Saturday, April 19, 2008

AA works

I've finished my first week working for Isleicom, the organization that tracks inter-library loans among all the state's college and university libraries. It's entirely computer work and much of the computer work is custodial (repairing errors in files, reporting programming bugs to programmers, etc.)

I may as well be tracking used auto parts among junk-yards. The difference is that my 15 co-workers have Library Science Degrees. My last job was working on an assembly line for a newspaper, in the bindery department. I haven't had a technical job since I was an 'analyst' for a financial information service, where I wrote in COBOL and produced financial reports that I couldn't possibly fathom. (I was successful for about a year, then the slow crack-up, or unmasking). I almost forget my eight weeks at the bookstore earlier this year. That is where I belong, but today's super-stores have few full-time positions, and pay starvation wages.

Here I am making more money than I need (sharing a sober house is cheap and I lack for nothing but usually I am anxious for the next paycheck and sometimes have to borrow money for smokes). It's all due to my sobriety of '98-2000, and the uncharacteristic discipline---mysterious grace, really--- I had to finish a two year degree in legacy programming. By god, what little use I've made of it, it's still there, that degree and those transcripts. What I am saying is that I'm surprised to find I can make grown up sums of money. People take me too seriously. They pay. It's stunning.

And I'm happy. May and June are the happy months and I am in the catbird seat. It's part-time and still the money is awesome to me. At my desk at 8, on my way home at noon, five days a week. It seems there are still 24 hours left to the day.
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I don't remember those three years sober. Not really. Just like a bender. Now I am about to celebrate another three years and I'm older---47, not 37! (I never knew 37 though I was high-functioning.) The spectre of becoming a toothless, sunken faced old Dead End Club Elder makes me truly afraid. I don't know or care if Alcoholism is a disease. All I know is that if I drink, I have no brakes. I will continue drinking.

And this time I'd surely be doomed. If not to jail, death or instituions, then to an eventual "truth"---another unmasking---where my appearence reveals everything. I don't want to lose control now.

Happily, with a sort of second-hand vigilence, I will stay sober the rest of my life, I believe. I have to behave as a cancer patient who knows damn well what would bring about another tumor. So I attend AA, do 12 step work, keep myself in prayerful spiritual condition, and keep close to the people who have succesfully overcome their obsession to self-destruct and drink. "Stay in the middle of the boat", they say. And stick with the winners.

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