Tag!

I think I've played this meme game before, but these things tend to go around and around the blogosphere. I got tagged this time by Recovery Reconnaissance, and it's the list five things about you game. I suppose folks want to know more than that I am married to a junky, so here are five random facts about me:

1. For lunch, I just ate a box of Pocky, given to me by my BFF. They were the chocolatey almondy kind. I enjoy Pocky.

2. I am reading American Psycho presently. It wasn't the best book for the Christmas spirit, but I like it so far. I just learned the word, "gorno," which I think describes it aptly.

3. I am trying to drink more water. It's kind of a New Year's goal. I have decided that more water will cure about 65% of my problems.

4. My other New Year's resolution is to do more yoga. Lots and lots of yoga. Yoga is going to cure the problems that water can't reach.

5. I don't want my house to be so dirty anymore. There's animal mess and people mess always everywhere, and I want it to be better. I think I wouldn't always feel so overwhelmed if the house weren't always so gross. I'm going to try really, really hard to keep it a little cleaner.

Now I'm supposed to tag folks, but the last time I tagged folks, they yelled at me. So I'm not tagging anyone..I'm tagging everyone. If you are reading this and feel inclined, then post your own 5 random facts.

Who Knows.

After realizing that he'd acted like a jackass last night, he went to bed very early and was quiet in that extra-sulky, addicty, head-buried-beneath the covers way. It was fine with me. I didn't like him anymore, and I didn't want to hang out.

It gets all under my skin, though...sometimes, I wonder if I haven't remained married to this man, or even if I might have fallen in love with this man, because I can't figure him out. I stand before him like an enigma...like he's a riddling bridge troll I've got to get past before I can move on with my life, and the riddles he keeps coming up with stump me again and again.

I hate the weird attitude, too, of needing to go hide after acting crazy. He gets upset with me for seeing him act like an asshole, or he's upset with me for noticing that his behavior was ridiculous...as if the problem is in my noticing.

It does help me, though, when I read your comments. It helps me to know that this shitty, pissy, foot-stomping addict mess is normal addict mess. It helps me to keep perspective. It helps me to read my own writing, my own thinking from the night before when I was so pleased with him.

I do tire, however, of this constant evaluation...the perpetual re-positioning of myself against my life. I am always looking at me, looking at him, looking at us and our lives and trying to figure out if where we are is where we need to be, if where I am is where I want to be...if this life is tolerable. There's a lot of measuring, weighing, checking and balancing. I am hoping that my vigilance now will pay off in simplicity in the future, that a day will come when every moment won't require an analysis to see if it's worth it. I'm hoping that one day it will all be worth it.

I'm so wise. I'm investing. I'm taking a risk with the hope of a future return. We'll see what happens.

Now, with all that said, I think you should all go read the Cunt Face Social Club. We've taken the underground society public, and we need some lovin. I'm not sure what's going to happen with us over there, but we will be a force to be reckoned with one day. Our mission is not yet clearly defined (except, of course, for the procurement of man-slaves and eventual world-domination), and so much of our fate will depend on you, dear readers, and your responses to our fledgling posts. So check us out!

Link Lovin'

I did some housekeeping today and deleted links that were inactive or that I couldn't remember what they were for. If I deleted you and your feelings are hurt, please just tell me and I'll add you back.

Everybody's Doing It.

I'm a blog pusher-man...But this one is good, and I think many of you reading my site might really enjoy it, and many of you (Chloe, I'm looking at you HARD), might even like writing there. It's a group blog started by EJ of Behind Pinned Eyes, and a bunch of us blog rockstars who like to sit around and talk to each other all day through our blogs are now going to do it in an even more publicly onanistic kind of way! I love these guys. Scout's there, and Wayward Son, and all kinds of folks. So come on over!

You can read at The Write Thought, and to sign up to become and author, email ejsblog@gmail.com.

Double Shot Of Courage

Break out the champagne (or the sparkling grape juice for my alcoholic friends in recovery), the hankies, and the "world peace" speeches!

