Happy Cake Day. Rita!
Or pie 
if that’s you!!
Happy birthday! 35 was my best year! It’s when I got sober and started in recovery! Haha, what came before that I can’t remember anyway, so that’s how I will always view being 35. We are still so young, but much wiser than we were when we hit 30. I loved 36 as well, but 37 just sounds shitty. Fortunately it has been a great age as well.
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Thanks for the birthday wishes! Day 16 and still sober. Had a really great day but my melatonin is kicking my butt so I can’t explain today. I’ll be back for my day 17 check in tomorrow.
Good night everyone!
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I appreciate the check-ins - keeping us posted might be building your accountability, but we are drawn into your life as well, and that makes us richer.
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So my news from yesterday… I have found a way to get away from my current supervisor. This is good for multiple reasons. I come from a background in which my mom was very verbally and emotionally abusive. I dealt with it as a child by developing incredibly low self-esteem. I didn’t ever deal with that trauma until like a 1.5 years ago. One year ago I started my team lead position. The supervisor is great, most of the time, but she has erratic moods and acts totally inappropriate for a supervisor. My first month she told someone they should just quit if they couldn’t handle doing the job her way. I have tried to help her out as much as possible with growth and trying to remain calm when she’s upset. Recently she has decided to start “coaching” me, this has consisted of her calling me 2nd grade names, like snotty and bossy. When she’s in a good mood though she encourages all of my bad behavior; eating poorly, drinking, calling in sick just cause I have the time. I don’t need anyone’s help to make bad decisions. So yeah, I’m really stoked to be moving on. And I was able to do it in a professional manner that impressed my new boss and the general manager. I’m really hoping to be getting the next supervisor position that becomes available. 
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And you stayed sober the whole day. Praise be!
How did you tackle your self esteem issues if you don’t mind me asking? I ask as this was the root cause for certainly my initial drug use and more than likely also responsible for my continued use so it’s something I’m keen to work on I just have literally no clue how to go about it. 
Short answer was therapy. Longer answer is lots of meditation with mantras of love. We tried starting with “I am worthy of love” but I couldn’t actually say it out loud in my first two sessions she brought it up without crying. When I tried it at home I noticed when my mind started to drift I would start repeating “I am worried of love.” We took a step back and discussed if everyone deserved love; I agreed they did but couldn’t really place why I felt like I didn’t. So I used “I deserved love” as a mantra for a while. I’m pretty picky about word choice so deserved and worthy feel very different to me. It was, on purpose, past tense because of the childhood trauma. Then I moved to present tense. And after another while I was able to say I am worthy of love. That probably doesn’t make a lot of sense because we were doing other work in session as well that helped but that’s what was going on. I work at a university with a counseling program so I was working with a student. I feel like this was great for two reasons: 1) it was cheap 2) they are there for a specific time frame and have a really good incentive to work with people and get them “healed” rather than just have y them come back once a week for years. They are gonna graduate and move on plus they don’t get paid for their time.
Also, besides the drinking I really made a point of always being busy. Like so busy I had most of my life planned down to about 15-30 minute increments. Most of those activities were things I was doing for other people. My therapist encouraged me to try to cut things out that weren’t at least in some way also helping my self and then try to do something, even small things, that were only for me. I scheduled in time once a week to go paint my finger nails with my sister. I’m still not great with this but it’s better. I think business is one reason why it’s easier for me to not drink all week long. I stay so busy I don’t need to worry about those feeling a lot of meet sooner people say they feel. It’s when I “get bored,” or you know sir down long enough to think, that feelings happen.
So yeah not sure that will help but that’s what happened. I feel like I were a short novel lol, Best of luck to you. You deserve self-love!
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Day 18: it’s Friday and I’m sober (and it’s payday)! I went to an outdoor showing of Grease sing-a-long. This is the first time I’ve been around alcohol since I last drank. This is just a hipster movie theater that serves alcohol not like an actual bar or anything. But I got to have that great opportunity to be around really annoying drunks. It was a sing-a-long do participation was encouraged but the group right next to us was so loud and yelling side comments and the clapping OMG! I’m kinda a party pooper when it comes to loud people.
