i don’t have angel wings hiding under my clothes. in fact, lots of days i don’t get dressed until just before my husband comes home from work. i have a messy desk. i am currently going through a phase of drinking instant coffee powdered cappuccino shit that is very pleasing for some unknown reason. i’ve spent a LOT of time thinking about sober treats while writing the sober book, and i’ve been eating like it’s an olympic sport. keeps me sober. helps me write books. all is well.
i’m not particularly special, i promise. i have a few talents – as do you. you have kids and i don’t. you have all your own teeth (i have an implant). you have talents that i don’t have, including being able to watch a movie without multi-tasking. or maybe you can sew (i’m blind enough that i can barely thread the needle and by then i’ve lost all motivation).
i’m not special. i am pretty good at being stubbornly determined to do things once i set my mind to them, even when i flail around for a long time looking like an idiot. the similarities between writing and being sober are huge. feeling lost, reaching out, asking for support, having treats, having incentives, keeping going even when you’ve lost the plot (ha. writing humour). if day by day you are sober and you move further away from day 1, it’s just like me writing a bit each day for a year and a half (fuckers) and then it’s done.
and now that it’s done, i know enough to not break the writing momentum. it’s like sober momentum. it’s hard to get. it’s not easy to step on/step off, despite what our brains may tell us. What about the vacation? wolfie says, tempting us to drink. the writing wolfie says the same thing: “you deserve some time off.” and i do deserve time off. thankfully it’s possible to vacation without alcohol (who knew). heading out tomorrow morning on the train andi’m not going to skip being sober while i’m on vacation. it’s a non-negotiable part of my life that makes everything else POSSIBLE. (oh, if you haven’t heard the one minute message called Sober Foundation, then you’re missing out. it’s episode #6 and it’s free here.) (that said, at the risk of filling this entirely with parentheticals, i haven’t recorded enough OMMs this week as i’ve been occupied with the book thing. i pray that next week is a bit more normal in terms of me slipping into my daily routine.). happy sober friday. back on tuesday.
Ugh, I fell for the vacation trick. Now my momentum is gone and I’m back at square 1– feeling like a failure.
I have read your first 30 days and it was really helpful and inspiring! Thank you!! I decided to do 365 days January 1, 2014, which I did and it was a HUGE deal for me. Then I went on vacation in January of 2015… you know the story, drank for a week and made myself ill. I then did another 365 days. I guess there’s about January because this January, going through intense stress at home, I started to drink again. One or two drinks every couple of weeks. I did this for a couple months until I ended up deciding it was ok to drink and I got drunk a few times. Recently I switched to nonalcoholic beer and that experiment failed miserably. It just reinforced my desire to drink and made me think about drinking a lot. Now I am on Day 1 of sobriety. My brain is thinking about all of the situations and events I am going to miss drinking at coming up. Enough is enough, I am getting sober and reaching out for help this time! Thank you for your blog and support!