Routine (part 2)

November 17th

Continuing the theme from yesterday about routines. Over the last several weeks I had some setbacks on a personal, emotional, and financial level. That put me off my routine and familiarity of everyday life. I am no longer afraid of change, especially when I can anticipate it and be prepared for it or even initiate the change myself as a proactive move. But when several things that change my routine happen at once, that impacts my way of thinking and reacting. My mood changes as well — I jump from one problem to another without really resolving anything and I don’t have any closure on any problem. What helps me is making a list, a plan — where I have an exact overview of what I want to do daily/weekly as my necessary chores, and I can then add other stuff around it. Of course — I am very careful about not trying to do too much at once. I have bad memories from right after I finished my therapy and wanted to catch up with everything immediately. That didn’t work, it only made me angry and tired and triggered my alcohol craving (I didn’t relapse, but I don’t want to go through something like that again).

And another thing — my routine is not boring. When I do things in an organized way I actually have to stop myself occasionally from doing too much. It seems like the day is not long enough but I also want to have a working self-care and, for example, I always aim for 6.5–7 hours of sleep a night. It only happens when I am disorganized and without a clear aim in my day-to-day life that I suffer from boredom. And boredom is a huge trigger for recovering alcoholics like me. When everything is organized — when I have time for my professional life, my personal chores, and hobbies plus occasional time to be lazy (and lazy is NOT equal to bored) then I function well and I am calm and happy. So I strongly recommend a routine as help during addiction recovery.