Live Easy But Think First
This Week on Diary of a Sober Girl
I am so grateful to be sober today. I’m grateful for two really great meetings this weekend, for time to relax and for AA. I’m grateful for coffee, vacation coming up, my therapist and my sponsor. I’m grateful for seeing friends get married on Friday, for living in NYC and for the way things grow and change.
Goood morning my friends! Hope everyone as always had a lovely weekend (:Â
Someone a long time ago at a meeting in New Jersey I think, told me that those four signs that some (most??) meetings put out that say ‘Live and Let Live’, Easy Does it’, ‘But for the Grace of God’, ‘Think’, and ‘First Things First’ are supposed to be put in such an order that the first word of each sign makes the sentence ‘Live Easy But Think First’. So anytime I see those signs and they are not in such an order I want to reorder them immediately BUT the meeting I went to last night did in fact (as they always do) have them in what I consider to be the correct order.Â
All of that said, seeing them made me think about what exactly does it mean to ‘live easy’. I used to say that too about pages 86-88 about ‘relax and take it easy’. I can kinda sorta relax but take it easy?? To LIVE easy?? The ‘thinking first’ thing I got that down, that’s all I do is think think think. Thinking about all the things I don’t like about myself, all the things I think other people don’t like about me. Think about the ways I’m not enough, the ways I can be better, I think myself into oblivion.Â
To live easy man that must be nice. And I think that in a way goes hand in hand with wearing your sobriety like a loose garment which I can also kinda sorta do today but I’m just in awe of people who genuinely can relax and take it easy. Who can live easily.
I want to be like that one day. I know I can get there because I wanted to be someone who relied on a power greater than myself and now I do that. I wanted to be someone who could be honest about how I am feeling and now I can do that. So I know that I can live easy one day too but I don’t know how. I would pretty much have to spend the entire day turning things over and just waiting for God to make me less crazy in which case I would get nothing done.Â
And there can be a whole subsection written here about fear and self love but that’s just an entire post in itself. The bottom line for me today is that my therapist and I have been talking a lot about simply just sitting with discomfort. The discomfort I feel when I know I need to stop working but I just can’t peel myself away because I feel like I’m not doing enough. The discomfort I feel about changing a routine, or going to a new meeting, or having a difficult conversation.Â
I have a tendency to be OVER self aware, to over analyze and put everything under a microscope because honestly trying to dissect the discomfort, find its origin, brainstorm solutions that to just sit in the fact that I am uncomfortable and STOP working anyway, change the routine anyway, go to the new meeting anyway, have the difficult conversation anyway.Â
Maybe after I do all of that I’ll be living a little easier. Perhaps that is also why I don’t want to dive into the whole fear and self love thing because that’s just more microscope examining.Â
One day I want to live easy. And that starts by pushing through some uncomfortability today.Â
XxÂ
JaneÂ