Guys, this thing is going ever so slowly.

Yesterday all there was time for was cooking, eating, dishes, blah blah blah and cleaning our park space because of the snow. Hm, I like doing that, so I did it for the neighbor too, yesterday I cleaned for the whole side of our block (took me 2 or 3 hours, who counts when you are having fun right) and this morning just our car and the neighbor's.

I am a good person, I know :-)

Darn, I am not. I feel tired and helpless. I haven't done any reading, no exercises, nothing. So here goes, I will try and be specific of what I do.

I am learning that I will not be able to stay sober for a longer period of time, if I don't do something about it.

Is this the right place to make my accountability site (in matters of reading Torah, reading the daily newspaper, reading literature, viewing films, doing sports...)?

I am reading Ortgea Revolt of the masses (1930). I am not sure yet where he is going with his stuff, but somethings correspond to me really. He differs between the mass-man and the elite-man, the difference is that the elite-man is not content with where he is and wants to develop. While the mass-man is content with what he knows, living with no particular direction...

Ok, ok. That might be old stuff. But hear this:

The european man can't manage the leap up until an optimist demands from him, that he takes off all of his garments and relieve himself so that all that there is left is his essence.

That I found funny. It corresponds to me though. One really can't depend on his clothes and a full belly to make a difference how he thinks and feels, thus how he lives. For Ortega those clothes and that belly might be even an obstacle for reaching that state of full living.

That might also be old, but new for me.

For me belly and clothes are not that important, I guess one should just be modest, basic and not give it too much thought.

So this part i am writing the next day, with is today :-)

I didn't do anything more yesterday. Just went to sleep around midnight. I fell asleep in front of the tv. I just wanted a quick rest after folding the laundry. Then my wife came out of the bedroom (she thought I am going to view films), she was mad and said i needed to go to bed right then and that's it. So I had a good night sleep, we woke up only once at 2.30 for feeding.

Yesterday I felt like, this is enough I can't take care of household in every detail. But my wife is also near the edge, the work and the children there (she is a teacher), then the exams (oh, she passed the last one with flying colors) and then she needs to prepare for an english exam (FCE).... So when she comes home, she really just gets to work....
So we cried yesterday together and then she studied some more and I made pancakes.

Now our baby is asleep. My wife at work.

So I need to do the laundry, then make bread and lunch, then clean and hopefully there will still be time to do something else. Like read the news, do sports, see the end of Modern times....

Hm, not much time. At 12 my wife is back. So got to get to it.

I am not getting anywhere with this method to be honest.... I am not disciplined enough, I am a total idiot to be honest and I am starting to think that there is no other way but to join a live group.

I was up until around 1 am yesterday, saw the end of Modern Times, Straw Dogs and started to watch other stuff. Yesterday I had a slip too in that late hour, typed some shmutz in this engine (well that site is always full of women flashing at you), but I didn't download it or view it - you need strong nerves to stay clean there, but how can I get movies other way!??? But then I went on GYE and talked with Kedusha. He was really busy, so he didn't really answer my question, but hey, it was great to reach out, to talk and say hi to someone knowing he is struggling too.
I put to on much stress my viewing movies and neglect other things. And I feel this deeply, it is eating me up inside. As Elya would say RID is growing and that is bringing a fall....

I haven't done any sports, no reading the news, no Rashi, just movies. This needs to change today or I am loosing my mind, my sobriety. I am so helpless and so lazy. It's not the laziness to do things only, but the laziness to think....
It is also true that then I woke up at 3am for feeding, but BH my wife took care of it tonight. Well then I woke up at 6. My eyes hurt a bit and I feel tired and my head kind of hurts..... A this self pity, do we really stand alone, isn't Hashem here, just waiting to asked for help!? All we need is to ask! BH i did that yesterday

So a question to the forum? Do you guys work out, do you guys run or something? Do you follow news? I don't want "feeling better that thou", but some experience would be nice....

