If at first you don't succeed . . .

There's an ancient proverb (I'm guessing Chinese, it seems like that sort of thing). Fall down nine times, get up ten.

It is amazingly hard to change the habits of a lifetime. It's possible, if you're truly motivated and work at it. And the longer you're able to change it, and the more often you follow the new behaviors the easier it gets --- right up until you get severely stressed. Then the old stuff sneaks up on you. You're watching the crisis du jour, and the bad habit takes advantage.

So you start over.

I am not a spring chicken. Hell, I'm not even a SUMMER chicken. It's late autumn. The habits are pretty entrenched. And I've been stressed out of my freaking mind. So I should not be surprised that I backslid.

Self destructive stuff - check
Screw up the old checkbook - check
Depression and self anger - oh freakin' check.

But oddly, it's not all bad.

First, I noticed it. And most of it is fixable at this stage.
Second, some of the things that came up in the process are hugely important and are not a product of my 'mood'. My mood just amplifies it.

I do a lot of self-improvement stuff. I know there are people it doesn't work for. It works for me. So I do it. When I feel like I'm sinking fast, I pull out the book by the guru, the CDs (I've been doing this long enough that I even have the program on cassette tapes. Like I said, late autumn.) One of the reasons I've been recognizing the symptoms is that I've started doing the program again.

It's a cycle. Start moving forward. Screw up. Backslide. Groan and complain. Gather myself back up. Start over.

But that's pretty much the average human learning curve. Nobody gets it perfectly right the first time and just keeps executing it perfectly. (Okay, maybe there's an exception that proves the rule, but I don't want to hear about them. How incredibly annoying THAT would be.)

Now I don't like to think I'm average. I've always been "different." (You will note I didn't say special. Special connotates better. Different is just not the same; and can, in fact, be perjorative if you ask the right/wrong person.) But when it comes to the learning curve, I'm just as fallible as the next guy/gal/goat. (Hell, sometimes I think the goat learns quicker. It doesn't do the endless self-flagellation and arguing about what should work logically.)

SO, while it sounds like a broken record, (again with the ancient tech-speak that shows my age,) I am picking myself up. Dusting myself off. Taking 2 minutes to curse, swear, and generally feel sorry for myself. Then I'm trying again. Fall 9,999,999 times . . .