Failure To Launch
Why Do I Keep Stalling
142.
That’s how many days it’s been since I got sober(but who’s counting?)
I’m actually not. I know that my sober day was the fall equinox, and I did math.
I’ve relapsed too many times to count, and every time I was counting the sober days. Every time I relapsed, the weight of that ‘wasted time’ was so heavy it often led to my staying in active addiction longer.
This time I decided to not count the days, and to just note that it’s the equinox so I’ll know that on the solstices and equinoxes I’ll have a chunk of time.
Instead I decided to just move forward as someone who doesn’t drink or smoke anymore and ‘burn the ships’, so to speak.
That’s worked well, except that I had these big ideas of what I would do when I was sober, and the more time that’s passed without me doing them, the worse I feel.
Like writing on Substack!
237.
That’s how many days it’s been since I wrote my long(ish) first post here, and since then I’ve only written two more.
To be fair, I did take a hiatus to do a meditation teacher training course, I work graveyard shifts four nights a week, have two kids and a wifey - but that’s no excuse.
I also relapsed, which stops me from writing(and reading), but I had this grand plan to publish SO much, and I just haven’t.
So I sat to stream-of -consciousness this today to wrestle with the why.
“Comparison is the thief of joy.” — Theodore Roosevelt
Since the time I made that first post until now, Substack has grown a LOT.
Especially in the waters I waded into - the Recovery space - I’ve seen way more people writing about it now then I did last summer.
I don’t know how much of that is growth in the community or the almighty algorithm feeding me... Probably it’s a bit of both.
That’s great in and of itself because the more people trying to help people struggling the better; the downside for me is that they’re all better at this than I am.
At least that’s what I tell myself.
I didn’t go to college(barely finished high school), I don’t have professional experience writing, self-promoting, running a business, public speaking, etc.…
All these are things I tell myself to justify why I shouldn’t be a writer on here. None of them are good reasons, but that’s much easier to know intellectually than to feel.
“Not good enough” is one of the reasons I started self-medicating in the first place.
Turns out that sobriety doesn’t magically get rid of all the insecurities - who knew?
So here I am - writing about how I should be writing more, but thinking I’m not a good enough writer to be writing where there are so many awesome other writers.
1,059.
That’s how many total days I’ve logged some sort of meditation on Insight Timer.
290 of them consecutive.
That’s something I should be proud of! Even with the relapses, where I often slipped up in my practice, I still managed to log all that time. I also used Headspace for a year and change before that, so that’s a lot of time.
I say that to say - to myself - that I can do pretty cool things, that I had zero experience or training in prior, if I stay consistent and give it the old “college try”.
When I first started meditation I had zero idea or thought that one day I would take a course on how to teach it, but last year I did.
The course didn’t go as well as I had hoped - I had a four week relapse in the middle of it - but I still gained invaluable insight into myself and my ability to communicate.
I decided to sign up for lifetime access to retake the course alongside new cohorts, and so last week I started again.
I have no doubt that this time I will pick up even more of the wisdom.
This isn’t going to be a long post, just something to get the fingers moving.
I have no idea where this year will take me as far as writing, but I know that it’s something that I love doing.
So I will keep showing up. Even if it’s only one of these every so often. I’ll keep doing the daily notes ‘n’ quotes, and try to make the time to engage more on the reading side, and see where it goes from there.
Will it launch me into a career as a writer? Maybe. Even if it doesn’t, there’s no reason I can’t use it for now as just a place to get some thoughts out of my head.