I've been doubly gifted with a Courageous Blogger Award, and I'm honored. I also like the versatility of this award, so I am going to branch out from my incestuous awarding of prizes to the same MPJ and Long Vowels to include some other folks.

Well, maybe it'll still be incestuous, but that's ok.

I received my two Courageous Blogger Awards from the incomparable Ev Nucci at My Life Is Murphy's Law and my new friend Honeybell from The Bell Pages. I'm passing my awards along (drumroll) to:



I will be giving out 2 Thoughtful Blogger Awards.

My dear friend Question Air will receive the Thoughtful Blogger Award for her brand new blog. It's a thoughtful blog, I think, for various reasons:

1. She has a political conscience (stupid hippy!).
2. She is asking questions and interacting with her audience and respecting her audience's opinions.
3. She started the blog because I was bothering her because I think everyone of my writer friends should have a blog now that I do. That's a thoughtful thing to do, obeying my mandates.

Another newer and yet equally dear friend E. of Behind Pinned Eyes has been amazingly thoughtful. From loaning me a laptop after mine was stolen to keeping in touch and checking in with me when I take a rare break from blogging, he's become a real friend. Also, his blog is pretty interesting for those of us in the recovery world, and also for those of us outside of it. Go check him out!



I'm going to give the Courageous Blogger Award to three folks, who I have come to think of as my blog sisters.

Mantramine, Married To My Ex, and Married To An Addict are all struggling through the same experiences that I'm struggling through, and it's amazing to share with them, read their experiences, and grow from one another's day to day accounts of what it's like living with an addict. It takes guts to stick around, and it takes guts to write about what it's like sticking around. I'm proud of us for being strong, interesting, creative women, and I hope you guys wear your badges with pride!



And I'm going to cheat a little to give out two more awards, the Inspirational Blogger Award. Since I got tagged twice with the courageous one, I figure I can give out a couple extra...fuck the system!

So the first goes to Scout, and see, you didn't even have to whine to get this one! You can always count on Scout to give you a loving comment, and if you visit her blog, she is endlessly thoughtful, strong, and generally wonderful. She also inspires the most interesting ire in people who become jealous of her incursions on our blog romances, from my blog BFF Long Vowels' rage against her warm comments to my own outrage at her advances towards my darling MPJ. Scout is everyone's favorite inspirational blog-ho! Hah!

And finally, I'm giving an inspirational prize to Stay At Home Motherdom. Like Scout's blog, you can count on this one to be full of hope and inspiration, and it's a great place to visit for that good old ESH.



You can find the rules for how to pass it on here.

Disclosure!

I'm quitting with the viral tags and viral icons and all that link-building jazz...those of you linking to me can feel free to take my link down. I heard from this SEO guy that those things are BAD. I took my posts down, and I figured I should disclose so I don't keep reaping the advantages of being linked to without linking back.

So, no more linking games, even though it's really gratifying to watch my ranking in Technorati climb and climb. I'll still play memes that are accompanied by substantial content, just no more link building schemes that don't come with anything more than reciprocal link. I want Google to love me. I love Google.

Rate Your Blog!

Mingle² - Online Dating

Well that was fun. Meagan pointed out to me that you can get your blog's rating on this mingle website, as if it were a movie. My blog is, apparently, porn. I tested some of yours, too, but I won't ruin the game for you. I got in trouble for using the words "heroin," "fuck," "bitch," and "kill."

Hooray For Boobies!

My new friend elf-fu and I discuss her tatas, her husband, her life as a post-Canadian Floridian postmodern housewife in this latest Peopleized interview. You can see more at her blog Hooray For Boobies.

thejunkyswife: So why boobies?

elf_fu: It's an eye catching word. Whether someone is searching for free porn or just a sneak peek at some nipples, good for the search engines. Also, I happen to have two, and the other gender half of the planet either has two, hopes to have two, or wants to have two. It's a common theme. It also helps that I have two huge ones, which my husband enjoys poking, prodding, bouncing, touching, jiggling and finding new ways to remind me that I have magnificently large tits. One evening while amusing himself with a particularly long jiggle he exclaimed, "Hooray for Boobies!" And I thought, indeed my good man, indeed. What a smashing name for a blog.

