I have noticed that since I have not been drinking, I have been so much more relaxed. Since I know I am not going to go home and unwind with a glass (or 5) of wine, I have no reason to be in a hurry. I remember getting so aggravated when I had to make an extra stop on the way home. If I had to go to the grocery store or run an errand, it would be such a negative experience simply because it delayed the commencement of my wind down time. My sober evenings have been filled with reading, maybe a little tv and going to bed at a reasonable hour. I find it funny that I watched so many hours of tv in the evening when often the end of the show or movie would be a bit patchy for me to remember. Maybe I just had the tv on while I got good and drunk just so it felt like that wasn't the only thing I was doing. I also notice how obsessive I would get about things while drinking. People would often tell me that I would get stuck on one subject, one point and just go on and on about it. I found that I would do that while drinking alone too. I might spend forever looking for something, or go on and on commenting on something someone posted on Facebook, writing comments or continuing the joke way past where it needed to go, or even worse write a novel on my Facebook status about some little thing or idea. I have always been a little obsessive about things. Since we are on the subject of drinking at home alone, I would like to clear something up. When I first started this blog, I talked about how I was rarely getting sloppy drunk but when it would happen, I would be devastated. This is true. However, I have to be honest with myself and realize that I was drinking at home a couple nights a week and although I didn't get sloppy drunk, it was normal for me to open the wine bottle and throw away the cork as I just knew that whole bottle would be a goner. I guess I would look at that as blowing off steam. Since it would be just enough to get me drunk before bed but not enough to make me sloppy, I guess I wasn't considering it a horrible thing.
Anyhow back to my point. I have noticed that I am just generally more relaxed without all of the drinking chatter and worry. This has really allowed me to be more patient, present and therefore polite! I would definitely consider myself an extremely polite person anyway, but sometimes I would have to fake it if someone was going on and on delaying me from leaving work or taking too long to explain something. Indeed, I have realized that I am a fast paced person and I get aggravated when someone doesn't follow my logic fast enough, make decisions quickly, or give me the meat and potatoes of a problem without peppering it with unnecessary details. I guess part of that has to do with the fact that I am so intently listening to my clients and am fully focused and present with them so when I am not with clients and in running a business mode, I get overwhelmed with the pure number of things that come into my world in the day. I am constantly on a countdown where I might only have 8 minutes to address this issue or 7 minutes til this or that. I think I put a lot of pressure on my staff to communicate and problem solve with me at lightening speed. Still, I find this highly ironic seeing that it took me twenty years to use my logic to see the extremely obvious fact that drinking was ruining my life, twenty years to decide to stop drinking, and twenty years of babbling to my friends and family the details of my guilt and feelings about drinking. I have learned to slow down and really try to hear what my employees are saying to me even if they want to give me all of the details including the irrelevant ones. If we run out of time, we run out of time. We can resume later. I am not in this constant panic mode where the clock is counting down. So patience, presence and politness... I am really enjoying these states of mind and qualities. I am sure the people around me are enjoying them too!
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