I don’t check my clean time counter app often (ever) and haven’t paid attention to my day count since I celebrated one year in January, but today I spontaneously checked the app and lo and behold: I am one year one month and one week sober. I guess it would be even cooler if I checked tomorrow, at one year one month one week and one day, but we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. It’s only been a few 24 hours.
I don’t put much (any) stock in so-called angel numbers, but the internet tells me 111 is a number of manifesting. The angels are telling me to watch my persistent thoughts as they will become my reality.
As an alcoholic with maybe a touch of self-diagnosed OCD all my thoughts are persistent thoughts. Lately, I’ve been oscillating between obsessive focus on what I want but can’t imagine having–publishing a book–and the consolation prize–relapse.
I’ll take the out of the blue thought to check the clean time counter and the fact that I noticed the one one one at all as a sign to tilt my thoughts toward the former.
I gave up Facebook for Lent and in the extra time I had in only six days I wrote the story that’s been simmering inside me for over a year: the story of leaving the Mormon church. Where will it go? Here? On another website as a standalone essay? In a book? A compilation or a memoir?
Tell me what to do, Internet.
Congratulations on your recovery. I have missed your posts.
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Please post it here! I don’t want to miss it!
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Relapse is not a consulation prize for writing a book. If that was so, I’d be dead 4 times over. That is how many books I’ve written since about 23 years clean. In a couple weeks I will have 30 years and I am on my 5th book. God willing I will finish it soon. Do what your heart tells you and enjoy writing if that is what you want to do.
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Congratulations on 29 years! That is so inspiring. And on the books too! What do you write about?
I was being flippant about relapse. I’m sorry I was insensitive. I forget how my words impact other sufferers. Relapse is where my mind goes when I don’t have something positive to put my energy into and it’s where my mind goes when I am depressed (and I get depressed when I turn away from the good things calling me, like writing). Also, in all honesty, I am in a place where I sometimes romanticize my addiction. Not great, but it’s where I’m at. I will follow your advice and do what my heart is telling me, which is, right now, to write.
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I wrote an autobiography but stopped selling it when it became apparent that my memories, of my life, were not the same as friends and family! And I wrote a couple engineering/history books.
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Memory is tricky! As is writing about friends and family, I am learning.
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A memoir
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