Mark – The Beacon Beats

Gratitude

When I first stopped drinking it’s because I got caught. The gig was up and now I must stop, I thought. I passed out on a lawn, missed a family event, and got took to the ER. Second time that happened the summer, wasn’t even legal to go to the bar.

I carried a feeling that this is happening to me and why God why into my 11 months of sobriety. Less sober, more abstaining. Looking at everyone else, struggling not restraining. It created negativity, something’s not wrong with me, it’s society.

July 4th of that year, I gave myself an out. Figured it would be just a couple of brews and led to a bout that lasted about 10 years – too long if I had just admitted 11 months prior that the problem was me.

But instead I looked for excuses. How alcohol wasn’t the problem, I didn’t need to say deuces.

Since stopping this time around – my life’s done a 180, for that I’m proud. Got married, a promotion, and lost 60 pounds.

Came to LA to be a writer, ended up being a drinker, since quitting it’s gotten me to do some thinking. Picked up music and am working on my first album. And as I type this this morning, I’m still sweating from my beach run.

I could point at all the things I do now to show, how great my life is now that I kicked the booze to the road. But the reality is that it’s only good because I admitted I wanted more. I was tired of waking up on the floor, head banging, and still going back to the store for more.

I spend too much time thinking about what I’m doing. Like actions make my life is meaningful, I need to stop that proving.

I love myself. I want to love myself. That’s why I stopped hurting myself.

Today I’m grateful for me. And that’s enough to not just abstain, but embrace sobriety.

On God

When I think on God, I think en guarde

Touché! I get touchy, afraid of pitchforks on my tushy

It must be, when I was eight crying in the kitchen

Asking my mom, whispering, what happens if you go to heaven and I go to hell?

Tell me what you’ll do, well I’ll yell she tells

Me.

Whoopee.

Felt me harden my shell

Youth already afraid of death, second guessing every movement every breathe

Learned to fear God not love, guilt and shame fit like a glove

Grow up, learn only a fool believes, can’t take the first step, so I say what the heck, throw away the whole concept

Didn’t need the big man, to put me in place, no magic would save this face, disgrace, took a stand and rejected the grace

Laughing at people saying to turn myself over to Him, you fell for that gim-

mick, sick, twisted, the priests in my city used to touch kids – Haven’t you seen Doubt? He did it! Shit!

When I quiet my mind I know it’s still coming for me, can’t beat the heat

Outwardly reject, mentally unsure, inwardly I’m going to hell, screaming I’m an atheist, but I swallowed the whole lure

Now I say there’s no use for me, when in actuality, I’ve been living fear to the nth degree, removed the name, but played the same game

If belief can lead me to self-doubt, then maybe it’s time to flip it, belief to be free

New Music

The Beacon Beats – Hand to God

On all streaming services

Apple: https://music.apple.com/us/album/hand-to-god/1770262629?i=1770262630

Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/4JQDUXwbrpPFubteTOz2N9?utm_campaign=website&utm_medium=Email+&utm_source=SendGrid

YouTube Music: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=yhgTFN1hP-w&si=Bk2D9Tjz82f9D8wP

Free Thoughts – Poem

I’m lying here, trying to keep my fingers busy

Analyzing what to write, getting a little dizzy

Been known in the past to go through periods of blocks

And what comes with that are big breaks and stops

So I’m free-associating my thoughts, going to break through the box

“When you force it, the reader can tell”

But this ain’t for you, it’s for me so what the hell

Don’t have anything profound to say, what a shame

That I feel like I can only write when I can put you on game

Attitude like that comes from years of chasing fame

Have me thinking that I’m some kind of lame

Quality valued over reps, like I don’t have to practice or tame

Learn to value myself and any product will be the same

Just an expression of myself and freedom at best

Take the expectations out back, Old Yeller, put it to rest

Because when it’s all said and done this is the test

Take it easy, hang loose, all in good jest

Don’t worry too much about what will be

And only then will you see, that you can be free

Not by another man, his money, actions, or word

Not by defeating foes through combat and sword

But by learning to celebrate what you do

Even when it’s meaningless, if you love it, it’s serving you

On Greatness and One Step at a Time

I was at lunch yesterday when a colleague asked me how I lost the weight. I think the initial shock of losing the weight has subsided – it’s been almost 9 months now – but it’s now the consistency. It’s not that it’s off. It’s that it’s stayed off. And some days, if I do say so myself I actually am getting leaner – though I have entered the world of body-recomposition, which is a new way I get to torture myself.

He was curious though. Not in the way that people are where they think it’s this trick that they hope they can get from me to jumpstart themselves – I’ve learned to say walk more – but actually the mechanics of it. Not what, but how.

