Seven years later .....

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Seven years later .....	Mike Monson	22:44 27/12/19
RE: Seven years later .....	Linda ”Polly Ester” Ö	03:00 28/12/19
RE: Seven years later .....	Ben V.	06:44 28/12/19
RE: Seven years later .....	Nick O	06:46 28/12/19
RE: Seven years later .....	Anton	12:09 28/12/19
RE: Seven years later .....	Mike Monson	14:31 28/12/19
RE: Seven years later .....	Mike Monson	15:24 28/12/19
RE: Seven years later .....	terry	16:08 28/12/19
RE: Seven years later .....	Not two, not one	12:29 28/12/19
RE: Seven years later .....	Sigma Tropic	16:06 28/12/19
RE: Seven years later .....	Chris M	19:35 28/12/19
RE: Seven years later .....	Mike Monson	20:28 28/12/19
RE: Seven years later .....	Chris M	09:30 29/12/19
RE: Seven years later .....	Mike Monson	09:44 29/12/19
RE: Seven years later .....	Chris M	11:58 29/12/19
RE: Seven years later .....	shargrol	17:15 29/12/19
RE: Seven years later .....	Mike Monson	17:35 29/12/19
RE: Seven years later .....	Chris M	08:29 30/12/19
RE: Seven years later .....	Mike Monson	11:39 30/12/19
RE: Seven years later .....	Chris M	08:32 31/12/19
RE: Seven years later .....	Mike Monson	10:42 31/12/19

Mike Monson, שונה לפני 4 שנים at 22:44 27/12/19

Created 4 שנים ago at 22:39 27/12/19

Seven years later .....

פרסומים: 55 תאריך הצטרפות: 27/12/19 פרסומים אחרונים

For three or four years, up until, I think, around the spring of 2012 -- I had an intense meditation practice, I was active on this board and several others, I had a skype student-teacher relationship with Kenneth Folk (I can't quite remember how long that lastest and how exactly it ended), and I was very peripherally involved with sittings at SFZC, Spirit Rock, and with a couple of local sanghas.

I stopped practicing, I stopped reading and posting online on the subject, and for much of the time I stopped being very interested in it all. I wasn't exactly bitter I don't think, just sort of exausted and dissapointed with the whole thing, and by "whole thing," I mean, myself.

While some of the the past seven years were good and fruitful, it was mostly rife with significant failures in marriage/relationships, parenting, career/work life, as well as long periods of addiction and compulsive behavior in regards to sex, alcohol, drugs (mostly over-the-counter types such as taking 20 to 50 benadryl at bedtime!), music listening/playing, writing, social media, and a couple of fellow humans. I was pretty miserable most of the time. Yay.

Now, I'm 63, single, living alone, and kind of retired. I live in Modesto, California, and I get monthly social security and work as an Uber driver (mostly by driving over to the San Francisco Bay Area) to supplement that meager amount.

I'm kind of stable finally, and at I'm starting to make some peace with my failures and bad behaviors, and I've been working at repairing some of the damage I've done.

Sometime around October or November, I started getting interested in practice again. And, now, I am becoming very interested, similar to my experience seven years ago.

I wanted to make this post partly as a reintroduction, and partly as a way back in to some sense of community, of belonging to a group of like-minded people.

This is all so new again -- and I feel some caution due to my prior experiences -- that I'm not sure when or if I'll join a real-life group or sangha (though it's likely), but in the meantime I'm hoping for some of the camaderie I remember I used to feel posting on these dharma-related forums.