As typical with nursing homes, we are short staffed, especially on the second shift (3 p.m. to 11 p.m.) Last night I worked another 16 hour shift. Working at least one 16 hour day per week besides the 4 day, 12 hour work week is becoming the norm.  I am not the only one, as there is a large amount of stress for us all. However, when your co-workers act like children from high school moaning and groaning because they didn’t get what they wanted, my blood just boils. In this type of environment, when people are stretched thin, things just don’t get done. In the end, it’s the residents that suffer. So here I am thinking about calling in sick – but I won’t. It’s times like this I look at my last ten years of sobriety for answers.

For instance, when I got sober, I made a commitment to myself – no matter how bad things got, I would not drink. The various slogans of the program come into play. Yet no matter how much I spin this one or that one, it just doesn’t seem to work.For now, I feel like I’m white knuckling through it.

On a daily basis I’m saying the Serenity Prayer right before I go into work:

No matter how much I try to ignore all the negativity, it’s like a small acting poison. Day after day my frustration and anger just build breaking my strength to deal with the situations appropriately. Honestly, I have blown up at the wrong people and wrong places, yet I don’t regret my actions. I simply can’t ignore the transgressions of others. I have a responsibility set before me NOT to ignore them. Yet my concerns continue to fall on deaf ears.

For me, “Let Go, Let God” hasn’t been much successful either. I can’t change people or the situations before me. I have done what needs to be done – my responsibility, therefore I need to trust that God will take care of business. While I do understand such changes may not happen overnight, in a week, month or even a year, eventually I trust that God will take over. In the meantime, I’m the one that continues to be miserable.

No offense, but my ex-Sponsor, “Spiritual Advisor” or whatever he likes to call himself these days is also not much help at all.  Unfortunately, at this time he’s the only one I have a phone call away but I don’t bother to call him. While I feel he doesn’t understand what I’m going through, he just throws out, “Get another job.” I wish it was that easy.

I simply just don’t know what to do.

All I can fall back on for now is, “Just One Day at a Time”.

Forget the past, today is a new night at work, go in and get it done.

“It’s a choice one has to make with anything in life: to either believe in yourself or allow yourself to be sucked into self-pity and feelings of self-doubt.”