Posts Tagged ‘AA’

Books4free.com Vibe Coded Relaunch & Life Updates from 2019 to Now

Posted: April 15, 2026 in Uncategorized
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Hello world! Its been a very long time since I’ve written anything at all on here and I went through some massive changes, spiritually, geographically, and even matrimonially! I moved to Florida, became Catholic, albeit not a very good one, and married a woman I love with a 3 year old daughter who is now 7 and we are in the process of adopting!

So much to unpack there! I’ll start with Covid and dirty rotten scoundrel politics. I’d moved to Tampa Florida in October of 2019 with my fiancĂ© at the time, but we broke up in February of 2020 after fighting like cats and dogs. It was painful to say the least. Few things though, save 9/11 have been more surreal than seeing our country turn itself inside out, over that debacle, that now seems was mainly about selling snake oil medicine. I happened to be in Las Vegas twice in late February and early March for two different shows, and the day after Trump announced Chinese tourists had been banned from visiting the US, I was in Paris, the casino, not France, and I’m not kidding when I tell you two buses filled with Chinese tourists pulled up, meandered on in to the casino and went and filled the breakfast area. The first few days of my visit, there had been a few tourists, mostly Americans, and then opposite of the news, the place filled with Chinese that last day. It would be another couple of weeks before full panic set it.

The breakup with my fiancĂ© hadn’t yet happened. The second trip out to Vegas though was when the real Covid panic hit. We were all at the ConTech show 2020, when the global hysteria set in. I’ve always felt it had a real national security level emergency feeling to it. One of the largest tradeshows in the world, this year I know 140,000 attendees, and they just shut the whole thing down. I had to wait in the airport all day, as everyone flights were moved, and there were a lot of soldiers and drone support airmen in the airport as well, being moved from Vegas. When I arrived home early, my fiancĂ© didn’t pick me up at the airport, and we broke up a few days later.

I had launched my book, Spiral’s End, Hepatitis C and Me, the year before and had lackluster results with it, primarily because I didn’t promote it at all, hating that name with every ounce of my being. I had hoped the name would help with the Amazon SEO, and I’d had it professionally edited and cleaned up as well, but used the same cover. Still the name is terrible, lol, the originally name Hippopotamus Sea was much better, subtle, creative. I mention it again though because I did still have a Social Media presence with it and it comes into play during this covid story.

But first the bottom fell out. Sadly as a man in Western Civilization, much of our identity comes from financial stability, and as a salesman in tech, construction software specifically, I am probably over invested in tech like Tesla, Google, Amazon, and Nvidia, so when the crash of 2020 hit the stock market, I was punched hard right in the gut. I lost a lot, a very big percentage of my nest egg disappeared relatively quickly. Around this time too, my fiancĂ© had moved out, and a few weeks later met another man who she was head over heels for, and wouldn’t return my calls or texts, and with the move to Tampa, losing my network, my financial status taking a hit, I simply went into a tailspin. I had a bit of a spiritual experience as well, realizing that that relationship ultimately failed due to my own character defects, lust basically without expounding, and that the TRT I’d been on for a few years probably wasn’t helping I decided to kick that as well. This was probably ill advised at this exact juncture. I’ve now cycled on and off it a few times over the years, and as a man in sobriety, 19 years sober in December 2026 I can tell you this is not nothing, but can cause extreme mood swings, depression, and can last months. I didn’t know this the first time I cycled off though, I genuinely felt like I was losing my mind. I guess I was 13 years sober or so around then, and it just felt like the world was coming apart.

So I became a bit manic, as one is want to do. I began obsessively trying to fix up my house, which was awfully small compared to my Atlanta house, which I loved, and was a perfect mid-century model work of art I’d put all my love into, and this tiny house on the canal in Tampa just felt super cramped. It wasn’t helping so I began to work on it obsessively, as well as double down my efforts at work, and exercising like mad to try and kick the obsessive thinking about my ex. None of it worked, but I did fix my house up and get in great shape, waking up at 4:30 am and riding my bike 30 miles a day consistently from Town and Country, through Oldsmar, Safety Harbor, across the Courtney Campbell and back home every day before work. If you’d rolled up on my house at this time you may have found me single handedly trying to fix my boat lift, where in replacing the felt pads, all the beams fell into the water, with me on them and all my tools, racing against the tide to put it all back together, in 3 foot deep Tampa Bay tidal mud, just beating the waters, before my boat tipped over. My next door neighbor gawking at my antics the whole time ready to call the emergency crews. Or renting a scissor-lift to cut the Oak Tree branches, getting it done, manic, no planning, but executing, never mind a scissor lift doesn’t work well in sand, and I’m lucky to have lived as it settled and adjusted as I sawed off huge branches falling to the ground, narrowly missing my skull. I stayed busy.

