So I have toyed with the idea of doing something like this for a long time. Partly due to encouragement I have received from others, but mostly because it just felt like someplace I could express some things that I am realizing, revisiting or just thinking about. However, I haven’t done it until now and that is exactly what this post is about.
Do Some! You see I have a pronounced tendency to imagine things I would like to do, actions I should take or new directions I would like to go and completely talk myself out of them. As part of my journey in recovery I have had to come to accept some pretty hard truths about myself, not the least of which is that I have anxiety. Not the kind that leads to complete paralysis or panic attacks, no mine is more like a vulture that just kind of picks away at me. Some days when I wake up it is like this vulture sitting on my chest who as soon as I open my eyes says, “Good you’re up, here’s what you need to worry about!” Doesn’t even let me put my foot on the floor before he starts in. Now thankfully most days I can fend him off with some good old fashioned CBT or self-talk. But he is a persistent little turd and that initial morning onslaught is only one of his basest tactics.
You see my anxiety is a decidedly formidable nemesis that is able to meet me on multiple fronts in a multitude of guises. I continue to become more capable of sniffing out his undermining ways, but before I got sober I was running blind. You see, I had put so much effort into making myself the person I wanted to be through my using that I fell victim to the most dastardly deceiver of them all, me.
When I got sober I knew I had to quit using, but I was totally blind to my anxiety and nervousness. I had bought into this image that I was very laid back, care free and even. However, as I went to meetings and stayed sober I kept hearing people refer to their anxiety and over time it clicked. I had anxiety! Now to most people that isn’t an astounding revelation, but for me it was a real huzzah moment. You see when you come into this world with anxiety as a part of the air you breathe, it isn’t anxiety, it’s just life. Right? As I started to look at my life I began to realize just how many things that I thought were lame, uninteresting, unimportant or generally not worth my time, just plain scared me. Well, maybe they didn’t scare me but they made me nervous. Now add the sabotaging narrative of my little vulture friend and I just didn’t try them.
Even when my motivation and interest would get me to seriously think about trying something my anxiety’s good friends “perfectionism” and “self-doubt would show up and outnumbered I would decide not to try whatever it was.
Fortunately, needing to turn away from the soul-eating, meat grinder that is addiction required me to start doing some things that made me nervous in order to salvage my life. Sobriety required taking some risks and pushing past that inner vulture. But usually just by taking some baby steps, just creeping into the discomfort, but the hell I was leaving was a lot more compelling, so I crept.
And that is when I started just”doing some”. Not everything, not all today, not perfectly, but some. So today I am doing some. Just writing something, trying a little, taking a risk, and seeing how it goes. Usually encourages me to do a little more, but who knows. Either way I will go to bed tonight knowing I did something, even if it made me a little nervous.
