These Ascetic Days

I am sober and single and seething. In therapy. Un-medicated. Exercising. Working. Applied for diversion. Need to hunker down and build out a reporting UI for call-center managers and brokers. Hungry all the time. If I don't eat enough it feels like my brain is on fire. If I eat a lot of bread or turkey it feels like my brain is on fire. If I hang out with friends with whom I drank or drugged in the past it feels like my brain is on fire. Right now I'm going to lunch in 30 minutes but my brain feels cool enough. At night I read the Bible which I started recently from the beginning. I'm using the New Oxford Annotated edition. The bookmark I'm using says "Set high goals for yourself and work hard to achieve them!" with a picture of George W. Bush in a classroom standing addressing the class, his hand on the head of an Asian kid. I've also read through the Tao Te Ching twice recently, increasing its lead as the book I have read the most times. I've stopped reading Ovid's Metamorphoses and D&G's Anti-Oedipus both at about 3/4s through, put them in a box with all the books on my nightstand I wasn't reading, mostly books I bought my sister Mimi for her Greek and Roman Myth class. Finished Foucault's Madness & Civilization in Wisconsin while drunk. It's been two weeks sober now. Two weeks has always been my limit. This weekend will be psychologically difficult. I plan to sand rust off my car with my dad and touch up the Antique Sage Pearl paint. Then we are going to visit baby Madison Lee Martin. Otherwise I think I will go to the YMCA and the Corinth Library. I have tried to read Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. Too much academic detail. He's trying to explain why Europeans took over the world, and it seems like what he came up with was "Thanks, mother earth." Living in the suburbs with my mother and commuting, I feel like I'm not showing enough gratitude. Yet I'm staying here for the winter, when global warming will sound nice. Voyeurs, how was that for you?