"i am dissatisfied, and i want it to be your fault" - sonny boy williamson

procrastinating & continuing to fail are much easier when i can blame you. if you -- or my job/lack of, or where i live/don't live, or anything external -- are not my problem,  i'm forced to look at myself. crap! i don't want to look at myself! -- not my faults & defects, that is... dorking around online, presenting a cultivated image of me on social networking sites, presenting a persona when in public, that's different; i like all that cause no one -- including me -- gets near the real me that way. if you really knew me, you'd reject me, goes my thinking -- & if i have frustration, anger, upset, if i don't succeed or accomplish what i'm supposed to, it is your fault, not mine! do i want to admit deep-down i might be the cause of my own problems -- that i'm scared, angry, lonely, selfish, jealous, depressed, worried about failure & mortality, that i can't control what you do or think, that i'm filled up w/deadly sins? no way!
it takes a lot of courage, i think, to drop the rock & admit powerlessness, to admit defeat, surrender to a force much wiser & greater than i am, then have to find the humility to admit my defects so i can start to be  free of them... only then can i start taking responsibility for myself & learn to grow up. that's what i think, anyways, of people i know who give up & embrace a new, positive life of recovery from whatever is replacing god -- obsession w/others, drink, drugs, eating disorder, video games, violence, whatever external that's giving me that temporary feeling of being ok, even transcended. one definition i read of surrender is "to give up & go to the winning side." i add to that, i must drop my weapons. (no, i've never been to war, & i've not even held a firearm in probably 25 years, but i can understand that analogy well enough, i think...)
i'm no frigging saint at all when it comes to emotional surrender, but i know i'm gonna keep trying. the big book says my very life depends on my constant thought of others, how to best meet their needs -- i believe this assumes i've already worked the steps, been shed of judgment & resentment & excuses, & therefore am fit to be of service. it also says my serenity is directly proportionate to my acceptance of the world AS IT IS.
if i can't accept you just the way you are, not only am i not loving & growing, i'm living in fantasy land, ripe to fall back into the rotten world of illusion, pipe dream, &, for me, failure. 
at a recent meeting, a woman shared that she was complaining about something or other & her sponsor said, let me see your hands. the woman showed them. sponsor said, i don't see any nail holes.
"there are no victims -- only volunteers."
(i wrote this for me & for you, whomever you are reading it. may it be helpful!)