There was a time when my only goal in recovery was getting through the day without using. Happily, through time and a lot of work, I have built up skills that allow me to get through most days without ever thinking about my drug of choice.

Great. But what about all the other things that I’ve tried working on throughout my recovery. Why do I go balls out, start seeing results, then get kind of bored and let it fall to the wayside?

I feel like this is still me doing everything to excess, choking the life out of things and then leaving them to die. How can I keep myself balanced in addiction recovery?

My latest interest of body art, which I am lovingly calling Body Art by Erin, is all consuming. I’m thinking about it constantly, planning in my head, even dreaming about it at night. Fine. It’s good to be excited about new directions that life is taking you. BUT… I find that I’m ignoring some key areas of my life because of my new interest.

Why do I have such trouble with keeping myself balanced? Why am I going full speed ahead in one direction, so passionate about it, then all of a sudden… not so much.

I’m trying to avoid strangling the fun out of this new body art interest but it’s proving to be difficult to balance it into my life.

I KNOW what I need to do but I just can’t get myself to actually DO what I need to do. I need to get back to reading the author’s that really center me at night. I need to get back to the simple routines that get me through the day. I need to get back to focusing on these Twenty four hours and staying in the moment. I feel like my hard work is kind of slipping away at the moment.

But even as I’m sitting here writing I am reminding myself of the post I wrote about ebbs and flows in recovery. I’ve felt like this before, hung in there, and came out the other end.

If history has taught us anything (the history of Erin that is) it is that I love to spout off addiction recovery sayings. Now, what saying would I annoyingly come up with if this situation was someone else’s?

I would definitely start off by telling them that “this too shall pass”. I might follow that up with a simple “be here now” and then end the whole thing with a little “Easy does it… but do it”.

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I guess my fear of going back to my old ways keeps me on the look out for these littlest changes in myself. More times than not, when I notice this “undone” feeling I eventually come to the conclusion that my day to day routines have been disrupted in some way. I guess sometimes I just forget the importance of a routine.

In a post that The Discovering Alcoholic wrote called An Anchor to Keep from Drifting, he talked about the different things that he does while on the road that anchor him and keep him from drifting away from his recovery.

Boom! Just like that I realized that I had been letting some of the routines that I hold near and dear fall to the wayside lately. No wonder I’m feeling undone… I am.

It doesn’t always take traveling or experiencing a highly emotional event to throw you off course. It can happen in your day to day life, right under your nose.

Like most of us, I am a creature of habit. When I don’t fill my life with positive habits… negative ones can creep right in. That scares the hell out of me and usually has me on the look out for this type of situation.

Lately though, I’ve been kind of caught up in a professional venture. I’ve been focusing a lot of my time and engergy into one particular area and I seem to have been neglecting some other areas. Some of which have a very profound effect on my peace of mind and spirituality.

The very fact that I notice these little slips shows that I am far better off than I have ever been in my life. But having said that… I gotta get back on track with my routines. Somehow these small routines are my peace of mind and spirituality.

I love Deepak Chopra books and reading them made me feel at ease, why all of a sudden am I not reading them anymore? Walking everyday had me feeling good about myself, why did I just stop? Making sure my living room was neat each night before I went to bed made my home a great place to wake up to in the morning (5 year old kid… need I say more?), so why has that not been a priority for me anymore?

As we know, acknowleging something isn’t going to make it change right? You actually have to do something about it. So I guess this is where I start getting back on track. If it was someone else I would say “hey, you’re human. You slipped. You recognize that now, so just start to do something about it”. So I guess that’s the advice I will try to follow.

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This past week my husband was on vacation and we really had a great time going on day trips here and there. All of this fun had me away from my house and more importantly away from my routine. Excellent right? Then why is it that I feel like I’ve come undone?

In the post I did about identifying the difference between backsliding and human imperfection I touched on the fact that I give my self a very hard time when I feel that I’m not doing the best that I could be doing. I guess I’m just a little unforgiving with myself.

Yesterday I tried very hard to get back into the “normal” routine swing of things and it was difficult. Sure, I got some things done that needed to be done but didn’t get to everything that I thought I could accomplish. If it were anyone else I would say “Big effing deal… there is always tomorrow”. Me? I say “Uh oh, what is this, don’t let yourself get back to your old ways. Why are you taking a break? You really didn’t do enough work so far to merit a break. The house looks pretty gross and you are taking a break? You’re kind of lazy.”

