It was Sunday and I was in the mid work scramble of the day. Tired from riding for 3 hours and getting ready to prep meals, Sunday is one of the busiest days I have these days and I work alone the whole time. A simple thought and despite its seeming lack of ominous, it weighed a ton. “It’s always going to be like this.”
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I’d had this thought before but in a much different context. There was a time in early 2000 or so when I was in deep working in the restaurant/bar business and was drinking too much and my life was spiraling. I remember being in the Chimes for a morning shift, still out of it from the night before (or more recent morning) and looking into the mirror and thinking, “It’s always going to be like this.” It was terrifying. Terrifying enough to change my ways. To say to myself “you pushed yourself all the way to the edge of oblivion, you’d better see if you can pull yourself back.”
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Rock bottom is this thing you’re supposed to hit to make change, but it doesn’t have to be a complete unravelling. Sometimes it can just be a realization. For me, on Sunday, I think it was. In a moment I thought about the last 20 years, about the ups and the downs, about success and failure. Again I thought “it’s always going to be like this,” and “this” is again, both terrifying in similar and different ways as it was 19 years ago. It was again followed by “I don’t want it this way anymore”. Same as that hungover stare into the Chimes bathroom mirror.
This time around, it’s not near addiction I am battling. It is a repeating of similar behaviors and expecting change (or is this just another addiction). It’s about non stop hustling and working on the wrong things. About ignoring things and hoping they’ll get better through some sort of magical “change fairy”. It’s about doing non stop and not stopping to do.
I say DOERS>SAYERS and I mean that, but at some point doing the wrong things for the sake of doing is part of the problem (mine). “It’s going to be this way forever” today feels like a call to arms. It felt like a rock bottom without a jagged knee scraping, my life is spiraling from alcohol, fall. Like a false flat. Or a false bottom. Whatever.
All of the above is fine and well. Rock bottoms, realizations, change, bullshit, doing, saying. None of it matters if you don’t do something.
It’s always amazing though, when you can get impetuous to make something happen. It’s so immensely hard to change your ways, but it always comes from a specific realization. You just have to be open to them.
#hugsandhi5s