All the Things

How to set yourself up for failure.

Try doing all the things perfectly at the same time.

I have a lot of questions for myself. Today, Corinne (founder of my weight loss coaching membership program), was introducing the January content and I thought: How am I going to remember all of this stuff? Then I thought: Am I overwhelmed? In my head I always criticize those women in the membership who complain that they’re overwhelmed. Why? Then I thought: Why do I feel like she’s talking to everyone but me? Is it because I think I know it so I don’t have to do the work?

In all of these programs/memberships I’m in I don’t think I ever really do the work. I listen to the content and think about it but most of the time I don’t complete the worksheets, I don’t write down my answers. And yet, I think I’ve got it. In the day 2 content of the Alcohol Experiment Annie Grace said don’t get caught in the “I know this” trap. We deliberately repeat things because that’s how your brain learns. The more you hear something the more likely you are to understand it and implement it. And I’m like, OK, I won’t do that. But I think I am doing that.

I spend a lot of time watching tv. I’m on season 13 of SVU, I watched it ALL DAY Saturday, and I’m not exaggerating. All fucking day. And when it comes time to watch the content videos of No BS or The PATH or Tempest or The Luckiest Club I don’t have time so I do it during the work day when I should be actually working. I’m literally shaking my damn head right now. WTF?!

I’m on day 4 alcohol free. I’m hoping thinking I’m willing to change things while I’m not drinking. I want to spend more time absorbing content and doing the work than watching tv. Wow, my brain is really fighting me right now. It’s telling me I don’t have to change, I don’t have to make a goal, I don’t have to make it (SMART) specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. It’s telling me that I can just stop at the second sentence in this paragraph… I want to. And I think it’s because I’m scared to change my habits. It’s easy to sit in front of the tv and watch SVU all day. It takes purpose and strength to make a change. Sitting in front of the tv allows me to not feel, not think, not engage with myself.

Minimum baseline.

• 24 hour plan at least 4 days a week
• I will ask myself if I’m hungry before I eat anything
• I will ask myself if I’ve had enough at every meal
• I will not drink any alcohol
• I will attend 1 support meeting each day.

Do Goals:

• go to bed by 10:00 – no tv after 10:00
• get up by 6:15
• at least 64 oz water every day
• move for 15 minutes a day – walk, Peloton, yoga, strength
• 30 minutes of The PATH content/reflection/work every weekday morning
• 60 minutes of No BS content and worksheets and daily PATH content each weekend day

Am I setting myself up for failure? Let’s remember that the minimum baseline is what I will do no matter what. The Do Goals are what I want to get to by the end of January. Ok, I think I’m ok.

Here We Go Again

Welcome 2022, I hope you’re nicer to us than the last two; I’m not holding my breath.

I’m working on sobriety again. I’ve been working on it for 4 years, it gets old, like Groundhog Day. Day 3. I told J I’m doing Dry January and he said he’d do it too, we did a pinky-swear. This is the first time he’s expressed any desire to not drink. I really think it’s more about me, I’ve said I’m going to do 30 days so many times in the past year and I haven’t gotten past like 3 weeks since early 2020.

I’m a member of Tempest – alcohol free support community, The Luckiest Club – alcohol free support community and The PATH by This Naked Mind – a year long program to help rethink one’s relationship with alcohol. You’d think I’d have this shit under control by now with all this support and education. It’s a process and I feel that eventually it will all come together but in order for that to happen I have to actually do the work. Just watching videos and listening to others share isn’t enough and all of the coaches have said this more than once.

In The PATH I’m doing the Alcohol Experiment, the group started it on December 15 but we all have the freedom to start when we’re ready and on the 15th I was NOT ready. I AM READY now.

Day 1 is Why. Why I Want to Stop Drinking

• I don’t want to die
• lose weight
• lose hangovers
• more productive at home and at work
• I hate the way it feels to have my hips touch the sides of my office chair
• fit into my clothes
• fix digestive issues
• sleep better
• remember my evenings
• save money
• not make an ass out of myself
• get rid of the shame
• more present for the girl (I just call her that because I don’t want the kids names out here)
• I don’t want my legacy to be that I was a drunk
• get more exercise
• create more happiness and less regret
• I’ll be proud of myself
• When I talk to people I forget words
• I want to know what I said and did last night
• the ringing in my ears
• my skin is dry
• my lips are always chapped
• sometimes my mouth hurts
• sometimes I think I feel my liver
• I’m puffy
• I don’t like what I see in the mirror
• I really don’t like who I am – the next day I’m always wishing I wasn’t me
• I want to think more clearly
• Anxiety the next day, sometimes it’s overwhelming and I can’t deal with every day things

