Yesterday I ...

Bought a new houseplant at Home Depot and some plant food. I re-potted all the houseplants in my bedroom, added fresh dirt to the kitchen plants and fed and watered them all. I picked off all the dead leaves and unfortunately had to euthanize a plant that was gasping for it's last breath. Riley had knocked over one of the plants on my bedroom windowsill when a mounted policeman on horseback clip-clopped down the street one day last week. He got so freaked out he tried to get out (or get his head out) the window and upended the pot. He also has a habit of lazily chewing on the leaves when he's bored so I will have to be vigilant if I want a little green patch outside my bedroom window this summer. I'm also thinking about growing at least one potted tomato plant this year to have a few weeks of fresh, homegrown tomatoes.

Googled myself, as I was wondering if maybe prospective employers were doing it and maybe it could be an explanation for why I am having no success landing a job. I had a theory that Googling me would lead pretty quickly to this here blog thingy, and once employers were reading my self-descriptive "middle aged, gay, HIV+, recovering alcoholic" confessional that they were running for the exits. I discovered to my relief and then horror that despite my best efforts to live a scandalously transparent life on the intertubes, Googling myself produces almost no information whatsoever. The highest link being a roster of my graduating Classmates.com from high school. Beyond that, there is page after page of nothing about me. I barley exist.

Asked someone from Gay-A if he would be interested in being my sponsor. I have been sponsor-less for most of the last two years. He turned me down, which of course made me feel even lower on the crap-meter than I already did. What's  interesting about this particular tale of woe is that instead of going home,  eating a pint of ice cream and replaying the conversation over and over in my head until I felt like a complete asshole and hated everyone I had ever met in the bargain, I opted to ignore the instincts that got me to need Gay-A in the first place and marched back in to the meeting and had a chat with the sponsorship chairman for the group. I gave him my contact information and let him know that I was actively needing a sponsor and I hope to hear from him in a day or two.

This is an amazing development in my recovery for two reasons. Obviously, I have learned a thing or two about my behavior and how I tend to make choices that are least beneficial to my own well-being, and second I seem to be moving in to a more active phase of my recovery. I've been feeling like I've reached a plateau where I am not making significant progress in my recovery. I feel stagnated, and I think the best way out of that is to get more committed to the process by working with another alcoholic on the program and what it means to me. This would have been impossible two years ago, as it would involve taking a chance and exposing my inner workings to what amounts to a total stranger. It took everything I had to try it with a therapist a couple of years ago, and I ended up lying (mostly by omission) about most of what I was doing and feeling. Rigorous honesty, with yourself and others, is a cornerstone of Gay-A and recovery, and it's a step I feel (more or less) ready to start taking.