I woke up this morning in my bed and I had no idea where I was.

It took me like a full minute to realize that unbelievably comfortable bed in the tidy and air-conditioned room is what I normally just call “home.”

I visited my family in Portland for 3 weeks, and I just got back yesterday.  It only took 11 hours from my mother’s doorstep to my own, and an hour and half of that was waiting on the incorrectly named Super Shuttle to take me from Reagan to Downtown Silver Spring.  When I finally arrived at my apartment I made a promise to myself that I will never again use this ill-run company.

So what does keeping that promise mean?  It means that I have to pack more carefully when I travel, so that I’m only taking luggage that is manageable on public transportation.  It means that I have to be willing, both when leaving and arriving, to spend the time and effort to take the Metro.  This isn’t too difficult on the way to someplace far away and fun, but it is a Herculean feat when I’ve already been in and out of airports for hours.  It means that I will have to ask people I care about to take time out of their days to help me out.  It means I can’t leave planning to the last minute because “well I always have the option…”

And this is why I make many promises to myself that I sooner or later break.  When faced with minor annoyance I fall back onto the least difficult solution.  This isn’t so with big things: when a problem is serious, I (eventually) put in the work to fix it the right way.  But on small matters, like how to get to and from the airport, I don’t want to have to try very hard, and then I end up unbelievably irritated because the easiest solution is usually the crappiest solution; one that works, but just barely.  Before long I’ve made a liar out of myself, and said “this one last time” I’ll do what I told myself I wasn’t going to do, or conversely “this one time only” I won’t do what I told myself I would do.  It’s hard to trust yourself when your not particularly reliable to yourself.

I really am a “this one last time” kind of person.  In the particular instance it isn’t so bad: the extra donut, the sleeping until noon on Saturday, the thinking unkind thoughts about a co-worker, the bitching about how incompetent the faceless bureaucrat is, spending a few bucks on an e-book that I could easily get from the library.  I’m not say that everything in the world is completely evil and we should all go live as hermits in the dessert.  (Far from it actually, I love the life expectancy and comforts of a first-world modern existence.)  No, what I mean is for me it’s never just “this one last time.”  I told myself over and over again for years when I was intentionally going out to get black out drunk that it would be the last time, a final farewell to being young and stupid before I cleaned up my ways and acted like a responsible adult.  And it was never the last time.  There was always another excuse, another reason why I needed to have “a little extra fun.”  And then the need was the reason, and it was the opposite of fun.

Little things add up quickly into bigger things.  There will always be more excuses than opportunities to use them.  Trust in myself is slow to build and easy to destroy.  Maybe I can start by making a small promise and doing my best to keep it.

I promise myself I will… wait, give me a minute, I need a break before I commit to something.

(1 Year, 10 Months and 29 Days Sober)