Month: July 2023

157. 28 YEARS IN RECOVERY

It’s been an odd year. My last job was so involved that I’ve had little time to attend to my blog. If you’re from Denver, or you’re a South Park fan, then you know about Casa Bonita, which is really a bit of an indoor carnival/Mexican restaurant. If memory serves, it seats up to seven hundred at a time, so it’s damn big. Since the previous menu needed purged and badly upgraded a world-class chef was also brought on board to revamp the menu. Both her skills and her personality are impressive. The food is indeed much better as are the inner workings of the establishment itself. From May of last year to June of this year I was the plumbing foreman in charge of the remodel. We had to sign NDA’s (understandably) and other paperwork that would allow the creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, to turn us into cartoon characters if they so choose. It was a huge challenge and I’m glad it’s over.

During this time I’ve been dealing with hyper increased arthritis, which my rheumatologist says I have in every joint now. I can even feel it in my jaw which clicks and crunches, but thank God it doesn’t keep me from being a blabbermouth, at least not yet. Two weeks ago I went in for a pro-op to get my left knee replaced on August 2nd (the right one was done a year and a half ago) only to find out, in their words, I have massive blood clots in both lungs and behind my left knee. The blood thinners I’m on are causing migraines which are pretty disabling, but they are getting better. Also, because of the clots I have trouble breathing which adds to my energy level being pretty low. For now (but not forever, I like to work too much) I’m on short term disability which is a nice safety net. 

One thing’s for sure, other people are definitely going though much worse than me, in fact the weekend I went into the hospital a beloved coworker was in a horrific motorcycle accident. He’s alive but his injuries are extensive. Another of my coworkers has cancer. They are on my mind all the time.

If all these events are a test to see if I’ll turn back to the bottle, then I’m winning hands down. This path never enters my mind as a way to escape. Last night I had a lucid dream where I was using again. I was lying in bed, knowing I was ‘awake’ and asking myself if my wife could smell my breath while I tried to go to the bathroom without looking like I was drunk. These episodes feel as real as anything in life and it always takes me a while to shake off the illusion. I’ve said it before, my occasional nightmares of slipping are a precious gift that keeps the horror close, even twenty-eight years later.

My wife bought me the item in the picture above. It’s nice she cares and celebrates with me.

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With Love and Compassion, Daniel Andrew Lockwood

156. FOR ART’S SAKE

I am, and always will be, a fan of art, both as an observer and in practice. I’m an artist myself, one who chooses to express my proclivity through many mediums. These days writing is my main outlet, but I do have a painting and drawing studio in my home, one filled with all kinds of resourceful tools; too many, in fact. My collection is so extensive I had to buy a large upright rolling toolbox in place of a traditional taboret. I own a few easels as well as an ancient drafting table along with its traditional accoutrements. In paintbrushes alone I hoard over two hundred, and I have stacks of various art pads and canvases. I must admit, however, that my amateur skills in this area have waned as I have grown older, and admittedly, lazier. Most of the time they collect dust, but at least they are there when the mood strikes.

Often, when I mention a personal inclination and enthusiasm towards an artistic frame of mind, many of my colleagues will, without hesitation, deny that they have the same tendencies. While I’m hesitant to call anyone a liar, they are, in fact, totally incorrect. The stereotypical and shallow-minded definition of art is not limited to the contents of museums, libraries, and concert halls, it literally saturates our surroundings, and this includes all things both man-made and natural.

The inability or unwillingness to recognize this in everything is a subconscious attitude of apathy towards the world. This choice robs us of a connection from spirit (or imagination) to manifestation, and without this frame of mind, all the work we do becomes nothing more than programming and drudgery. It’s important to point out that almost all of us were, as children, deeply involved in all kinds of artistic activities. Crayons and glue, clay, colored paper and paper airplanes, coloring books and paint were associated with leisure and fun. So was singing, pretending, and looking for dragons in the clouds. This is because we were still connecting to the world from the inside out rather than the outside in. We wanted to reach out to everything at one point and make it blossom, but for many the reverse eventually happens and sadly, we decide our efforts are a waste of time. Instead of creating the rain that makes things grow, we choose to believe it’s better or easier to wait for the right conditions to come to us. We want reward without action, not realizing the reward IS the action. Everyone has an inner garden, and while some have ignored or neglected theirs, they can always be revived to a point of flourishing if properly attended to. The seeds of creativeness may lie dormant, but they are never nonexistent.

Passionate expression isn’t just a personal pursuit, it is an enviable one, meaning the person who’s best at envisioning and subsequently producing something, can often be an inspiration to others. This action radiates magnetism and demands an audience. Not only that, the process is transferable. It can be consciously shifted into other, unexplored, or unconsidered areas. For example, if a person is an expert at restoring cars, there’s no reason this obsessive energy can’t be refocused into becoming a skillful cook. 

They say practice makes perfect. This clichéd saying is its own dichotomy. If practice makes perfect, then the time will come when practice is no longer necessary, and since perfection is both unattainable and highly subjective, then practice is a waste of time to begin with. Personally, I don’t like the word practice. It’s been my experience that the Pavlovian response to the (covert) definition can stir up connections to previously perceived failures, and in turn it can lead to disenchantment and negative outcomes. I feel the word persistence is much more productive and positive. The vernacular may be subtle, but the consequences are obvious. The road of persistence is about the journey, and the only goal is to make the journey itself more and more pleasant.

