I’m grateful for a gray Monday morning. I’m grateful for a really lazy afternoon yesterday. I’m grateful for not having to clean up the kitchen right away. I’m grateful to feel the sense of excitement I do. I’m grateful for people who are on the same page. I’m grateful for a chance to be the real me. I’m grateful to be sober today.
I feel like if I was to say something like “Happy Monday,” you might think it was gratuitous and maybe even kind of a snarky taunt, so let’s just not go there. I will tell you that many grand plans were made for yesterday that ended in a heap on the sofa punctuated by a long-ish nap. I awoke to complete the last essential task of the lazy Sunday: The ordering of the Chinese food. How did I feel? Kind of guilty and a little anxious, actually.1
That’s a feeling I’ve struggled with since I was a kid—the idea that it was ok to do nothing sometimes. I believe in the value of hard work and I believe that work is an essential part of life and certainly recovery. But it’s always been hard for me to let go and just do nothing sometimes. I think that the inability to take the engine out of gear had something to do with my alcoholism for sure.2 Downtime provoked a lot of unsettling feelings for me and alcohol helped me navigate around those, like it helped me navigate around most feelings.
You hear alcoholics and addicts talk a lot about that sense of discomfort, some people cleverly call it dis-ease, and I think it’s one of the things that’s at the core of many of us. You might even describe it as a symptom. One of the skills I’ve had to develop in recovery is the ability to switch off and relax. It sounds really self-indulgent to me and I guess that’s kind of the core of the problem. Sure, there were always external forces that put pressure on me, we all do, the thing was that I didn’t ever let my self take much of a breather. I mean, I did, I was drinking every day, but that wasn’t the same thing.
Laying on the sofa yesterday, my mind was still chugging through all of the things I could accomplish during this “rest period.” There’s that pile of New Yorkers that I haven’t read, the book on the table I haven’t even started, I could be reviewing and condensing my notes. I forced myself to do none of those things and just relax. Last night, I was kind of cranky and out-of-sorts, had this sense that I had somehow wasted the day, didn’t get anything done, nothing crossed off the to-do list.
Today, I’m ready to go. It’s not the most inspiring day weather-wise, kind of a dreary Monday morning here in New York, but I’m in a pretty good mood. One of the things I always found very annoying about the Big Book was the insistence that the problem was always me. I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I had lots of very good reasons to drink. For many years, I thought that it was just not possible to lead the life I was leading without drinking. Of course, I was right. The life “I was leading” required alcohol. Today, the life “I’m living,” doesn’t.
That’s the difference and that change didn’t come from removing other people or external pressures from my equation, it came from me recognizing that the thing that needed to change was me. Conveniently, that is also the only thing that I can change. So, I gave myself the afternoon off yesterday and even though it took me a while to appreciate what I had done, it’s another example of seeing that I’m the one who has the power to make things okay in my life. The more I open my eyes, I see that every day is a chance to learn and what I learned yesterday was that a nap on a Sunday afternoon is a pretty nice thing.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
This was not related in any way to the quality of the Chinese food. I will tell you, one of the few disappointments in my move to NYC has been the inability to find a really good Chinese restaurant in my delivery radius. I was spoiled because I used to live about 2 blocks from the best Chinese restaurant I’ve ever been to: Great Wall on 14th Street in DC. The Mala chicken is the thing to get there and I think I ate it about 80% of the nights in early sobriety. Actually, if I were to start a list called “Things That Helped Get Me Sober,” (and now I probably will), the Mala Chicken from Great Wall would be high on that list.
There’s another list I should make.
Great post and so glad you were able to accept the need for “down time” - constantly trying to busy ourselves can be productive but I too have learned the importance of rest! Have a great day🦾🙏🦋🍀❤️🌈❤️🩹
Great post! This line really struck a chord with me: "That’s a feeling I’ve struggled with since I was a kid—the idea that it was ok to do nothing sometimes." It was never okay when I was a kid, either!
When I was little we were NEVER doing nothing - there were always jobs to be done - feeding the hens, picking apples, tidying up. We'd never be indoors during the day - and if we were, there's no way we'd be sitting down - we'd be DOING something. The only exception to this would be during Wimbledon - depending on who was playing, on some selected afternoons in the last week of June and the first week of July we'd be in the sitting room with the curtains closed so as to avoid glare ruining our view of the TV screen, watching the tennis. But we'd still be busy with useful things - sorting washing, podding broad beans, hulling strawberries to make into jam...! Those were great days, but oh boy I always feel guilty even now if I'm ever doing nothing without having a good reason!