Uncomfortably unnumb

So tonight I'm trying to work on something that scares me, and I want a drink.

This is not news. I want a drink when I work on things that don't scare me, too. I also want a drink when I'm reading, when I'm not reading, when I'm stressed and not stressed, when I'm eating and not eating.

The drink wanting mostly hovers far in the background these days, though. It takes a noteworthy event or circumstance to push it into my conscious mind. Like working on something that scares me, apparently.

The scary thing is a book proposal, and I think I'm more frightened of it being accepted than rejected. I'm afraid of the pressure that will ensue if I get a contract, the deadlines and commitment and expectations. The proposal is for a fiction series, and I have the publisher's interest but I haven't ever written fiction for money and I'm afraid I won't pull it off and and and.

In short, I'm afraid I'll fail.

This fear is sufficiently uncomfortable that it's set off my old response mechanism, the reactive craving for soothing via a glass of wine or a gin and tonic or any of a number of other possibilities. (I am nothing if not flexible.)

One difficulty of being a sober alcoholic is that this habitual anesthesia of emotions leaves you pretty much unprepared to deal with them in sobriety. You have to interrupt the response mechanism, remind yourself of consequences and alternatives and blah blah blah, and cope in some vaguely healthy way. Which is what I'm trying to do now by writing here.

If that fails, there's the phone and a meeting, neither of which would get my work done but neither of which has failed me yet where drink wanting is concerned. Sobriety first, work second. (Actually, work clocks in at fifth or sixth these days once you factor in other life concerns: spiritual growth, my people, my pets, my health...Yeah. Sixth.)

Another approach is to analyze the emotion and figure out why it's causing such trouble. Here, for example: Why'm I so afraid of professional failure? It wouldn't be the first time. In this particular case, though, failing at writing fiction would mean that the thing I have supposedly wanted to do with all my heart for all my life and built my identity around and etc is a lost cause.

Err...except that it wouldn't.

Oh. Huh. Go figure.

Hey, check that out. Drink wanting has lessened. So my tactics worked, more or less, at least until I return to working on the scary thing, which perhaps won't be quite as scary now.

I feel kind of nauseated when I try to picture how many times I'll have to implement this process by the end of my life. Just for today, just for today. Just. For. Today.