If I always do what I’ve always done, I’ll always get what I’ve always got.
I literally didn’t do what I promised I would just ten hours ago. The result? I’m already out of sorts and out-of-doors at 6:45 a.m. Sunday morning. Whipped up some drama for no other reason then that’s what I do when left unchecked. It took less than five minutes of human interaction with the two people I love most on this planet for me to go off the rails.
Step 10: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
My alcoholism wakes before I do. I tripped over it walking into the kitchen this morning. All my old defense mechanisms and shortcomings snapped to attention and fell in line: the irresistible urge to isolate, get down on myself, and see the world as filled with jackals, biting at my bones.
And so I did what I’ve always done: I ran away. Took the dog. Walked him, watched him poop, picked it up, then sat in the car and read yesterday’s blog. I’m writing them for me, remember? Maybe I should start learning something from them.
I read the Seventh Step prayer three times in a parking lot that I used to be my go-to drinking station. Remember: that alone is a miracle.
Five minutes of quiet meditation with the eyes closed and doors locked.
Now I’m heading back home to apply step ten in the doorway. It’s 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning. And a day that was once destroyed by alcoholism now at least has a chance to be salvaged.
It works when I work it.
12 the hard way 