thejunkyswife: Is it weird being in Florida after growing up in Canada?

elf_fu: It is, and it isn't. Life here is pretty much exactly the same as it was in Canada, people think that just because Canada and the U.S are two different countries, life within it MUST be oh-so-different!Save for taxes and health care, it really isn't that much of a change. What ISN'T weird is that I don't have to God damn well swim to the end of my drive way for six months out of the year, dig my car out, or wait a week for the fucking snow to melt just to go out. Thank you Florida, thank you.

thejunkyswife: Do you use LiveJournal strictly for blogging or also for social networking? This is less about you and more about my confusion over Livejournal...

elf_fu: Yes and yes. All of my journals have always been hosted on LiveJournal. The first few attempts were unsuccessful because I updated maybe once a month, maybe twice, had no idea how to customize my journal, wrote cliche emo poetry, used song lyrics, filled it with meme's and pretty much let it rot. After several years using Livejournal, and two+ years with Hooray for Boobies! I've got a good circle of decent people to watch, comment as well as read. And...I only write the emo poetry every six months or so. Also, I'm too fucking lazy to figure out how to transfer two years worth of posts to a personally hosted site right at the moment.

thejunkyswife: Is it fun being a housewife? It seems very glamorous to me...

elf_fu: I don't know what could be glamorous about digging through the cat shit to scoop it into the garbage so the bathroom doesn't stink, scrubbing the toilet seat, washing dishes, picking up socks, burning myself with hot oil when I cook, hauling thousands of pounds of dirt for gardening--on my off days, I pose for playboy. They were looking for a plus sized model and saw me digging dandelions up from the back ya...Where was I? Oh, right! No, it's not glamorous. Then again, it's not as bad as my sarcasm makes it out to be.

thejunkyswife: From your blog, it seems like you have a really nice husband. This is an observation. This is not a question. I am a bad journalist.

elf_fu: He is a nice husband. I would like to thank all of his ex-girlfriends for training him for me. I appreciate you ladies getting him ready ahead of time. And in all seriousness, he is a wonderful man. I'm a flippant, bitchy, over the top, over emotional odd ball and he is able to continue living with me without burying me in the back yard. He's also has a giant, huge, massive--Computer. It's hot. This counts as a question!

thejunkyswife: If you were forced to say what your blog is about, what would you say? I'm forcing you!

elf_fu: Help, help, I'm being repressed!My blog is about my mundane life as an every day woman who has decided house wifery, geekery, and observing life with humor. It's about me, as selfish as it sounds, it's aboot (Hosers!) my life, my thoughts, my husband, my dreams, my broken dreams, my poetry and my journey in living life. It's also about cat poop, socks, my husband spraying the ceiling with pancake goop and why I hate people who use chat speak.

Fuck It.

I'm breaking the rules. I didn't give Scout a Rockin' Girl Blogger award because I though MPJ would want to give it to her, as they were having some kind of electronic affair. However, Scout wants an award, and MPJ has been neglectful.

So that's right, Scout, I'm stealing you from MPJ. Muahahahahaha! Here is your prize! I'm emailing you right now!

A Peopleized Interview with the Baroness Of Long Vowels.

So Peopleized is still cool, and if you're not on it yet, you're still a dork. Apparently, I'm the only person in the world who thinks it's super-fun to interview people. But it's super-fun to interview people, and it's a way to find fun websites and make people talk to you and pay attention to you. So I have recently invited about a zillion people to be my Peopleized friends, and I finally convinced Mahog from Long Vowels to sign up. Here's our interview! It rocks!

thejunkyswife: So tell us about your blog.

mahog: My blog is about everything but nothing. I write about me, my relationships with my boyfriend and friends, family issues, my poetry, my former life as a urban fashion maven, grad school and poverty...

It's really all over the place but I try to hold them together.


thejunkyswife: How did you get so sexy?

mahog: I used to think sexy was created but I know thing you a just born with it, but you know that, you got it baby..


thejunkyswife: What makes Beyonce so sexy?

mahog: She's like a fluffy kitten wearing a blind fold.
It's her transformation from dead sexy to deer caught in head lights.
The lights hit her eyes and the get big and moist like an anime character and you can help but stare. Then they start spin and swirl and you get get sucked in. before you know it you're sprung and you don't care who seees.