This kind of thinking opens up the flood gates and lets all sorts of negative self talk sneak right in. I then start to pick myself apart. “I’m too fat, I’m too lazy, I could really be better at getting my child on a schedule, I fool myself into thinking I’m doing better than I really am. Just forget about your idea to turn your interest in children’s face painting into a body art business… you’re not good enough and you’re business sense sucks.”

Those are just the things I feel comfortable putting out there for others to read so you can use your imagination on the really negative stuff.

Why do I allow myself to do this? I don’t fully understand where all of this negativity comes from. I could go on and on about when I was a child I was never really encouraged to have goals or follow through with anything but honestly… I’m 30 (ok 31 on the 17th of this month) isn’t it time to get over my childhood already?

I guess all I can do is try to deal with these things as they come up. When I start to lose confidence in myself I need to take a step back and try to see that I’m just having a moment of self doubt. This is normal and it will pass. I just need to keep pushing through.

I think I know the answer to this question but, does everyone have these moments? If so, how do you keep from giving in to this type of thinking? Do you just let it pass and then get back to your forward momentum? I’m just looking for better ways to deal with this using other people’s experience.

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Last year’s Fourth of July was a pretty difficult time for me. Being 6 months into my recovery, I was still filled with a lot of uncontrollable emotions that had been ignored for so long. I kind of had an emotionally draining day which left me looking for something… anything to make it stop. I guess that’s why I popped a pill.

Last year on this day I was about 6 months into my recovery. On the morning of July fourth I had written a Happy Fourth of July post talking about what this holiday meant to me. All of the reminiscing had gotten me pretty down which should have been a red flag. But I didn’t pay attention to my feelings and just went through the motions of the day.

When I had gotten home that night I headed straight into the bathroom, opened up the drawer, and took over the counter medication for no reason other than to fall into sleep without having to think about anything. For someone else this may not have been a big deal. For me? It was huge. I felt that I had relapsed.

I accpeted that I had screwed up, I looked at the situation very closely and tried to see where it began going wrong and I tried to learn something from that experience.

This Fourth of July I am in a very different place from last year. Sure, fireworks and parades can still get me choked up ( yeah, I don’t know either) but I’m not feeling sad and depressed about “the good old days”. I’m trying to live in the moment… not in the past.

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Maybe it was going to interfere with me being messed up. Maybe it  was because I got messed up the night before and couldn’t drag my lazy ass out of bed. There were many reasons that all had the same conclusion… I never finished anything I started.

This is why still now, a year and a half into my recovery, I am pleasantly surprised when I actually finish something I started. Let me tell you about my latest start to finish.

Around the time that I wrote the post on finding your life’s purpose I was presented with an opportunity to volunteer my time painting faces at a local farm’s 100 year anniversary celebration. Since I had just blogged about being open to different roles in life I decided to try my hand at a new role in life: children’s face painter.

I have always been great at drawing and really interested in art and I soon realized that I was really excited about being able to try this out.

Then it happened. That little voice in my head that tries to tell me that I’m not going to be as good at this as I think I am and that I’m going to end up embarrassing myself starting piping up. I hear this voice less and less these days but wouldn’t you know it… here she was.

I know you’re saying, “Erin, your just volunteering to paint kids faces. What’s the big deal?” The big deal was that when I agreed to do this it just felt so right that I began to wonder if maybe this is an experience I could expand on and actually try doing this as a job. The big deal was that I was going to have to be out there dealing with the public and doing something that I had never done before in my life.

I put a lot of time into practicing and learning everything I could about the best practices of face painting before hand so that I would feel confident. The more I practiced the more I began to realize just how much I loved body art.

That voice in my head thrived on all the hard work I put into this. She was telling me that it was ridiculous of me to think that I could make anything out of face painting. I was wasting my time once again on something that I would never follow through with… because I never follow through with anything.

This time I decided to tell this little voice to eff off. I decided to act as if I had all the confidence in the world about my artistic skills and that I would be able to handle this commitment with calmness and grace and see it out till the end.

Saturday and Sunday came and went without a hitch. Between the two days I volunteered about 7 hours of my time to face painting. There was a steady stream of kids the entire time I was there. I had no breaks in between kids… didn’t even pee.

I loved it and I felt really great about myself for actually doing something that I said I would and seeing it through till the end. I have decided to move forward with trying to turn my interest in body art into a career. I’ll keep you posted on how it’s coming and give you the URL for my site once there is some content on there.

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George was a brilliant comedian with a passion for language that shined through in his act. For those that didn’t pay close attention to him, they may have thought of him as just a filthy minded comedian who used vulgar language for shock value. They would be wrong.

