right at this moment, I accept that when it comes to substance abuse, sometimes it doesn’t matter where you were. Sometimes, what matters is that you acknowledge that you can’t go back there ever again. It’s knowing that every minute of every hour of every day going forward is a battle. It’s choosing to be stronger than the you from before. It’s choosing to go to war against something that wants to destroy you.
Day 40 rerun
On Wednesday, I was trying to find an image of the number 40 that I would find suitable for yesterday’s Day 40 post. I didn’t have any grand ideas for the post… 40 is just a nice round number to comment on.
After entering ’40 days’ into Google, the search results came in with an unusually heavy weighting in Christianity and the bible. I’m not religious but this caught my interest. What is the significance of the number 40 in the bible?
It seems that there are many biblical stories where God would test man with various trials and, often, the duration of these trials were… 40 days. Weird. I didn’t look into thoughts or theories on why this was; I only have so much tolerance for preaching and every website had just too much preaching for me. I did take note of the biblical stories in question and, unfortunately, none of these trials would have starred Charleton Heston or involved Jesus riding a raptor. Sorry.
I’m not making any religious parallels here. Unless there’s a parallel that involves Nic Cage… then, why the hell not? 40 days… it’s just an interesting coincidence.
But, yeah, yesterday was my 40th day of sobriety and, holy fuck, it was boring. I had text messaged a friend earlier in the day saying, “I don’t need a drink but I could really go for a beer right now.” It wasn’t like I was going to actually have a beer but it was just one of those days where I was needing to unwind. A beer was just my old familiar way to unwind. Instead, I relaxed in my chair after work, watched some hockey on TV and ended up in bed around 9:30 pm out of pure exhaustion. That’s kind of been my modus operandi lately. Chillaxing.