April 13 2011
Good morning to all, and a welcome to any newcomers that I may have missed posting to during recent days. It has been 20 months since I began my resolve to live gambling free. A year and 8 months of making the right choice One Day At A Time. Each day adds to a commutative time, but each day also starts anew and must be faced with the same resolve and determination as I had at the beginning. For me each day is the 1st day and one that I look forward to starting, it is another Day 2 that I do not want to face.
As mentioned in my other topic, Our Daily Pledge, I was absent from the Internet a few days, I visited New Orleans and enjoyed being at this years French Quarter Festival. Had a good time listing to local music and sampling a few dishes from a variety of food courts featuring many of the restaurants there. To me this free and open event spread out over the Quarter and river front that precedes the huge "Jazz Fest" every spring, offers a lot more sampling of the local music without the outrageous cost and the confinement of the Jazz Fest Grounds. The Jazz Fest is still a good festival to attend, but it is geared toward visitors from around the world, and filters out the common local residents — although the attendance this year of the French Quarter Festival would come near in matching that of the more publicized one; over 500,000 roaming the streets and enjoying the open-air stages.
I even enjoyed sitting around a few of my old haunts having some drinks; only a few of the old cronies are still around, but the strangers that are now there didn’t seem to mind me intruding in on what they think of as their place. The only things that changes in a local bar is the tunes on the jukebox and the ages of the ones around you.
One of the places that I still enjoy dropping in for some unknown or forgotten reason has a "community" urn that holds the ashes of a few old drinking buddies, and even the old "bar dog" that died; a reminder to me of the perils of the life of an alcoholic or other addict. Even though I frequently walked through those bar doors, I never passed over the line that would have turned me into an alcoholic; I only wish that I could say the same about my addiction. One thing that did cross my mind is that if my favorite casino had a urn for the gambling dead, my ashes are no longer destined to be mixed with the other ones — I now live gambling free and hope to die that way.
God’s speed to all. Stay strong. Keep aware.
LarryThanks to my Higher Power, My 3G’s – God, GA, and GT, "Day Two Is Another Day Behind" and with the help from all , I will continue to remain gambling free.
