i’ll sleep when I’m good and angry.

I don’t need to pick a fight to get upset, although that often happens. I can just as easily watch a bit of the news, or obsess over something that makes me unhappy. Dealer’s choice.

Step 10: continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

In Part One of this two-part exclusive, tonight and tomorrow morning I’m going to document my nightly routine and my morning wake-up.

It’s Sunday night. My daughter’s asleep, and the prime-time night football game is, for all intents and purposes, over. I shut down the house, and once my head hits the pillow, I’m struck by the different types of thoughts and feelings that go through my head when I am appropriately applying the program, and what raced through my obsessive, paranoid, misunderstood mind in the past.  Back before I knew or cared that I was sick, my body would drift off, while my mind would hang back and begin making plans to enact revenge come morning, or set something straight, or promise myself to be more withdrawn.  I’d literally be waking up the next day asking, what was I pissed about again?  Oh, yeah.  Grr.  Grumble, grumble.  Then my feet hit the floor and I’m off to justify and rationalize.  But what did I honestly expect?

Go to bed sick, wake up sick and tired.

Step Ten preps my subconscious for dozing, and tries to eliminate any lingering mental detours that might have me driving throughout the night, too lost to pull over.  I try to keep all remembered encounters on point, keep my personal inventory right-sized, and end with my gratitude list.

Planting seeds: a little night gardening.