Yehoshua please feel free to share things about yourself too, I'll listen.
what do you mean you cant join a group? do you mean a 12 step group, if so don't feel pressured by anyone, everyone has what works for them and what works for one person doesn't always work for another so defiantly find what works for you but if what you try does not work try other things.
About laziness and avoidance, I find that with me it usually stems from two main causes (at least the laziness, because avoidance also comes from RID, not to get into 12 step stuff but that is exactly what escaping reality usually is) but laziness for me is either a form of procrastination and I can go on and on about that in matter of fact I am procrastinating right now and the more I write the more I am procrastinating. as a side note I have been noticing lately that I sometimes use my recovery as an excuse to procrastinate but that is not here or there, the other leading cause of my laziness is plain old selfishness, saying, "I don't want to do x,y, or z so I will just relax and take it easy, its not important that I have responsibilities and that others will suffer because of my laziness"
What I have found does work for me not that I do this all the time but I am working on it is to ask myself the "who am I serving question" and not just when I am feeling lazy but whenever I am consciously making a decision
and as you mentioned doing a random mitzvah helps in the beginning, I believe that the reason why this may loose its affect after the initial laziness is in the fact that it is "random" so yes when I am feeling lazy go do something good for someone, thats very nice but what if someone is not around, and I know that many will jump on that and reply just pull out a tehillim and daven for someone, thats very nice too, but personally I'd get board fairly quickly with that and return to laziness.
By conditioning my decision making through asking myself "who am I serving" I am preparing myself for being in a lazy situation and I then have a different attitude about laziness. In matter of fact, with that attitude I can than do something for myself in order that I can down line benefit someone else.
and the other thing that helps but is not so easy is what you do, just get up and work harder and sometimes thats the only way to go. hope my ranting helps a bit
ok and now about me I am doing well.
9 days clean ;D
I have to say that working on shmiras ainayim helps getting through a week, one day, or even step in public at a time, of course. before this week of being clean I had a few falls and I know for a fact that during that time I was not being as careful about shmiras ainayim which most certainly made it easier to initially slip. General consciousness seems to help a lot
so I'll try and daven that Hashem helps me)