And she comes off as so earnest and genuine, not jaded like those other chicks.

And she listens to her momma. That hot.
Respect for your elders is hot!


thejunkyswife: How would you define a total eclipse of the heart?

mahog: Essentially the song reads almost like a list of offenses/symptoms. The guilty or afflicted have either done some of the charges in the song or are going through theses symptoms. I would say a total eclipse of the heart is what you are currently going through with your husband and what I go through with mine.

It's when you've done everything you can do everything you thought would never do and you reach a place where you think it’s the bottom but then you realize there is still another level of hell you can go to- then you go there. Tyler states, “there’s nothing any better and there’s nothing (she) I just wouldn’t do.” All of this because of the hope that something can change and something can happen.
The image of his love being like a shadow on her all of the time, is two fold, in a way it’s always there, but it also oppresses her but forever is going to start tonight.

I'm guilty of: getting a little bit restless and I dreaming of something wild,
getting a little bit lonely and you’re never coming round
getting a little bit tired of listening to the sound of my tears
getting a little bit terrified but then I see the look in his eyes

And you are guilty of: knowing there’s no one in the universe as magical and wondrous as him
getting a little bit angry and I know I’ve got to get out and cry
getting a little bit lonely and he was never coming round
getting a little bit tired of listening to the sound of my tears
getting a little bit terrified but then I see the look in his eyes

Strangely enough, I think it’s similar to Beyonce’s Crazy in love video with Jay-Z.
If you listen to the words her love for him has driven her to madness and she too becomes guilty of feeling like “there’s nothing any better and there’s nothing I just wouldn’t do.”
And what does he do, he blows her up in a car.

You just ruined my life with this question.


thejunkyswife: What the hell is wrong with our men?

mahog: They are cute, got pretty eyes and were raised to be ladies of leisure.


thejunkyswife: How come our men look kind of alike?

mahog: Because we have good taste.


thejunkyswife: How come our men kind of look alike and act alike and yet they are so very different?

mahog: It's because of the parts of the country they were raised in.


thejunkyswife: What makes Anselm Berrigan so sexy?

mahog: I love Boss man's aloofness and how easy he is to talk to. You think he'd be a jerk but he's so cool. And he looks like a little boy.


thejunkyswife: What makes Lewis Warsh so sexy?

mahog: He's awesome cause he can play both mean and nice daddy.
And sometimes you need a mean daddy...


thejunkyswife: What makes our men so sexy?

mahog: Their boyish bodies. They always seem to busy being creative to do stuff like get jobs or pay bills.
They look good on our arms. candy.


thejunkyswife: When are we going to get married?

mahog: When our men die, which can be any day the way they're acting.

Rockin Blogger Girl!

I won a prize! A blogger prize!

It might be one of the nerdiest things I've been excited about in a long time, but, I am a nerd. The mistress of Stay At Home Motherdom issued the award, and I'm very excited about it! Her blog is one I look forward to as a source of hope, wisdom, and inspiration. I found her in my early days of blogging when I'd surf Technorati for other addiction and recovery-related blogs, and hers was one of the first that I started reading on a regular basis. There were a few folks who I found that made me feel like I'd joined a real community, almost as if I'd found an online meeting with a conversation I could contribute to whenever I wanted.

In the tradition of great blog awards, I now get to pass them on to 5 others that I enjoy. She's already tagged my cyber soulmate MPJ, and I guess I have to leave that adulterous Scout for MPJ to tag...so my 5 Rockin' Girl Bloggers are:

1. Real life BFF and tragic poetess extraordinaire, the one and only Long Vowels, who is the first of my real-time friends to catch blog-fever with me. She rules the universe, and if you could see her, you'd know that she's hot. She's a fantastically strange poet, and she shares my affinity for hopeless romance. I love her dearly and passionately, TJW+LV=BFF4EVA! Peace NYCLIUBrooklynNEWJerzJOO!