At one point during Covid, I want to say around April, I was on Twitter, which we all recall was being heavily censored at this point, and I commented on a post by the Chinese CCP aligned Editor, Hu Xijin, something about you know my usual libertarian rantings around being on the wrong side of history, and I always just thought I was lost as a tear drop in the ocean whining to this guy, but this time I must have struck a nerve. Now my wife is not a fan of this cartoon, and its not my best work I’ll grant, but it did get a mild amount of AA fame and a few folks from conventions have given me recognition on these YouTube videos, but my series AA Boy Meets AA Girl on YouTube was public to try and help promote the book, SEO for booksfree.com and ultimately entertain, and the video at had gotten around 20k views by then. Arguably, save the post I wrote after Bin Laden was killed, my most popular publication of any kind. It was NOT linked to my Twitter account at the time. Within 10 minutes of my snarky reply to Hu Xijin, the Silicon Valley cabal of censorship had pulled my YouTube account, Facebook and Twitter accounts. I was absolutely shocked. I could not believe they were linked, and so infiltrated by Chinese Communists. Its shocking to me still. It verified for me that Covid was a powerplay, more so than a big pharma scam, though maybe it was both? I mean really who knows, the power plays were so hidden, so expansive, so malignant and secret that we just don’t know. The conspiracies now can’t be proven or unproven and mountains of evidence obscure every angle. We are truly in a doubt of real information and that is a book in itself, I intend on writing at some point. What I can say definitively is that they deactivated my accounts across all my socials instantly. I appealed and prevailed, but the power, and the coordination was not lost on me. It was real, it was powerful, and those agents probably are still in Silicon Valley in these big tech companies, thought quieter now. On this day as Chinese ships head to the Strait of Hormuz, and the Chinese embassy wraps barb wire around its DC offices, this cold war could become hot at any time. It is said there are many Chinese men of military age poised to go in the US at any point, we simply don’t know what information is real and what is not. I do know that day in 2020 they censored me, and by appealing I got all my links and socials turned back on.

Easter Sunday, Tampa police guarded the churches to prevent church goers from attending. AA meetings were closed in Tampa. Someone had the gall to tell me to quit riding my bike at 4:30 am thus breaking the curfew or whatever authoritarian overreach bullshit the Tampa local government tried to enforce via Facebook and I recall responding poorly, and threatening to post up in my house until the National Guard arrived if they wanted to stop me, and this was bad timing on my part. As fate would have it a few days later towing my boat, that had a 12.5 foot tower, I ripped the cable line serving the entire internet to all the homebound house arrested Tampa covid sufferers, basically LIVING off the internet, and old JB ripped their internet line straight out of the powerlines using my boat. The police arrived, as did an angry, almost medieval mob, and they almost arrested me! I was not making friends. The police openly discussed arresting me and I laughed at them, which they didn’t appreciate, but eventually let me go, there was some legal point about the neighborhood not having an HOA to press charges, but here I was 13 years sober, about to get arrested over a minor traffic incident. And frankly that has happened, with low hanging internet cables three times since because my boat tower is so tall but at the time, boy, with these riled up home bound Tampa residents, mad at losing internet, it was all very intense,. and I wasn’t making any friends in that neighborhood.

I kept trying to make it work though, I knew I loved living near the water, and going back to Atlanta felt like retreat so my mission was to persevere and this too shall pass. I’m emotional though, and I hadn’t had enough meetings, and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought of taking my boat way offshore and just not coming back. Having lost my father this way though, I’d long ago promised myself I’d never quit on life this way, and cause pain to all those I knew and loved and who loved me, but the thoughts were there. Even while fishing offshore, catching lots of fish, in the Gulf and the East Coast, I still was manic, sad, obsessive and it would be a year before my mind really settled down. I tried many things to calm my mind, and one thing finally took hold. Playing guitar. I found while learning to play I found peace. I guess you can’t be sad and try to learn something at the same time or maybe it was just music soothing my soul, I really don’t know. I’d owned guitars since my 20’s and even mention picking one up in a bender while in Little Five Points in my book, but I’d never sat down and attempted to learn. Frankly had my brother not accomplished this task I would have never had the faith to pick one up myself, but lo and behold I began to be able to put a song or two together and singing gave me peace. The first song I learned, poorly I’m sure, was El Paso, by Marty Robbins.

My Uncle Barton and I were talking not too long after, I believe I sent him a video of my playing, and he said, “That’s interesting you know your Dad was an Air Force brat, and began learning music, when your grandfather was stationed in El Paso.” I knew my dad had moved around a lot but I always think of him and my mom from being from Albany Georgia, perhaps because their home videos sound like they bother fell off the turnip truck. But also when someone dies in your life so young you don’t get their narrative, you fill it in yourself. My uncle went on to ask, “Did you say you were in Tampa? You know that is where your Dad, Barry and myself, (my two uncles) were all born, at MacDill Airforce Base. So oddly enough, a traveling salesman that has seen most of the country, just happened to move of all places, to Tampa Florida, after living in Atlanta 42 years of my life. I chose the one city my dad had been born. And something about it felt right. Though I knew I was in a tough spot, I loved being by the water and learning my dad had been born here did bring me some kind of peace.

Around this time, the black crows began showing up. Now the crows are significant, as are all birds, prominently mentioned in my book and some of my delusions, but my dad had a particular niche with Black Crows. I skipped over this in my book as you just can’t fit in every little detail, but it now becomes significant. When we’d moved to Sweet Apple Crossing in Roswell, after living in Norcross, and just before moving to Brookfield West, my father had begun to get a bit more dark. His alcoholism was taking root, I believe in retrospect, but he went and bought a boombox, for those who remember the eighties. And an audiotape of a crow’s distress calls, and man I tell you the sky would fill with black crows, thousands and thousand of ominous black crows and he would laugh like the mad hatter staring at the apocalyptic sky with circling birds, screaming at us. It was not lost on me then how odd this was, and this being the beginning of this descent into madness that would culminate in his taking his head off with a .357, I have never super appreciated a big flock of crows at any time since. Well fast forward to Spring 2020, really early summer I believe and the trash was not getting picked up at the nearby Starbucks consistently and the crows began to gather. A murder as they say. By the thousands. For weeks on end. I’m not playing any God forsaken distress calls, they are just gathering, and while they traveled to the Starbucks it did seem like they had chosen my house specifically to make their headquarters.

