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.

Recovery song: Disputation

This song came out of thinking about "triggers" or whatever you want to call them - life events that put stress on me and would have given me an excuse for using.

Lyrics:


This kind of thing
would always get me started
The phone would ring
fear would grip my heart and
Then off I'd run
to hide among the bottles
Problem not solved
but I could not be bothered

CHORUS
There's something to be said for disputation
Facing up to the facts of situations
Emotions conjure up endless permutations
But I want a life and not an imitation

The walls come down
I'm feeling kind of lonely
No one around
The life a solo party
A shot right now
the night is getting started
I could go out
and come home broken-hearted

REPEAT CHORUS X 2

Encouragement Song: Family Picture

I like this song. It's upbeat and has a good message. The band is called Donna the Buffalo. Lyrics below.

The world is a wonderous puzzle
everyone a piece and every piece fits
every piece is alive making energy
energy pulls the pieces together
into a round ball
and there is love
it's a round ball
and there is love


The ball jumps the ball rolls
The ball lives in the moment I am told
The ball pumps and rolls with the flow
The ball laughs as it bounces


CHORUS
Sure as the sunrise it doesn't matter the shape of the hat
It all fits together in a family picture
and every wallÒs got room for that


Every piece is a part of the whole
No one piece more important than the rest
So stand up, take a number
Every piece here's got someplace to go
It's a round ball
and there is love
It's a round ball
and there is love
there is love


CHORUS

BRIDGE
Hey there look at you you got nothin' else to do
you got any bright ideas?
Tumbleweed rolling by
catch the dust up in your eye
saddle up the grey and ride out
CHORUS

Boundaries

One of the things that kept me in chaos over the last few years was boundaries. Specifically, I had none. Part of recovery is setting boundaries.

Over the last week or so, I've been quietly constructing some small boundaries around parts of my life. These boundaries are helpful to keep me focused on things that are important and not get sidetracked. I will give an example of one small, but important, boundary for me: email.

I get a lot of email. Lots of it is from mailing lists, etc. Well, over the last few months, I let it pile up (wonder why that happened?). About two weeks ago, I had over 1700 unread emails in my account. So I set up a goal: I would clear out 100 unread emails a day until I got things under control. 100 might sound like a lot, but, like I said, a lot are stuff I don't read, so I just delete those.

So far, I've been successful with this goal, but only because, I think, I put some boundaries around it. These are the boundaries:
I will not clear out emails except during dedicated email time during work hours.
I will not clear out emails on weekends
I will not clear out more than 100 emails a day.

Each of those small boundaries is a way for me to say "no" to something. Which is important, because saying no there means I can say "yes" to something else that is important, like free time, my music, my online friends, other stuff I need to do for work, etc.

And, by maintaining those boundaries day by day, I am building up my "boundriceps" through practice. The goal is that when a big boundary needs to be established, I will be better equipped to do so because I've been training with smaller ones.

Ultimately, our whole life is an exercise in boundary-setting. The whole world is crying out for your attention, and if you don't set boundaries, the world will take as much as you can give - and then some. I'm just now learning how to set those boundaries effectively.

(a side note: I planned to have this post finished yesterday, but wasn't able to get to it. I could have pushed to finish it, but that would have gone beyond a boundary I'd set to not overdo it. So it's finished today, and I don't feel overwhelmed)

Housekeeping: Video gadget

If you look at the top of the page, there's now a video gadget with my video channel on YouTube. There are now 5 songs in the channel, and as I write more, they should show up there. I'll have another full post up tomorrow. Thanks for stopping by.

Obstacles

One of the things I have to learn in recovery is how to fill all the time that I used to spend unproductively destroying my life. As you can imagine, that's a lot of time. And it also means learning new ways to interact with the world around me. I'm an introvert by nature, so that's a hard thing too.

So there are two big hurdles that seem to crop up: boredom and loneliness.

In the recovery program I'm pursuing, they talk about a Vitally Absorbing Creative Interest. This is a hobby or pursuit that you can take after with a passion in such a way that it takes up some of that 'extra' time, and releases stress as well. The types of VACI's are as varied as the stars in the sky. But when people are new in recovery, it seems like we can't figure out how to find a VACI. I think often, the real obstacle to finding a VACI or defeating boredom is within ourselves.

The first thing we do is close off anything new. 'I don't want to try something new.' This is the quickest way to shut off a path away from boredom. I used to hear this a lot when I was in church, "the 7 words that mean a church will never grow: we've never done it that way before."

The next thing we do is set unrealistic expectations of our performance. 'I won't be good at it, or it takes a long time to get good at it.'

I am really good at making excuses for why I can't do something. Fifteen people could give me suggestions of things to try to solve a problem, or a new thing to try, and I could find 15 variations on a theme to keep me from trying something. But the only real obstacle is me.

So my encouragement to me is to try something. The Nike saying is "Just Do It.(tm)" I would do well to remember that, and remember all the new things I tried that I didn't think I'd like, and found myself enjoying. Will I be nervous? Yes. Could I fail? Sure. But I could succeed. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

What a long strange trip it's been

It's been 30 days since I started this recovery journey, and it's been a real growing experience. I've learned a lot about myself, but more importantly, I've learned a lot about better ways to cope with the challenges that life throws at me. I'm really grateful for having found a program of recovery that is empowering, and affirming of dealing with life in a rational, proactive manner.

I realize that there's a long way to go, and nothing is over. This is just one small mile-marker on the road of a different life than the one I left behind 30 days ago. I wrote this song a week ago, and it sort of fits how I feel today. (lyrics below the video)

The clock on the wall keeps counting
And the hours keep mounting
And I'm sitting here thinking
'is this all there is?'

Now my mind is wandering
And I keep on pondering
Am I misremembering
Just the way it was

CHORUS
were the lights really so bright?
Was I really that good at night?
Are my glasses so rosy
I forget the misery

When I wake on the morrow
And I play the tape forward
Will I be filled with sorrow
for the things I did again?

All these hours that I'm filling
the results aren't thrilling
or maybe it's just
I've forgotten how to live

So I keep these words beside me
To try and remind me
that sometimes things look
better from afar

REPEAT CHORUS

Will I be filled with sorrow
for the things I did again?

What a beautiful world

This is a good song for recovery. Sort of helps me with mindfulness, I think. Lyrics are below.

My, my, my it's a beautiful world
i like swimming in the sea
i like to go out beyond the white breakers
where a man can still be free (or a woman if you are one)
i like swimming in the sea


my, my, my it's a beautiful world
i like drinking Irish tea
with a little bit of Lapsang Souchong
i like making my own tea


my, my, my it's a beautiful world
i like driving in my car
roll the top down, sometimes i travel quite far
travel to the ocean and stare up at the stars
i like driving in my car


all around is anger
automatic guns
death in large numbers
and no respect for women or our little ones
i tried talking to Jesus
but he just put me on hold
said he'd been swamped by calls this week
and he could not shake his cold


and still this emptiness persists
perhaps this is as good as it gets
when you've given up the drink
and those nasty cigarettes
now i leave the party early, at least with no regrets
i watch the sun as it comes up, i watch it as it sets
yeah, this is as good as it gets


my, my, my it's a beautiful world
i like sleeping with Marie
she is one sexy girl full of mystery
says she doesn't like me
but she likes my company
for now that's good enough for me


my, my, my it's a beautiful world
i like swimming in the sea
i like to go out beyond the white breakers
where a man can still be free (or a woman if you are one)
i like swimming in the sea