2. EgyptReality was another of my early favorite blogs, and one I've neglected to visit lately. She's a passionate, young recovering addict from Egypt, and her blog is a tulmultuous blend of culture, recovery, women's stuff, and all kinds of yummy blog goodness. Check her out.

3 and 4. Married To An Addict and Married To My Ex are my blog-sisters. Our lives overlap in these strange and tragic and predictable ways. Ladies, one day, we should meet for coffee. I bet we could talk for hours and hours and hours.

5. From sex to news to scandal, the Dirty Bitch Society is a fun blog for dirty bitches to visit. Take a moment to check it out. The dirty bitch is on my daily reading list.

Behind Pinned Eyes

Check out my friend's new site Behind Pinned Eyes. He was the writer of this guest blog from last week, and he's just begun his journey to recovery with a visit to a methadone clinic today. If he keeps it up, the blog promises to be an interesting read, hopeful read.


Also, in this first post, he gratifies my vanity and assists in my fucked-up codependent world view, where I will single-handedly free the world from the evils of heroin through blogging. One junky at a time!


But honestly, through corresponding with this new blogger, I've found him to be a good writer and all kinds of crazy conflicted, which will make for perfect blog reading for those of us (and you codies know who I'm talking to) who enjoy that tortured soul thing...

Meme: Eight Things About Me

I got tagged by Wacky Mom with another meme; it makes me feel like I've really become hip in the blog world when I get invited to play meme games. I like them. Here's the latest:

1. Each player must post these rules first.
2. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Here's my list:

1. I love the number 11. I get a little crazy about it. When I set my alarm clock, I have to make sure that all the numbers add up to 11. For instance, I can get up at 9:02, 9:11, 9:20, and after that, I'm pretty much screwed. I can, if I'm really desperate, sometimes get away with a cheat like 9:31 (9+3-1=11). I wake up EVERY MORNING with this neurotic bullshit. It's awful.
2. I have this thing with symmetry. If you touch me with something cold on my right shoulder, I need to be touched with something equally cold on my left shoulder in exactly the same place. If you tweak one nipple, you must tweak the other. Lovers have exploited this obsession by doing mean things like smacking one ass cheek and refusing to smack the other unless I am willing to blow them. Again, awful.
3. On my desk at work, I have a plush stuffed pig. It sits atop my computer. It is wearing an outfit of red devil horns that are glittery and gorgeous.
   
4. I'm not wearing any panties!
5. Today, my fingernails are painted purple-black. I got a wild hair up my ass not long ago and painted them for the first time in centuries. Painting fingernails is neat.
6. I am a famous zit-picker. I'll pick zits for hours and hours. I love it. I'm not sorry. Apparently, I am also a chronic confessionalist.
7. Sometimes if I get really depressed, I have these visions of spectacular self harm; for instance, stapling my vagina closed, lying on train tracks, hammering nails into my arms, etc. It's not like conscious thought...just more like visions that pop into my mind. My ex-husband, apparently, also has these thoughts, but they're about me. He keeps envisioning me getting hit by a bus, or that's what he said when I talked to him last week. What a jackass.
8. I sleep with a nightgown, still, that used to be my mother's. I call it my "Silky." It smells like my mom, and I like to put it all over my face, and my husband likes to steal it and hide it from me and pretend like he's having an affair with it. Usually, he hides it somewhere near his penis and tells me that Silky was giving him a blowjob. It's very charming.

Now, that was fun. It's time to pick people to tag!

Tried and true, and a fan of list posts: My Blogging Bff MPJ
My real-time BFF: Long Vowels
The Dirtiest of Dirty Bitches
The Discovering Alcoholic
The Stay At Home Mother-Extraordinaire
Methed Up
Urban Thought, a new friend
Miriguy: tagged back!

Two New Interviews!

Peopleized is fun. This time, I've interviewed the keepers of Urban Thought, which brings a refreshing perspective to the blogosphere, and Wayward Son, my freqent commenter and publisher of Crystal Clean Persuasion, a recovery blog that I read regularly.

