(part 297) 39 years clean and sober

In 2 days I will have been clean and sober for 39 years. For a guy no one believed would get clean and sober in the first place, I feel vindicated to say the least. I may not be mr. happy, but I have not had to get loaded, no matter how rough things have gotten, in the last four decades. While I have fought bitterly, at times, with people in the music business on this blog, I have never lost sight of the one thing that was most important in my life, and that is maintaining the single thing that allowed me to be here at all. People have come and gone, but I am still here attempting, poorly at times, to communicate the ups and downs of a person who has experienced life, in both the fast lane, as well as the slow lane. For some, my achievement means little, while to others it is proof that no matter how crazy you are you can still get clean and stay that way... I may not always look like it, but in the background I measure all that has gone on here by the fact that I am still sober. In my life, without sobriety, I would be, and was, a madman running wild and headed for disaster at all times. My past is riddled with countless stories about nearly achieving my goals, and the reasons why I never did. My reactions to what happened and what didn't happen are the subjects I have tried to explore on this blog. I have failed, and succeeded, at doing that over the years, and continue trying to tie it altogether as I go. I have learned that my allies, over time, may turn into my detractors later on, and visa-versa to some degree. It has been a massive learning experience for me, writing this blog, and still is. What tomorrow may bring has proven to be just about anything as far as I can tell, and no one is ever qualified to predict what it will be, least of all me. I ride it through, and decipher it as I go, and then again in hindsight. It has proven to be difficult as hell to do this in public, as it is happening, but that's the way this blog has been from the beginning. For those of you who find fault with me, give it a try sometime. Put your life on display for anyone to see, and try dealing with the myriad of responses you may get while attempting to do so. I can't really complain about it, because I'm the dumbbell who decided to do it this way.

The good part of writing this blog is that I have been able to tell a story that needed to be told, if only for my own peace of mind. It was the complete lack of a cohesive beginning to the story, and the lack of any context or continuity to it, that bothered me originally. People had written things that weren't true, and had the history all wrong. For years, decades really, I felt the need to say, "Hey, wait a minute, that's not what happened," so finally I just said, "I'll do it myself," and did. it has been a labor of both love and frustration for me. An opportunity to have a voice about the facts and fiction of a crazy son-of-a-bitch who wrote and recorded a lot of songs, and who did a lot of things, with a lot of different people, in a lot of different places. It has been a way for me to make known recordings that no one ever knew about, to tell you about who they were made with, and why. To give, to some degree, insight into the inner workings of things you may, or may not, have found interesting. All in all I have attempted to take up your time, and keep you interested enough to keep coming back.

GO TO PART 1 OF BLOG