Why I drink

• I think it helps me relax
• I’m less inhibited
• It helps me get out of my own head
• I’m not so uptight
• More comfortable with sex
• Don’t want to feel anxious, frustrated, angry, annoyed
• Jeff and I spend more time together when we’re drinking
• I’m scared our relationship will suffer
• It’s a habit
• I like wine, not sure if it’s the taste or the experience and the ritual
• I’m better able to talk to people
• I feel really disconnected and alone when I’m not drinking
• I’m bored
• I deserve it because of whatever
• It’s Friday or Saturday or maybe any day
• I’m addicted

I’m certain there are more and I’ll probably come back and add them as I think of them.

I’m happy to be sober today and I will not drink today.

So Much and So Little

So much sanity.

So little reality

I’m drunk and I don’t want to go home.

We can’t lie. right?

Well of course we can. we lie all the time.

Do you know what really bothers me?

Double fucking spacing

I mean FFS does anyone really write this way? I fucking hate having to change the fucking spacing every fucking time I write something. So, why is it single spacing now? I didn’t change anything.. I can’t spill out my fucking life on a platform that I don’t fucking understand.

Fuck you you fucking fuck

OH look, now its double spacing again.

Fuck OFF

I Got My Dream

We moved into a much larger house in December 2020. I now live on almost 3 acres, a big sledding hill in the backyard, the neighbors aren’t right next door, there’s space to not hear them.

In our previous home we were in the city, the houses were probably 20 feet apart at most and there were plenty of kids; one in particular was severely autistic and nonverbal, so his form of communication was screaming. I realize that he was only doing what he knew and his parents couldn’t do anything to stop it. I empathize and I believe his mother had the patience of a saint; she had 2 other boys younger than him. I am an introvert, I am very sensitive to sound, and I work from home (COVID ya know) so I could never open my windows during the day or sit outside on the weekends when they were outside, it was just too much for me. The neighbors behind us had a security light in the back of their house, it was on 24/7 and just put this spotlight on the back of my house. I couldn’t sit out on the deck at night without being practically blinded (yes, I’m exaggerating), there was no darkness to be had. So during the day I had sound sensory issues and at night I had light sensory issues. I lived this way for at least 5 years.

I moved into that house 20 years ago and it was just in the last 5-8 years that I wanted out. During this time we adopted our grandkids so we went from a house of 2 adults with room to spare (I had an office and a workout room) to a full house with 1 1/2 bathrooms and no sound barriers. You could say something in the kitchen and they’d hear you in the bedroom. I searched the real estate apps daily, it was part of my morning routine but I was so scared that we didn’t have enough equity (we refinanced – stupid move) we didn’t have a down payment (daycare for 2 kids was more than my house payment) and we had a lot of work to do that previously we didn’t have the money. A kitchen that needed countertops cabinets, and a garage ceiling that needed replaced, and plumbing that needed work and rooms needing paint. Ugh, all the things we never could afford to do just for us. But then there was a global pandemic. My company sent us all home to work, schools sent the kids home, daycare closed for all but the kids of essential workers so no daycare cost. Then the government decided we needed stimulus money 3 times and my company decided this would be a good time to give us our gainshare payout early (normally we get 75% of it in December right before Christmas and the remainder in February the following year after year end results are published). All of sudden we had money in savings.

J was considered essential because he works in a machine shop that makes parts for the military so both of us were still working. J’s a veteran so we decided to apply for a VA loan which requires no down payment and no mortgage insurance; we were approved for more than I expected. We saw one house that I thought would be the one, it shined like a star on the internet but when we got there, nope, it was a dud. The mortgage company assigned us an agent which was awesome because we didn’t have to find one on our own (she was fan-freaking-tastic).

One Thursday morning in early November I did my usual real estate search routine and a house popped up and I knew immediately. I got so excited, I was giddy, like dancing around my kitchen giddy. I texted it to J and to our agent. We saw the house the next day and I loved it. On the way home from the showing I kept thinking I don’t deserve this house, this is far beyond what I have ever expected and I cried because I just knew we would never get it. I didn’t deserve a house like this. I texted my daughters that and I said, I know this isn’t true but that’s what my brain keeps thinking.