I tried firecrackers, I tried a BB Gun, and my neighbors weren’t fans of either or me by this point if I’m being perfectly honest with all my antics, and so I just had to suffer. I hoped against hope they would go away and they just didn’t. it went on for days, then weeks and then months. Around this time, I visited my buddy Greg Steiniger in Saint Pete Beach, and the beach felt absolutely magical. The cool breeze off the water and salty air. I just loved it. This is where I’d wanted to move in the first place, well Tierra Verde, but my fiancĂ© at the time had thought we wouldn’t get any work done and so we settled on Town and Country with a boatlift, but this beach was amazing. He told me I could easily rent my house out, and we should find a house down here. I told him to start looking, hell interest rates were at 2.65 in June/July 2020. I felt silly moving after only living in the Tampa home 8 months or so, but then I returned to my house, and there were 4 dozen black crows on the dead tree limb poking prominently from the canal, that had been an Ospreys home when we were house shopping. My fiancĂ© had tried to feed it a Sweet Potato, and I lost the argument trying to convince her otherwise. The osprey never did become vegan. Those crows chased it off though.

We found a house in Saint Pete Beach though, a mid-century modern. And it was small but the feel of it was clean, modern and efficient. I will never doubt the impact good design has on my mind, though rationally it seems like it shouldn’t if the utility is the same, all things being equal, but I’m telling you, design matters and that house in Tampa made me miserable, while mid-century modern brings me peace. I can’t explain it. On the way to the house on the island, I saw three green parrots. They were beautiful, exotic, gorgeous. So much nicer, more pleasant than crows, a breath of fresh air.

I thought I was crazy though being chased out of my house by crows, and I literally went to a shrink, fully expecting her to tell me I was delusional, crazy, here is some medication. But when I explained the crows, and then the three exquisite parrots at the beach house, a medical doctor told me, “Sometimes the universe just tells you what do do.”

I’d also met a woman in AA that I really liked. She was bright, beautiful, and seemed to enjoy my company, though our philosophies were different, they were also vastly similar. She was a Jungian, she was sober, and we both had a deep respect for Alcoholics Anonymous, and both had been grateful beyond measure for sobriety. She had a daughter, and she was not easily won over, but I did think a nice house at the beach couldn’t hurt. The AA meetings at Saint Pete Beach had been another strong pull, not to mention the beautiful girl at the meetings, but the fact that AA had effectively closed in Tampa and remained opened in Saint Pete Beach was impactful as well. I moved, and moving to be close to Audrey was certainly a factor.

I would later learn she lived 45 minutes from that Blind Pass clubhouse, in Largo, but due diligence and planning has never been my strong suite, I’m much more ready fire aim, execute execute execute. She’s a planner, and that’s good for me. It didn’t happen over night, but we are married now, and we are one court case away from adopting my daughter, as I write here in April 2026.

So I moved to the beach in August of 2020, I closed on the house. I feed those parrots still, and sometimes they follow me around my little island. It’s magical. There is much more to tell, the court case has been intense, the absent biological father, a chronic heroin, crack user who stole from Audrey and abused her emotionally, verbally and has paid nothing in support since our daughters birth decided to fight us tooth and nail, and we’ve been in a lengthy court battle that can be its own book. Their defense is that he’s “sober” while being on Kratom, an opiate, and a travesty of justice and good common sense that it is legal in gas stations, while most of the country has never heard of it, a responsible adult capable of fathering it does not make one. That it keeps him off the needle is not what we would consider sober, and we are praying the court sees it this way as well. \

I look back on 2020 and the crows, and not unlike my brushes with darkness in the past, it all led me back to the light. Darkness is God’s double agent, eventually we all come home.

There is a romantic notion to me, that my father pushed through the veil of death and the beyond, guiding me to music, nudging me along to Saint Pete Beach, allowing the universe to whisper in my ear, this place is not for you, but there is a place you’ll love and that has been my experience.

We say in Alcoholics Anonymous that you’ll be rocketed to a 4th dimension. That finding God’s will is the proper alignment of ones own will, and that it will become easier and easier to discern. Life is either magical, and filled with God’s miracles or it is not, God is either everything or he is nothing.

He is everything, my sobriety is everything. Love is everything, and God is love. I feel it walking my puppy, daughter and wife around this island, and I feel it speaking in meetings. And just like guitar in 2020, I’ve felt it in learning to vibe code books4free.com.

I sell AI in the Contech space, and I’ve learned much in the year, to the day, I’ve been with this silicon valley start-up. Two Stanford PhDs, some of the smartest men on the planet, hired this ex drug addict, alcoholic, in and out of juvenile and jail, to represent their masterpiece software, that uses AI to process construction POs, Invoices and Packing Slips. While there, in the process of learning their software I’ve learned to vibe code, and as a result I’ve built books4free.com for the 3rd or 4th time, but this time all myself, with the help of AI.

It’s amazing, I’m obsessed and passionate about it. I hope you’ll come along for the ride! I’ll write more later but wanted to just update the world. Thanks for reading, more to come.

JB Smith
Founder
Books4free.com

Post Interferon – Post Celexa – Take 2 with Lamictal (Lamotrigine)

Posted: July 8, 2012 in Uncategorized
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Man oh man how nice it was when Celexa worked for so long in keeping the Post Interferon headaches at bay. And how disheartening when it simply stopped working about 5 months into treatment. So with my Doctors counsel I tried to first double the Celexa from 20 mg to 40 mg only to have my headaches increase in intensity almost immediately. But, since the Celexa had taken two weeks to feel somewhat positive to begin with I held on for two weeks suffering through an intense basically constant headache through the first two weeks of June, and then finally gave up on that increased dosage strategy, and went back to the 20 mg for a week, then down to 10 mg and then off for about a week, before beginning the next step in this process, to try lamictal. I had used it once a few years back and had some good luck with it however I’d stopped when laid off from my recruiting job, and losing my health insurance. The experiment of course was to try several different meds until I found one that worked, while I have the good health insurance, and before I take any major entrepreneurial risks. I just want to be fully operational, or even just find something that makes me fully functional and for a while Celexa worked, until it just didn’t. When I stopped taking the Celexa though, I was reminded of the original headaches I’d been taking it for to treat in the firstplace. I was hoping that conditions and variables had changed, or rather that my quitting drinking coffee was going to make the headaches disappear entirely and therefore make the headaches disappear, however this wasn’t the case. It was weird though, getting off Celexa, about as weird as getting on it was. I was out of sort, dizzy sometimes, and just not myself.