I wrote a whole blog previously about calories and the science of it. That matters. You need to educate yourself before you lose weight. You need to learn if you want to do something, but that’s not what this is about.

I told him it was a series of little changes. That if I were to tell myself what I do now when I first started to work on my health and fitness I would have quit right then and there. It snowballed into something bigger. Greater than I could have ever imagined.

And that’s the rub because I still feel less than in my weaker moments. I still feel like I’m not great. The pressure still mounts. Daily, hourly, sometimes it can flip in a moment of seconds. You look left in the mirror and smile, catch your right side and grimace.

There’s deeper stuff at play there. Things that date back to childhood and food and weight and hating the concept of organized sports on a Saturday morning when N64 was waiting for me in my basement that I don’t need to go down in this moment.

The reality is to be great, you first have to be good. Not just good. You actually have to be real good, consistently. Then you can be great, in spurts. Then maybe 50% really good and 50% great. Until more often than not you are great.

Greatness is not a switch. It’s a series of routines that you improve upon day by day until you don’t even notice that you are great but you are. It’s the feeling that you are still challenged every day, not because you aren’t progressing but because you are making it harder. You stopped eating dessert? Great cut cream and sugar from your Dunkin. You don’t eat pizza? Great measure your pasta to an actual serving size.

It’s a combo of masochism mixed with the true desire to be the best version of that thing you can be. This isn’t just food. This is music, art, writing, work, friendship. It’s anything and everything that you can sink your time into and find meaning from while we are here.

But do you know before you are really good, you are just good. And before that you are okay. Fine. Adequate. Serviceable. Beginner. Novice. Bad. Really bad. Really, really bad. Really, really, really bad. And before all of that you are nothing.

I’ve been nothing yearning to be great. That sums up my whole twenties. Waiting for opportunity to come while not trying to challenge myself the world I was interested in pursuing. If only I had the chance. If I just had the time. Whatever.

This isn’t a post about getting on the horse and taking it on. This isn’t supposed to motivate. This isn’t to say you can take over the world.

This is a post to say strive to be bad. Work hard to be bad. Because you’ll be better than really bad.

Only once you aren’t bad anymore can you actually know if you like something anyways. You don’t know if you like something if you barely understand it. I have dreamt entire lives around things I have never even tried. That’s not romantic. That’s cowardice.

Bravery is failing. It’s cherishing the failure. Because the only way you are going to get great at something is to make good really hard that you will fail. You will double you pasta portion because honestly how can’t you! You will get the Dunkin with cream and sugar because that’s the point of Dunkies damnit! You will mess up. Slip. Every step of the way if you are doing it right.

And then you will try again. And get more consistent. And overcome the seemingly impossible. Only to start again. Finding a new impossible task. That you be bad at. But that you when you were bad, when you were nothing could have never even fathomed – like eating hearts of palm pasta instead. Willingly.

So here’s to sucking. The building blocks of greatness.

Dreams – Poem

Is dreaming even practical? I ask; she looks at me with sad eyes

I don’t want to get tactical, plans so quickly turn to my demise

And if I had to get factual, I can’t trust myself to stay focused on the prize

Over-engineer, didactical, if I fail then my hope perverts into lies

She sighs, rolls over, turns away

Somehow I made dreaming a chore today

Only I could take something freeing, point out the confines

Prisoner of my own minds, don’t know other ways

Hope is a dangerous thing, that’s what Red says

The problem is I don’t trust myself, that much is clear

This is the cliche where I trace back to the beer

Put liquor on the shelf, to drown my fear

Previous failures coming back to life, reappear

Tired of the mistidings and negative assumption

She says I’m avoidant, that’s just how I function

Don’t want to burden with emotion, so I limit the gumption

That’s why I partook in overconsumption

So now I am unpacking, like a garage that’s been abandoned

Sweeping out cobwebs, my own propaganda, and

Ideas that this is how it is. Need to change my perspective, I understand and

Nothing’s been a failure, perfection I just demanded

Learning about goals, point yourself in a direction and forget it

As time goes down the road, progress naturally set in

Rome wasn’t build in a day, that’s the truth let it

Lighten your load. Journey not the destination – get in

Control

Grant me the serenity.

I started to more formerly explore step 1 of CODA – admit that we are powerless.

In one of the books I was reading it discussed doing some work to identify where you think you have control over people. Why you believe that? As in what is the basis for your beliefs.

It was one of the first time I stopped to not just examine my relationships, but actual look at my beliefs I had formed around them.

What did I think my responsibility was? How was it formed?

We are storytellers and story listeners/readers/consumers.

