Today I was grateful for an easy day at work. My work volume was low due to the coming holiday. I got to finish a project that I had been working on for some time.

At noon I got to go to my meeting. The topic was tradition 8 again. We went through this tradition two weeks ago and then they got mixed up and went through it again. Today we were on the last page. There were some new people at our meeting and one of them was chairing. The meeting was late getting started when I got there and got off to an awkward start as they weren't sure what page we were on. I sat down and was the first to read.

I didn't have much time to think about the topic but thankfully I had some previous stuff to rehash from the previous weeks. I wasn't to pleased with the job I was doing but I was blessed with some thoughts that connected to my early sobriety and went off in a tagent but then came back to the tradition and sobriety and emotional sobriety at the group and personal level.

A lady with 36 years kindly shared that she couldn't hear what I said. A newcomer shared that he related to the parts where I went off topic.

In the afternoon I got to play table tennis twice. The matches were epic struggles in which my opponet and I took our skills to beyond the extent of what each of us thought we were capable of. In the end however, I lost both matches.

This is not a big deal, it is just a game. However, I realized on my way home again that I was experiencing an emotional let down and this was creeping into my other thoughts. As meaningless as the game was, I still had to pray to God to reform this. I gained immediate perspective and it left me.

This evening I chopped some wood from my woodpile and made a fire in the fireplace. I had the kids practice sitting for church and being quite. At one point my daughter was being defiant and I angrily swatted her. I felt an obligation to repent and I prayed and asked the Lord for guidance. My daughter behaved the rest of the night and I didn't get any feeling that I didn't do the right thing.

Later we watched Mother Angelica and I read a story with the kids.

We said our prayers together before bed and my daughter spoke her prayers next to me very consistently. She sounded like a little angel.

Thanks be to God for a great day.