So Lamictal, originally suggested by my Neurologist a few years back takes about 2-3 weeks to get up to its full dosage and I’m only about 4 days into it but so far so good. First of all I didn’t have, or haven’t had any of the skin rashes they warn you about which is apparently the main reason you have to ease into it, but also I woke up with one of my headaches this morning and it was the kind that usually stays with me all freaking day, however after taking a few tylenol and going to the gym it was gone, and I’ve felt pretty good all day.

I am hopefully for Lamictal , but if it doesn’t work I’ll just try for six months like I did Celexa, then try something else. In the long run, I’ve now quit smoking cigarettes, and a full month off caffeine trying to get rid of headaches and there must be light at the end of the tunnel. The Celexa was good for a while, but it ended up just causing another kind of headache and also some seriously weird stomach issues that I was very very tired of. So maybe Lamictal will be better.

If not, theres still Lexapro and Wellbutrin to try out and if I get real desperate I guess I could even try Prozac…. I had really hoped quitting drinking coffee would do it… but hell, at least my teeth are whiter! 🙂

In other news, work is going great, even though I had to work through a massive headache in June, I have still managed to be over 120% of quota every month and therefore making some great money. I head to Cabo in a few weeks so that should be a blast and I’ll be sure to hit up some AA meetings while I’m down there. It will sort of be dangerous, I’ll be hanging with old friends who all drink and party still but I figure I’ll just go from the airport to the clubhouse that supposedly speaks English and then head to the hotel so I have an escape route at anytime. I’ll also have my cell phone at all times so shouldn’t be too tough , and the place looks like a dream come true, Barcelo. I deserve it, I’ve worked hard the last few months and taken care of a lot of debts.

Maybe I’ll come up with some new book ideas, the beach always does that to me!

Jared Bryan Smith

Post Interferon Syndrome vs Celexa 20 mg – 90 days in… thereabouts…

Posted: April 14, 2012 in Uncategorized
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Lets see, that has to be about right, maybe 60 days because I guess I started taking the Celexa at the end of January and now we are rounding mid april so probably 70 days or so. The great news is that I rarely have the major stop me from functioning headaches anymore, taking the pain level from an easy 8 or 9 to a most days nothing at all and when the headaches do return it is a mild 2 or 3, not the all encompassing pain I experience full well half my days for so many years Post TX. Is it the medicine, or perhaps just the amount of time now finally getting on close to 4 years post TX, I really can’t say but I’m too scared to try and stop taking the medicine. I’m much less manic, much more focused and consistent and I’ve been outperforming at work and doing well. Save a couple of emails from disgruntled cheap shot customers, lol, in one I called my VP of Sales the price Nazi and since he was out I could offer an incredible price and the stupid customer sent it to my boss, the little pain in my ass, I was called in and reprimanded. Since when is Nazi a bad word… Oh well, who cares, life goes on.

The major downside of Celexa I’ve noticed though is that I’m not as driven and or motivated if you will. I’ve written almost nothing, nothing in the blog, books, barely anything in my own personal journal. I do my job well enough, even put in the extra hours for fear of being laid off yet again in this fickle economy, but as far as extra curricular, the gym, the blog, the meetings, I have been barely getting by.. And the meetings. the thing that has literally held me together the last five years, well I will be honest, on Celexa, while I still go, I don’t really feel like I get as much out of the meetings as I used to, don’t feel as compelled to share, and don’t leave with the sense of accomplishment and well being that I used to… now it’s just a blah feeling… but no headaches. Hard to weigh the pros and cons. I mean I’m not going to stop taking Celexa, I simply can’t. But there is a lot to be said about losing the drive to write, work out, or go to meetings and be passionate….

Also peeing. Urinating and orgasms, now take effing forever. Sometimes I’ll have to pee really bad walk in the bathroom and sit there for five minutes just waiting and waiting… weird side effect. In addition my super regularity is gone, as you could have timed the stock market on my morning movement prior to Celexa, and now, who knows, sometimes its a few days, sometimes its daily, which is strange for me.

Are those symptoms things worth the headaches being gone? Hard to say. I guess I’ll keep on keeping on, grateful that I’m cured of Hep C and alcoholism, or daily reprieve or what have you, and just be glad that something, anything was able to treat the headaches at all… for if this thing treats them one way, perhaps Lexapro, or Wellbutrin will treat them another, and I owe it to myself to explore those ways as well. Hope is better than despair I suppose, and headaches for years was starting to get a bit desperate for sure.

I’m grateful I’ve found something, but am definitely open to the possibility that something else may treat them better, and this time at least it will be nice to know I can fall back on the Celexa, should the headaches return. Also I may as well use whats working for a while at least, or hell for economic reasons at least wait until Lexapro has a generic.

– Jared Bryan Smith

My fasting experiment…

Posted: January 10, 2012 in Uncategorized
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Well I only lasted 32 hours, but I mean the results were tangible. I became hungry. haha… no I was definitely amazed by the clarity of my prayers, by the meaning and depth of reading scripture and there was a lot to be said for fasting overall. I still am skeptical of Free Chapel though to be quite perfectly honest.

