An extensive Tenth Step inventory might focus on one particular character defect, behavior pattern, or area of life. ~ Overeaters Anonymous. The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous, Second Edition. Overeaters Anonymous, Inc. Kindle Edition.

If you’ve read Recovery Daily Dose a while
you’re read the definition of procrastination
as chronic low-intensity fear. My scan
found ten times in the past. That it’s the title
chosen today indicates it remains a burr
under my saddle. So, is the reading today
prescient, did the next selection quit instructing
and start meddling? Maybe, but I think
of a wise old lawyer I knew. He would sit
in a Texas courtroom and with the Bronx boyhood
embedded in his speech say, of defendants
charged with fleeing to elude say,
“But they’re CRIMINALS, that’s their JOOOB!”
And I read Recovery literature for that reason.
“It should meddle. That’s why I’m reading it.”
My character defect of the day is procrastination.
Naming it as fear is enlightening but solves nothing
if I continue to ignore things I promised to do months ago.
So, to begin this during morning readings
only to return near bedtime then to escape to
stupid computer games, a vice appearing
in these poems a precious eight times,
is to gain nothing from the process.
I’ve identified two character defects,
or behavior patterns to be addressed.
What benefit has procrastination given me?
It keeps me from feeling incompetent, inadequate.
What benefit have computer games given me?
In moderation, they are a diversion
allowing ideas to develop in the background.
I’m ready to be a mature adult
and to have them removed.
They have reached the point they
My Creator, I am now willing
that You should have all of me,
good and bad. I pray
that You now remove from me
every single defect of character
which stands in the way of my usefulness
to You and my fellows.
Grant me strength,
as I go out from here,
to do Your bidding.
Another reading today
reassured me I’m moving
in the right direction:

My sense of failure is a sure sign that I am growing in the new life. It is only struggle that hurts. In sloth—physical, mental, or spiritual—there is no sense of failure or discomfort. ~ Anonymous. Twenty Four Hours A Day: Meditations (p. 36). Hazelden Publishing. Kindle Edition.