All offers had to be in by Saturday. Immediately I knew we had to go $15,000 over asking, that’s what it was worth to me. We made an offer $15,000 over asking the next night and I told my agent I wanted to include a letter in the offer. Since the offers weren’t actually due until the next evening I was able to write a well constructed letter.

Everyone loves the “We adopted our grandkids” story, everyone thinks it makes us noble and self-sacrificing, I always think that’s bullshit. In this case I used that story to our advantage telling the owners how I wanted a better life for them and I could see them sledding down that hill in the winter. It was partially crap, I’m not that touchy-feely about kids; have I mentioned that I’m not the biggest fan of kids in general? I think, once or twice.

We were so anxious, deep down I was actually hoping we didn’t get the house because I was so scared it would backfire and we’d end up not having enough money and we wouldn’t be able to fix our house enough and it wouldn’t sell.

Sunday our agent called and said “are you sitting down?” I said I was even though I wasn’t, then went and sat down. “You got the house!” I was stunned! Wow. Did that release our anxiety? NO! It got worse. I think buying and selling homes is one of the most stressful and anxiety inducing situation there is behind death and divorce. She said it was the letter that did it; we weren’t even the highest offer. They liked the sledding part, and to be honest, I added that as an afterthought a day after I originally wrote the letter. I assume it’s because that’s what their kids did, they left a snowboard in the shed, I’m pretty sure it was purposely because that and a shelving unit were the only things in there when we moved in.

So, the shit that happened between then and when we moved in is just unimportant other than to say the stress was like a wave, one day I’m excited and dancing around, the next I’m scared to death and crying.

We overlooked a lot of things when we toured the house. Within a few months of moving in I realized it was a builder-grade house. Things are cheap as shit here, the closet doors don’t fit well, the floor is slanted upstairs in one certain spot and we don’t know why because there’s carpet and we’re not ready to remodel the floors. There weren’t any hooks or towel bars… I kept saying this is uncivilized; who lives without hooks to hang the kitchen towels on? Why are there no towel bars or hand towel rings in the bathrooms? Why are there no lights under the kitchen cabinets? Why are there no lights over the kitchen breakfast bar where I do all food prep? The ceiling fans are ugly and cheap. The main bathroom is super-tiny, the master bath shower is too small, J won’t take a shower in there because it’s just too small for him. And the fucking carpet! Ugh, I have a love/hate relationship with carpet, I love the feel of it under my feet, I hate the carpet/pet combination, and it’s everywhere except the bathrooms, kitchen and entry. The garage door opener. OMFG I had to press the button then close the door to the house because it was SO. FUCKING. LOUD! That was the first thing we replaced, it was obnoxious! The windows and patio doors had those plastic grids between the panes; when I put up horizontal blinds in the bathroom the windows looked like a spreadsheet. And many of them had broken seals so they were fogged in between the panes. The basement, though finished with a walkout, is ridiculously cold all the time. You can’t sit down there in the winter without a space heater.

That’s the bad. The good is: I fucking LOVE this place! I say this over and over especially in the spring, summer and fall. I had been living in the wrong place my entire life. I love it here. I love having my own bathroom. I love that everyone has their own room including J so he’s not taking over the basement as his bedroom meaning it’s a family space so I can send kids down there when they’re being loud. There’s a huge bonus room which B used as his bedroom until he moved in with his mom. In front of the bonus room is a bedroom which is where I keep the Peloton. We replaced the windows and patio door – NO GRIDS! Sitting on the front porch in the afternoon/evening (when it’s not hot because it faces west) is my love, it’s beautiful. Sitting on the deck in the back is my love, it’s beautiful. Watching the sun rise is my love, it’s beautiful. The trees are my love, they’re beautiful. Do you sense a theme here? Regardless of the stupid builder-grade finishes and the bullshit we’ve had to deal with (the stove needed replaced within 3 months, the furnace had to be replaced right before Thanksgiving) I’m so totally happy here

I got my dream!

