I think my annual autumn depression is trying to lay claim to my soul. I’m out of sorts when nothing is different. I’m getting a bit stressed about running out of time to make my nephew’s Halloween costume, which could be contributing to my exhaustion. It’s probably allergies too. I take Claritin every day in every season except winter. It takes the edge off all be the worst symptoms, but I get tired. Compared to bronchitis and sinus misery it is a fine trade off.
I spoke at my Thursday night meeting last week. It was a crazy work week and I went directly from a go!go!go! work day to the meeting. I prayed before hand to be useful and according to one person I was. That is all I can hope for, but it felt awful at the time. Once others shared I finally felt the sanity and serenity I find at meetings. I felt then that I was ready to talk. To bad I’d already rambled for 30 minutes. The longer I’m in program, the more info I feel compelled to share. Next time I’m asked to speak I must remember to take time to get serene before the meeting.
I wanted to prepare for speaking this time. The first time I spoke my sponsor would not let me prepare. I still think that is a good policy, but I wanted to look at some old posts and see some progress I could talk about. I took literally two minutes before rushing to the meet to look back. I started WIT in November 2005. I skimmed a few posts and was dismayed to see that I’m struggling with the same crap now that I was almost two years ago: late bills, focusing at work, procrastination, stalling on steps and over-sleeping. It freaked me out a bit. I thought I had made so much progress, but it didn’t look like it in my blog. So I called my sponsor.
I still struggle with calling her. When my sponsees have trouble picking up the phone I can relate absolutely. When I talk with her I feel better. She always says something helpful, even if she is simply agreeing that something sucks. But I’m always making excuses when it comes to calling her. I’m trying to push past those excuses. If I think I should call her, I do it. So I called her Thursday night on my drive from work to the meeting I was to speak at. She told me it was all about degree. She was still dealing with the same character defects from 19 years ago, but to a much smaller degree. I can see this is true with me. Yes, I still pay some bills late, and I need to stop that, but I set up most of my bills to auto-pay so there are only three bills I need to worry about each month.
My character defects are still there, they always will be. But the degree to which they control my life is so much less than it was two years ago. I have made progress and all I need think about today is today.
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