I opened myself up to 10 strangers a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t bring a notebook filled with bullet points or a speech letter. I had no idea how I was to engage the group or even the subject I would touch base on to engage. I wasn’t sure what to expect honestly so I walked into the building raw as raw could be. What you kids call raw dogging these days.

I talked briefly about my professional background, my reckoning with sobriety and dipped just a tad into some philosophy. It was therapeutic for me and I managed to shake off some social jitters that I had created for myself for the last 5 years. Stifled a small cry but worked my way through it.

It was good for me. It was needed.

One small topic I had touched base on during my chat with the group was even when you conquer some of your worst demons you can still come out the other side a complete asshole. Everyone had a good laugh I was engaging but wanted to make a point from my perspective of where I’ve been and where I wanted to head next.

Sobriety is perhaps the best thing I could’ve done to turn my mind and life around to the lighter side of things. The chemical imbalance of years of toxicity changed the person I once was or at least tried to be. It changed my behavioral patterns, my scruples, morals, point of views. Add the typical childhood traumas we all experience, life’s hiccups, years of feeling like life only takes craps on you and no one else. It makes for a long lasting cocktail that takes much more than just time and sobriety to shake off the effects.

Things you have to reckon with each separately.

If you have a old car that you just replaced the old engine with a brand new one it doesnt mean the car will now run without any chance of breaking down. Transmission has the same wear and tear. Tires are worn, seats are ripped, paint is faded, alignment is twisted and your shocks have been shook. All of your electronics are outdated and they don’t make those parts anymore.

That has been me for about three years. I’m not diminishing the value of sobriety. I won’t say I’m conquering sobriety but I’ve made my life possible without alcohol. I still had/have some other personal property to reckon with.

Pettiness

Complaining

Empathy -lack of

Stereotyping

Impatience

Negativity

Then the big ones

Hatred

Bitterness

Anger

All of these poxes contain underlying annexes, attachments, subject matter etc but this was my new reckoning for 2025.

I was sober but my subconscious was still a raging maniac. It would bother me when people approached me to tell me how proud of me they were about my lifestyle changes and my transparency. In my head my mind would say “I’m only about 10% transparent.” I can’t say some of the things that still sit in my mind.”

Anger produces some dark thoughts

Bitterness will cause you to think some not so good things about others. Which brings on hatred.

I’m sober, I’m a much better person for it. Easier to be around for most part unless I’m in one of my manic episodes. I’m much more focused and analytical about my being. A lot of bad habits went into the trash with the bottle but most of my personality trash traits I picked up along the way stuck to me like burrs on my hiking socks. Jagged and perturbing.

In my eyes I was just a sober jerk. A few other eyes too.

This wasn’t a surprise to me. I know me better than anyone but I needed to put sobriety into it’s proper place. I replaced my car engine. I already knew other parts needed to be replaced but I had to get that car back on the road first.

My new reckoning has been slowly turning a different corner. I’m faced with rewiring my car right now.

I’m making peace with things I’ve held onto for far too long.

The first and easiest to be honest was to backspace my words on social media. I stopped engaging. Or I’ve been in that practice. I’ve found myself making snarky remarks in form of humor but it’s just a disguise. Social media is a megaphone of negativity. I’m standing by that. What it could’ve been used for once upon a time has been lost.

I’m making peace with people who have controlled my energy over the years long term and short. There’s too many to count. Some I haven’t spoken too in years and others I have to reckon with everyday. Do you have those people on social media that you don’t really like but you still keep them around? Do you get infuriated reading a total stranger’s opinion? Do you get upset when someone you haven’t seen in person in 20 years disagrees with your online opinion? I’ve cut out about 75% of my social media engagement. My feet feel lighter already.

I made peace with my old partners after my one of them passed. It wasn’t the passing that made me do it but it did trigger my one sided pov. I felt compelled to when I experienced a fraction of the pain his family must’ve been going through during the whole process. The thought of my pettiness bouncing around in their minds while one of their family members was slowly dying made me sick to my stomach. I lost touch with empathy because of my pettiness.

It was sobering. They deserved better. There’s business and then there’s just being a good human being. Bitterness takes away from my energy.

It was therapeutic to put those bad thoughts to rest. The impact also caused my to pause and reflect on “what are we doing here Gangwer?”

“Why are you so dead set on getting enraged from your self proclaimed victimization?”

And why do I feel the need to air it out for all to see?

It’s not therapeutic it’s grandstanding.

Social media has turned that into a trophy

☮️

^^

This has been my focus this year. I’ve been talking about a new reckoning all last year but I needed to find it. Hold that thought. No ma’am it found me this time.

Trail markers are amazing tools once you know how to harness them. I’m on quite the spiritual journey at the moment. It took something way out of left field for this reckoning to arrive but it’s one I couldn’t ignore.

I’m just following the steps shown to me

Sobriety to clear the mind. Erasing my hard drive to allow new uploads.

Alcohol truly destroyed my intuition processing. As did the system I indulged in for decades that comes with it.

The service industry.

It destroyed me because I allowed it to.

Writing has been my most utilized trail marker.

Anytime I put it one “paper” I’m able to release some trauma and or inner conflict. Writing has helped me make peace with my father’s passing decades ago, my mother, and my brother’s too. My mental rucking gets lighter each time and man was I carrying around a lot of weight.

Sometimes I’ll write something negative on a pad of paper, ball it up and throw it in the trash.

It’s symbolic and it works for me.

I’ve created a mental web in my mind.

For the last month when I negative thought pops in I have this web to catch it in my subconscious and I reckon with it.

“Why is this thought sitting here? What prompted it? What do you intend to do with it? Is it worthy of processing or do we need to wrap it up and get rid of it?”

It’s taken me three years to weave this fragile web. It only works if I’m hyper focused on it during my nighttime routine of self hypnosis. Things slip through all the time but at least now I’m aware. I’m catching negative thoughts before they can get through and each time my web gets stronger.

I’m exhausted from carrying around so much hate and bitterness. It’s breaking my back and heart.

But

I’m improving and that’s all I can hope for.

It’s astounding how it changes your energy almost overnight when you make peace with subject matter that shouldn’t matter.

I carried my despises for the mandates for Covid like a scar on my forehead. The shutdowns, masks, restaurants were the scapegoats and it made me feel helpless. It locked me up and shut me down. It caused the rift between my partners and I. It made me double my drinking pars.

Two or three weekends ago I purposely walked into the new restaurant inside of the old SC and ate on a Sunday. I hadn’t stepped foot in those doors since April 2021. I had to get it done. I needed to make peace with my emotions over my first and favorite restaurant.

And I did.

Last week as I prepared to loosen some bitter strings my thoughts were

“This shakeup literally saved your life and everything attached to it.”

“You would still be the old person that you had become to despise.”

“You didn’t lose anything. You gained everything.”

As I said those words to myself while driving to work I did something that I’ve done quite a few times the past couple of years.

I cried

And then I shut the door on it.

I’ve got a few more big ones I have to reckon with and I’m struggling only because I have to retrain how I think.

Negativity has been infested in my soul for decades. This one I have to take some time on. Every time I think I’m moving in the right direction I find myself mumbling some old words that want to stay around.

It’s going to take a bit.

But

I’m more than hopeful. I’m confident. Something else I had to reckon with too.

Each time I’m able to close the book on one of these the better I feel inside. Spirituality is my focus. It’s my new mountain to climb.

It’s not what you think it is but it’s all relatable. I’m just now finding some meaning after 53 years of perpetual motion.

Just a better awareness of myself. For myself.

“Oh you have to let go

So the soul may fall” – Sturg