I went there yesterday to pray prior to going down to do some step work with a sponsee at the 1 pm and low and behold there were, I’d say, about 20 people there already kneeling and praying at the front of the church. However I couldn’t help but notice the feeling of the whole place just being a big TV set. There was no cross, no alter, no stain glass windows, just a huge stage. Then to my left I heard some of those folks talking in tongues. I pretty much decided to end my fast and eat a cheeseburger right then and there. It was weird, and there was no church leadership, or even anything remotely christian about the praying…. I guess I’m just a little too skeptical still.

All that skepticism aside, I can’t argue that the Bible mentions praying and fasting quite a bit, more than I’d ever acknowledged before in my life and I’m glad to have brought it to my spiritual tool kit. I noticed in my meditation Sunday night after I was able to stay a lot more focused than usual… but then again I hadn’t really meditated in a long time anyway. Still, it put things into perspective.

I was able to recall just how powerful the feelings from last year were, and though similar, how far a cry this new woman was, and how both were but a taste of what is to come. Clearly I am not ready to receive the love God has in store for me at this moment but that doesn’t mean I won’t be one day in the future. Just that last year wasn’t right, and and this girl wasn’t the right one either, to be ok with that, to be patient, and that really I should have never let someone quite so sick get quite so close to begin with. One more set of lies I can no longer trust in myself I suppose, that I can date an active alcoholic because I won’t be stupid enough to develop feelings for her… nix that theory. I am just that stupid and more. No, I can’t fix people is part of the lesson. So don’t try and date or make love to projects that need fixing. I have enough fixing of my own to deal with, I need not take on any more challenges.

But after mediating, and praying yesterday, that hole in my heart was literally gone. So I guess a couple of lessons learned, calling the ball earlier reduces the pain, or the length of the pain, and also, fasting and praying is a great way to sharpen your connection to your higher power at any time. It filled the God sized hole right up in just over a 24 hour time frame. Reminding me of how human and delicate and savage I really am, and how much I really do need God.

Our program of AA is a spiritual program of action and that is one of the things I really enjoyed about fasting, is that it was an action event. Unlike so much else in the Bible, and outside of our 12 steps, it is something we can do, take action towards, and immediately begin reaping the benefits, feeling the results. if ever I begin to doubt God again I know I can use this tool, not eating, to immediately begin to feel his presence and force my hand to begin communicating. It reminds me of that saying, if you feel God is no longer in your presence, “Who do you think moved?” By fasting I get back to God, and I mean in a hurry. I must have prayed two dozen times, on my knees in that 30 hour period and my mind was crystal clear.

Regardless of my skeptical nature, I truly can not argue that Fasting has added an arrow to my quiver that I won’t soon forget.

I am grateful that pain of loss left me, grateful I start a new job next week, and grateful that joy and happiness are in my heart. I wish that girl the best, and I will remain her friend if she should call upon me, but I will not allow myself to get sucked back into an alcoholic sick situation. I will stay sober, and hopefully one day she’ll want sobriety based on my example. I wrote multiple letters I can’t send promoting AA and our way of life, but upon talking to my sponsor, which I already damn well knew, that is not how we operate. We are a program of attraction not promotion, so we’ll just have to wait by the sidelines, and move on, if it were right omnipotent God would make it so. As I’ve said before “If it’s right nothing in the world you do can prevent it from happening and if it’s wrong, nothing in the world can force it.” It is what it is, and I’m just grateful I can accept that more easily 5 years in than I could when I first got sober.

Jared Bryan Smith

“Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours.” – Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis

Posted: November 10, 2011 in Uncategorized
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This quote reminded me of something today. Reminds me that I didn’t get sober to settle. That I don’t care about money, the way my father and mother pined over it, broke their backs for it, sweated it out, and died for it. I would rather work more hours, in a physically demanding job, alone, than ever go back to that state of being where I valued status or ego, or place in society more than my own peace of mind. I’ll not settle for the lesser state of mind from which I came. Sobriety is incredible. I would rather be sober and homeless, broke, riding on the bus, than care about what kind of car I drive, or what kind of job I have, or what people think of me. I have given it all away, more than once, and I’ve gotten it all back in sobriety, and that which hasn’t returned, I did not want.

I was great at sales, when I lied and manipulated a lot. But I was not happy.

If my sales career comes back to me on my terms, than so be it, but for the time being I will be content to take a less stressful job, and simply replace that energy, effort and worry I would be devoting to my career in the practice of writing. The autobiography needs to be cut down, edited, commercialized before marketed to paperback, but the format of Books4free.com works well, and now I just need to really find a vein of content where I can sink my voice, and spend some time devoted to a story that spans centuries… or maybe just multiple complex characters. God knows I’ve known a few.

I’ll return to the editing of the Hippopotamus Sea when I have some more time and money, but for now I think I’m going to begin just by practicing writing some short stories. They may not be great. They may only be rough drafts and I may even mix up character names or use them to line my kittens litter box, but I figure I may as well write them in the this blog as I  can hide and unhide them as necessary, or even go back and edit them. I’m not sure how the copyrights work on a blog, but hopefully, I’ll just prove I have enough content that I’m worth hiring over time, haha… But the basic premise and idea is that I write a few short stories per genre and see what I enjoy writing the most.

