Baby stepping my way to massive change
2023 review: letting go of expectations
Merry Christmas to all of you who open this email or this post. Whatever rituals and routines you and yours choose to celebrate this holiday season, I honor you. 2023 has been another year in our lives.
Wanna know what change looks like? Look at me. I was a man who needed—required—a fifth of Johnny Walker Black to pass out at night. I was a man who licked my finger and scooped spilt cocaine off the nasty floor of a stadium bathroom. I was a man who outran the cops drunk driving through a residential neighborhood at 100 mph. I was a man from a good family with a college education and a career who gave blood to put $15 in my pocket. I was a man who stole groceries.
I am still that same flesh and blood. But I am not the same man.
The changes took time. With the exception perhaps of 2009 when sobriety finally stuck, this past year has been full of more change than any year I can remember. With the least amount of effort. Let me explain.
It’s been a fair bit of time since I’ve had to measure accomplishments within the framework of a calendar year—far less time since I relinquished the actual habit of it. Like maybe this year for the first time. The pattern of decades in business that required that kind of measurement was set deep in my psyche. Did we hit our numbers? Did I do everything I could do to hit my bonus? Should I quit drinking—nahhh—maybe after the Holidays.
My younger days and years were filled with push-push and run like hell. I’ve written a lot about that idea, but particularly the idea of Pace in a recent essay here. The pace—the tempo—has changed.
There are the obvious physical changes that come along with aging.
in her Winter Solstice essay calls it “becoming an old house.” I’ve always liked old houses—I’ve owned a few. I am now like a creaky and warm old house. Windows and doors need to be opened and closed to fit the weather. The foundation has been redone. The roof is a good roof.My friend
writes of change often in her Bright Life newsletter. Change is. It’s better to prepare yourself for it than to not. She can teach you.The mission has changed. In 2022 I’m working for a living. In 2022 I’m not here on Substack. Nowhere to be found anywhere online—I’d bailed on all social media several years before—except old mentions of my career and an occasional reference to the volunteer radio show I host. Zero writing is online. Zero essays have been written.
Here’s one thing I’ve learned—was reinforced—in 2023. Letting go of old things and habits and ideas creates space for new ones. Until 2023 there was no space for it. No time. No energy. No real estate available in my head.
So what changed?
Mostly I think it is part of an evolution in my life. Sobriety—huge. Long-term recovery—epic. Acceptance of myself and my particular character defects—remarkable. But also, working for money stopped being the driving force in my life. Wait just a damn minute before you start calling me an altruist or something natty like that—I’m not. Sure I want to help people as much as the next person—maybe even a little more. But as my recovery reminds me daily, “selfishness, self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate.” (page 62 Big Book of AA).
I’ve been a selfish prick most of my life and it still sometimes feels comfortable to me—like a quilted blankie is that old house that I’m becoming. The evolution I refer to is that I’m consciously less of one now.
Mostly less of one.
Hopefully less of one?
I’ve always had a lot to say. I’ve not always had a writing practice. I started a blog back in early 2000 and got right in thick of it—building a nice following of my Scotch-induced rants on business communications. But a practice? Not hardly. My work colleagues were not thrilled by some of my posts. I was always surprised by that—cuz I really couldn’t remember what I’d written. So I quit doing it. A shame attack around that whole episode set my hopes of writing back for another decade.
A lot has happened in the interim. Much change. My recovery expanded. My thinking changed.
Eighteen months ago I decided to write a book about the characters and history of my community radio station. A documentary-style recounting of a miraculous series of events that led to the formation and growth of KWVH, of which I’m a proud part. I recorded over 60 hours of audio interviews with nearly 30 different key people and then I began to flesh out the book. Then I stalled. Then I started again. Then I stalled.
I now know that this is what happens to many writers. I did not know this a year ago. I put my corporate VP hat on—my Founder’s hat on—and told myself, get this fucking thing written you slack-a-lacker! I soon realized that was exactly the wrong thing to do in a creative endeavor. I had no actual deadline to finish the book. Setting a made-up one was just mental masturbation. There are most definitely some practices and lessons from my business career that assist and inform me in my writing—more on that later in 2024—but deadlines ain’t one of ‘em.
Experience and recovery have taught me to ask for help. Very occasionally. This is a highly unnatural act for me. A learned skill to be sure. Part of that process was to sign up with a coach.
is a writer, musician, podcaster, and now friend. He has helped dozens of people from all walks of life get out of their own way. I also started reading Rick Rubin’s book The Creative Act, which I’ve referenced in other essays. I started sitting with the idea of writing rather than telling myself to write.Me and the book had a long-distance relationship. I’d make the obligatory texts how ya doing darlin? and the occasional phone call I miss you—we need to see each other more often. Like several of my long-distance relationships of the past—borne of 48 weeks of travel a year—the description differed depending on the audience.
