Up Up and ....

Not gonna let it take me away!! My new store opened this week, and I have been bushwhacked every single night. So I have a pretty good reason to stay home and not go to meetings right? Nope, nope, nope!!

Wednesday night, my step meeting. I used to love going to that meeting, but have not been as into it the past six months or so. I stopped going for a bit, and added another open meeting. But I knew something was missing, felt it. So when they started back on Step One to cycle through again I committed in my head to going back. I have already missed a couple and we are on Step Six. I missed last Wednesday .... no good reason other than I was tired and didn't want to go. That type of thinking is so very bad for me. This week I was on that same playing field. I also had the added "excuse" of how tired I was from opening the new place. I really did not want to go.

I live in complete fear of that first drink. Even two years away from the last drink. I have had enough days, both good and bad, were the thought of a drink still passes through my head. It does not shake me up the way it use to, I have accepted the fact that I am a alcoholic and these thoughts will plague me my entire life. I know this because I go to meetings and people have spoken of it. And today, I know that I am no different from them. I also know that the meeting I will really regret going to will be the one I did not go to at all.

My friend G speaks of a slip she had when she was five or six years sober. She went to lots of meetings and was pretty active. Then one day she did not go to her meeting. And she figured a nice glass of wine would be oh so tasty .... Took her another five years to get back. There is no knowing for sure, but there is a good chance that if she went to her meeting that day, she would not have had that glass of wine.

I have enough regrets on my hands, I don't want to add anymore. I don't want to drink. So I went to the meetings. And I did not regret one single minute of it. Because of the new store I will be missing my Sunday morning meeting. Tonight I will go to a different one. This meeting is actually were I got what I hope is my last 24 hour chip. I like to start my week off with a meeting, and how great it is that I can start this new chapter in my life in the place that in fact started a whole new book .........

Bar room pipe dreams no more ....

How many, many, many, MANY times did I sit at the bar and tell people how to run their lives? I always had the answers. How many, many, many times did I sit at the bar and talk about "the things I could/would" do "some day". Lots and tons and then some.

Today I don't have to pretend to have the answers for other people. And I actually wait for a question (most of the time) before I venture a response of any kind. What a wonderful gift of sobriety that is. I don't have to be in charge of anyone other than myself. That includes my eighteen year old daughter and someday to be ex husband. I am free to be just me. I can offer and give my love and support, and mean it. More importantly, I can really give it.

As for those bar room pipe dreams ......... I can make those real now. Really real!! For EVER I have dreamed of running my own business. What business that would be changed from week to week, but the dream was there. When I was drinking of course part of the motivation was how convinced I was in my arrogant way that I could "do it better". I was a legend in my own mind.

Less than a week from now that dream of running my own business will be coming true. After many hurtles (I have a HUGE resentment against building inspectors at the moment....) ... I will be opening the doors to MY place. Really real. I am still kind of in a state of disbelief to be honest. Once I have the keys in hand and product in stock ... make that first sale ... it MIGHT all start to feel really real. In the tween time, I am getting ready.

Not just trying .. but doing. I am not so concerned about "doing it better than". I do of course want to do it better than the competition, be kind of silly if I didn't! But the arrogance of drunken me is gone. I will be asking for help and advise, and listening. I will implement ideas, some will work, some will not. And that is ok. God is giving me a shot. And if this is not what I was meant to do with my life, not going to be my success story, that is ok too. Instead of just talking about it, I am doing. Such a big improvement that I have already succeeded more than I ever would have sitting in a bar.