Day 278 – FUCK I want to get drunk

That is all

I’m not a fucking teacher

I have a full time job that I need to keep in order to keep a fucking roof over their heads and fucking food in their bellies.  I don’t have fucking time to keep track of everything they have to do for school.  One of them is a fucking chronic liar and will tell me what he thinks will get him out of the work, the other is in first grade and can’t do a fucking thing on her own.  Then there’s him who won’t do a fucking thing besides playing on his fucking phone when he gets home from work.  Then yesterday he fucking gets sick and now because who knows why he’s sick he can’t have any fucking contact with the kids so he doesn’t have to do any-fucking-thing at all.  I’m sick of it.  I fucking hate my life and then I feel guilty because I fucking hate my life because there are so many people who are sick, dying or out of work.  \

FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING FUCK!

Holy $h!t – Day 254

It’s day 7 of working from home because of the pandemic.  I like working from home but this is a whole different ballgame, there’s too much information and not enough information.  According to worldometers.info there are over 381,000 confirmed cases worldwide, 16,550 deaths.  Over 46,100 confirmed cases in the US with over 580 deaths.  The world is coming to an end.  No, it’s not, but some people are acting like it is.  People can’t buy toilet paper.  People bought all the toilet paper.  People don’t understand why people are buying all the toilet paper.  I understand but no one wants to hear it so I keep my keyboard silent.  But truly, it’s a scary situation.  Until yesterday I’ve had the news on constantly.  Yesterday I turned it on and heard the same thing I heard the day before and decided I changed my mind and turned it off.  They just keep rehashing the same old shit, saying it in a different way with a different expert.  I’m tired of hearing it but it’s like an obsession, I want to watch, I want to know all the news.  Today I haven’t even turned the tv on; I picked up the remote and put it right back.  Facebook is my vice, I can spend hours just scrolling and scrolling, it’s just not healthy, it can’t be.  I cannot leave my phone alone, I’m running a query that takes 1 minute and I can’t just sit here and wait for it to finish I have to tap my phone to see if I have a little red dot on Facebook.  Fuck – just stop!

I am so happy/relieved that I’m not drinking.  Imagine what a cluster-fuck that would be.  Drunk every day and starting to drink at what noon because I’m home.   I’d be stupid by dinner time and belligerent by bedtime then I’d wake up feeling horrible, promising myself that I wouldn’t drink today, but lose my resolve by dinner time.  Also the panic because what if the stores close or run out, I have to have enough wine and vodka, damn I’d be broke too.  I can see it now, boxes and boxes of wine lined up in Harry Potter’s room.  SO HAPPY to not have that going on!

Instead I run, I Peloton, I listen to life coaches and I do my best to not eat everything imaginable all fucking day long.  Yes, food is trying to take the place of alcohol.  No, food does not have some magical ability but my brain seems to think boredom = eating.  I want all the sugar – GAWD the fucking ice cream.  Why did I buy the ice cream?  I swear I could eat an entire carton of ice cream in a day.  One day last week I needed the ice cream to be gone so I ate it until it was gone and was relieved.  That’s ridiculous.  I think Corinne would say I’m being an asshole to myself.  I don’t outright mentally beat myself up, I’m more subtle about it.  Like “that’s ridiculous”.  I heard a coaching call yesterday that I think I need to listen to again.  She says self-loathing doesn’t have to be “hey, I’m a fuck up”, it can be “I think I’m out of control, I really need to work on this”.  Isn’t that basically what I just said to myself – “that’s ridiculous”.  See I don’t think I’m doing it because I’m not telling myself I’m a loser and I’m not saying I’m stupid and I’m never going to get this.  I’m more subtle just like that – I have to get control of this, I can’t do this again.  They don’t sound terrible but they don’t sound great.   But I’m still eating the ice cream, the carton will be gone by the end of the day and I’ll be relieved again.

 

100 Days

Yeah, I did that.  100 alcohol free days.  That commitment to 1 year made all the difference.  I haven’t been AF 100 days since I was pregnant 30 years ago.

I’ve gotten all kinds of ambitious.  I thought I might want to be a life coach back in August so I decided to test myself and signed up for This Naked Mind Live 2019 in Denver the beginning of September.  It was a good experience but I hated just about every minute of it because I was so uncomfortable anywhere but in my room by myself.  Every break period I ran back to my room to get some solitude and quiet.  Amazingly I didn’t become a different person just because I was doing something different.  I was still the anti-social, solitary, withdrawn, people-hating person I was at home.  The people were nice but I didn’t meet anyone I really connected with and I ended up not wanting to be there at all.  The last day I contemplated just skipping it altogether but I couldn’t do that, I paid almost $600 for the conference ticket and hundreds for the hotel room and hundreds for the flight.  I would forever regret wasting that much money because it all went on credit cards that I have to pay back with interest.  Nope, I decided to do the thing so I had to finish it.  It was good information but some activities made me want to run away as fast as possible and after those activities I was constantly on edge for something like that to happen again.  I don’t think I relaxed the entire time I wasn’t in my room.  So that experience made me realize that I don’t want to make a career out of talking to people… really?  WTF was I thinking?  I don’t know if I was ever so happy to get home.

