Memories

Today is Thursday of the April Twenty Second. Wow. A friend of mine just posted some pics of our high school prom, what a trip that was. Both the prom and then looking at pics from twenty three years ago that I'd never seen. I had forgotten how hot my girl friend was but seeing her in the flapper dress she wore was a nice reminder. She was a day student while I was a boarder which had certain advantages for me. I don't rightly remember how that one ended, except that as soon as summer was around I was dismissed. I remember calling her house and having her mother lie to me over the phone. I don't think I could get my folks to lie for me if some girl was giving me problems. Anyway, it was an awesome eight months of dating her and I am glad that I did. She was from a different clique and financial circle than I was and I learned a lot from that. She was also the first girl I slept with more than once or twice and I will forever be grateful for that. Perhaps thats why her old man didn't like me sniffing around the nest so much. Oh, well.

I can't regret the past as it says in the BB and god knows there is a shit load to regret back there. I can't say that I am glad that I am an alcoholic like some folks claim, but I am glad that I am able to appreciate the life I've lived and the life that I am living now. I may not have the dog, wife, house, car, or boat that I wish I had but I know now those things are possible if I apply myself. Those items are in no particular order, just how I thought about them as I was typing. I don't know which is more important; a dog or a wife but I do know that if I work hard enough I can certainly look forward to having both. I never even thought about realistically having any of those things. Sure, I would dream about having a cool house and someone to share it with but they were just dreams, nothing I could put into reality. Funny how things work out, here I am forty years old and thinking realistically about things I should have thought about in my twenties. Better late than never I say.

Those high school pics brought back such a flood of memories, most of them good ones. Things I have not thought about since I was eighteen I am thinking about as I was walking to work this morning. I have really lived a blessed life and was very lucky to attend a boarding school. I loved going to Tabor, not only for the friendships I made with the other boarders, the sailing on the schooner, but for the education in fending on my own. Granted I didn't learn much scholastically but I did learn a bunch of things that would help me later in life. I think it was awesome that when I saw a good friend from that time we were able to pick right up where we left off and the twenty year span didn't make any difference. I am really looking forward to my twenty fifth reunion and you better believe that I am going to borrow my dad's porsche for the weekend. Unless of course I manage to purchase something thats as nice as that car is by then, I do have two years or so.

I will be the first to admit that I am materialistic. I like to have stuff. I like giving stuff to other people and I like getting stuff from other people. I think internet shopping kicks serious ass and I am liable to spend much more money on clothes if I know they will fit. As I lose weight I am psyched to purchase some funky clothes from this place in LA that I am going to visit once I get down to one eighty or so. Its a shop that Slash owns and they have some of the coolest rock star clothes but a size thirty four waist is considered big and tall. I am sure a shirt and a pair of pants will run you a couple of hundred bucks but they will be the coolest shirt & pair of pants you own and nobody back in Boston will have anything even approaching the coolness of the threads.

I sorta dressed for the funk show I'm going to tonight and I feel good. I am wearing this cool black western shit with awesome snap buttons I got in Dallas, my new cowboy belt, and pair of jeans that didn't fit four months ago, and my gold adidas. Well, one of my two pairs of gold adidas that I of course just had to have. I could not even button the jeans when I first started going to the gym and I tried them on six weeks ago and while I could wear them they were really tight. Now they fit well and I guess I just not used to wearing shit that fits because while they seem a little snug a female friend of mine told me that they looked great and it was nice to see my ass for once. Looking back I can't believe how much of a fatty I let myself be, XXL shirts were getting too small for christ sake. Now I find that larges are fitting well and thats some fucking progress !

Well thats about it for the fashion update, I don't want to get ahead of myself. I have a sincere respect for people who look well put together and the clothes def make the man. I think that dressing well makes you more confident and that you feel better about yourself when you look in the mirror and are happy with the reflection. Self image is obviously important to me, I may trumpet the advantages of a healthy lifestyle but I am getting into shape so that I will look better to other people. So people will say to themselves, "wow look at what sobriety can do for someone, he has totally turned his life around. Maybe I can too." I've said this many times but if I can influence just one person to give sobriety and recovery a chance then I will be a very happy man. If just one person sees the turnaround that I've done and thinks that perhaps that would be a good idea for them, then I will be psyched. It doesn't mean that I need to be the poster boy for AA that people sometimes call me, I don't care about that. If that helps them stay sober, if they believe (and rightly so) that they had a hand in me being what I am today then awesome. The program is working for me and should work for others as long as they are willing to work as hard as they can and to place sobriety before everything else.