Guys all the best to You, let every challenge bring you closer to Hashem

I have been practicing karate for the past 30 years and find that a good workout with a few regular calisthenics and stetches, a walk on the treadmill, and some punches, does wonders. I guess I get out all the punches on the bags, so I don't have to hit the kids as much...nor as hard when I do hit them....ok, that was a joke...don't call the cops.

News? Yeah, I follow Google news frequentlybut I must tell you that in the weeks that stories abounded about Tiger Woods and his Cecil B DeMille-esque cast of mistresses - I did not look up a single story about it, because I had the humility (borne of humiliation) that I simply have no business doing that, for I can't afford playing with lust. Also, the present story about Petorius (or whatever his name really is) shooting his girlfriend - as soon as I hear that she was a pretty model, I know the media will be all over it because sex sells...and I have enough sex problems, I do not need to vicariously get into his house, his love-life, his girlfriend, or anywhere else. I Can't afford to play that game today...just today. Who knows and who cares what I can or cannot do tomorrow.

Even if it would be a mitzvah for me to look up those stories - even if porn were somehow a mitzvah - I would be patur, just as it is obviously completely assur for alkies to drink wine for the 4 kosos or on Purim (hic*!). Simple. I sacrifice nothing but my hubris when it is 'a struggle' inside me.

Is this clear? Is it holier than thou, or thou, (or them)? I do not think so. I'm just a recovering pervert doing OK today and enjoying this life the easy way!

Work out, man! It feels great! Your Maker obviously wants you to feel great, not just 'OK'.

BTW, Rashi is very nice, but have you tried saying Tehillim. Not in hebrew, but in a good english translation - or better yet, in your own words reading from the hebrew? There are some great translations that are not just party-line stuff. R SR Hirsch's translation is sweet, I feel.

Hatzlocha!

I have made a few attempts at signing up for news E-mails. Somehow I always get stuck only on the boring international news feeds with nothing but political editorials so I usually get sick of it after a week or so and then unsubscribe.

Besides that, I think my main source of news is Aish.Com. If anything really interesting or contraversial is in the news, they always have somebody write something about it, and that--strangely enough--seems to be enough news for me. They don't have p*rnography, either, which is a plus.

In college I once worked in a company where it was my job to watch TV news and summarize the stories and enter them into a computer. The idea was that, if someone died drinking Coca-Cola and it was on NBC 7pm news, someone in the sales department would call up Coca-Cola and say, "NBC 7pm news just ran a story about somebody dying from drinking Coca-Cola. Would you be interested in buying a copy of that story?"

At first I thought it was a fantastic job. I always felt I wasn't current enough with current events, and here was my opportunity. The first week or two was great. But after that (in conjunction with a really amazing Media Criticism course), I could practically sit down without seeing the news and type out everything they were going to show--including who they were going to interview and what they were going to say. Here's that scene again of the police picking through the forest to find hidden clues of the murder suspect!

The news shows basically take reality and squish it into a little template they've got so they can get the "latest news" out in a flash. It's basically scripted (from shoot to finish--camera-men are poised in key locations to instigate the desired crowd response, then editors slice and dice the words to say what they want people to hear--even if nobody said it) and most of it, if you think about it, is of negligible importance for your ability to function in everyday life. It's always the same story--some sort of s*x scandal, or freak murder, tragic car accident, inferno, kosher meat fraud, and sometimes they do a real important piece about "Love Your Dog" Month--complete with pictures of cute little French poodles in little tu-tus and then a picture of a Rotweiler wearing a "Bad to the Bone" T-shirt just to prove the news station believes in multiculturalism. The "Love Your Dog" Month, and other such crucial feature stories, usually takes up the entire second half or two-thirds of the newscast, whereas all the other local and world news is squished into those first ten or fifteen minutes, including 12 1/2 minutes of commercial breaks where you are supposed to learn the importance lessons of Western Culture of drinking beer and choosing the correct brand of breath mint.

I overdosed on news, I guess, and since then I have lived without much of it without missing it. But you got me to reminisce a little bit, which was nice.

Glad to see you're still truckin', Yehoshua.

--Elyah

Overdose on news Elya, you rock!

