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The other day, my wife opened a conversation with a vague question and I immediately could tell she had an underlying story.

“How long do you think it takes the average person to respond to a text?” she asked.

I gave a nothingburger answer that I actually believe, which is that it depends on the person, the time of day, whether it’s a Saturday or a Monday morning, etc. I basically shrugged my shoulders.

She proceeded to air out an agitation she was feeling about a friend who hadn’t responded to a text since yesterday. I know the person in question, and yes, she can be a little flaky on communication.

My wife eventually said, “Who doesn’t respond to texts?”

This is where I messed up and gave a recovery answer.

“Well, honey, earlier today I texted you and you didn’t respond for two hours, so I texted you again, and then you said, ‘Sorry, I missed your text.’ So it can pop up for all of us. You know, in sobriety, we always try to identify with people who hurt us or do us wrong, because chances are, we have done the same thing at some point in our lives.”

She didn’t like that answer. She told me she was just venting and didn’t need any kind of lesson. I, of course, immediately felt my back go up in annoyance. But my second thought was that she was right. I try to carry the message of recovery in all of my affairs, and sometimes I slip up a little and start trying to carry it into your affairs, too. That goes for people who are alcoholics and people who aren’t—even with fellow sober people, I really aim to only give suggestions and advice if I am directly asked about it. I just haven’t seen any benefit to being aggressive with my opinions. In fact, I have found myself gravitating toward people who seem to feel either very little or no obligation to inject their thoughts into situations where they weren’t asked to. That’s a pretty lovely way to cruise through life, in my humble opinion.

That brings me around to my specific point for this post, which is that I am better off when I keep my recovery stuff in my recovery world. It’s fine if I live by the principles of recovery in all aspects of my life. But I don’t need to be on work Zooms or at my family Thanksgiving dinner telling people they ought to do a Fourth Step on their resentments, or else I am going to end up with lots more resentments aimed in my direction.

This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:

WE WERE HAVING LUNCH on Friday the thirteenth and talking about being superstitious. One of the young men eating with us said, "I really believe in that sort of thing. Two months ago, I walked under a ladder at work. That night I got a drunk driving ticket."

Once I stopped laughing, I said, "Think it had anything to do with the drinking?"

(Credit: Grapevine, February 2009, by Jack B. of Santa Cruz, California)

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What happens in sobriety should probably stay in sobriety