War Stories

Sci Fi

Horror (including but not limited to Vampires and Zombies)

Romance (though cynicism may reign in this topic)

Job Interview 2011

Sales Job 2011

Modern Church Experience

Divorce w a Child

Hunting & Fishing Stories

More or less this is to practice and exercise writing in a public setting… I figure if I just start with something, some sort of goal oriented project, I’ll accomplish more than just randomly writing cartoons that are hit or miss. This way, I’ll at least be working on my overall body of work. And I can feel better about my career in sales going to the sidelines for a while, as it’s made me so terribly unhappy in my sobriety. In my drinking and drugging it was always the means to an end, but soberly, I just feel like to much of a fake always trying to smooze, manipulate, make friends with people for the purpose of selling. I’d rather do an honest days hard labor and be able to write than to sell… Maybe one day I’ll be able to do both, but for right now, just really putting my heart and soul into cultivating my writing seems like it makes sense. I guess we shall see. haha, I make plans and God laughs!

-Jared Bryan Smith

Drunks and the Meanings of Dreams or Lack There Of…

Posted: September 10, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Great week for me. For weeks I’ve been praying for God’s guidance and direction in my job search, and I’d basically felt like I’d been beating my head against a brick wall for a few weeks, with dead ends, holding patterns, lost opportunities, and the oh so escapism fantasy I constantly return to… Afghanistan. Well one night this week, I don’t remember which now, I prayed intently, and slept well that evening and dreamed vividly for what seemed like the entire evening. The first dream, wasn’t the most profound to me, but it did have significance in that I dreamed i was about to take a drink and even in the dream decided, “Wait, it’s not the beer or the buzz, it’s that fucking obsession in the morning. So if you’re doing this to feel good, well in the morning that obsession back on, you’ll feel ten times worse, so your argument is pointless.” I heard that even in my dream and wasn’t able to drink even in my subconscious, or more miraculously didn’t want to drink, even in my dream. The next one I remembered was of a bunch of us middleschoolers from Crabapple Middle tearing it up on the football field at the Roswell Rec. I was quarterback and we were playing on the whole field, and Jay Houze was running down the field, and Steve Rose was trying to tackle me counting the Mississippi’s and low and behold I just decided to run for it and juked Stevie, ran the whole 100 yard outmaneuvered a few more and bam was in the end zone! In my dream I was barely panting, but hell even at 13 that run would have hurt.

So I was left the next morning to ponder the meaning of the dreams and as any alcoholic over analyzer will do, I thought and thought and thought about these and basically came up with what I am now using as guidance. You see I loved playing football growing up, absolutely loved getting bloody and running all over the place getting cut up and especially when after a long battle the occasional win. Unfortunately when I finally talked my mom into playing football at the Rec I absolutely fucking hated it. The dream, the romance and the reality just didn’t line up. The hours were hell, the pads were claustrophobic and the heat was just unbearable, and I remember wishing it would just all be over out there. I was the runt of the entire team, which didn’t matter as much in Stevie’s front yard, but when I was lined up against big ass Chad Crane, and we both knew I was going to get decked over and over and over again, helmet to helmet headaches no matter what moves or magic or even prayers, it just took all the romance right the fuck out of the game for me. Lol, I remember him knocking my ass over one time and I was just like, fuck this, I quit, and knew I’d never play football in pads again. The more I think about the Army the more I think that’s probably what I would end up like. Miserable. The romance of hunting Taliban in Afghanistan, just doesn’t match the reality of wearing Kevlar, and ten tons of equipment, a big ole oversized everything cause I’m all of 5’6″ and carrying around a big ole, hot metal gun in the 120 degree desert heat. Shit, an hour of that and I’d probably be shooting at donkeys, thinking they were Taliban. I’d probably trip over my own boots and blow my big toe off and have to write the stupidest combat blog ever known to man, lol. I have nothing but mad respect for our Armed Forces, I just think my romantic notion of what it will be like, and what its really like is probably way the fuck off.

The other thing I thought of was all the jobs I’ve lost over the past 3 years and how much better off I’d been if I’d just kept my damn company with all the contracts I had with Time Warner, Home Depot, Cox, I mean over 20 or so major accounts in the Atlanta area, and I thought I’d be better off working for other folks for a bit, when perhaps I really was better off running my own show the whole time. The fact that I choose not to throw to Jay, but instead ran the 100 yards, maybe means I’m ready to start my company back up, this time sober, from start to goal achievement. Sure we’re all worried about the potential government defaults and European credit crises, yes yes I see the trash piling up in the streets in Italy due to austerity measures and certainly I’m aware this is an unprecedented time in our history, but here I am third time in 3 years laid off, while giving it my best shot, and when I folded up shop, it was only for greener pastures. So with all that in mind, I come to find out that I actually made a placement at my former employer, which would coincidentally give me the ample funds to start my company back up.

This time though, in the recruiting world, instead of going with the name SeekAndEmploy, which was awesome mind you, albeit a bit juvenile, I think I’ll go a little more professional this go around with a name in mind i’ve kicked around for a bit.

It’s good to have options I suppose.

It’s also good to have savings while you consider ones options.

Both of which wouldn’t be a reality if I were still drinking. God is good, and there is a reason for all things under the sun, I need only listen and God’s guidance will point me in the direction I need to go. The difficulty usually lies in doing the right thing, right now as a friend would say. We shall see, but a much better end to the week than beginning.

-Jared Bryan Smith

Speaker Meeting – Alpharetta Group, Labour Day Weekend 2011

Posted: September 6, 2011 in Uncategorized
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It was an honor to be asked by Troy to speak at the Alpharetta Group and I accepted months ago and simply forgot that he’d even asked. When I spoke to him a couple of days ago I thought for sure it would be a breeze, no worries. But when I got there , a few small adjustments made a huge difference. The biggest thing was that it’s done at a freakin podium. I’d never done that before. I’ve always shared my story at 8111, well over the course of the last 4.5 years anyway, sitting down, relaxed, usually with someone even sitting next to you so you’re not entirely swamped with attention. But I’ve for damn sure never done it, standing at a podium the whole time, and when I saw that set up, man I have to admit it was a bit nerve-wracking.

