Tag Archives: Drinking

Vacation, Drinking, and Not Drinking

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I guess I’m doing this again. 2:30 a.m. tired but unable to sleep. Might as well write.

I’m back to sober life and today is day four. I fell of the wagon or whatever it is a few weeks ago…maybe? It’s amazing how I’ve lost track of all time and structure since I started boozing it up again. A fewish weeks of being drunk is a whole lot better than my last three month streak. I’ll take the victory and move forward.

Something came along and hit me so hard, or maybe I wasn’t prepared for any life difficulties, that I took up alcohol. It was only for one day but any drinkers/ex-drinkers know how that works. It doesn’t. Anyways, and this sounds pathetic as a drinking trigger, but we’re being grouped into new teams at work. Instead of a big group of 25 people working together like a chaotic beehive were going to have actual supervisors and teams separate from each other. The big news that shit on me? I wasn’t going to be with my friends or anyone I really knew.

This sent me on such a violent downward spiral that I didn’t know how else to cope but alcohol. My mind was racing with shitty thoughts that I couldn’t banish with the cute protips the therapist suggests to me. No calming thoughts or self-soothing (that’s a shitty word really) could do anything. My thoughts went something like this: “No friends. It takes me literal years to make friends. Why am I so scared of not having friends? Why can’t I have friends outside of work? What about me makes me so ineffective at keeping friendships? Work will suck. And why is work sucking such a big shock to me?” It all sounds like dumbest shit ever to kick you into drinking which made it even worse for me. “I’m drinking over this? What kind of insecure dipshit am I?” And as you go down this path it only gets worse. “I’m a defective human being, holy shit. Pathetic. Why am I such a softie?”

And so on. I’ve been pulling myself out of that rut recently so it’s fine. Progress is slow but I’ll take it. I think it helped that we don’t start our new rotation until next Monday which is nice, but life is never that easy because…

…I’m on vacation this week!

Last week at work I was bullshitting with one of these friends I’m scared to lose about how there’s no work to do. He said soon people would be on vacation and then maybe I could actually do some work and not feel useless. This sparked some interest in me and I wondered when my vacations were. Next Week?! Fuck! Yes, I somehow didn’t know I was going to be on vacation this week until last Wednesday. Fun. And that was the day we had our meeting about the new shifts. Fun. I had that strange feeling that the universe was purposefully shitting on me again for some reason. I was a drunk by that time, but a wise drunk. I knew I had to quit before the new crews started because I obviously cope with stress with alcohol; I better get used to stressful situations before that lest I’d be an alcoholic for the near future. And while I tried to sober up I’d be off work, antsy and bored. Boredom is a massive trigger for my drinking. And when I go back to work it’ll be totally different. Did I say insecurity/fear is also why I drink? Fucking three things to deal with! Stress, change, and boredom are in max force and I have to stop drinking? Sheeeeeeit.

I hit that moment Saturday that all drunks hopefully get: the do or die moment. Some probably call it “rock bottom” but luckily I wasn’t there. I wasn’t in the ER, I wasn’t on a bridge, I wasn’t in a car wreck, and I wasn’t dead. I was at home in bed, unable to sleep, feeling drunk but also ultra-aware of how shitty I felt. It just clicked in my mind a certain question: is this really who you are? More thoughts followed. “Alcohol doesn’t work for you and you know it. What are you scared of? Let’s just not drink. Sure it’ll be shit for a few days, but you know you’re better without it. You’ll write again. You’ll talk and be social. You joke and act like you’re actually alive, like your soul isn’t fucking dead and rotting away.” And so on. You get the idea.

I guess this is day four, or whenever I actually go to sleep and wake up is day four. I still feel…off? Like I’m in a dream and that feeling is disconcerting, but I’m telling myself it’s the lack of alcohol and it’ll pass. It’s a terrible feeling though and hard to explain, maybe fellow ex-drunks know what I’m talking about. Despite feeling perpetually “funny” vacation is actually going great and I’m not too antsy. Once again I blame the antsiness on the lack of booze and am trying to channel it the best I can, like writing at 3 a.m. I’m surprised at how fast it’s going! Like damn it’s Wednesday already? I tilled our garden yesterday and maybe we can plant some vegetables today. I’m also helping a friend move in today; he’s coming back from a stint in North Carolina (Plans apparently change…). My wife’s birthday is tomorrow and hopefully we can get out of the house and do something. Friday and Saturday we’re visiting my sister who had her gallbladder removed. Most surprising of all: I still feel like there’s a million more things to do and I don’t have enough time. Write. Blog. Run. Lift weights. Bike ride. Visit a park. Play guitar. Clean the garage. Clean the cars. Pick up my meds. Cook some meals. Trade stonks. Reply to an email. Fuck with solar power. Make a YouTube video. This all sounds silly coming from someone who drinks out of boredom. I have tons of shit to do and why would I ever drink because I’m bored? Maybe drinking makes up its own reasons to exist like some parasite on your soul. 

