Great job buddyi really love how you are taking it one day at a time and writing your events. This will allow you to probe your actions and change what needs to be changed. Kol ha kavod and behatslaha rabbah!  Your doing great, don't let go! One day at a time.

Thanks TC. Your journey and positive attitude is inspiring and (cough cough) addictive . Keep it up! 

Thank you Singularity and Moudmack for the encouragement.

Tonight is 54 b'H!! Thank you Hashem for helping me with each and every challenge.

Shabbos was very nice. I got some antibiotics so my voice is finally back (like 80%) so I could sing some zmiros b'H!! A couple of sick thoughts crossed my mind over shabbos and I had to almost keel over from them. (revolting, and no I won't share them here. and No they are not what you may be thinking1 ) With Hashem's help I managed to dismiss them all within the 3 secondish rule limit and move on. It brought to mind the idea from the handbook (i think it was though it may have been a chizuk email) that said that these thoughts come to our mind so that they can be uplifted when we surrender them to Hashem. I know that if I had never seen anything like this in my life I wouldn't have thoughts like this, but the idea brought me some calm and helped make the surrender more effective.  

now that the yom tov season is over I will bli neder rejuvenate my physical workout routine which has been on hiatus for a couple of months. (I have a small but effective gym in my house thank God so no need to deal with possible issues on that front ) I also would like to strengthen my learning schedule. (make it more kovei'ah itim, even if I time does not allow for as much as I can) Part of that may be to aim to do shnayim mikra in bits over the week and not cram it all in on the weekend. That way it's more meaningful. :D 

Anyway, The most important thing is to take it ONE day at a time! (It's like living ledovid the each and every day!!!)

All the best fellow GYE'ers!! Keep trucking...

Very good mindset. May you go from strenght to strenght

Amain!! Moudmack

Today is 66 baruch Hashem!!!! One step at a time. ONE DAY at a time. Yesterday I had a date in manhattan. There were so many distractions (noise, people, bustling, etc...) A lot of the shmiras eynayim that I have been working on suddenly felt like it disappeared. I found myself looking around (not specifically at anything innapropriate, and when I saw something innapropriate I looked away, surrendered whatever it was, all within the three second rule). It was very disorienting just ahving so much going on. Baruch Hashem once I met up with my date it became a lot easier to focus and I think I only saw a few innapropriate sights. Which is actually amazing given where I was. It should have been much worse (so thank you Hashem for making it easier).

Each day is a day. Each is not dependent on the another (especially not future days), and we only have to focus on one of them at a time. I am happy that Hashem reminds me that I am not better (probably never will be, though I am growing a lot through this recovery). I know that feelings of confidence in terms of feeling 'cured' is a major red warning sign for a fall. So Thank you Hashem for the reminders.

And when I think about it, despite having tests every day, there really aren't so many of them. More and more my days are becoming less about lust, and more about life.

Thank you all for your support and encouragement, and may Hashem help each and every one of us find the true us and the true relationship with Him.

Good shabbos GYE!

Well that is day 69 b'H!!! Thank you Hashem

And that rounds out to just over 700 days clean since I started at GYE which is pretty amazing. Just keep working at it, working on making myself a better person (jewishly, socially, normally, and be in recovery) Is key. Personal growth and development. Fill in the void, etc... are all part of the daily grind of trucking. One thing I started doing in my learning is to write down every time I have a question on anything. Doesn't matter how simple or complex the question. And I don't care if I have an answer to it or not. One, it gets me to be more honest with my learning and admit that I don't fully understand everything that I learn. Two, it engages me in my learning so that it is more interesting and personalized. (It becomes something meaningful to me). Third, some of the questions are actually very good. 

So I did that for shnayim mikra of last week and it became much more meaningful and not boring in the least. (the one downside is not being able to do this on shabbos since we can't write.) 

Anyway, so good progress on the learning front. Will keep it up IMY'H and continue upward and onward!!

One anecdote that occurred to me which I think contains an important lesson is: I was frustrated from something because the schedule I had planned out was completely ignored and fell apart. I decided that I should be mivater and not make a big deal out of it. In the end I couldn't contain it and did make some remark about it. Immediately, my yetzer harah was like you totally blew that. All down the drain. Then I was thinking about it and realized that, true, I did not live up to the expectation of being mivater 100% but I definitely could've gone way overboard in my reaction had I not made the decision to be mivater. So I didn't blow it, Just that there is room for improvement the next time.

ATB GYE!!! Keep that trucking up!!!

So you have 20 days more to go, congratulations!

I was up to 16 days and already had my fell yesterday.

dm wrote on 14 Nov 2016 14:03:

So stick out your hand , grab a hitch with Tzedek's Truck and you'll be good to go!!

Thank you dm. Actually, I only have one more day... After that just one more. The total number doesn't matter and dwelling on it doesn't help me. I have been there 17 days, 8 days, 67 days, 160 days. Without that taking it one day at a time, I fall right back down.