Urban Thought



thejunkyswife: I was interested in interviewing you because I haven't bumped into too many folks with an urban perspective in the blogosphere. It may just be my niche, but it seems to be the province of stay-at-home moms and computer nerds...what brought you to the world of blogging? Do you think my generalizations are accurate in any way?

Urban Thought: The world of blogging was introduced to me by a friend of mine. When my friend launched his site I thought to myyself 'that seems like a cool idea.' I was looking for a hobby at the time to occupy my time. It also was supposed to be a platform for me to showcase my photography.

There is some truth to generalizations. I wasn't aware of other urbanites (folk) that were involved in blogging until I actually started. But I'm not a stay-at-home mom or a computer nerd.

You're never truly aware of the world outside your window until you open it and stick your head out.

thejunkyswife: What's your goal as a blogger?

Urban Thought: My goal as a blogger is to reach people and engage them in thought. I just thought that up. When I started blogging it was only a means of killing time and exploring my creative side (still a work in progress). But at the end of the day if I can provoke thought then I feel a sense of accomplishment.

thejunkyswife: Where do you get your ideas for things to write about?

Urban Thought: My ideas for writing come from daily observations of my environment. In addition, the web, newspapers, radio, television, and movies play a big role in source material.

thejunkyswife: This isn't a question, I just wanted to say it. I like your music reviews. The personal take is refreshing and honest. You can respond if you have anything to say to that.

Urban Thought: Thank you. I appreciate that.

My approach in reviewing music is the most creative I've been on the blog. The commentary is true to my personality.

thejunkyswife: And that said, while much of your blog feels really personal, I don't get much of a sense of who you are. What's up with that stance...the juxtaposition between being really forthright and revealing a lot about yourself through your opinions but not really revealing much about YOU (where you are, what you look like, etc) creates an interesting tension...

Urban Thought: My life is tension.

Funny you should comment on that. People say that about me who have known me for years. My personality is the same on my blog as it is in my day-to-day life.

I'm not the type to reveal myself. I have a need for affords me the privacy I hold close to my heart while letting me express myself freely.

Besides, people like mystery (until they get bored with it).



Wayward Son of Crystal Clean Persuasion



TJW: First things first, did you choose your "wayward son" name after the song? If the answer is yes, explain. If the answer is no, then where did you get the name from?

WS: No, I’m not carrying on. The moniker Wayward Son was born out of my sister referring to me as the prodigal son. She is this odd combination of an Evangelical and an Episcopalian. I am otherwise evangelical phobic. But I love my sister because she talks the talk AND she walks the walk. The only thing I have in common with Joseph, the prodigal son of biblical lore, is that I am the youngest. The similarity ends there. Wayward son was a better fit to my way of thinking.

TJW: In your blog, you sometimes very eagerly talk about your recovery, and sometimes you seem to avoid the subject. Why do you think that is?
WS: As you know, don’t like to dwell in my addiction much. For me recovery has turned out to be about recovering from a life neglected more than a life addicted. I try and keep my attention on where I am going and less on where I came from. Sometimes I am drawn back to the lessons learned. But if I don’t keep looking forward, it will be pointless to have learned them. That and writing too much about my addiction bores me. I can only imagine it would be just as boring for anyone else.

TJW: How did you get clean? What made you realize it was time?
WS: The decision came to me when I had reached a point that I had to quit using if I wanted to continue living. I am talking about food and shelter mostly. If I were to continue to use I would have had to become a person I did not want to be. That was the stepping off point. The initial act of not using was just a temporary one in my mind. But between the requisite chemical backlash of severe depression and the physiological effects of detoxing, I had a fleeting moment of inexplicable joy. I knew then I wanted to quit for good. I wanted to have a life and to feel joy—two things I had come to understand that had been clearly absent during the last ten years or so.

