healthy behaviors. f*ck.

As the title indicates, I thought I'd write tonite about healthy behaviors and there contribution to my recovery. I read this great thing the other day it said what you do everyday matters way more then what you do once in a while. It made me think. So many of my good habits I have trouble sticking with while the old standby bad habits seem to come naturally & daily (e.g. running late, procrastinating, negative self talk). I wondered about how different my day would be if I could practice healthy habits as much as I practice my bad ones. This reminded me about when I was drinking I always felt so...good at it and how it only later occured to me that I had practiced nearly everyday for a long long time. Then I thought about all of the different skills I'd seen other people acquire and how it never once had occured to me that they had had to work hard to learn these skills. I just saw the finished product (e.g. the A on the paper, the song on the guitar, the great backhand) and assumed that, unlike me, they were born with natural talent. It has taken years for it to sink in that those people had learned how to work hard, how to not give up, how to develop habits that contributed positively to their sense of self. How had I missed that? and why had I never before thought about just how much practice I was getting drinking and what other practice I was missing out on in the process. Maybe this is why teenage drinking worries/interests me so much. At such a critical time in our development how easy is it for us to learn to identify ourselves as the crazy, wild, party people and what price do we pay when we wake up the next day and have to go back to the real world where we feel dangerously insecure and inadequate--not to mention hungover. I wish we could teach this in school. An entire class on why alcohol, and its companion drug marijuana, can be dangerous for some people, how to know if you're on of them, what to do if you are worried about yourself or a friend. What are signs that you might be heading in the wrong direction with substances. Anyway, maybe someday I'll figure out a way to teach a real class to middle school kids that is honest and applicable. For now, I am just happy that I hit the treadmill again today and got up on time. That is progress. x