George Carlin had such an honest view of human beings (including himself) that everything he said resonated with his viewers. He knew exactly how to use human language to convey his ideas to us perfectly.

To quote the great George Carlin from his 1984 Carlin on Campus HBO special:

“Rat shit

Bat shit

Dirty old twat

69 assholes tied in a knot

Hoooooray

Lizard shit

Fuck!”

It seems that George Carlin was battling with recovery for most of his adult life. You would hear the announcement here and there that he had entered into rehab for this or for that. The most recent being a prescription pill addiction.

I guess that’s just another reason why I felt so connected to this guy. He knew real life and wasn’t afraid to talk about it openly, honestly, and in a funny way.

I really am saddened by his passing.

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Sure, I can tell you that you should ease up on yourself because after all… you’re just a person and as we all know, no one is perfect. So why is it that when I see myself slip up here and there (not in my sobriety.. just everyday kind of things) that I right away jump to the fact that I must be backsliding into my old ways?

Why am I not easier and more understanding with myself?

I guess at this stage of my recovery I feel that being very rigid with myself about certain things is the only way that I will make it.

I feel that I cannot trust myself to just get done what needs to get done without being on a strict schedule or living by certain rules because in the past… that never worked.

I’m afraid of slipping back to that place where I am so lax with myself that I choose the easy way out of every single situation I’m faced with no matter how it affects others or how it makes me look. That of course left me feeling bad and you know what happens when I feel bad on a consistent basis right?  That’s right, I start looking for the easy way out of that too which always involves a mood altering substance.

But see, I take a simple thing like not getting the bathroom cleaned on the day I had planned to do it and make the leap that I’m headed back to my old ways. There is no in between with me right now. I don’t want it to always be like that.

I don’t want to be so hard on myself. I want to be able to truly accept that fact that I’m just a human with imperfections. It’s tough to know the difference between behaviors that are the result of many years lived with an addiciton and behaviors that are just human nature. I get lost in that sometimes.

But you know what I would tell someone else right? I would tell them to just worry about today. Don’t think about tomorrow until you’re there. Deal with your actions and your behaviors based on today and not the past. As long as you are striving to do the best that you can today then you have nothing to fear in tomorrow. Good advice… if I could only follow it right?

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I don’t believe that. I feel like all of your life is building up to something and when it all comes together… you find your life’s purpose.

But what do you do until then? What do you do with the question: “what am I doing here?”

Sometimes I take a look at the many, many roles I have played in my 30 years on earth. I try to connect the dots and find what all of these various situations would have to do with one another and what things from each experience could be meshed together to make something else.

So far… nothing.  I can’t seem to figure it out yet. So I feel a little lost at the moment. I can’t shake this feeling that there is something that I’m supposed to be doing. Something greater than what I am doing at the moment.

Then again, other times I feel like my job in life at this point is to raise my child the best that I can with the least distractions as possible.

I know, I know… all I should concern myself with really is the present time and not worry about what I’ll be doing with myself in the future. But you know, sometimes you just can’t help it right?

I guess I get kind of nervous that because I’m a stay at home mom and my main goal of taking care of my child and husband will end one day that I’ll be left with not much else. Grimm thought I know. But it is something I fear.

What is really weird is that from the time I was little I never really wanted to be anything. You know what I mean? Someone asks a younger person “what do you want to be when you get older?” and I would say “I don’t know”. That answer has never really changed for me.

So I walk around feeling like I’m meant to do something… I just haven’t figured out what that is yet. I pay attention to coincidences that I notice in life and I try to use them as indicators of what direction I’m supposed to be taking.

I believe that the “luckiest” people on earth are the ones that pay attention to life’s coincidences. Kind of explains the type of people that are always in the right place at the right time. I guess they are just paying attention to the natural flow and not fighting it. I WANT TO BE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE!!

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We all know that active addiction and isolation are old chums and that they fit together so well. One directly feeds off of the other and eventually take over your whole being leaving you with… addiction and isolation.

Well I guess I am living proof that just because you take away one, it doesn’t mean that the other will follow. It seems that isolation will hang out until you actively push it out of your life. So how do you go about avoiding isolation in addiction recovery?

In the past I noticed that I do this horrible thing that involves people watching and some pretty harsh judging of these poor strangers who are just trying to walk down the street or pick up some milk at the store. I would pick apart a stranger based on nothing more than how they look, what they are wearing, how they walk… anything really.

