This message was sent to subscribers by email october 16th.
day 1 stories:
“I was sober for work, but hungover for my own time.”
from me: a couple of days ago, i invited you to send me your Day 1 stories. How do you know it was time to quit? What tools do you reach for? What part of Day 1 do you never want to repeat again?
I said I’d choose 4 stories to share, and that each person chosen would get a copy of the first year of the blog collected into one big PDF file (easier than reading it online).
Here’s story #3 (of 4). If this is you, send me an email so i can send you the blog PDF 🙂
S: “I knew it was time (my ah-ah) moment after I’d been trying to moderate for about a year, and had gotten very good about not drinking on ‘work’ nights. I won’t go into the exhausting process of moderating — constant planning, conniving, and bargaining … I had worked in my garden and greenhouse all day, and had 2 beers. Two beers! That was almost the same as not drinking, right? … Next morning I woke with a raging head ache and had a big mountain bike ride planned. I went and almost died. That was it. It just didn’t make sense to me.
We give and give ourselves to our jobs. It’s the American way of life, right? When someone asks you what you do, I could say ‘I play the ukulele, I mountain bike, I walk my dog, write poems, and dance. I’m a gardener, a wife, a friend’ — but we don’t. We immediately tell people our job titles, encompassing our identity. I was finding out the hard way that drinking robbed me of my time, and time is the one thing we know for sure we will run out of. I was sober for work, but hungover for my own time? Silly. That makes no sense. Now I’m sober both on and off the clock😀”
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yesterday’s link: a small audio about feeling irritated, how to shift your thinking. comment from texassandradee: “Belle, not only are you giving the adults who face these challenges tools and support, you are helping change the next generation. We parents will start arming our children with these ‘stay here now’ techniques and hopefully will raise a mindful, sober, healthy generation of children.”
and i’ve chosen to share this, not because she says nice things, but because she is taking it upon herself to share this with kidlets. and when parents can model self-care to kids, as we’re learning to do it ourselves, that is a really big deal.
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this exit is in mandarin. but the message is clear. time to get off the booze elevator. HERE.