Dear reader, 

On Saturday I celebrated 5555 days without a drink, a miracle and a gift in my journey of sobriety. May 17 marked fifteen years where I got a coin and I congratulated myself and made a pretty big deal out of the fact that I’ve somehow managed to stay alive.

Along the way I like to track these angel number in between days. 3000 days, 3333 days, 4000 days, 4444 days, 5000 days, and now 5555 days.

I spent some time reading about the number five, how it demands curiosity, adventure, a changing of the tides. I feel this right now. Not in the exciting way I maybe would have expected, but in this way that demands I hold things loosely.

The looser I hold the grip on my life, the house I own, my beautiful relationship with my girlfriend, parenting June, the less fear I have in losing it all.

One of the great privileges of my sobriety is that I have remained self employed as an artist and teacher. And yet sometimes I long to be on someone else’s schedule, provided benefits, paid time off, insurance. These 5555 days show me that anything is possible, as long as I do it one day at a time. Today is day 5557, I like this number too. Because this number is today, and today is all I have.

Perhaps there is an in between, self directed but in collaboration with others.

Change feels amplified under the five, it feels big when in fact it might be a subtle shift. Every small movement feels like a new direction, a right turn where there should be a left turn or a roundabout.

I sense upcoming opportunities, doors opening, possibilities becoming endless. There is a hope returning that I didn’t see before. It isn’t all the way clear to me now, but the curtains are parting and the solution is making itself known.

The struggle with alcohol abuse and alcoholism didn’t end when I put down my last drink. It continues to float through everything I do, sometimes quietly and sometimes loudly. I greet it with a reverence and a gratitude for all it teaches me.

In these times of unknowing I come to my journal, I come to the page, I come to the blank space to see what wants to emerge. Lately I’ve been wondering if something wants to come through about not drinking and staying sober in long form writing. It’s something I am asked about a lot and have mostly kept it to my newsletter. What book or zine wants to be written about this journey? This is a question I am asking.

I don’t like to be prescriptive with my methods of not picking up, but I do know a thing or two. In the meantime I’ll let my morning pages do the work of the heavy lifting, parsing through the ideas and the scope of work.

So many of you have been reading and sharing your own stories of sobriety and hope since I was celebrating those first few years. Thank you for bringing witness to my story. Thank you to those of you who have also stayed sober. And for anyone still figuring it out, I see you. Just for today.

→ Pre-Order Cass Eddington’s new book of poetry The Fold from Beautiful Days Press

→ My next online class is August 22 + 23 and you can join the waitlist here for Ways of Knowing : A journaling class on creativity and visioning

→ The Trans Unity Quilt - from The Good Law Project

→ Fonograf Editions 2026 Open Genre Book Prize Contest

→ High Desert Test Sites Open Call for Spring 2027 Work Trade

→ Just Beautiful : A call for entries Glen Arbor Arts Center (apply through November 5)

→ Another new Radiator Hospital song

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