I then signed up for the Engine 2 Rescue 10X Program.  Living plant-based is on my mind a lot.  I have major cognitive dissonance in that I hate the thought of all the animals killed for food, all the animals mistreated for food, all the animals tortured with testing for the products we “have to have”.  Turns out even vegan food products are required by the FDA to be tested on animals.  How?  Why?  WTF?  I paid $200 and started that the end of September.  I was great the first couple of weeks but it felt so restrictive.  Actually I wasn’t great because I refused to give up Coffee-mate which has sugar and milk derivatives and Sodastream grapefruit flavored water which has artificial sweeteners.  I mourned the loss of peanut butter and saltines and ended up stuffing them into my face in week 3.  And as with every other online program I decide I need I didn’t do the work.  I’ve written this statement a half dozen times I think trying to get myself to take some responsibility and get with the program.  I don’t think it works, it’s equivalent to beating myself up and if I’ve learned anything from all the programs and podcasts and life-coaching it’s that beating yourself up has the opposite effect.

Next is the Run Your Best Life coaching group with Jill Angie, $39 a month.  I’m in the first week and I’ve done a thought download and a self-coaching model with it so I’m on a freaking roll.  Tonight is the first live group call.  I want to run.  Remember when I used to run?  I got pretty good distance in the end, now I’m starting over.  3 miles is hell.  I want to come up with a goal.  Maybe I should sign up for coaching in tonight’s call.  Get my money’s worth.

In total since January I’ve lost almost 50 pounds.  I feel great about that.  It’s not a direct result of not drinking but I’m sure that is a driving factor.  I’ve been riding with Peloton  and running and trying to eat right so all that together is working.

I’ve run into some PAWS symptoms recently.  Fuzzy-brained, confusion, super tired, super cranky and headaches.  It comes and goes but I will say that it’s nothing compared to the shit I feel like when drinking.  I really don’t know how I functioned in that state of drunkenness and hangover cycle.  I don’t ever want to go there again.  My life is a shit-show but all that drinking and feeling horrible and looking horrible made everything so much worse.  I certainly have shitty days and my marriage is not in the best place since I quit drinking but it’s on the back burner for now, I’ve got to get myself in order and kind of figure out who I am and what I want first.  I guess it all goes how it’s supposed to so I shouldn’t fight it.  It’ll work out, that’s what they mean when they say surrender to the higher power.  I can’t control everything and trying to do that in the past has gotten me shit so why keep doing it?

So, there it is.  I’m certain that’s not everything because a lot happens in 100 days but these are the things that are the focus of my sobriety at the moment.

It’s all GOOD!

Day 4: Time Passes Anyway

Regardless of what one chooses to do, time will pass.  In a year it will be a year later than it is today and what have I done?  When I look back, when I read this post on July 17, 2020 will I be feeling regret and loss or pride and accomplishment?  My hope is that I’ll feel that I’ve accomplished what I thought impossible and I’ll feel like drinking is just not an option anymore, I’m a non-drinker.

This is me a little over a year ago and me a little over a month ago, obviously I was drinking in the first one, I mean, I was drunk in the first one.

I’m happy I’ve spent a lot of time sober since I took the first one and in doing so have improved my health and my physical appearance.  I lost 30 lbs and started exercising again (PELOTON ) and trying to eat more healthfully.   I hope to post an even better comparison in 365 days.

Day 2: Who’s in Charge Here Anyway?!

