When I was knew and had not come to believe much more than that saying the Serenity Prayer was about all I could do to get through a day until I could get to one of my nightly meetings,  a couple of those had signs that said, "The measure of a man's anxiety is the measure of his distance from God." Instead of feeling comforted by that,  I was thinking it was one more thing to feel anxious about,  being far from God.  I don't have much of that now but it isn't entirely gone.  I just figure that nobody would be sitting in God's lap and feeling a bit of anxiety is probably just something humans do.

I see living in the now as related to getting out of the universe,  a place that is too crowded anyway.  Living somewhere near its edge and dealing only with what is in front of me right now is a lot easier than feeling responsible for what has and will happen all over.

I while back,  I got to thinking that I was getting really close to being able to enjoy each moment as it comes along,  but lately there have sometimes been little unproductive thought loops going around in my head about my finances and why I am the only player at the local lawn bowls club who hasn't been asked to play in a Saturday competition for almost three months.  My head keeps reassuring me that neither is really a problem but my emotions don't really believe that.

I have long understood that what happens to me doesn't get me into trouble, but my reactions and over-reactions can and sometimes do.  I don't see my problems as the real problems which are my attitudes toward them.  It is trying to find and truly accept healthy attitudes that can get a bit frustrating at times.  I can even get frustrated about getting frustrated, getting bogged down in an obsession with self-analysis.

Some years ago,  when 90% of my life was going well,  I would  focus 90% of my attention on the 10% that wasn't,  get a bit pessimistic and see the good stuff turning sour as well.  That doesn't happen now,  but that tendency can still reappear at times if I don't keep myself grounded in reality, maintain my trust in God,  and stay in the hear and now.

I have been around long enough to know that answers to problems with adapting to changing reality,  but it is sometimes not easy to apply them to myself.  It is easy to say that it is none of my business what other people think of me.  My mind is clear on that,  and even sees it as obvious,  but it can still be hard to get my emotions to agree.

I have often  had to remind myself,  that is it life that happens,  not the brown smelly stuff,  and that it only stinks when my attitudes are off,  but it can sometimes take a while to find the right attitudes and hope that my feelings about things follow,  as I can't do much about them directly.