The maelstrom of emotions was only added to when I saw the sponsor of a friend who hasn’t spoken to me in many moons, and as she sat down and looked over at me, I wondered what had happened. Again. She left moments afterwards, leaving me to create a myriad of reasons why, and wondering if I did owe another round of amends and to whom exactly. Who knows.

So the show must go on and I actually think I told my story better than I have at any other time in the past. I almost choked up twice, as always when I tell about my Dad killing himself, and then again when I talk about stealing my moms opiates, I don’t seem to be bulletproof to talking about those things as of yet, but it’s all good, I almost cried again when I talked about being finally relieved of the burden to drink and drug and what a miracle it really is. All in all it was one of my best stories ever.

I’m still on the job  hunt, still considering the Army, even though flight is totally out due to the heart murmur. I wish I knew if Infantry was still an option considering the Hep C, as someone mentioned to me they wouldn’t allow you on the frontlines, in case your bones might become Hep C infected shrapnel, but that seems pretty far-fetched. I guess there is only one way to find out.

Most people think I’m crazy to be 33 and considering the Army, but I run across men who understand. Talked to Allen last night, who was the first guy I’d spoken to about Hep C early on and who I’d thought was saying the phrase Hippopotamus Sea, and he’s in his sixties, selling cars now a days. Working 6 days a week 12 hour days, and he told me if he was young enough he would join the Army for sure. 20 years and you can retire. Full benefits, college paid for, health insurance. There is very little security in ANY industry out there, from cars to telecom, to technology, all the safe havens of careers are being shredded, and even the post office is looking at closing. And they haven’t even begun addressing budget issues. Of course, the military isn’t safe either, they could easily change the terms of pay at any given moment, but still, there is a relative safety and job security there…if you live. And furthermore, as a writer it would give me the details, experience, and depth of a real witness to history. I’ve been told I have a voice, and being positioned somewhere to really experience history, could give me the chance to really write and be heard. Of course going to war isn’t a prerequisite for a writer, but I guess it never hurts. Well so long as you survive that is.

It’s a lot to consider, and maybe even just purely romantic. They may say, you’re too damn old, with too many injuries. Guess I’ll have to fill out the paperwork to find out.

Laid Off… That sounds so much better than it really is.

Posted: August 19, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Getting laid, or jerking off, now that sounds at least moderately enjoyable… but being laid off, just blows. In sobriety I’ve now been laid off three times in less than 3 years. This never happened to me when I was out there drinking and drugging. Now mind you there are some details I’m leaving out. Sure, sure, I was told I am actually free to continue to work, but commission only. I don’t think my car payment or ex wife will accept such terms however, and therefore I’ve been looking for work all week long. I’m fortunate in that I do have a good solid ten years of recruiting experience under my belt and I’ve had a few nibbles.

I tell you also, the romantic notion of becoming a soldier continues to haunt my conscience. I have always romanticized the horrors of war. I have studied history, read dozens of books, and know academically how horrendous, monotonous, boring and terrifying war can be. I know the stats of double and triple amputees coming out of Afghanistan, especially those of Infantry, where I imagine myself going, and I know that this time last year we’d seen an increase of IED’s up to about 1000 and that this year that number is already at 1800 or almost double. It also seems they have something more potent taking helicopters out of the sky though nobody is about to admit that publicly. I know all these facts like the back of my hand, and yet I can’t escape the notion that I would love to serve, and to fight. I would love to fly helicopters into battle ultimately.

My record is such, bar fights and dui’s etc, that I don’t qualify for Security Clearance to be a medic or a pilot though, so the recruiter tells me I need a good year of good behavior to earn security clearance and then apply for Helicopter Pilot School. And my brain tells me no, but heart tells me yes. I pray for guidance, and I hear no voices, but when I think of the adventure while sitting in church, it’s like  thinking of the woman who slipped away, my heart pounds, adrenaline flows and chills radiate out from my spine through my bloodstream. I love the idea of it all. The journey.

Andrew Jackson once said “I was born in a storm, and a calm does not suit me.”

I know how he feels. I’m having a hard time getting motivated by mere corporate survival and sales goals as of late. Though I know the math is terrible, the odds dismal my age a huge obstacle, I can’t stop thinking I might be happier if I just followed my heart every once in a while instead of listening to my fact filled brain. I will continue to pray about I suppose.

I go back to Hemingway at war, and though I know I’m no Hemingway, you just can’t deny it would give a powerful subject to a voice I now have a lot of faith in. Also with 5k friends under my real name and about 2k friends under Jared Bryan Smith on facebook I could blog and post videos and picture from the war zone that would be mind blowing. Again, food for thought, just some of the things a grandiose alcoholic considers when his career gets sidelined yet again. We shall see.

-Jared Bryan Smith

 

Crazy weird dreams last night…

Posted: August 6, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Then I wake up to the second time in a week where I’ve had an email in my inbox stating “We need to chat.” So last time it turned out to be a very positive thing for the marketing company I work for but this  one was regarding the book, and damn it if I don’t get nervous as hell when someone leaves something like that. Just seems so ominous. “We need to chat” Sounds like a woman getting ready to give you bad news or something, which i why I haven’t had a woman all year, I’m tired of bad news, haha..

Man those dreams were kicking too. After a very long week, I decided not to do anything at all Friday  night but just relax at home and I ended up falling asleep around 11 or so. Had several days in a row of good workouts, I really can’t under emphasize the importance of exercise in sobriety. I’ve noticed I  even began getting depressed if I don’t work out over a few days in a row. The human body was meant to exercise, for 50k years or whatever we had to to eat, and only in the past 100 or so has man been able to provide a living and be stationary, never moving a muscle. Our brain chemistry requires those endorphins in the blood, and I only wish I’d begun adding exercise to my sobriety earlier, because damn if it doesn’t make me much more happier overall… but I digress, so yeah, I crashed hard and slept deep and came up with some very strange dreams.