Anywho, I’m still sober, up about 4 hours past my bedtime, have a head schedule like I’m hungover from being awake for 19 hours and this is how I’ve decided to start my 3 day weekend of overtime. I truly do usually try to take care of myself better than this.
Yes, this! All of this. Being open to ideas and learning and change and accepting that we don’t know what we don’t know has been a huge turning point to me.
Just what I needed to read 
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Fwiw, unless I have something particular to do on a Friday or Saturday night I go to bed at the same time as I do other days (around 10pm which I appreciate is still later than your normal bed time).
Amazing that your former drinking buddy is up for doing sober stuff too and GREAT idea to sign up to that online class. Congrats on the job too!
Hope you get some chances to catch up on sleep over the weekend
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Thanks @siand. Won’t get to catch up on sleep per se but I do a good enough job getting like 8 to 8.5 hours every night that screwing it up one day isn’t usually to bad. It’s like I make extra sleep deposits every night so them when I do a big withdrawal I’m not overdraft.
Anyone on Instagram, I highly recommend you follow Yung_Pueblo. He posts the type of thing that makes you stop and think for a second everyday. Sometimes similar to the sober time app daily motivation quote.
Day 19 turned into day .01. 
Went to BBQ at my sister’s. This is the first time I really noticed it was actually peer pressure that I was drinking because of. She asked me if I wanted to try her drink in front of 4 other people. I folded. I drank. I didn’t drink until blackout like I normally do. But I know that doesn’t really matter. So I start again.
You acknowledged it, you are back here, and you are moving forward. That is the important thing!
Something that works for me is visualizing myself in situations beforehand, seeing myself not drinking, saying no, alternate good outcomes. Your brain doesn’t distinguish between real and imaginery.
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Today’s mantra: I am not perfect, but I am making progress.
I have to work the concourse area in a stadium today and it’s supposed to be 100°. I am so glad I didn’t drink more than I did yesterday. Having a hang over today would suck so bad.
That’s a perfect mantra. 
Just thinking about hangover sweats and pukes in high heat, or at all, made me feel a little bit sick just now.
Well checking in again. It’s just day 1. Got sucked into more overtime after work today. Feeling nervous about the class I signed up for. Its week 2 and I’m already behind on all of my reading but I got all of my assignments in. I think I have to stick it out though just so I can say I’ve taken a Master’s level class. Well see, I still have like 2 weeks to drop it. Shouldn’t be making any decisions while this tired.
So coming the the end of day 2. I have managed to walk over 109,000 steps already this month. No wonder I feel so freaking tired. I love getting paid for the overtime I put in at work but I always forget how much I also like having a day off.
Maybe if I could say something here. Yes it’s nice having the money but are you maybe trying to do too much.
I found at first that I was too tired to do more than just the basic stuff to get by. I lost a lot of time and ultimately money through taking time off just to take time for myself. To let my body and mind come to terms with what I was going through.
I don’t think I would be where I am if I hadn’t took that time.
So yes and no. I absolutely know that I keep myself busy, and frequently too busy and a crummy coping mechanism. I mentioned it in a reply to someone else (like 8 posts up) so I won’t go into as much detail here. But it is something I worked on with my therapist. I used to be way worse. My husband and I are slowly crawling out of debt. The overtime season is basically only 4-5 months and we work as much as we can. He has paid off one credit card and closed the account. By December I should have two paid off and closed. For now we need to do this for our stress and financial health. In like 2 more overtime seasons we should be out of debt (except my student loans) entirely. Because we also have a good amount of vacation time, I usually make a point to plan an extra day off to help make up for the last weekends. I worked all labor day weekend but instead next weekend is a3-day weekend for me. Plus I do like the bragging rights a little …
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