And so we come to the idea of art in practical applications, not just as an occasional emotional outlet, but as an extension of everything we do. If we allow our inner spirit to influence outer actions, we reinforce purpose. If we apply an artistic frame of mind to most duties they’ll cease to be strictly motivated by gain and eventually become driven by how we deliver them. The side benifit is people will ALWAYS be willing to pay more for that which is done with an attention to detail and a disposistion for beauty. Gain (or profit) then becomes automatic. If we find a way to anchor enjoyment to our responsibilities, then does it not become a habit we want to repeat and enhance? With practice all movement becomes dance, all words become poetry, all we touch becomes sculpture, all we hear becomes music, and all we see becomes one vast painting.


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With Love and Compassion, Daniel Andrew Lockwood



155. WORDS IN THE DARK

When I was between the ages of nine and eleven, we moved into our third house in Colorado. My new room in this home happened to be in the attic. It was small, but the entire floor was all mine. Between first and tenth grade we ended up living in no less than nine places, so looking back, there was a decent variety of spaces to compare it to. I imagine this one ended up being the most memorable because of the privacy it provided. It had its own full-sized staircase with a door at the bottom. There was also a window that faced the backyard which not only helped to give the room a complete feel, but, when necessary, eased the hot summer nights and allowed the droning of crickets to fill an otherwise extreme mountain silence. My parents rarely came up as it was just big enough for my twin bed, a dresser, and a kid sized desk. If my memory is correct, they couldn’t even stand up fully. This was the best real estate I was to occupy up until I was in my twenties.

Over the stairway was an ancient globe light fixture that had a pull string switch I could reach from my bed. For some reason my father had put a low wattage blue bulb in it, and this ended up being fortuitous. When I needed to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, it was plenty to illuminate the way, but I often used it for more clandestine reasons, reading.

Once I started third grade, I was already quite the reader. Not because it came naturally, but more because the idea itself was intoxicating and therefore a worthwhile and satisfying pursuit. My parents had started teaching me at home when I was quite young, and when I realized what was (possibly) printed on undiscovered pages, it was like discovering new worlds. I’m also sure that being an only child fed into my favorite pastime. For most of my childhood all I really wanted for gifts were books. I recall going to the school library (still in third grade) determined to check out the biggest book I could find and tackle it. Now, I was focused on the BIGGEST, which in my mind meant size, so I’m glad I didn’t go for “The Complete works of Shakespeare” or something of that nature. The one I did pick happened to be “The Wonderful Wizard of OZ”. Honestly, it was a real struggle. My parents helped when asked and I bleeped over a lot of words, but I did make it through.

Soon after finishing the novel we moved into the house I previously mentioned. A neighbor who was a friend of my parents, and was the manager of a bookstore, knew I’d done this and to my surprise bought me “The Marvelous Land of OZ” for Christmas the following year, which is the second book in the original series of fourteen. I had no idea the storyline continued. When I found this out I went out of my freaking mind, and she was thrilled. She also bought me the complete boxed set of “Winnie the Pooh” which I adored. We called her ‘skinny Jenny’ and she was, but I remember her more for being very pretty and sweet. She had no children of her own so I suppose that played into her motives. In any case, Baum ended up as a staple in my library, even to this day. We knew her long enough for her to introduce me at a later age to the “Chronicles of Narnia” and “The Phantom Tollbooth”. The books she enthusiastically gifted ended up being my go-to fantasy escapes for years. To this day “Tollbooth” is still my favorite book.

Most nights, after I knew my parents were asleep, I’d quietly pop on my light, dim though it was, and read for hours, always with mixed feelings of paranoia that I’d be caught, and euphoria that I was getting away with it. At some point I had a little flashlight I used occasionally under my covers (this felt better, probably because it was sneakier) but batteries were hard to come by. One of my other stand-by authors during this time was Thornton W. Burgess who wrote the “Old Mother West Wind” series, which no one seems to remember these days even though he wrote close to one hundred seventy books.

Being read to by various teachers back in the day was my favorite class activity. It easily eclipsed art projects, softball, or even recess, and it too spurned me to continue feeding the habit. Here is where I first heard “James and the Giant Peach” (along with other Roald Dahl titles), “The Pushcart War” and “Half Magic” and at least a dozen other long forgotten titles.

By fourth and fifth grade my path found the Henry Reed series and Beverly Cleary’s collection, which included the joyful “The Mouse and the Motorcycle. “Charlotte’s Web” and “Stewart Little” by E. B. White were there as well. The road of discovery continued later through Edgar Rice Burroughs’ library, which I’ve often called ‘romance novels for guys’. Several hundred of his titles (I was an avid collector for years) in various editions, some extremely rare, still sit on my shelves to this day. As I grew older new interests and more serious publications caught my eye. In the eighties newspapers (remember those?) and magazines, particularly those of a scientific nature, were common distractions. Eventually my tastes shifted into self-help, psychological, and even spiritual titles, especially once I sobered up in nineteen ninety-five. Wayne W. Dyer, Alan Watts, and Viktor E. Frankl are currently part of my ever expanding foundation of influence. Audio books are a large part of my itinerary these days as well, and sites like YouTube provide an almost endless supply of free, previously unconsidered publications. Altogether my library consists of about three hundred audio titles and three thousand print ones, and no… I have NOT read them all.

One thing is certain, reading, whether it’s in tactile form or in audio format, definitely continues to feed my imagination, creativity, and probably most importantly, my intentionally evolving point of view. I hope the journey never wanes. I’m blessed to have had such passionate teachers, friends, and family who guided me into the world of other people’s expression.

And now we come the the point of why I wanted to write this post on a blog that is focused on self-help and recovery for beginners. If you’re feeling empty, lost, or overwhelmed, read, please trust me. Contrary to what one may think, (most) books don’t really take the reader anywhere but inward, to the spirit. They unmask and reveal our inner selves, and that’s the best discovery of all.

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With Love and Compassion, Daniel Andrew Lockwood