Is This Winning?

I seem to have gotten what I wanted, yet I feel as though I am floundering. Old habits return and old resentments follow on their heels. The doors that i slammed shut years ago are pried open and the wood is splintering. How to fit my fluidly rigid world view into a structure that was built for a much younger man with a young man's vices? Did those vices harken the destruction of the old situation, and are they now the present ruiner of the same?

I paid for my sins of a decade ago, but still have my nose rubbed in them daily. I understand the resentment for which I am a target, but if I am to do my best, for better and worse, I need to be let off of a couple of hooks. I am now on an unhealthy course, with constant mental comparisons to my replacements, real or imagined. It has to stop or I hold out no hope for the current restructuring. I do not want to relive. I want to rebuild on a foundation not made of a sickly mentor/pupil dynamic, nor on a party-recovery-party cycle. Neither leads to anything but another flame-out.

I need to build this thing with something more than positive intentions. Dreams are not sufficient. I am too old to let them guide my positive inaction.