Tomorrow I absolutely must get out of bed. Take a shower. Put on clothes. Go outside. I don’t know why these were unappealing tasks today but I gave into sloth and just laid here watching Frasier on Netflix and reading blogs. And napping with the dog.

One of the things that has changed in these past near 60 days of sobriety is that I can really pay attention to my dog. Poor bubby, my relationship with alcohol was just about to go off the rails when I found him. He is so loyal to me and so full of love even though for much of our time together I was a sub par puppy parent. I will spend the rest of his life making it up to him, all those nights I drank and went to bed instead of taking him out for a walk. I am trying to remind myself that guilt is a wasted emotion. I so enjoy spending time with him now, he’s such a good dog. He can tell that I am more engaged and it makes him happy.

The dog was hardly the only relationship I neglected. Drinking alone on my couch didn’t exactly facilitate building new relationships and hiding my drinking required me to withdraw from existing relationships. I really am realizing that the last 4 years of my life were a colossal waste of time. Being at the statistical midpoint of my life is likely driving my desire to stop wasting time. These days when it’s hard for me to go out and do something feel like wasting more time.

I lost touch with myself. I lost touch with what makes me happy, what I want to learn, what I want to do. So now I’m sober and I still don’t really know those things anymore. Some days I am excited about finding out and some days I am discouraged by not knowing. There should be hobbies and projects and whatnot to be up working on today.

I am, though, profoundly more committed to taking care of myself. A weird side effect is that I suddenly feel real disgust and anger toward people (ok, men) who have treated me poorly. I don’t like feeling anger, especially 6 years after the fact. I assume these feelings are coming up because my feelings in general are coming back online. Two nights ago I was crying over something that happened 4 years ago but I never much processed it. All of these damned feelings, sometimes it is exhausting.

I am trying my best to remember that this is just the process, that everything isn’t magically better because I stopped drinking. I love not being hungover. I love not buying alcohol. I love the extra room in my recycle bin. Today I did not drink. I did not kiss inappropriate people. I did not neglect my dog. I did not drunk text/email/call anyone. I did not make any impulsive poor decisions. Maybe some days I will have to measure success by the “did not do” list. My, this was a disjointed and unfocused blog entry. Which I suppose is perfectly fitting for how I am feeling…disjointed and unfocused. But tomorrow I will try again.