Work has always taken up a lot of space in my brain. Maybe it’s like that for everyone. Work problems always felt like my biggest problems, and work took up more time in my day than just the hours I was working, because I was always thinking about my job.

When I got into Twelve Step recovery, that urgency remained. And some days I felt like I was just holding on to my job, getting through the day the best I could with the tools I had available. Slowly, though, I realized that there was a new meaning in my job, because I found myself doing what I think a lot of us are doing: working to give our lives enough structure that we can recover — and, for some of us, to provide children with the stability we never had.

If I’m going to do that, though, I can’t react in the same old ways to everything that happens at work. I started writing these reflections for myself, because I just wanted a principle to hold on to during the day. And I decided to share them here, in one place, to create the blog I’d always wanted.

A quick note: most Twelve Step groups like to focus on one program at a time. That makes perfect sense to me. But here, I tend to pull principles from any literature that helps me. So you might see quotes or thoughts from Al-Anon, ACA, or AA on any given day. As we say, take what you like and leave the rest, and I hope you find something helpful.