Is it a distorted way of making myself feel better? I guess that could be part of it. But it’s also a way to ensure that I will not have any kind of meaningful connection with any other human being because I am way to busy judging them.

Like I said, I did notice this undesirable behavior in myself a while back and I have been working on not doing it. Once I realize that I’m having these thoughts about someone I just acknowledge it and stop that train of thought. I have found that I haven’t had to change my train of thought nearly as much as I did when I first noticed it. So there is improvement there.

But I have so many isolating tendencies still left. It is one thing to feel lonely when you are messed up all the time. You kind of just numb it out. It’s a whole other thing to be doing things to distance yourself from people when you can feel the pain it brings. So why do I do it?

Honestly, I haven’t figured that out yet. Who knows if I will ever figure it out. I don’t think you need to know the reason why you have some of the bad behaviors you do. I think you just have to admit that you do it, it’s a problem and then work towards not doing it anymore. So simple right? Sure.

I have even made a conscious effort lately to be more open to making connections with others while I’m out in public. I realized that maybe I wasn’t always giving off such a friendly vibe to people. Sure, the crazies would still talk to me but I would never just strike up conversations with people like the cashier or the gas attendant. I see that happening more and more lately.

I guess all of this kind of stuff comes to the surface when you are trying to be more self aware. I just realized the other night that even though I am in a house full of people or I am out to eat with a group of people I am still feeling lonely.

Instead of pretending that this isn’t happening, stuffing my feelings, and then trying to find an easy way out of feeling the pain I’ve decided to do something about it. Along with being active in my recovery my main “self goal” is to work on my isolating tendencies.

I can’t be the only one out there who is focusing on this. If you find yourself exhibiting some of the same types of isolating behaviors as myself I would love to hear about it.

If you find yourself having to go against every internal instinct to push yourself out of the protective husk that you have built up around yourself… just remember that I’m doing it to. You’re not alone.

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We all have both highs and lows as our life sort of ebbs and flows through time. I guess what I’m realizing is that I need to make the most  out of the highs in life so that when the lows come I am better prepared to hang in there.

We’re not always going to be feeling like sunshine and roses. That is one thing in life we can pretty much be certain about. What we can’t be certain about is how long each of these periods will last. It’s not like there is an egg timer you can set that will let you know that you are almost done with a low period in your life. You just gotta ride these things out and… you guessed it, hang in there.

Think about how it used to be. If you started to go through a challenging period in your life you would no doubt try to erase any negative feelings by numbing yourself up with your substance of choice. Fine. But little by little that thing you were doing to “make yourself feel better” ended up causing more problems in your life… so that’s not gonna work.

When I entered into recovery I was more than a little shocked to find that I was still experiencing low periods in life. I fell into the trap that many others in our situation fell into… the pink cloud. Once I realized that sobriety didn’t automatically equal happiness and ease of life I started to panic.

But I hung in there. I think about the low periods in my early recovery and I just am so thankful that circumstances never put me face to face with my drug of choice because I can’t whole heartedly say that I wouldn’t have used. I just shake my head now when I think about those times.

What began happening was that it really sunk into my brain that using to get me through difficult situations was not even an option for me anymore. But what now?

In my opinion, you really have to make the most of your time when you are experiencing a stretch of time in your life where things are looking good. You know those times right? You feel good, you have confidence, maybe you have a little more peace of mind, and you are just all around feeling pretty positive about life.

It’s in those times that you need to be searching for your spirituality and trying to understand how you got to this point, working on staying in the moment and just doing everything in your power to really be self aware.

Here’s why. At some point you will reach a low in your life. A time, much like the one I just went through where I was convinced that nice girls really do finish last, where you can briefly lose hope and start to question why you try to do the right thing when you are still going to feel like this.

If I had become complacent in my happiness I would have been putting myself more at risk for a relapse because I would not have acquired some of the skills that I have to hang in there during these down periods.

Gone (but not forgotten) are the days when my thoughts automatically think of drugs to make myself feel better. This didn’t just happen. It wasn’t because time heals or any of those things you make think. This is because I have worked really hard to change my thinking around. But it really does take constant work.

It’s ok to feel negative. It’s ok to not feel happy. It’s ok not to want to work out. It’s ok not to want to eat right. It’s ok to say “what the use”. It’s not ok to just give up when you have these feelings.

This is the time when you need to really lean on all of the spirituality and self awareness that you were able to gain while you were going through a higher time in life. This is what it’s for. It’s so that you can hang in there until this passes. Good luck.

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