It seems my life is lived one of two ways; pushing myself to my mental, physical, and emotional breaking point, or sedentarily waiting for something spectacular to fall into my lap.  Balance is a commodity seldom on the market.  And although I am shockingly aware of this, I am rarely able… Read full post »

i don't really know what this is, but it happened the other night...

one soul rests

another mourns,

lost in regrets

of a friendship sworn.

one soul lives on

less than before,

a darkness is born

it yurns for a cure. 

but there's no such thing

at least… Read full post »

   Slowly peeling back the door to his room, the first thing I noticed was that his body was not in a natural position.  The bottoms of his bare feet were pointed upward, stretched out along the carpet.  He was wearing blue striped pajama pants, which were different than the/… Read full post »

I am currently enrolled in a Marketing class called Consumer Buyer and Behavior.  Each week, our professor posts a question in an online forum and we all weigh in several times, some weeks being more heated than others.  This is one of those heated weeks.  The topic is as follows:

In… Read full post »

Two days ago, I rolled my ankle playing basketball.  My immediate reaction was, fuck!  Not so much in the sense that it hurt, but more in regards to how it was going to alter my plans.  Spraining my ankle wasn’t on my agenda.  That being said, in the minutes following the… Read full post »

Many addicts and alcoholics speak of using their drug of choice to fill some sort of void.  I don't pretend to know why I drank and drugged the way I did, because if I was able to figure that out, then presumably I would be able to fix it.  And that… Read full post »

My thoughts are not my own.  I don’t know where they come from or for what reasons they appear.  Yet they do serve a purpose.  They brought me here tonight.  I am at a place where I can do things to learn from the fuzzy logic that winds its way through… Read full post »

If life were easy and not so fast,

I wouldn't think about the past. -Phish

It’s a surreal feeling.  It’s just another day really, but sobriety anniversaries offer recovering people a chance to reflect and celebrate a date in their lives that was a monumental start to changing their lives. 

On December 31, 2009, I was struggling.  I wanted to use… Read full post »

Possibly one of my least favorite questions to answer is, "What kind of music do you like?"  Upon hearing these foul seven words, the hair on my neck stands up, my… Read full post »

In less than a month I will have two years of continuous sobriety.  Since arriving on the doorsteps of treatment in August of 2009, I have gotten drunk one time.  I managed to slip up on my first trip home to Maryland for Christmas that year, reaching a new emotional… Read full post »

I'm 24 years old, and just wrote my mom the most heartfelt message of our lives together.  I just started writing, never questioning, never thinking.  Thoughts flowed through my veins to the tips of my fingers, driving my pen in a way that only the subconscious knows how.  There was ha… Read full post »

To preface, this is a school assignment....just try to bear with the reference to the syllabus in the beginning. The assignment is simply the question posed above....it is an opinion piece designed to draw primarily from our own personal experience.  There were no guidelines about style...enjoy,… Read full post »

Something about being in that tightly packed, gym-sock smelling yoga classroom reminds me that all the other shit going on in my life can pause...for at least an hour.  There are times where I can't quiet the internal voices; like last Friday when all I could think about was how I… Read full post »

I don't want to work right now. 

 I'm sitting in my cube.  Of course its positioned right below the air conditioner, blowing a steady, frigid breeze of unnecessary proportions on my partially exposed arms.  Outside it's sunny and 71 degrees. 

Why the hell is the AC on?

Aft… Read full post »

Well, here I am.  I miss you guys.  And by you guys I mean anyone willing to read through this on a lonely Wednesday night....or whatever time of day it may be for you.  There really is no point to this other than to say that I got a proper slap… Read full post »

Jen and Joe met on a blind date; neither was looking forward to it.  Joe was a go-getter, a self-made man, and found it rather discomforting to relinquish any control of a given situation.  Jen was on the rebound.  She was coming off of a four-year relationship that ended in train-wrec/… Read full post »

This class has given a lot more than I to it.  I don’t say that in the sense that I didn’t put forth effort or that I failed to show up.  In fact, I don’t think I missed a class.  What I have learned this semester is that I have… Read full post »

Call me a skeptic, a cynic, or anything in between, but after last weeks snowfall here in a currently sunny St. Paul, I lost all hope to ever see summer again.  It seems that in Minnesota, Mother Nature has made a deal with the devil, and at his behest, hell has/… Read full post »

I have been assigned an image analysis for my writing class.  This is a copy of the first draft handed in last Wednesday.  The assignment is as follows:

 Choose an image and write an analytical response to it. This should include description of the image…. Your interpretation of… Read full post »

The following is an excerpt of an email I received from a fellow open-saloner.   Following the snipit is my response to its author. I felt the need to post this because I figured that I am not the only one who has experienced situations like this.  I hope someone else can… Read full post »

Last night, I found myself eavesdropping on the job.  I prepare and serve food in a house that holds weekend retreats for the spiritually inclined.  Being the curious zen master that I am, I occasionally find my ear sneaking into discussions, hoping to absorb a tasty thought-morsel.  I… Read full post »

Like most profound moments in my life today, this one began whilst drenched in sweat, huddled over the 6’x2’ space that is my yoga mat.  Undoubtedly emerging between a sandwich of self-deprecating internal dialogue, the thought took an insidious grip on my consciousness and refused t… Read full post »

A friend once told me to write when I'm inspired, write when I'm not inspired.  Today would be one of the latter days.  In fact, for the past few days I have either sat down to write and not gotten anywhere, or just plain avoided the subject altogether.  I feel my… Read full post »