Things happen because they happen. But we try to make sense of it. And we see it from our perspective, putting ourselves as the main character.

If someone gets sick and passes, it becomes a negotiation of what you could have done differently. How you could have showed up more. Bargaining.

If you work lays people off, maybe you believe that if you make a mistake, you will be next. Or worse, if those around you make a mistake, everyone will be next. Burdening yourself with others’ responsibility.

Positive emotions too. It can start to rewire your brain.

A negative person in your life is positive when you did something. Now you could be spending your days people pleasing. Trying to get back to that high of control. Feeling that other person validate you.

The funny thing is that when you start to open your mind up to the narratives you tell yourself, you also start to hear the narratives others tell themselves.

I had a someone express that her entire team at work believes that they are responsible for the success of the business. If their projects fail, the business will too. One division out of many, bearing the responsibility of all. A feeling I too have harbored.

In my volunteering, someone told me all of the things they should be doing. Well, I really “need to do” this or that. Not able to simply be. Most certainly learned behaviors of the importance of productivity and how a “good person” is a do-er. Something I struggle with from my own background.

This realization is sad and hopeful. A bit melancholy.

To know that I need to discern and challenge my beliefs and the stories I tell myself, is overwhelming. It’s another big tally on the never ending list of not trusting myself. That list has exposed itself in my sobriety.

To start to see it’s not just me. There’s comfort there. Maybe I’m not crazy. I’m just human.

To finally get some resolution, well that is a win. To see above the trees so to speak and work past the pressures of life, it’s beautiful up here. The pressures that I put upon myself. Even if those moments of clarity are fleeting. They are real. And they are worth working for more.

Embracing Boredom – Mundanity in Modernity

I’m trying to stop using technology. When I say using, I mean it in an addiction sense. I still of course need to use technology and phones and computers and all that for my job and just my existence as a human being in 2024.

But I’m trying to stop using it.

Escaping with it. You know what I mean.

The scrolling. The bathroom breaks that take 15 minutes. The mornings hijacked by newsfeeds of photos and events that I actually didn’t need to know anything about. The well let me just one more video nights.

A little over a year sober from alcohol, I’ve learned some things during that time about myself and about addiction.

Anyone can use anything to escape. To dissociate themselves from reality. Food, work, drugs, sex, exercise, people, cheese. If you are only classifying addiction as something that is the same as a drug or alcohol then you are kind of fucked in your definition and are probably forfeiting your peace in ways you don’t even realize.

Addiction does not look like how it is portrayed in the movies. And that’s actually a negative. Addiction is portrayed as a complex thing. I feel as though it is simple. In my world, any time I feel myself forming a dependency within my brain on something – that is the building blocks of addiction.

In the same vain, people all too often wait for the bottom to be discovered to take control of their life. Addiction starts small and takes more and more. The reason why it gets bad is because we let it take up the space and territory in our world.

So I’m working on removing more and more addictions from my world. Without, you know, being addicted to even the act of that.

So technology, social media, my phone in general is something I’m working to define parameters and limits with.

I went on vacation two weeks ago. I read 300 pages of a book that I really enjoyed. Since returning I haven’t picked that book up.

Also since returning my screen time has doubled.

Part of what happens when you start to engage with yourself and the world around you is you get bored.

More often than not, I find myself scrolling to distract myself. But when you stop, and you can’t distract yourself, you find that the world for most of it doesn’t have too much going on in it.

I realize that I have been rebelling against the boredom in my life. That boredom has become a true four letter word for me. It is the ultimate negativity to be bored. But so much of sobriety is learning to feel comfortable bored.

And I don’t mean be bored so you can then go do something totally different. That in itself is a bit of addict mentality.

I’ll stop using this so that I can do that. If I do that then I can be this person I’ve always wanted to be.

That is escapism. Using. Dependencies on outside forces to live your life.

What I mean is truly not replacing the activity with anything else. So you can feel yourself get bored.

I had that moment the other day. I was hit with a wave of discomfort. I felt the pangs of boredom. And quickly tried to replace them with tasks. I should do this thing. I should do that. I should be a better employee. Husband. Creative. Human.

I pushed those out of my head. I sat with my boredom.

I realized that was the closest I’ve ever gotten in my adult life to understanding what the phrase you are enough means.

Strip away all of the distractions, bullshit, labels, everything. And just learn to be alive.

You are enough. You are allowed to live. Be.

House of Cards

Spend so much of my life plotting my moves. Making sure that I’m doing the “right thing.” Can’t be wrong.

When you spend your life second guessing yourself, questioning your motives, not trusting your decisions – you spend your life fighting your humanity.

