The Clear Horizon

From oblivion of alcoholism into the light of sobriety

life

  • Personal suffering boundaries and other people‘s advice

    Sometimes things are harder to endure than in other times. My personal suffering boundaries depend a lot on overwhelming and stressful life situations and lack of motivation, that’s for sure. In different modes and moods, I tend to react differently to things that are bugging me and stressing me out up to the point of… Read more

  • Confrontation and being confronted – The Middle of Things

    I love complicated headlines. What is it about? Well, I am a social worker and in my company we work with a concept called “confrontative pedagogy”, which in the end is nothing more than confronting clients with their responsibility and their actions but also with the resources and their potential to work out solutions for… Read more

  • No alcohol doesn‘t help. But alcohol would only make it worse

    First off, let’s identify a couple of statuses (do you write it that way?) about emotional balance: #1: In times of emotional balance, or if my basic mood has a quiet tone, there is nothing that would want me to think about having a drop of alcohol. It has become an automatism not to drink… Read more

  • My rules, my routines – why Self reliance is so important in neuro divergence

    There is an issue I have been pondering on for as long as I have had been working with youths and kids, and something that I can relate to personally: Self reliance and exterior influence in combination with task and problem solving. As neurodivergent folks, we all need, even more than other folks, a structure… Read more

  • Most disturbing personal Horror

    Sometimes diving too deep into the Rabbit Hole has something in stock that’s really messing up and shaking the very foundations of my resilience systems. Not in terms of falling back into toxic habit loops or alcohol abuse, but something that keeps my psyche on its toes for longer than I would like to: Bad… Read more

  • Another word on nostalgia – why old patterns and habits in a renewed appearance is a real support

    Indulging in music of my adolescence and my early grown up years still serves a very important function. And actually Cosmic Horror, Science Fiction, RPG and all that stuff serves the same function. Why is that so? Fundamentally, the “mobile imagery” comes back into play (cf. “My life is like a Mobile“): Every choice to… Read more

  • How the death of my uncle offers a quantum of solace

    This is a pretty personal note on an incident that just happened recently: My uncle died, and although he wasn’t that close to me and my grief has its frontiers, it has a couple of implications about my own finiteness of life. First of all, I am in a current state of reevaluating and restructuring… Read more

  • Is AI making us deliberately stupid? A Word on digital dementia

    I don’t know what it particularly is, maybe a drive towards high level activating activities to boost dopamine release, but I love to dive into controversial discussions. There have been a lot of things passing through my system during times of teaching and working as a social worker, at the same time when I was… Read more

  • A cul de sac – What now?

    Keeping up the energy to get going is pretty stressful. I am now beginning to realize that it’s not simply about building up too many good habits and trying to do too many “good things” at once. I have a more fundamental problem right now, and that is something I dreaded in a long time:… Read more

  • Total freedom to exploit my mind – the pros and cons of being a pedagogue

    If people asked me what the perfect job was for me… …30 years ago: I would have said – programmer! I can indulge in nerdy stuff, be a tech-guy (following in the footsteps of my father being into technology and craftsmanship) and overcome my feelings of maths ineptitude. Result: Fail – I would have had… Read more