TJW: If I were to describe your writing with one word, it would probably be "compassionate." You take on a lot of big world issues, from writing about the war to writing about the animals you help. (Sounds almost like you might be gearing up to join the ranks of the codependent! Hah!) Tell me a little about your deeply personal interest in world affairs...
WS: There was the point in the Iraq war when the insurgency began to become a very public horror that things changed for me in a way I could not have ever imagined. I was home in my apartment alone one afternoon and sitting in my bedroom. I don’t recall what I was doing at the time but since I was awake I can assure you I was high. The television was blaring in the living room but I wasn’t paying any attention to what was being broadcast. When the news came on the lead story was about Nick Berg, the independent contractor who was kidnapped by extremist and beheaded with a handsaw. It was videotaped and posted on the Web. The newscaster was saying how the video had over two million hits before a full day had past since it was posted. I remember thinking why would anyone willingly choose to view such a thing?

Up to that point in time, the war had no place in my reality nor in my consciousness. Then the newscaster went on to describe what had happened on the video. When he started describing how Nick began to scream, I flew into the living room and desperately tried to turn off the television. It was this complex setup with six remotes and big huge television with the audio feed running through a sound system. I managed to get the picture off but the audio portion of the broadcast was still blaring. I was scrambling to just turn it off so I would not have to hear about this unbelievably cruel act. I was never going to be able to not be conscious of this war again. Furthermore, I was going to be angry—no, enraged for the next three years, falling deeper and deeper into my drug use but to no avail. The rage would not abate because the world is in a horrible state of existence and there is much more cruelty coming at us from all sides.

I am still learning how to be compassionate. It is the best cure unfathomable despair.

TJW: Tell me about the phrase "Joy Is My Beacon."
WS: Because of that fleeting moment of joy I felt soon after I quit, I made the quest for joy my purpose It’s more than an affirmation. It is why I am here.

Why I Blog.

I got tagged by Miriguy to list the 5 reasons why I blog, and then I've got to tag 5 of you guys. At least I think that's how it works...

So here's my reasons:

1. After the Needle-Finding incident, I felt like I was just about to burst with words. I've always been a poet, so I tried writing poems. I wrote one or two, but it didn't really let the floodgates open the way I needed them to. I felt like I needed to be telling a story, and I have no experience with memoir/essay/fiction, except academic essays. I thought, one day, that I should start a blog, and then I did. The floodgates opened.

2. At first, I was just saying a bunch of crap about my life. I started figuring out ways to mess around with the formatting, and I added widgets and took them away, added and rearranged links. Then I discovered Technorati and started reading about ways to market your blog, and I discovered Google ads (I've made a big $12 so far! Keep clicking, my friends!), and just updating, growing, and re-arranging the site itself has become something of a hobby. It kind of feels like gardening...I like to experiment with different ways to make my stats jump, like by using Stumble Upon. Strangely, I get the most big jumps on posts that have nothing to do with addiction (such as the underwater tigers pictures from a few weeks back), but I get the most comments on the personal posts. It's cool, though, because I like mixing it up, sticking in things about my life and me with stuff that is news-worthy or that I think is interesting.

3. After the blog started to grow, I started making some new friends through the site, many of whom became regular readers/ commenters. I like to interact with them, and this is the forum where we chat. It keeps me coming back!

4. I'm in front of a computer all day at work. I'd kind of run out of fun internet things to do to fill the time when I'm not writing or researching for an article. I'd stalked all my ex-lovers and my lover's exes through Myspace and Friendster and Facebook and all the rest, I'd read blogs, I'd played online games...I'd done it all. Blogging has become my new internet-passtime, and it's actually made me feel a lot healthier about my relationship with my computer.

5. I want to be a rockstar, of course. I want the paparazi to follow me and take pictures and point and say, "LOOK! It's the Junky's Wife! She's passed out in her Porsche! She's going to rehab! Oooh look! Is she pregnant?" I want to be on the cover of Us magazine.

Duh.

So, now it's time to tag 5 of you. This is the easy part:

MPJ: You're it!
Scout: Stop messing with my woman!
Vowels: Don't be lame! Play geek games with me!
Married To My Ex: Your turn!
Wayward Son: Carry on!

