I got an email yesterday from Johnny, with some good advice. He didn’t say it, but I think he was responding to my most recent blog posts. They have not been happy-chappy, exclamatory or even particularly positive. I have not been a champion of recovery lately. I have had a case of the January blues.

Bush Pilots and Recovery

He told me to ask myself, when I am feeling anxious or out of sorts, “Is the plane still flying?” I am a visual thinker, so I love this mental image. Having spent eight years on a small island in The Bahamas, I can relate to this bush pilot’s credo. The controls might be smoking; the captain a little hung over; the landing strip a patch of beaten sand, running end to end on a tiny, coral promontory. A storm may have blown in, causing us to fly closer and closer to the Exuma Sound to get a visual. But the plane is still flying.

I start looking around at the rivets that hold the plane together. The aircraft is at least 30 years old, well worn and patched together with tarnished, old parts. I am being thrown around in the seat and the pilot says, “It’s all good mon’, tighten your belt so you don’t hit your head on the roof…” He smiles with all his teeth. I am thinking, landing in open water is not an option – there’s no one around for miles and the sharks… But the plane is still flying.

And then, tilting and bucking like something alive, the plane bumps in for a landing, all the way to the edge of the runway. Right where the ocean laps the shore. There are crashed planes rusting in the mangroves, but I am alive. And the plane was still flying, even when I was tossed like loose baggage by force majeure. Even when I had no control of the outcome.

It’s all good mon’…

I woke up this morning feeling like myself. Kim says there is no shame in a “season of taking something to soften the edges.” But I really don’t want to go there. These bouts of the blues are like a storm in the tropics.  Black, even a little frightening, but short lived…

The post When All Else Fails, Ask Yourself, “Is the Plane Still Flying?” first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.

I joined the Grand Rapids YMCA two months ago. I just went for the first time (after 3 payments of $55) yesterday. My school of thought about exercise regimens has always been, “Do not turn up for Pilates class until you have lost 5 pounds or are an expert at Pilates.” I wouldn’t want to start an exercise class without being in tiptop shape or the best in show, right? It doesn’t matter that I am paying for my empty spot. Nor that I am not seeming to drop the weight or practice in preparation… Hence putting off starting at all.

I Have My Reasons…

Whenever I have tried to institute a positive life change, like quitting drinking for example, I have this thing I do. It’s not just that I put it off. I am a pleasure seeker, so I will always hesitate before I do anything hard. It’s that I also feel the need to stockpile bad stuff the night or nights before I do the positive thing.

When I go on a diet, I eat everything fattening I can think of – even if I don’t want it – the night before. The many times I tried to quit drinking, I would swill a death defying amount of booze the prior evening. When you think about it, that is the definition of self-sabotage. For two reasons. One, you are telling yourself that the “bad thing” is going to be so missed you have to stay up all night to overindulge it one last time. Like that vacation, Italian lover the night before you leave for Kansas and your old, dull life…

Two, you set yourself back by loading up on the bad thing. Starting to quit drinking with a hangover may seem like an inspirational thing to do. But all you want the morning after a last-call binge is a Bloody Mary. If I eat a cake in toto, I wake wanting more cake. See what I mean?

Don’t Let This Happen to You

Maybe no one else on earth stockpiles, but I know a lot of people procrastinate. Don’t let this happen to you. And don’t glamorize the bad thing by having one last fling. Especially the night before a cleanse. And don’t put off the inevitable. I turned up at the Y and I was not the blue ribbon, best in the Pilates class. But I was not the worst one either. And it’s not a contest.

Just turn up.

The post Procrastination, Self Sabotage and Other Bad Things… first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.