Anyways, big disjointed rant over. I feel great. I’ve been silent for awhile but I’m ready to get my shit back together again. I’m skeptical it’ll last long — when is the next crisis going to hit? — but until then, fuck it, I feel fantastic and I’m feeling pretty positive about the future.

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Sober January? Sober 2021?

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Well let’s give this a try again: sobriety. Despite the wonderful success of Sober September I took up drinking again in October and I’ve drank every day since. Part of this was justified (in the grasping-for-straws way us alcoholics are exceedingly good at); as a UPS worker dealing with the holidays I did whatever I needed to do to survive the season. And survive I did, even if I did have to make excuses to justify the alcoholism. Now that that’s done I don’t really have any excuses for drinking. There’s no drama, nothing to survive, nothing to deal with, only life itself. It’s that boring time of year where nothing happens at work, where life in general is in stasis until the warmer months, and when I wonder if humans have any small genetic and evolutionary tendency for hibernation. It’s the time of year post-Christmas/New Year’s where I just want to disappear until March when I feel like I can live life again. You know, go outside, exercise, get some vitamin D, get my general health in order, and enjoy existing.

Most of what I told my therapist last Friday piggybacks off this post (Adderall Sucks) where I argue that drugs don’t solve a damn thing. She asked why I wanted to stop drinking and I told her that it’s boring. It offers nothing anymore. I’d used to drink to get motivated, write, clean, and do whatever needs to be done — it worked as a general mood enhancer and motivator, and worked well — until now when it doesn’t do a damn thing but make me sleepy. I’m currently 10 beers deep and I don’t feel a damn thing. No motivation, no joy, no nothing, just some vague feeling of obliviousness which detaches me from reality. Like I guess I have to wake up tomorrow and go to work and figure out what my investing accounts are up to but that’s so far away that it’s an abstraction.

Not to say that the next few days won’t be difficult. It’s easy while drinking to notice that alcohol doesn’t do you any good but it’s another thing to be sober for an extended period of time. Booze has a way of working it’s way into your mind where it’s an ever-present solution to anything you encounter in life. Sobriety sounds great now, but what about in a few days when I’m depressed after work and feeling useless, bored, and a failure? That’s when the real challenge hits.

Trying to recall my lessons from Sober-September: Keep Busy. Alcohol has a way of keeping you occupied and in its absence you must have a backup plan to keep yourself distracted. I plan on reading. I plan on writing. I plan on playing video games in an obsessive manner because while useless and wasteful it’s still better than drinking. I’ll have to rely on my hobbies, whatever they are, to keep me occupied and sober, and how is that a bad thing in the long run? You can only improve and get better while working on hobbies.

Luckily I have a good support system. My sister stopped drinking about a week ago and tried to get me on board, but I didn’t want to start sobriety so close to the New Year because it seemed like it’d be a resolution; last year I learned that resolutions fucking suck. Plus, relying on other people doesn’t seem to work either; you’re being sober for them and not yourself. Despite this, having someone in a similar situation (with a similar genetic makeup!) does give you someone to sympathize to. Hell, I’m even thinking of getting a few coworkers to join me in sobriety to extend the goodness and support to others. And Sober September? Setting a time goal only seems to make you do good enough to “win” or “succeed” and then toss it all away. Rereading that post only convinces me that I’m more competitive than I am an alcoholic; I’ll be sober just long enough to prove how I can “win” without doing it for myself. This time I have no window of sobriety and plan on just going with for however long I do.

Let me not ignore my wife here either. While not prone to any substance abuse at all she does seem to somewhat understand the struggle in someone like myself. She’s obviously been wanting me to quit even if she doesn’t personally understand why someone would drink as much and as obsessively as me. She wants me as healthy as possible and despite being ignorant of how alcoholics are seems more than supportive in keeping me as healthy as possible. I’m positive that whatever I go through the next week she’ll be kind and understanding and work through me being grumpy, anxious, bored, combative, and sleep-deprived.

And my readers. Blogging doesn’t seem to have the network-supportive feedback that other forms of media do, but the numbers do hint at some form of quiet support. I check my views daily (probably unhealthily) and I can’t help but notice that my 10 Reasons to Not be a Drunkard post seems to always show up as one of the most read posts (along with that damn Watermelon one for some reason). It seems contradictory to be an alcoholic and have one of your most viewed posts be a list of reasons to not drink, but here we are. I like to think I’m speaking from a position of total honesty here — no one is perfect and while I know how stupid I’m being I have a total inability to not be stupid — and maybe that dissonance with what I’m saying and what I’m doing has some meaning behind it. If anyone is not perfect it’s me and I’m fully aware of it.

Disjointed rant there, but whoever reads this I’m sure will be supportive of the journey and the struggle. Everyone is in their own shit, dealing with their own unique struggles, and this is mine. So we keep struggling. Keep fighting whatever demons we need to fight. Lose over and over again but keep kicking and screaming in the correct direction. Fighting means you have will and life in you, that you haven’t given up, and that you still have spirit and vitality in you. We still know the way forward towards the dim light at the end of the tunnel. And even if it ends in failure after failure, each step forward is still a step in the direction that we know we need to head towards. I’m certain that we’re all in this struggle together and while the battles are different the war is the same. It’s fucking 2021; let’s kick the shit out of this year together.