Dov, I thought I answered and I didn't. I am loosing my focus, it seems. I am impressed, Karate. I trained Uechi Ryu for 4 years, also did Judo as a kid. I love martial arts. I could put a candle out with my fist (you know when you stop just before the flame) Ok, sorry for the self praise. But 30 years. That is beautiful (i don't know what other word to write). It would be good to train with a master like you.

My days are similar and I really want to work out, but I just get so tired in the evening. This morning I said, it will be all different, I set the alarm clock at 5.40, which should be plenty to do my routine. But the alarm woke my little daughter up. Hm...

It's back to the drawing board like Wile E Coyote would put it.

I was away this week, so I will pull my socks up and try and post more....

All the best to you guys!!!

yehoshua wrote:


I would highly reccommend the book "Amusing Ourselves to Death," by Neil Postman. Even if it's only half as good as I remember it being way back when when I read it, it's worth reading.

--Elyah

Hi,

so life goes on, bla bla bla.

I just want to be sober today.


It is an important thought, but something keeps coming into my mind: "I want more. I want real freedom. Heck, I want to talk to Hashem like Moshe." Something hit me what Dov wrote, it was about his steps to stay clean: That I should look in Hashem for the thing that thought I will find in porn.

And that I find is a big thing,


uf baby, gotta go

like!

Sorry guys I FELL
Forgive me Hashem and please, please, please may this not affect my wife and my daughter, please let my character faults not bring pain to others.

What happened?

I typed in schmutz many times as I was working this night. It is 6 am morning now and I wanted to work through the whole night, I did, but just now I fell. Saw p* and m*, the works. And I feel like I want to kill myself, I feel like the last dirt on earth, I feel like nothing.

I am so scared that my little girl will be afraid of my face when she wakes up, that she will cry (for no reason - but of course because she can feel what I did). I hope that Hashem brings some kind of blessing right now, that I get another chance.

Another and another and another. It is what I always said, never again. Oh no not me.

But it had to happen.

I wasn't running, I wasn't reading, I wasn't posting, I wasn't praying (even though I made so much progress - man, I could stop myself in the middle of a rage, I could laugh...), but still I wasn't reading Psalms or Rashi. So this is it, I wasn't doing anything besides keeping that piece of paper in my pocket and reading it when things got tough.

Why didn't I read it today, just now?

I feel like throwing up.

Sorry guys, I will stand up, pick myself up and try again.This time with running, reading, posting, praying, crying before I fall.

When will I ever learn to cry before I fall!?

Baruch Hashem, You rule the world, may Your will be done.

fist of all don't kill yourself

Hashem will accept you back


It sounds to me like this wasn't a sudden fall

for like a long drawn out type

see if you can take action earlier in the future

We all love you

Dov wrote:

Wich part is a joke? Have you really been practicing karate for thirty years? If yes, we need to know and watch out...
Dov wrote:

thanks for the advertisement

Yehoshua, sorry that happened. But you already know what to do....

KOMT!

yehoshua wrote:


There was something more obvious that you left out... try not to do it again:

yehoshua wrote:


I have the same problem. Sometimes I focus so much on all the preventative medicine, but I forget the obvious. Despite all these things that fortify our spiritual diet, the most important and most basic thing remains--don't do things that poison yourself. Looking at schmutz is one of those things. But running on overdrive [which, I think, also exhibits and overdose of EGO], is another poison.

Still, after the fact, don't take it so hard. This is one of those moments not to be so gaivadik to think that the wellfare of the whole world depends on you. That's poison, too. It's one of those moments to remember that just as our success is up to G-d, so too, sometimes it was His Will for us to fall for whatever reason. Perhaps we were too proud of ourselves for our success and taking too much credit for it. "I'm so great that I've been surrendering to G-d!" When I get to feeling this way, what comes next is feeling like manure.

Posting, at least after the fact--admitting a fall, is also an action of healing. It's not easy, and kudos to you for having the honesty and humility to admit what happened.

Keep on posting--especially now.

KOT,

--Elyah

it would seek he isn't taking your advice to keep posting....hmm....

Maybe he's machmir not to post on Chol HaMoed.