Rough week

It's been a rough last 7 days. As I continue making my amends, I finally decided to e-mail the babysitter who beat me up when I was a kid. The letter wasn't the easy part but hitting "send" was even harder. My therapist told me I could write the note and then trash it and just never send it but that seemed cowardly to me. This guy beat the absolute crap out of me and scared me to death as a kid. I won't stand for that anymore. I figured if anything I owed it to Andy Lipman the little kid who feared for his life. Needless to say, I have e-mailed him and will hopefully get a response.

Last Friday, I got some very disheartening news. A friend of mine who I buy from at work and who talks about family every time we meet had something horrible happen. This is the guy who always asks about your family before he talks about anything work-related. He's offered to take my whole family to dinner in the past. Well, about 10 days ago, his son was killed in a freak home accident. His son was only 5. It's horrible and I can't stop thinking about John and I can't stop thinking about my kids and how delicate life truly is. That's why I enclosed a picture of my babies. They are literally all I can think about since I got the news from John.

My year of sobriety is around the corner and I was thinking what I've learned through the process. Here is my list.

1) Just because you are taking the steps to get better, doesn't mean you'll get better.
2) No one is perfect and thinking you have to be perfect is more dangerous than being incredibly imperfect.
3) People aren't necessarily bad because of their actions. Their actions are bad but maybe there's a good person living inside the person whose actions were awful. Maybe that person, with the right help, can not only recover but make the world a better place by helping others who have been through similar issues.
4) It's not easy to be open and honest but it's incredibly worthwhile.
5) Asking for help doesn't make you weak. Never asking for help when you definitely need it is a sign of weakness in my opinion.
6) No matter how bad you think your problems are, there are many people who have encountered worse.
7) It's not hard to find motivation when you have a beautiful family to look at every day.
8) It's not helpful to be hard on yourself. It makes everything worse for you and everyone around you.
9) Being humbled every now and then is a pretty good cure for an addict.
10) Family is priority. While we all say that, sometimes you (or at least I) didn't make my family the priority I should have. That's never happening again.

I'm doing pretty well healthwise. My softball team won again last night. We are now 5-0. Andrea and the kids have been under the weather but thankfully all of them are coming out of it. I am currently working on 4 projects at work that could add significant savings for our company. We have a Wish for Wendy meeting tonight and Emily's birthday is tomorrow night (Don't forget her store Raw Denim!!!). Dad is doing well and adjusting to being back home.

Please pray for my friend John. My heart still aches for him and his family.

Best Wishes,

Andy
Thanks for listening.