By Andrew Arthur Dawson
Today’s question is…
What is the dumbest thing you ever spent your money on that really wasn’t worth it?
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step The Twelfth Step
Do you know how much $5000 invested in Amazon stock when it first went public would be worth now? I almost shudder as I write this. $4 million dollars!!! Why do I shudder, because in 1997, when Amazon was taking its company onto the stock market for people to begin investing their money into them, I was a naïve and angry young adult who had just lost his father to suicide and who also inherited about $400,000 from him!
At the time, I wasn’t thinking at all about what stocks to invest my newly acquired money in. In fact, I wasn’t thinking at all when it came to that money. Rather, I had a pure alcoholic and addict mentality that was thinking about all the physical things I could now buy with it, like the trips I could take, the gadgets I could own, the cars I could possess, and so on. And I went on to do that quite wastefully, like a good alcoholic and addict often does.
Now getting back to that initial public offering of Amazon stock, here’s a very sobering thought I’ve had to face lately when it comes to that inheritance I once received. If I had followed the wise council of a few financial investors in my life back then by taking $100,000 of the money left to me and placing it in Amazon, I’d now be worth over $80 million dollars!
$80 million dollars!!!!!!!!!!
It’s almost hard to fathom, especially knowing the path I took instead was one wanting to have fun with it right away, like a good alcoholic and addict. So, my life became one that was filled with gadgets that eventually became worthless, cars that long ago were either wrecked or sold for next to nothing, and plenty of memories of going places and wasting money on things that almost feel totally ridiculous now. Frankly, I spent all that money like it was never going to run out, but it did.
I know I shouldn’t do this, but I often wish I could go back in time to talk to my younger, overly addicted self, to not only give him a few stock tips that would eventually make him a millionaire, but also to tell him to get his ass into recovery and work the 12 Steps. But, there wasn’t any Higher Power in charge of my life then, but my ego was though. And ego drove me to quick and rash decisions that spend dollar after dollar after dollar of my father’s well-earned and saved money. It took me a long time to get over the shame of spending all of it on the dumbest of things in this world, but in doing so, a hard lesson was learned and one I am thankful to have learned.
That lesson? Well it’s one pretty much all of us in this world have heard before, that money can’t buy happiness. Regrettably, it took me spending all of my father’s money and most of the money my mother left me when she died years later to figure that lesson out. Most alcoholics and addicts, and maybe even people in general in this world, don’t ever get to learn this lesson though, because they constantly remain on the chase for money their entire life, never having enough to realize the truth.
Thankfully, this recovering addict did and I spent that vast majority of my parent’s money left to me to learn that not only does money not buy happiness, but that there also isn’t any person, place, or thing I need to ever chase after, that much of my addiction-fueled life once did with incredible regularity, that can ever fix any of the brokenness within me.
The only thing that can ever fix any brokenness within me is me under the guidance of the Higher Power I seek to follow, whom I choose to call God these days. While I may not be a millionaire now who invested wisely in Amazon stock when it first went public, and while I may be exactly the opposite of that now on some level financially from what I could have been if I had invested wisely from the start, I feel pretty priceless because of one thing I do have.
It isn’t what money ever brought me and it’s not something that investments ever gave me. Rather, it’s something that was only ever able to be cultivated within me once I stopped looking outside of myself in dollars and cents for the answers to all my emptiness. What makes me feel priceless is the unconditional love that is emanating from my heart more and more every day now, for both myself and others, as that is something I never had when I was an active alcoholic and addict blowing through money like it was going out of style, when Amazon was first going public…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
Silly Joke #1
A nun is sitting with her Mother Superior, chatting.
“I used some horrible language this week and feel absolutely terrible about it.”
“When did you use this awful language?” asks the elder.
“Well, I was golfing and hit an incredible drive that looked like it was going to go over 280 yards, but it struck a phone line that’s hanging over the fairway and fell straight down to the ground after going only about 100 yards.”
“Is that when you swore?”
“No, Mother,” says the nun. “After that a squirrel ran out of the bushes and grabbed my ball in its mouth and began to run away.”
“Well, is THAT when you swore then?” asks the Mother Superior again.
“Well, no.” says the nun. “You see, as the squirrel was running, an eagle came down out of the sky, grabbed the squirrel in his talons and began to fly away!”
“Ah, so THAT is when you swore?” asks the amazed elder nun.
“No, not yet. Because you see, as the eagle carried the squirrel away in its claws, it flew near the green and the squirrel dropped my ball.”
“Well that must be when you swore THEN right?” asked Mother Superior, becoming impatient.
“No, because the ball then fell on a big rock, bounced over the sand trap, rolled onto the green, and stopped about a foot from the hole!”
The two nuns were silent for a moment.
Then Mother Superior sighed and asked, “You missed the putt, didn’t you?”
Silly Joke #2
A noted sex therapist realizes that people often lie about the frequency of their encounters, so he devises a test to tell for certain how often someone has sex. To prove his theory, he fills up an auditorium with people and goes down the line, asking each person to smile. Using the size of the person’s smile, the therapist is able to guess accurately until he comes to the last man in line, who is grinning from ear to ear.
“Twice a day,” the therapist guesses, but is surprised when the man says no.
“Once a day, then?” Again the answer is no.
“Twice a week?”
“No.”
“Twice a month?”
“No.”
The man finally says yes when the doctor gets to “once a year” and continues grinning from ear to ear.
The therapist is angry now that his theory isn’t working, and asks the man, “What are you so happy about then?”
The man answers, “Because tonight’s the night man!”
Silly Joke #3 (Two quick jokes)
A guy is walking down the street with his friend. He miserably says to his friend, “I’m a complete walking economy.” His friend replies, “And how’s that?” “Well, it’s like this — my hair line is in recession, my stomach is a victim of inflation, and the combination of these factors is putting me into a deep depression.”
The doorbell rings. A man opens the door and there’s his mother-in-law on the front step.
She asks, “Can I stay here for a few days?”
The man says, “Absolutely!” And he closes the door.
Bonus Silly Joke (NSFW)
A married man decided to work late to be with his sexy secretary, so he called his wife to make up an excuse. After work he invited his secretary to dinner. It soon became obvious that he was going to get lucky, so the two went back to her apartment and had great sex for two hours. Afterward the fellow went to the bathroom to straighten up for the trip home and noticed a huge hickey on his neck. He panicked, wondering what he was going to tell his wife. After the man unlocked his front door, his dog came bounding to greet him. Aha, the man thought, and promptly fell to the carpet, pretending to fight off the affectionate animal. Holding his neck with one hand, he said, “Honey, look what the dog did to my neck!” “Heck, that’s nothing” she answered with a sarcastic grin, ripping open her blouse. “Look at these marks he left on my boobs!!!”
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson