Early recovery needs to be a simple time of self-care, not optimizing the rest of one's life.

Goal-setting is good, but turning recovery into a wellness plan can derail early sobriety.

Sobriety is not about size; it's about life.

I love a good list. I have lists of house projects and plans. (Most of them will never come to fruition, but it's good to have HGTV dreams, I guess.) I have lists of article ideas, vacation spots, and books I want to read. I collect these tabulations in a notebook, and, yes, I have a list of my lists on the first page. It's good to have a plan. It's good to work towards a goal.

When I first got sober, I so wanted to make a list out of it. I wanted to write down all my goals, affirmations, and plans for my newly sober self. Early sobriety showed me windows of empowerment paired with flashes of joy. My synapses were firing up in a way that they hadn't been allowed to do so in years. True, a lot of these feelings were also paired with searing bouts of pain (all the emotions) and weariness........

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