When Blogging Goes Awry

So I posted about my scandalous blog incident earlier today, and it got me thinking: I bet there are lots of instances when bloggers' lives get messy because of blogging. My girlfriend Jeni kept a blog through her Friendster account about sex and men and body issues and all kinds of juicy stuff, and she finally made it private after it got passed around the law school.

I'd love to hear others' thoughts about situations when blogs about people's personal lives get a little messy.

I have come to love this form. As a writer, there's not much better than having an audience that talks back. It gives me a space, a group of readers that I'm starting to know well, and a topic that keeps me writing and writing and writing. I love it, and in spite of my efforts at keeping things anonymous, I've still run into a little trouble. If you've had similar experiences, share them! If you have advice or ideas about the subject of what to do when real life meets e-life, tell me that, too.

Talk to me, people!

A Perfect World

One more meme...I can't stop. I found this one at Moondanzer Delivers, and it was originally started at Goodness Graciousness. It's kind of hippy-dippy, but it seems like a nice post for going to bed.

Here's the prompt:

I invite you to blog about your vision of what is possible. If it feels
comfortable for you, create a post describing how you would envision the world
if it could be healed in its most perfect state. Take a minute to create an
imagine in your mind, and share with your readers, what a healthy world would
look like. And then tag all your readers with a similar tag!

I've already imagined my perfect world, and I promote it every chance I get. Or perhaps it's not a perfect world; it's a perfect society for me, a comfortable way to live and be happy and interact in healthy ways with everyone I love.

I'd like to live in a world that has been restructured so that we live our lives with our dearest friends instead of with our lovers. All of my best girlfriends live states or towns away. I will move across the country to live near the crazy-ass men I want to sleep with, but I live a zillion miles away from the women I love.

How great would it be if we were brought up to expect that we would live our lives with our best friends? If me, Meagan, Vowels, Question, Jeni, MPJ, and all you other codependent hos who I love could live in a house together, share our bills and our grocery shopping and our house chores and our cooking...live in a beautiful house painted all crazy and red and blue and ferny, mossy green...if we could live together, plan our lives, write and enjoy things, raise our children to be honest, strong, creative, intelligent little hippy children with a whole commune of hippy-dippy recycling-obsessed mommies...that would be nice.

And the best part would be, we'd still get to go sleep with the crazy-ass men who we love and won't leave alone, but they'd be able to do all the ridiculous things that they want to do and that we make them stop doing so that we can live with them. They can drink and fuck and shoot their veins full of heroin and have exotic poisonous animals for pets and all that dumb shit. They can play xBox and basketball and fart and scratch. We will meet with them occasionally, spend the night, have glorious, intense sex, touch and kiss and go out to dinner, and then leave them! Go home to our house of happy sapphic bliss!

Ahhh, non-sexual life partners! Join me! We'll blog and raise llamas!

And yes, there would be beauty and truth and poetry and peace and a clean environment and all that. And I'd have health insurance.

And there'd be no more heroin. I hate that shit.

Gratitude.

"When I’m suffering too much, when I have to change the way I feel right now, I find that gratitude works for me the same way drugs did. Gratitude puts everything in perspective. Gratitude makes things right. It’s easy enough for me to forget where I came from or justify some feeling of entitlement or jump into what seems to be a bottomless well of self loathing and self pity. In those times remembering the things I am grateful for and expressing that gratitude to those around me and to my Higher Power has never failed to place me back in the presence of the serenity and grace which I have come to rely on to keep me sober."

-from Methed Up

I thought this post was a really interesting, honest look at the power of gratitude in our lives in recovery. One characteristic of the addictive personality I've learned about is a tendency to be self-absorbed and obsessed with feelings. This tendency is something I struggle with in myself, but it's damned near pathological in my husband. When he is having a bad day, it is consuming. Everything has to stop so that he can rant and feel sorry for himself. If he is sick or otherwise in physical pain, he is unable to do anything except feel sorry for himself. It's as if he isn't able to see past the moment he's in, which often leads to using.

The suggestion of remembering all the things you have in your life to be grateful for is really wise. There are some posts that I find when I'm reading recovery stuff that make me so glad I found them...they're like shortcuts on my own life trip. That's real wisdom...