You dating anyone?
Nope. You and me girl.
How’s your love life?
Great! Oh yeah I’m seeing this woman. It’s great. (But I see her once a week for a day.)
So Bill says to me one day late last year, why don’t you start telling your personal stories on that Substack account you set up last year and haven’t done anything with? See if you can actually establish a practice of writing every week or day. See if you actually like it. Not a directive you see—more of a suggestion.
There’s a great song by Steely Dan entitled “Any World that I’m welcome to.”
I got this thing inside me
That's got to find a place to hide me
I only know I must obey
This feeling I can't explain away
I could write about what I know—but it felt scary as hell to actually put it out there. It was more comfortable not doing it. Meanwhile I’d just finished a consulting gig with Hazelden Betty Ford, the nation's premier addiction treatment organization, during which I was regularly advising them that stories were the key. Donors and supporters and the media and families needed to hear personal, first-person accounts of people who had successfully survived their addictions and made a full and meaningful recovery. I was telling them to do it. But could I do it myself?
My paying consulting gig was ending—I was turning 65—why not? In late February I began. Sixty-three published essays, a few hundred subscribers, and a bunch of new Substack friends later—here I sit writing this for you—and for me.
Along the way I’ve whittled out chapters of the book here and there. But mainly I’ve been practicing being a writer. Listening and learning from others. Although I clearly know a lot about my community radio station KWVH, 94.3 Wimberley Valley Radio—after all I was the first voice you heard on that August morning in 2016 when we went live on the air—it’s different telling someone else’s story than it is telling your own. The book requires research and details and the accurate sound of the many voices who are involved. My essays require only my heart, my memory, and my time. Different.
Am I a writer until I can write that kind of well-researched story? Yes I am. I’ve been welcomed into the community of writers on Substack. That in and of itself has been incredibly validating and powerful. I can evolve into the other kind of writer if I stay with it. And I will.
The most remarkable part of all of this change is that it required so little effort. As Rick Rubin writes in The Creative Act—A way of Being.
“If you are an artist whose process is intellectually based, it may be of benefit to play with spontaneity as a tool, a window to discovery and an access point to new parts of yourself.
Attachment to any specific creative process can seal the door through which spontaneity enters. Evern if for a short time, it may be of benefit to leave this door cracked open. We can make an experiment of surrender to allow the surprise of discovery to come.
If you sit down to write with no preparation or forethought, you might bypass the conscious mind and draw from the unconscious. You may find that what emerges holds a charge that cannot be duplicated through rational means. This approach is at the heart of some forms of jazz…the goal is to be in it and allow the music to essentially play itself, accepting the risks…even spontaneity gets better with practice.”
New parts of yourself? Surrender? Discovery? Surprise? Jazz? Oh man was he hitting on some notes for me. That’s recovery speak. Maybe I can be a writer after all. Maybe I am a creative being. Who the fuck knew? Probably everyone else—I was the one that needed convincing.
Let’s unpack this simply: Less effort. More being in the present. More allowing rather than forcing. The discipline is in being in the moment and honoring it. Let that other thing go so you can find this thing. Whoa…
Change is. And 2023 was full of it—kinda like me sometimes.
Oh—and I married the love of my life. Kind of a big deal.
Happy Holidays to all of you. I hope you’re able to be yourself among your loved ones and that they love you exactly for that. A gift we all deserve.
Here are some of the amazing writers on Substack who have been so supportive of my efforts with emails, comments, and a smile when needed. I’m grateful to you beyond measure. I’ve not met any of you in person. I hope to change that one day. May we all continue to express ourselves freely and honestly.
I know I’ve left some off of this list. What a community! A year ago I knew of none of you. My life is enriched from my communication and interaction with you. I’m smarter and more well-informed from having read your writing. I don’t always agree with what you write, but I can always find a nugget of gold in there somewhere. I’ve learned in my recovery to seek out the similarities rather than the differences.
Peace. I look forward to our shared growth in 2024.
Finally in my third trimester (over 60+), I have shifted from my corporate identity to a solopreneur, to an entrepreneur to a heartpreneur because I can claim the sense of what I perceive underlies heart-centered livelihood. Change and more chaos may come before us. Tuning-in to our capacity to expand our hearts is the songbeat for "we don't know what's coming, but we can help shape what's ahead."
What a beautiful piece, Dee. That Rubin book is such a cracker, isn't it? Good to see you making some space for your creativity. I still believe that it's the most useful of all the healing tools.