Day 99: Today is my 99th day of sober life. Tomorrow is a “big milestone” according to friends and family but I wanted to share the importance of focusing on things one day at a time. That is certainly the backbone as to why I have managed to stay sober and focused on my recovery. As I mentioned in a previous post, I think I’ve been too focused on the bigger picture in the past and setting aims and targets for myself that are often so far out of reach and effectively setting me up for failure. This has been a cycle for around 20 years – one which started in my senior years at school and continued until my recent mental health breakdown and hospital stay.
I think being unwell and the time away from my family has taught me that there are so many things outside of our control that we waste time worrying about. What other people think, what other people have said, what we should have done, what we could have done, and what will we do in the future.
I get up on a morning and yesterday is gone. I don’t waste my energy thinking about it anymore. I don’t think about tomorrow. Tomorrow will be tackled tomorrow. That’s not to say my ‘today’ isn’t structured and productive. Of course it is. But it is also dominated by thoughts focused on what I have done as opposed to what I can do – which in the past has lead to lists that are rarely completed.
People ask me about sobriety and my mental health in years to come.
“What?! So you’re never gonna have a beer ever again?!”
“Do you think you’ll ever feel like ending things again?”
I can’t predict the future and I choose not to think about the future. Living in the now is working for me. And has done for 99 days. I’ll go again tomorrow but today is about today
Happy Daddy 