This is the seventh entry in my Morning Drift series — a personal search and journal of gratitude, presence, and the shifting truths I find in sobriety. These aren’t polished guides or programs, just lived moments: presence, gratitude, reflections, frustrations, questions, and the daily work of finding balance.
False Starts and Returning Sparks
December 9th, and I am contemplating a Morning Drift series here. This would be number seven. Over the past couple of months, I actually started a few of these posts, but each one fizzled out. I had one going right after daylight savings, started another about being at the wrong place at the wrong time — or the right place at the wrong time — and none of them came together the way I hoped.
I went back and tried to edit them. It was like when you’re writing a song: you have a great idea, you jot it down because you think it’s solid, and then when you circle back, the spark just isn’t there anymore. The concept is still there, and I still like the idea, but it wasn’t ready. I’ll have to come back to it.
What’s interesting is that before, losing momentum like that would frustrate me. Now I’m noticing something different. Even as I’m talking through this, I’m engaging in creativity again — and honestly, that’s a great problem to have.
A Milestone, not a Measurement
I’m not forcing this post, but I do want to get my thoughts down as I drive home. Today marks my 300th day of sobriety. To put it in perspective, it’s about 65 days until I reach a full year, which suddenly feels like a surprisingly short amount of time, especially considering how monumental those first 30, 60, and 90 days feel when you first make the choice to be sober.
When you start out on a sobriety journey, everything is about counting days and keeping track. In some of my earlier posts, I talked about how I initially embraced the AA concept and then shifted to SMART. That change reminded me that sobriety doesn’t fit into one single form or fix. Each person has to find their own way, and that choice belongs to them.
The Stoic Shift
Over the past 300 days, I’ve started dipping my toes into Stoic philosophy and what it looks like to apply it in my own life. I’ve learned that life is never going to be exactly the way I want it to be, and there’s a kind of relief in recognizing it instead of fighting it — especially since it seems I’ve been fighting that tide for most of my life.
Memento Mori, a reminder tied to Marcus Aurelius, was jarring the first time I came across it. The idea behind it — “Remember, you must die” — teaches you to value each small moment for what it is and to live each moment with this in mind, or at least try. And I’ve started to notice that in real ways. On a recent trip to Texas, I woke up at 5 a.m. just to see the sunrise and walk through a part of a park I would have never made the effort to visit before. In the past, that would have stayed in the “it would have been nice” category — this time, I actually did it. Moments like that are showing me what that Stoic idea really means.
Things aren’t necessarily clearer now; they’re just different. I’ve had to re-learn how to deal with people, situations, and my own emotions in ways I never really tried before. I still get angry, I still get upset, and I still get emotional — but the shift is in how I sit with those feelings, process them, and move through them. And maybe that’s the real change these past 300 days have brought.
The Dogs, the Walks, and the Shift
One of the biggest changes I’ve made is reclaiming my mornings. I usually wake up around 5 a.m., even on the weekends, and on the rare days I let myself sleep until 6, it still feels early enough to start ahead instead of behind. What surprises me is how much I look forward to waking up now — how much I genuinely enjoy those early hours — because the contrast to before is sharp.
301 days ago, mornings were something I avoided. Even though I wasn’t a morning drunk, I slept as late as I possibly could and dreaded the alarm, squeezing every last minute out of the bed. I had my routine engineered down to about seventeen minutes — shower, get ready, out the door — all so I could maximize sleep from the night before and delay facing the day. There was no joy in it, just calculation.
Moving into the apartment with the dogs, walking them in the morning, afternoon, and at night started out as a chore. But it’s become something different now. It’s part of the routine, and somewhere along the way, I learned to actually enjoy it.
Before, it was always I have to do this.
Now it’s I get to do this.
And that’s been a big shift.
Cold Toes and Perspective
Riding the motorcycle to work in forty-three degrees the other day — maybe forty-four — my toes were frozen, and I found myself laughing at it. Before, I would’ve been miserable about something like that — not because it didn’t suck, but because I was the one making it suck more. This time, it was just an unexpected moment where I realized how different things feel now.
I still didn’t like it — my toes, despite their new Stoic education, absolutely did not approve — but it didn’t own me the way things used to. Instead, I caught myself seeing it as a strange kind of privilege: I have a job to ride to, I have responsibilities, and I’m actually living my mornings instead of sleeping through them or running from them.
I think that’s what hit me the most.
Close Enough to Feel It, Too Far to Hold
It used to meet almost every moment with irritation, usually by spotting the negative angle with embarrassing efficiency. I still do it, but it’s a lot less polished now, and I’m leaning away from it. Somehow those same moments have shifted into something I process differently, maybe even appreciate.
I feel calmer, more focused, yet there’s still something I haven’t held in a long time — something I once felt and quietly wish I could feel again — and maybe that’s what’s nudging me toward these new goals I’m finally allowing myself to hold, goals that will require work, effort, maybe even some pain. And I’m okay with that.
What I didn’t expect was this layer of loneliness. Not the kind people assume when they hear the word sober. Not missing alcohol — but missing something intangible, something I can’t quite name. And it brings me back to that post I started writing about being in the right place at the wrong time, or the wrong place at the right time, depending on who was looking at it.
I think I know exactly what it is — something I once held and still feel in the background — but I’m not sure I should let myself drift toward it. Sobriety has made the outlines clearer: a loneliness that doesn’t empty me, but sits inside a life already more than half full, something outside my time zone, outside my hemisphere — close enough to sense, but still out of reach.
I want it. And I don’t know if I’m supposed to. Maybe that’s the part that matters most — the wanting and the not-knowing, both still alive in me.
Making a Big Deal Out of Not Making a Big Deal
Three hundred days in — 300 fucking days — I’m not trying to measure anything. I’m not looking for praise or a pat on the back. I’m just paying attention to how the small things stack up. And the funniest part? I’m out here insisting I’m “not counting days” while practically throwing a parade for day 300. The contradiction isn’t lost on me — and honestly, it’s fun to finally be in on the joke instead of the punchline.
Plenty has changed, and plenty hasn’t. The changes matter, and the things that remain the same just show me where I still need to do the work. And I’m finally at a place where that feels okay.
I don’t know what the next hundred days are going to look like. I don’t know what’s going to change or stay the same, and I don’t really know what I’m aiming for yet. But I do know this: if I keep doing these small things — these little shifts — the bigger picture will probably start to make more sense.
I’m not trying to solve everything at once anymore.
I’m just trying to show up.
No big moment, no fireworks — I don’t need a celebration. Just the truth that I’m still moving, and for the first time, it feels like I’m headed somewhere on purpose, and this time I actually trust the direction I’m choosing.
Tides and Truth... 