Change of pace

I know it has been a couple of weeks since I updated this here blog, and I can assure you there have been reasons. Some of them have been "good" reasons, and some of them have been simply reasons.

My work has been much more hectic over the last two weeks, which wasn't unexpected, but even with preparation, the huge uptick in time commitments and energy expended has taken a lot out of me. This week, I have also been battling an illness (nothing too serious, but enough to put me off my schedule as well).

With the increased workload, along came old habits of procrastination and lack of focus. One thing that has been different this time around is my response. Whereas before recovery, I would have been prone to just allow those habits to take over, and ride along the waves of events to places that weren't healthy, this time, I have noticed the changes and attempted corrective action.

Sometimes this has worked, and sometimes it is still a work in progress.

One thing I am trying to do to maintain my life balance is maintain my personal time and some of the boundaries I worked on this summer. I have been somewhat successful with this. My email inbox is not on "0", but it's in single digits most days. I'm more organized than I have been, and I'm trying to maintain a sense of accomplishment with what I can get done each day.

This time hasn't featured any blinding insights to make the process easier. It has just been more grinding it out, as the saying goes. Sometimes, that's the way life goes - we have to grind it out. It's still early in this particular phase at work, so I'll see how this strategy works over the next few weeks and update as things progress.

Milestone 2

(well, this post was supposed to self-publish 7 days ago! ha! I'm posting it now just for "posterity")

Today is 60 days for me. One of the things people talk about some in recovery is getting over "counting days." I admit I have been counting the days so far.

I don't begrudge anyone who doesn't want to count days. I don't think I'll be counting days forever, either.

Right now, I feel much more confident in myself than I did 30 days ago, and a LOT more confident than I did 60 days ago. But I am also keenly aware that if I don't maintain vigilance, I'll slip back into bad habits and destroy all the good things that have been happening lately.

So today, it's 60 days. I'm not going to do a celebratory end zone dance (analogy from American football), because I've only moved the ball for a few yards. But it does do one good to acknowledge that the ball is moving toward the goal instead of away from it.

Keep calm and carry on

I've been loving this slogan for the past few days, as it pertains to recovery. There's a fascinating story behind it. You can read all about it at the Wikipedia entry.

Moving beyond the "britishness" of the phrase, it seems to carry a certain mindfulness to it in both the simplicity and the power of two short phases.

Keep calm - What does it mean to keep calm? To me, it means not getting too high or too low, whatever the circumstances. When something unexpected happens, good or bad, you don't blow it out of proportion.

I don't see this "calm" as avoiding emotions entirely, but keeping a perspective and an emotional state that is optimal for maintaining recovery. When I lose my composure, my "calm," I do stupid things, usually. Calm is the realization that emotions and circumstances are fluid things that change, and adjusts expectations accordingly.

Carry on - One thing that often happens when I lose my "calm" is I get paralyzed with fear or inaction. I literally avoid doing things that I need to do. The simplest path through that paralysis is persistence - keep on keepin' on, as the saying goes.

On the other hand, if I get too excited, I do stupid things as well, like splurge spending money or eating or worse. That is not "carrying on" either. It is an abnormal state of activity - hyper-activity, if you will.

The key thing for me, then, is to maintain steady progress forward. Carry on with the normal state while circumstances and emotions ebb and flow.

Is this easy? No. Easy is letting go of calm and doing whatever my emotional state dictates. But things worth having don't come easy. As someone wise has said, Simple doesn't mean easy.

Keep calm and carry on.