In my dreams my baby sister, invited me to one of her hot 24 year old friends engagement party or something, and I showed up a little too early. I am not that great at new social situations and I found myself self conscious that my pants were too loose and that someone would see my ass crack. So I drifted away from the party into a laundry room, and in the room, there were several items of clothing scattered around the room, and one of them was a slim narrow chicks belt. That wasn’t going to work, but then I saw some shoe laces. I knelt down to get the shoelaces and in that instant, the pretty 24 year old blonde who was to be married, slid into the room. I stood up surprised and embaressed and in another split second another person came in, this was a guy though, of medium frame, with intelligent frantic looking eyes. Cool and collected he seemed, but egotistical with an aire of superiority, no amount of humility could shake from him. He began mocking the girl who was in tears, and she kept saying, you have to leave , you have to go, and he mocked and taunted her, called her stupid, said he was going that he just wanted to come by and say goodbye. So I stepped up closer, and suddenly as only happens in dreams the shoelaces had become a wire coil, like that you would expect to see exiting a washer/dryer or over, and I was stripping it down, listening to the two of theirs drama. They seemed not to notice me after all, I really did not know either of them very well, but had a loyalty to the girl since it was my sisters friend. I began to tense, if things did get ugly, I knew I could take this guy, but I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. God knows I didn’t need any charges 4.5 years sober. He was blackmailing her, he was threatening to make a scene if she didn’t let him stay, and instead of being forceful the poor girl was begging and pleading, she was in love, but she didn’t want her new beau to know about her damaged psycho ex past. He was smiling, threatening her, causing her pain, and she was in tears. I was unraveling the coil that I had originally picked up as shoelaces, which made me think of juvenile prison, where they took your laces to prevent suicide. I had removed several layers of wires by now and I had the core to make a belt, but now I also had a canister of air, seemingly a by product of disentangling the wires, and damn if it didn’t look just like an incideniary grenade suddenly. As their arguing reached a crescendo, I pulled the pin, and they both stopped to look at me, while we waited for the detonation. I dropped it in the middle of us, and the guy walked outside of the room we were in, a smug superior smirk on his face. He began walking up to the crowd of people near the center of the house, making exagarrated movements, trying to draw attention to himself and thus emberass the girl. I looked at the girl in tears, worry etched all over her face. I kicked the dud of a grenade to the side, and I went to go talk to the guy, ask him to leave, escort him to the door. He was now messing with a baby in a carriage, in my dream, literally stealing baby from a candy. And then I thought, wait a minute, who gave candy to that baby anyway. Baby’s can’t eat candy, and right when I put my arm on the guys arm to walk him out, I woke up. I have an overactive imagination.

Then I go to my computer and I have a message from a publisher that says “Jared, we need to chat.” It’s gonna be a long day, especially since he’s in a different time zone. Grrrr.

-Jared Bryan Smith

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” Mahatma Gandhi

Posted: June 29, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Woke up feeling refreshed and recharged, better than I have in several days. Probably because I worked out a small feud with someone whom I really never had anything against to begin with, but whom I did repeat a nasty rumor I’d heard, thus inciting a grudge that lasted way longer than it should have, and had farther reaching ramifications than I could have ever imagined. We made amends to each other and damn if I don’t feel 10 times better for it for my part.

Reminded me of a christian value that I wish I had followed earlier, because it really did bring an instant peace and calm into my life as soon as we were done talking.

Matthew 18:15 “Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.”

Pretty moving stuff… and just a few sentences later:

Matthew 18:19 “I tell you that if two of you on Earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in Heaven. for where two or three come together in my name, there I am with them.”

Well that parable to me, sums up the magic of an AA meeting perfectly. For years I would try to get sober all by myself and never get more than 2 weeks, tops, and then my very first half ass try into AA, where two or more people are trying to accomplish the same goal, and lo and behold I was able to stay sober for a month… and that was without getting a sponsor or working any steps… The forgiveness thing, for me anyway, is more in the Masters / Phd realm of AA, as my anger, once up is really hard to get back down… but I don’t have to think my way into right action, I have to act my way into right thinking, and the act of forgiveness, humility and an open conversation with my brother in sobriety, brought about the forgiveness I wouldn’t have thought possible.

And even if you must discount the religious mumbo jumbo, I found science to back the claims as well, the positive affects of forgiveness transcend even religion, and stab deep into the heart of science as well.

“Dr. Robert Enright from the University of Wisconsin–Madison founded the International Forgiveness Institute and is considered the initiator of forgiveness studies. He developed a 20-Step Process Model of Forgiveness.[4] Recent work has focused on what kind of person is more likely to be forgiving. A longitudinal study showed that people who were generally more neurotic, angry and hostile in life were less likely to forgive another person even after a long time had passed. Specifically, these people were more likely to still avoid their transgressor and want to enact revenge upon them two and a half years after the transgression.[5]

Studies show that people who forgive are happier and healthier than those who hold resentments.[6] The first study to look at how forgiveness improves physical health discovered that when people think about forgiving an offender it leads to improved functioning in their cardiovascular and nervous systems.[7] Another study at the University of Wisconsin found the more forgiving people were, the less they suffered from a wide range of illnesses. The less forgiving people reported a greater number of health problems.” 

I am glad it is behind me, once and for all, I truly wish my brother in arms, traveler on Earth with the same disease of addiction as me, the best sobriety has to offer.

Jared Bryan Smith

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