Day 158 – Podcasts and happy places

September 21st, 2018

I’ve been trying to find a good podcast. One of the (many) perks about sobriety is that you get to really know yourself again. There was a time, no matter how long ago, that drinking, and thoughts about drinking, didn’t take up significant space in your brain. I am only now realizing that I don’t really know what I like to do. Like, for fun. I don’t really have time for a full on hobby or anything like that and since time is limited I have to choose things that are interuptable and that I can enjoy when I have a minute here or there. It’s actually taken a bit to get this far, as silly as that seems. Here are a few things that I have discovered and since I am talking about things I like, I’m going to put this in list form, because I LOVE me a good list.

1. I really enjoy being productive
2. I love to read
3. I really enjoy writing
4. I like to have my headphones in listening to NPR or music and now, podcasts!
5. I love to learn and take in new information
6. I like to think and brainstorm
7. I like, no, NEED alone time
8. There is absolutely nothing like a hot bath but a long, hot shower will do and this may count as a separate thing but, oh my word, you can’t have enough candles!
9. Magazines. Yes, there’s Pintrest but nothing gets my 12 year old self as excited as a new, glossy, magazine. I’m shrieking inside just thinking about it! Eeee!
10. I love being inspired and finding inspiration

Yes, you read that right. The first thing on my “fun” list is that I enjoy being productive. I’ve stopped fighting it. I can head into workaholic territory very easily. One of the things that I thought I enjoyed about drinking is that I thought it relaxed me. I have a very hard time relaxing or just doing things for fun really and I’m seriously working on that. Not to say that I’m overly serious and don’t enjoy a good time. On the contrary, I can be a bit too silly sometimes and then people don’t get my humor and its weird. But I digress. When I feel that I am not accomplishing something, I can get a little cranky. To be more specific, I get frustrated. I think in the past I’ve confused that feeling of frustration as a craving. Emotions can be tricky to pin down. We also don’t all like the same things. I know, earth shattering! For me, that concept actually is. I spent my down time and days off, “relaxing” with alcohol, loosing coordination and my functionality dwindling as fast as the hours went by, for a long time. When I look at my list now, even if I had just been sitting on the couch watching tv, stone cold sober, it still would’ve been a terrible fit. Rather than doing what I think I should be doing, I’m doing more of what makes me happy. I took a moment to define what it is that I truly enjoy and now I am making sure that there is more of that in my life. When I took the online course to help stop drinking, (have I mentioned that yet?), one of the things that is mentioned in an exercise is to think back to what you liked to do when you were little. I didn’t think much about it at the time but after looking at my list, it’s still pretty much all of the same things. So simple, but thinking about what puts me in my happy place has been, well, fun and kind of relaxing.