So Jump on the bandwagon and join the trucking!!! We are happy to have you!!

Marks, do you get a trucking referral fee

TzedekChaim wrote on 15 Nov 2016 23:42:

Wow wow wow!!! Great inspiration and it's so true, keep it up.....

(I fell at 52 days, that was 15 days ago and I'm not back yet to even 1 day clean....)

TzedekChaim wrote on 15 Nov 2016 23:42:

Hmmmm. This sounds like someone I know well.

Cmon man you're almost there! You're into Yaakov mode!
(What's that?)

Well Avraham is the morning, the Middah of Chessed, things are new, fresh, the promise of a whole day. We thank Hashem for his Chessed in the morning more, longer davening, brochos, Modeh Ani.

Yitzchak is the afternoon. The afternoon is dry. The sun is hot. There's no Chiddush. Like Yitzchak's life, there was no chiddush, he did everything his father did (going to Avimelech, complaining about wells). And there's no end in sight. Yitzchak is Gevurah. Because that's what you need to carry on when there's no end in sight. Like 20km into a 50km marathon.

Yaakov is Emes. Night. It's exciting, wild, pumping. You feel rejuvenated miraculously from a long, stinging day. And it's Emes because if you got so far already, then you know it's true. And the end is in sight, so keep trucking~!!!

What exactly is this "end" that you're referring to?

DAY 75 b'H!!!! Thank you Hashem, for helping me so generously, and giving me this oppourtunity for growth on all fronts.

Thank you yidfrommonsey, shlomo24, and singularity for the tremendous chizuk and encouragement!! Feeling like Knowing that there are people there with me in this struggle makes it so much easier (for a good image eyin lihavdil harry potter when he goes to face down voldemort) 

The avraham/yitzchak/yaakov imagery/idea is very powerful. But I have to say that I identify more with the yitzchak stage. (well, actually, I find that I identify the most with the jews in the desert. For, the first time I can understand a bit why the yidden wanted to keep going back to mitzrayim. For nearly 20 years I could not understand how they could possibly want such a thing after seeing all of the miracles and everything. Being an addict in recovery has given me a new perspective on the whole pesach story as well as many other aspects of yiddishkeit. IT certainly brings home the whole kedusha/tumah thing). So I feel more like the day in day out guy and less like the marathonist nearing the finishline. Probably because this is not the finish line.

That is not to say that the mashul doesn't apply, I find it really does match well for the one DAY at a time thing. The day starts off, ready for action. Then the day goes on... one incident after another, surrender one, surrender 2, etc... How am I every going to get through this. Then before you know it, your falling asleep in bed thanking Hashem and pumped for tomorrow. (basic idea, can't say every day is like this )

The beginning for me was like a newborn baby (b'H have a nephew who was born a couple of weeks before I hit bottom, so I had a great role model for me in terms of total, helpless, and powerless surrender and need for Him to help me). For example, (I don't remember if I shared this already, but it's worth reading again) my brother and sister in law came over for shabbos. we were sitting in the living room shmoozing, and we heard the little fellow downstairs start crying. My sister in law turns calmly to my brother and says something like we will go bring him up after he cries for 5-15 min, (so he learns to self-sooth, or something like that). I was just like WOW. That's me! I am like that baby, I think everything is terrible, In a dark room, by myself and when I cry out no one answers me. Little do I know that the One(s) who love me most are right there taking care of me in ways that I cannot understand right now at all. 

After about 30 days, I felt more like a young child holding his fathers hand (I think that I had a measure of growth here and Hashem was taking it to the next level) One particular example I thought about a bit during this stage was that He is running the show and I am his kid. What can a kid really do? The parent loves the child and the child loves the parent (obviously not the same level). Like when a father takes out his tool box and goes to hammer in some nails, his little son runs over excited takes out his toy tool set and starts hammering in whatever he can find. It's adorable. The child is doing his best and his father loves him even more. When I surrender to Hashem, I say that I have no idea how I am going to get through this, but I'll just do my part (guarding my eyes and surrendering lust) and I trust that you will get me though it. Now I feel like the training wheels are off. Though it is a tricky gambit if they really are and I am ready for the next stage or if it is just the yetzer harah telling me that I am good and can do it on my own, which is a LIE!

Whew, that was a long stream of consciousness. A bunch of ideas I have been mulling over that fit (somewhat with a big, NAY! an enormous stretch of the imagination. ) your vort.

Thank you GYE for giving me life and the oppourtunity to reach my potential. It is not a trivial thing and I hope everyone here knows the truth of that.

One day at a time, fellows! and keep the trucking up!!

KUTGW! I really like the comparison to a baby. I was actually michaven to that a week ago. They say great minds think alike . For me I was thinking more in terms of the powerlessness of a baby. He/she is completely dependant on a Higher Power, in most cases that's the parents. I'm like that also. I'm really a baby, I need God in my life. Without Him I'm nothing. He gives me the strength to be who I am and he's like a parent, always there for me to care for me.

Hatzlacha Rabah.