I spent the entire month of June drinking every day.  I had a 6 day stay-cation over the July 4th holiday and was drunk every day and woke up with a hangover (with varying degrees of shitty-ness) every day.  I told myself before the first day of the holiday that I had a lot of things I wanted to do but one thing I DIDN’T want to do was be drunk, hungover and lazy the entire time.  Obviously that didn’t go the way I wanted.  I write that as if I didn’t make that choice but don’t get me wrong, I know I chose every minute of it. On Friday and Saturday I barely moved from my chair in front of the tv and we had takeout almost every day, some days for lunch and dinner; we spent a lot of money.  I even tried to drink stealthily on the 4th because B was at my house and she’s been sober for 9 months.  I probably didn’t fool anyone.   I drank almost an entire box of wine on 2 separate days, that’s 4 bottles of wine, I don’t think there was a bottle left in the box the next day, maybe 2 – 3 glasses; and I had the audacity to be surprised by that.  I was left shaking and anxious every day and by Saturday I swore I wouldn’t drink but couldn’t stand the shakes and anxiety anymore, knowing a glass of wine would help, knowing I would feel better after I drank, I started in the early afternoon and just kept going until bed.  Sunday I felt like death, I promised myself I wouldn’t drink because I needed the day to recover so I wouldn’t go back to work on Tuesday feeling awful.  I went grocery shopping and the anxiety was almost unbearable; I wanted to run out of the store.  By the time I got home I had to stop the shakes so I had the last glass available.  It helped almost immediately. 

Annie Grace talks about how it feels like alcohol is the answer because it makes you feel better when you do it but you don’t realize that alcohol caused that in the first place, drinking isn’t making you feel good it’s getting you back to not feeling bad.  It’s like scratching an itch but you wouldn’t sit in poison ivy just so you could get the relief of scratching your ass.  You wouldn’t purposely get a blister on your foot to feel the relief of taking your shoe off.  RIGHT?!

I was able to keep it to that one glass of wine on Sunday but man I was in a horrible place all day.  That drink may have stopped the shakes but after it processed it left me much lower than before I had it.  Monday was better, I felt good, not so depressed but it was the last day before I had to go back to work.

So, ok, I ruined my time off, WTF, why do I do that?  I have had so much time AF this year, 134 days total prior to June so it’s not like I don’t know how or I can’t not drink.  FUCK.  I could have had a fabulous, awesome, productive week but nope.  And the worst part is I’m an asshole when I’m drinking and I know it.  Instant lazy asshole, just add alcohol.

I didn’t drink all week after that, until this past Saturday and I let it get me.  Dave!  He sat on my shoulder and nagged and nagged at me until I said fuck it, I want wine, I’m having wine.  I drank almost 2 bottles.  I woke up in the middle of the night feeling awful and at first I couldn’t figure it out, I was thinking – but I didn’t even drink – for a second or two then it came back – oh but I did, didn’t I!  Fuck you, you fucking fuck!  I got up to get more water and poured the rest of that bottle down the drain.  I woke up in the morning once again asking myself why I don’t just give it up?  When it’s going to get into my thick cement brain that alcohol adds nothing to my life; I’m better off without it.

Somewhere I heard, it was probably Annie Grace, just make up your mind to not drink for a year.  Then you’ll get through all of the things that happen in a year, all the holidays, all the stressful events and the celebrations.  Then your neural pathways will be different, your subconscious will know a different reality; one without alcohol.  Why am I hesitating to make the commitment?  Is it a fear of failure or is it Dave?  Am I afraid that I can’t/won’t do it or am I afraid that I don’t really want to, that I still subconsciously  think alcohol adds something I can get nowhere else?  Maybe it’s both (I’m hearing Forrest Gump in my head right now), let’s just say it is both, how do I change that?  I’ve been listening to podcasts and This Naked Mind, what else do I need to do to get through to my subconscious and realize that drinking is a no-go?

If I do it, if I pledge, promise myself that drinking is not an option for a year then… what?  I don’t even know what I’m trying to express.  Does everything change?  No!  I know that, I still have the same shit going on that I had before, BUT I’m not hungover, I’m not losing days, I’m not wasting this one and only life, I’m not shameful, regretful and horrified by what I do or say because it’s all done with purpose not sitting on the toilet, raging and sending texts that could get me fired.  If I do it, I’ll improve my health, I’ll feel better about myself, I’ll have more good days.  I know there will be bad days, angry days, depressed days, sad days – life doesn’t get all rainbows and unicorns just because I choose to be present in my own life.  There will be days when I’ll want to drink more than I want anything else and I’ll get the fuck-its.  What will I do on those days, in those times of stress and craving and want what will I do?  I know the answer is out there somewhere, everyone has written about it or done a podcast about it.  I’ll find them.

I’m doing it.

I’m committing to 1 year alcohol free.  NO MATTER WHAT!