One Weird Trick
This new Edith comic offers . . . can it be . . . a shortcut to transcendence?
Here’s a law of physics. That thing you’ve been putting off? The one that gets transferred from to do list to do list? No, wait, not that one, not the big abstract one, the one that reads, in all caps, the specific words may be different but what it means is CHANGE MY LIFE — sorry, the law of physics that applies to that one will be revealed in a subsequent newsletter. Promise. I mean the other one, the smaller, more concrete one. It’s like, making a phone call, maybe? Or swapping some old batteries out for some new ones? But first you have to figure out what size batteries? And where to buy them? And how to dispose of the old ones? That one. Well, here’s the law: When you finally decide to do thing, it will — actually, I don’t want to spoil it. TSB illustrator Edith Zimmerman explains all, below.
Speaking of things that might appear on a to do list: It is once again time for you, dear readers, to send us your CHECK-INS.
Here are the details: 150-300 words.
EMAIL US HERE: tsbcheckins@thesmallbow.com SUBJECT: JUNE CHECK-IN
Here’s a great one from last month:
I reached 200 days without booze over Easter Weekend and I quickly told my dad in passing, as if it were a curiosity or piece of trivia. He gave me a fist bump and said he was proud of me and I immediately felt embarrassed that I am keeping track of how many days I’ve gone without drinking.
I tell my family and friends that I am “not drinking” and that I “don’t really have much interest in it anymore.” I do not tell them that I had been planning my days around my next drink for years and occasionally poured tequila into cans of sparkling water during family visits. I don’t tell them that one of the hardest parts of quitting was how simple it became to use binge drinking to “accidentally” compliment a nasty string of bulimia dotted over many years, or that my relationship with food had gotten so bad that I couldn’t really eat without being buzzed.
I was always the “easy one,” which is the most well-meaning albatross that parents hang around your adolescent neck. Those aren’t the types of things that the easy one burdens anyone else with. But I am proud of myself, even if nobody else knows.
It will be published on TUESDAY, June 3rd.
Anyone who contributes gets a FREE month of TSB’s Sunday edition.
One final FYI: Our newsletter mostly runs on paid subscriptions. If you can upgrade to paid, that would be great. But if the cost of a subscription is prohibitive, or if you wish to send TSB to someone you love, contact us. We’ll happily pass along a free annual subscription to those who need it most.
We can offer free subscriptions as long as we continue to grow. Grab a paid subscription today if you’d like to be a part of that growth — spiritually and otherwise. —TSB Editor
Doing It Myself
Edith Zimmerman is coming up on nine years of journaling, coloring, and scrolling. You can find more of her work here.
MORE BY EDITH:
Getting Sober, and Also, You’re an Insect
What if you were newly sober and also had six legs and a thorax? What if two of those legs were “raptorial”? What if you had just collected your sixty-day chip and you were admiring it with what Wikipedia calls “three small simple eyes”?
Favorite Edith Illustrations of the Year
Me and Edith have a very efficient work process that mainly involves me asking her to draw something…
*****
ZOOM MEETING SCHEDULE
Monday: 5:30 p.m. PT/8:30 ET
Tuesday: 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET
Wednesday: 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET
Thursday: 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET (Women and non-binary meeting.)
Friday: 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET and 4 p.m. PT/7 p.m. ET
Saturday: Mental Health Focus (Peer support for bipolar/anxiety/depression) 9:30 a.m. PT/12:30 p.m. ET
Sunday: (Mental Health and Sobriety Support Group.) 1:00 p.m PT/4 p.m. ET
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If you don’t feel comfortable calling yourself an “alcoholic,” that’s fine. If you have issues with sex, food, drugs, codependency, love, loneliness, and/or depression, come on in. Newcomers are especially welcome.
FORMAT: CROSSTALK, TOPIC MEETING
We’re there for an hour, sometimes more. We’d love to have you.
Meeting ID: 874 2568 6609
PASSWORD TO ZOOM: nickfoles
Need more info?: ajd@thesmallbow.com
This is The Small Bow newsletter. It is mainly written and edited by A.J. Daulerio. And Edith Zimmerman always illustrates it. We send it out every Tuesday and Friday.
You can also get a Sunday issue for $9 monthly or $60 annually. The Sunday issue is a recovery bonanza full of gratitude lists, a study guide to my daily recovery routines, a poem I like, the TSB Spotify playlist, and more exclusive essays. You also get commenting privileges!
Other ways you can help:
You can support Edith directly!
Demon With Watering Can Greeting Cards [Edith’s Store]
Or…
or you can give a
that goes toward the production of the podcast.
Everything helps.
A POEM ON THE WAY OUT:
Tender Buttons [A Light in the Moon]
by Gertrude Stein
*****
A LIGHT IN THE MOON
A light in the moon the only light is on Sunday. What was the sensible decision. The sensible decision was that notwithstanding many declarations and more music, not even notwithstanding the choice and a torch and a collection, notwithstanding the celebrating hat and a vacation and even more noise than cutting, notwithstanding Europe and Asia and being overbearing, not even notwithstanding an elephant and a strict occasion, not even withstanding more cultivation and some seasoning, not even with drowning and with the ocean being encircling, not even with more likeness and any cloud, not even with terrific sacrifice of pedestrianism and a special resolution, not even more likely to be pleasing. The care with which the rain is wrong and the green is wrong and the white is wrong, the care with which there is a chair and plenty of breathing. The care with which there is incredible justice and likeness, all this makes a magnificent asparagus, and also a fountain.
—via Poets.org
Edith you are the best!