A Better Me

There are some changes I will be making, as well as some personal goals I am setting for myself starting January 1, 2015. These are not empty resolutions that get thrown out after the second week of January. These are life changes that need to take place and continue on throughout the course of my time on earth.

Now that my life has settled into place and the unexpected tremors of early sobriety have long dissipated, I want to focus a bit more on my success and purpose as a human being. This does not mean I will stop doing what I need to do to stay sober. It just means that, on top of staying sober, I want to achieve other goals. There are also things about my life; as well as myself, that I am not okay with.

1- My weight. When my father died in October 2013, it affected my eating habits. I linked the death of my father to the foods he ate over the course of his life. Already having eating/food issues from a very young age (me), as well as very similar eating habits as my father, I started to despise eating food. As far as I knew, food killed my father and I hated it. Now, whether or not food is to blame for the death of my father; it doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is that I gain back my weight. I am not bulimic or anorexic. I just get pissed off at food and a lot of food textures gross me out. Some of my issue goes back to when I was a young child. I am still trying to figure it out and I plan to see a nutritional counselor. I guess it is also possible that I have Sensory Processing Disorder. I hate soggy, gritty, slimy, chunky textures and putting any of those in my mouth sounds about as fun as sliding naked down a huge razor-blade into a pool of rubbing alcohol. Any of my readers deal with this hyper-sensitive full-body-gagging experience? Same with folding a piece of 80-grit sandpaper in on itself but I’ll save the goose-bump hypersensitive touch stories for another time. Ugh!

GOAL- I will gain the weight back to my average size. This means I need to gain 15 pounds. That may seem like a small task but…I am a small man and will have to eat a massive amount of calories.

NUTRITION

2a- Drinks. I have been drinking waaaaay too much Mt. Dew, Pepsi, Red bull, Coffee, and other sugar loaded drinks. January 1st I am done. Well, one cup of coffee a day. No other soft drinks or sugary soda crap. Gotta have the coffee jump-start! Creamer, no sugar. 🙂

2b- Candy. I eat too much damn candy. I eat candy every day. milk duds, reeces pieces, M&Ms, Red licorice… I devour that shit. Willy Wonka would be jealous of my candy cupboard. Where is all the slimy soggy candy?! I guess that would be too easy. January 1st, DONE.

3- Work-out. I have started a work-out routine but they always stop. I always do it for the wrong reasons. This time, I am starting a workout because- well, I am getting older and I don’t want to die any time soon. I have been extremely rough with this body the last 20 years and I need to show it some love. I want to be healthy, strong, agile, headache-less and alert. January 1st, it’s on.

BUSINESS

4- My wife and I both work but we have opposite schedules. She works days and I work nights. We have worked this terrible schedule long enough so we are going to fix it. We have been talking about our plan to start our own business doing something we both enjoy. We know what direction we are going to go and have worked out the base decisions. Our business plan will start taking shape objectively on January 1, 2015.

5- Aside from our personal business goal, I am also setting a completion/publish goal for my book. I haven’t had any luck with agencies and I can’t just sit on it forever. My book will be getting published in 2015. If that means self-pub, so be it.

I’m sure there are many ways I can become a better person but I know the topics I listed above are the most important to me currently. Maybe when I wipe all these out I can work on some others. I am glad I have a precise starting point. Its time to walk the walk.

Thanks for your continued support my friends! For more great reading, stop by a fellow bloggers site at http://afterthepop.me/2014/12/26/hope-for-2015/

-Dustin

Word “Games”

A decade ago, before I understood what I needed to do to stay sober, I was a little bothered with the expression “working a program”. This term, being the deciding factor between living a happy sober life or succumbing to the vicious talon grips of a miserable, heroin infused death never sat well with me.

When I think of the word program, I think of a specific schedule or curriculum. An appointment or an arrangement of business or specific tasks to be completed. On the surface, it may seem that debating something as simple as a word definition or word usage is rather silly or insignificant. The truth is quite the opposite. The misuse of words have caused some of the most destructive actions we have seen in our world. Endless bickering and arguments in my own circle of friends and family has happened due to the misuse of spoken language. The misuse of words has caused a myriad of unnecessary and avoidable problems. It has also caused relationship perplexities with an endless amount of marriages rushing into splitsville.  All because we use the wrongs words!

Maybe using the phrase “working a program” works well for you. If so, that’s great! I would argue that is isn’t the correct term for redirecting someone’s entire life and everything in it, but like I said, if it works for you, great. I do believe that if we want words to keep some sort of firm validity and if we want continual growth in our relationships, we should do our best to say what we truly mean. I have noticed an large increase in the amount of word exploitation with the English language over the past 20 years. I am one of the worst culprits. In an ever-changing world, many words accurate meaning seems to slowly mesh and blend with others.

In a world where individuals want to ban the word bossy because it somehow sounds sexist.

In a world where shell-shock was too shocking so it was changed to combat fatigue but was still to real so it is now called PTSD. A complete disconnect from the reality my friends. Call it what it is. It is shell shock.

In a world where up is down and down is up.

In a world where a war against addicts is labeled The War on Drugs.

It is still a world that I refuse to call living my life, “a program”.

That is why I don’t use the term “working a program”. I would rather call it what it is. I am living my life. Yes, it is a much different life than the one I failed at before but I know now; I must live a much different life today. Letting go of the things I cannot control was the perfect starting point and I wanted to give my life what it deserved. My life deserves much more than a program.

The phrase “working a program” leaves the after-taste of an “ending just around the corner”. Recovery is nothing of the sort. It is a complete and total life change that requires things that are not always at the top of my to-do list. A program itself is easily fallible; easily set aside or put on the back burner. A life however, not so much.

Part of living a sober life, I want to become a better communicator. My goal after this post is to be more impeccable with my words and focus more on what I say to others.

-I can’t say I love someone if they don’t have any virtuous and/or admirable qualities about them.

-I will be upfront and honest. I won’t use words to soften a verbal blow. That is not admirable. That is only protecting the other persons feelings at the cost of my own.

If I am impeccable with my communication, no one has to “read between the lines” or “put words in my mouth” or try to guess what is bothering me.

Without spoken language, humans couldn’t do even the simplest of tasks. We would be like a dog, begging for a treat. I so often take for granted the ability to use the spoken language. Our words can be used as poisonous weapons or as helpful, informative sound waves of truth and logic. For so many years I have spread poison, lies, hate and misinformation and it is now time to be a better man. It is time to start living a truer, happier life.