Half measures

So. I am told that “Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point.” (Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 5 – How It Works)

Half measures. Half assed efforts when I know better. I hope they are not half-hearted efforts, but they are frequently doing the same thing and expecting different results. This is a very bad habit of mine, one of my default programs. Frustrating, to say the least. It was Labor Day, so I honored that and did absolutely no labor. I have sat here for yet another day, doing absolutely nothing, but building sand castles in my mind, without the sand, and leaving most of them unfinished. Great ideas, though. Always great ideas, just lacking on the implementation.

I was musing on how much I allow myself to be taken advantage of. Some friends of mine, who are ex-pats, will be coming to visit in October. A mutual friend is trying valiantly to assemble the usual suspects, but I had to laugh when she was asking me whether or not there was “history” between me and someone in the crowd. There is angst in the world, and then there is lesbian angst, which is the exponential value of the cumulative angst of everyone else. Good lord. I had “history” with the person in question, but we agreed it was not THAT kind of “history” so it would be safe to have us all assemble. Goodness. Drama averted.

The person in question owes me a small sum of money, around $350 if I recall correctly. I loaned it to her freely, and didn’t expect her to do the right thing and repay it. It’s been forgiven, and I have never mentioned it to another soul. I don’t have much respect for the woman, but I don’t care enough to make anything of the debt. That is the sum total of the “history” as far as I am concerned, so it’s a dead issue. But it got me thinking about how many times I go above and beyond for friends, colleagues, etc. only to have them kick me in the teeth in gratitude.

Maybe, when I was in much worse shape, I did likewise. I’m not that person any longer, and maybe it’s like survivor guilt on my part that prevents me from being more demanding about being treated fairly, or at least with more respect. I don’t know. I’ve never known, and I’ve always gotten the shorter end of the stick in relationships of just about any kind. I suppose that’s something I should work on. I’ll get right on that.

Regardless, I feel as though I am Sitting In Limbo (which is a great song by Jimmy Cliff). “…waiting for the dice to roll…got some time to search my soul…meanwhile they’re putting up resistance, but I know that my faith will lead me on.” Faith. My faith will lead me on.

That may be all that I’ve gotten from today – faith. I don’t know exactly what my faith is, but I suppose it’s that somehow, some way, I’ll be able to keep my snout above water. It’s frightening to be thinking about going into the, um, latter part of my time here but I don’t think living under a bridge at 70 is going to be in the cards for me. Fear is the biggest obstacle to faith, and faith is the antidote to fear. At least that is what I think. Both faith and fear ebb and flow on some never ending continuum, I guess. Right now, fear is rather high on the scales, but this too shall pass.

I’ve never considered myself brave, nor courageous. I’m more a scrapper, scraping the dirt with my fingernails to get to my feet when I’ve landed on my ass. That routine is getting old, though, so I’d kind of like to be figuring out better ways of staying on my feet. My balance generally sucks, but I am learning to compensate.

One of these days is going to be the day I speak up and my words are heard, and understood. One of these days is today on the other side of the planet, so one of these days is now. Time is a human construct, I keep feeling it necessary to remember that because I feel as though my life is over, that I’m old and have wasted all of my time in failure. Bleh.

Meanwhile, they’re putting up resistance. I’m waiting on the dice to roll, as the song says…waiting on judgement day. Who judges? I judge. It is always a pronouncement of sentence in my own measure. Perhaps I was a hanging judge in some other lifetime, and the bad karma exacts its ironic verdict in having me judge myself for this lifetime. That’s almost funny.

What’s not funny is living a half-assed life. Half-measure avail me nothing but I am certainly getting a lot of mileage out of trying for different results. It’s going to be OK, but I don’t know what OK looks like. I know what I want it to look like, but I’m not sure I believe that is a viable picture. Maybe I just don’t believe it’s viable for me. That perhaps I don’t deserve it, am not worthy of it. I don’t effing know, and I’m tired of doing the mental and emotional calesthenics to concoct an answer. (So, just stop screams the not-so-small and not-so-still voice within.)

Random thought for the evening – why in the world has the A&E channel on cable television decided to degrade itself with marathons of things like “Finding Bigfoot”? Now those are half-measures.