Before we get to the usual Sunday, it’s time to remind you that we need your FEBRUARY CHECK-INS. What’s happening with you and your recovery—or lack thereof—at this moment in your life? Maybe it’s miserable but maybe it’s…good? Joyful moments can sometimes sneak up on you during chaotic and troubling times. Help us, help you, help others. Need a refresher on a good check-in? Here’s one of my favorites from the past few months:

“I’m four years clean, maybe five. A recovery stalwart, ruefully coming to, coming to believe. I’m at daily meetings: astonished how hard I’m listening, how shares routinely rip my heart out. Here in New Zealand some call meetings ‘bleats’, a dark tribute to the fact that our hills are alive with the sound of sheep. Oh, and with weed plantations (and meth labs) dotted across them. Anyway, the daily shares that year, the ubiquitous message, is all about ‘growing’, a bit cheesy for barbed wire cynics like me. But threaded through it all, I’m hearing loud and clear, is this possibility of growing: better not bitter. Too late to stop now: ‘Grow or Go.’ And I’m on the ferry to an offshore island, with my new wife and kids. I spot an old using buddy leaning on the rail. He’s living on the island, on a vineyard, all he can drink, a new partner. And he lowers his voice: ‘But I’m still growing.’ And I pause, a minute to clock. Oh shit, he’s talking about weed . And I smile inwardly. Yup, perhaps I’m getting better.”

Remember—these don’t have to be about drinking or drugs. Love, sex, food, debt, mental health, loneliness—whatever is bringing you down, or gassing you up.

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All contributors will be kept anonymous. Submissions will be published on Friday, February 6th. Published submissions get a free month of TSB Sundays. (Just remind me, I forget sometimes.) Alright, let’s get into the rest of our usual Sunday rundown. — AJD

I had this cringe-worthy interaction with someone on Instagram, and it brought out my most stubborn, unhealed defect—my awful self-seeking characteristics that very much dogged me before sobriety but continue to do so now, almost 10 years into this thing.

​To help you (and me), first we have to decide what self-seeking actually means. I’ve always had trouble differentiating it from selfishness—or being overly ambitious—but the most helpful way for me to remember it was passed on to me by another person who struggles with it: “Self-seeking is the opposite of God-seeking.”  Cool? Great. Now here’s how I left God in the dust this time.

*****

​There is a music-related Instagram account I follow that does a sort of variation of fan-based minutiae and meme stuff that I find a happy distraction, especially on days when I can’t seem to pull myself away from the phone. We’d recently crossed parasocial paths and had a couple of friendly DM interactions. Then last week, their account began to cover the ICE protests in Minneapolis with a sort of frantic, righteous fury, a tone I’d yet to see them strike the entire couple of months I have followed. Some of it even read as downright despairing.

I saw this as a person who needed to be gently reminded to step from the machine, and that there is no need to process all the bad information. So I gave them a little encouragement—permission, really—to tone it down. Here’s what I wrote:

​“Give yourself a break. At least 24 hours. A week, even better. The platform can eat you alive if you’re not careful. Especially when it feels irresponsible to turn it off. But throw on your own oxygen mask here, man.”

​The response:

​“Thanks! It’s a little patronizing, but thanks.”

​Sirens blared inside me. First came embarrassment. Then anger.

“It’s a little patronizing,” what the fuck FUCK you, pal. Enjoy your brain rot.