To err is to be human.

Lesson I must have skipped in Kindergarten. Maybe I was sick that day.

First impressions count for everything.

Well what about the second, the third, the 50th? When can I release the tension of expectations and perfectionism?

How do you reconcile who you are with who you are expected to be?

The rub of is finding out the expectations come from you. Of course, you’ve been coached and molded along the way. Family, teachers, friends, TV, whatever. The imprint of society has been left on you. Sometimes battered onto you.

But they aren’t living your life. So who I am is determined from myself?.

That is a lot of responsibility.

Especially if you don’t trust yourself.

What if you show your cracks? What if your whole existence is cracked?

Can’t go to the doctor, what if something is wrong. Can’t stop, what if the engine won’t turn again.

I feel it some days. When I rest. The rust builds. The anxiety creeps.

So I keep trucking. Keep smiling. Keep doing.

The foundation is unstable. I’m a child of engineers; I know it’s time to reinforce it. Some steel would do. But who can afford that in this economy?

Build the plane while you fly. That’s the trick.

Unless of course, you are actually a boat. A magnificent, majestic boat. Destined to sail and circumnavigate the oceans. And you’re stuck in the skies. Trying to keep the plane alive.

Well then you are fated to crash. Into the oceans where you belong, except you won’t know how to swim or stay afloat. You spent so much time investing in others, never invested in yourself.

Frequencies – Poem

Lust

My thirst is insatiable

It feels as though a beast has been awakened in me

I know this demon

I don’t trust him

I need structure, I tell myself

I need boundaries

I need control

Need, need, need

Freedom

Liberation on the back of my mind daily now

From what though? Where am I trapped?

I take a vacation and do the same things there that I do here

Walks, coffee, beach

Yet there, I’m free

And for that, I’m alive

Death

Never have I been so aware of time

What do I have, 40 – 45 years? Well my grandparents lived longer, but they complained for most of it.

What’s the quality of life past 75? I’m already 31.

One life to live, I’m already marching towards death

Morning

In the morning, I awake while my wife sleeps

I start work

Everything I do is work, I don’t know the word hobby

My wife sleeps, softly – it is what peace looks like

I labor away

I’m envious of her

While I do the things I choose to do

Control

Just let go

I’m not holding it

I can’t just drop it

It’s tethered to me in ways I don’t even know

I can only control me

But it’s made itself part of me, sewed itself inside of me

Exorcism

Let the demon out of me please lord

Spend most of my days panicked over good or bad

Ancient biblical shit that still plagues my 2024 brain

I’m an atheist who believes he could go to hell

People pleasing, codependence just to be good

Do the right thing!

Passive

When in recovery is there such thing as passive recovery. Active using and active recovering are certainly different. But can you be passively recovering? Isn’t that just passively using. Which just is active using.

Active does not indicate awareness. Conscious is not active. Active just means it is taking a presence in your life in a commanding way. That the addiction is in control.

The problem is that you can’t passively live your life. That is the Catch 22 in it all. To take control of you, the only thing that you truly control, and take control of recovery you now have two major active responsibilities in your life. And yes, they are very much related, but they are unique and different in their own ways.

To fight off the cravings and to understand and untangle the psychological triggers of an addiction versus to truly learn to take agency for your actions and how you react to what occurs in your life. And so the problem is that as one focuses on more and more the chance for burnout climbs.

Burnout is about the width of things you are focused on, not the depth. If you had to over see a lot in one particular area of your life, then it would be far more easier than overseeing a little in multiple areas. That’s why I think CEO’s don’t burnout. They design their life to be about work. Everything else – maids, cooks, nannies, drivers, is handled by others.

But with recovery and with trying to truly be free, the active focus means that you already have two of your spots filled in, guaranteed. So you have to pick wisely on your next handful of priorities. Is it health? Relationships? Family commitments? Work? Hobbies? Friends? Money?

And then what about the layers in those sub-categories. Work – well how much are you taking on at work exactly? 1 project or 5? Friends – how many different friend groups are you juggling?

The crux is that I think as an addict, I want it all. Somewhere in my brain I think I can do it all. Because I’m a perfectionist. One of the classic signs, ironically enough, of an addict.

So I spread myself too thin easily. And burnout increases easily.

Or things active activities turn to passive.

And if you aren’t actively recovering then you aren’t recovering.

I am starting to understand the complexities of it all more and more. It’s a big Jenga game.

But it’s also beautiful in a way. It feels like I’m at a new level of life. That I can see things I hadn’t seen before. I never wish to go back to how it was. I am just starting to comprehend the level of commitment that will take for the rest of my life.