Profile

My name is Chris. I'm in my mid-thirties. I'm a single dad with three children: An elementary school aged son, a toddler daughter, and a baby son. My kids mean the world to me. My ex-wife and I share custody of our kids 50/50. I have an amazing girlfriend named Nikki, who lives with me.

I have a bachelor's degree in psychology, but my job is not degree-specific. I currently work a boring white collar management job. On top of my normal job, I used to work a few hours a week at a youth substance abuse treatment center, and I loved it. I would love to go back at some point, but I simply don't have the time now that I'm a single parent to three children.

I'm a recovering addict and alcoholic, so I write about that quite a bit. I started drinking and doing drugs at a very early age, so it has been a lifelong battle. I am clean and sober, but that doesn't mean it isn't still a struggle at times. Getting sober was the best thing I have ever done for myself. I have had relapses over the course of my journey, but it's just that--a journey, not an absolute destination. One thing I have learned about sobriety is that it is never 100% guaranteed. It's something you have to work at for the rest of your life, but it's SO worth it. I prefer my sober family man lifestyle to my former sex, drugs and rock 'n roll lifestyle by far. Sure, I had a lot of fun. A lot of good times. But also a lot of really bad times. Sober life is better.

I have been playing guitar for most of my life. Guitar is my true love (aside from my girlfriend). Hmmm, what else...I'm a vegetarian. I'm very liberal. I love psychology (hence my degree); especially abnormal psychology. I'm sarcastic, although not as much here as "in real life." I'm pretty easygoing. I do use "colorful language" at times (aka swear like a sailor), but there's a time and a place for that. I do tend to swear quite a bit in some of my journal entries, so if that bothers you, we might not be the best match. Also, if you like/support Donald Trump, are a racist or bigot, or a teapartier (though teabaggers are bigots by nature, right?), we won't get along.

A few years ago, I made my journal entirely Friends Only. Before that, most of the personal stuff was friends only. Most of my public entries from back then aren't really about anything personal. I left those entries up and public, but now every single entry is Friends Only. LJ is a great escape for me and I find it to be really therapeutic at times, so I'm on here quite a bit. I write about some really personal things sometimes, and prefer to keep my journal open only to friends. But to my friends in my journal, I'm an open book.

Things I write about: Whatever I'm thinking or feeling at the moment, my relationship with my girlfriend, my kids and being a single dad, my sobriety, my struggles with addiction (like cravings, triggers, thoughts and feelings for example), mental health (namely depression and anxiety), my ex-wife, sex, my crazy past, occasionally politics (I'm liberal), occasional rants, things I find interesting, random musings, etc.

My journal is 18+ due to some sexual content (no porn or anything too graphic, but I do talk about sex sometimes) and some content involving substance abuse and addiction, which I am extremely candid about.

Oh yeah, one more thing. It looks like I have a million friends on my friends list, but most of them (as in like 90%) are no longer active journals. I'm just too lazy to delete dead journals and communities haha. I'm not a "friend whore." I love learning about people, so I really enjoy reading people's entries and getting to know them better.

I'm not really sure what else to say here, so I'll leave it at that.