Check out my Instagram where I post pointless artistic pics and shitty poems every whenever I get around to it.

Or my other blog where I sometimes post stories.

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Ten Reasons Face Masks are Awesome!

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Here everyone! As you might know 2020 is nearing its close and has already established the record for the longest year ever in the history of humanity. Seriously, this year has lasted about 40 months and I don’t know any other year that can contend with it. I mean some people might argue that 1918 with the Spanish Flu was longer but they’re all dead so 🤷‍♂️? 

And who cares about masks anyways? The pandemic is a hoax, and if you know anyone personally who has died well you’re just part of the Deep State or something. And if it’s not a hoax, it was surely a plan by Democrats to steal the election. And if not that then Gyna made the virus to control the population. Or wage economic war on the USA. Or something. Either way: COVID-19=BULLSHIT. They’re trying to take away your freedom by keeping you away from your racist family members during Thanksgiving and Christmas The Holidays™! You’re a free ‘Murikan so fight for your right to have family gatherings, listen to your 2nd Amendment uncle rant about the election, and kill off grandma by infecting her with the fake virus that you’ve had for a few days. Hell, you’re not even aware you had it because you never were tested.

Despite this fake-ass virus (that still infects and kills people somehow) mask wearing isn’t all bad. In fact it has a ton of upsides and I want to talk about them here. So here are ten reasons to wear a mask despite the entire thing being a bullshit hoax. Let’s get started!

Dental Hygiene

Apparently walking around all day inhaling your breath is a great way to promote dental hygiene. It only took me a single day of wearing a mask to immediately regret not brushing my teeth. Is this what my breath always smells like? Is this the experience people have while conversing with me? Holy shit, I’m never going to talk to anyone ever again. 

While every other aspect of my life is falling apart during this pandemic (mental health, physical health, alcoholism, motivation, stress, etc.) I can say for a fact that my dental health has never been better. I brush my teeth everyday. Sometimes I even floss! Sometimes I drink the hand sanitizer to give my mouth a little jolt of disinfecting freshness if you get what I mean. So wear a mask to convince yourself to brush your fucking teeth regularly. It’s not like you’ll be seeing your dentist soon anyways; he doesn’t want to get near anyone’s mouth with COVID stomping around.

Poppin’ Pimples

Breathing hot and humid CO2 exhaust from your mouth/nose all over your face has a way of making pimples grow. But who doesn’t love a good pimple to pop here and there? The beauty of mask wearing is these infrequent pimples turn up in mass with each one giving you the satisfaction of popping them. I don’t know about you, but few things are more satisfying than feeling some dull, welled-up pain on the side of your chin the entire day only to go home and finally squeeze and blast that fucker all over your mirror in a delightful volcanic eruption of nasty skin puss and infection. It’s disgusting but, come on, y’all know exactly what I’m talking about. More masks means more pimples which means more evening joy for yourself (and a cleaner mirror).

Foggy Glasses

I don’t wear sunglasses (thanks daylight savings time, you asshole) but since I’ve started working around noon during the UPS peak season I’ve been able to break them out again. They’re also great if you’re up early, working outside, hungover, and tired which once again says volumes about UPS’s peak season. This is my state as of late and I’ve become accustomed to wearing glasses with a mask.

It’s great. With every exhale the glasses fog up and you can’t see a damn thing. This is especially pronounced if you enter a heated building; the cold glasses fog up even more than usual! This doesn’t sound good, but if you’re in the state to be wearing sunglasses at work, hungover, and working off 3 hours of sleep, it’s amazing. Let’s be honest here; your senses are so fucked already and you feel like the embodiment of misery so what’s another layer of shit you need to deal with? If anything the fogged up glasses keep you even more isolated from those around you. They’re like a fun safe-zone to hide in while you try to slowly get over your hangover. They can’t see you behind the glasses and, holy shit, you can’t see them through your vaporized glasses. You’re floating in a cloud detached from everyone else and it’s amazing to not worry about the people you can hear but cannot see.

Useful Handkerchief 

For some reason my nose runs a lot more while wearing a mask. It’s inconvenient but expected when you have damp, moist exhale going all over your face. But since the mask covers your nose (unless you’re wearing it like a jackass) no one is aware of it. Even better, you can simply wipe your snot on the inside of the mask and no one is aware of it! Hell, just shove your finger up there and give it a good pick and it’ll look like you’re just itching your nose or adjusting the mask.

And even if you do end up with snot and boogers all over your face, no one will know anyways. Go crazy! Pick your nose in public!

Facial Hair Doesn’t Matter

Even though I only shave once a week it’s still a chore that I dread doing. Sure you can procrastinate shaving for a bit but after two weeks I begin to look like a homeless unemployed bum. Eventually my crumbling self-esteem outweighs my laziness and I reluctantly shave. This is why I’m on the weekly plan.

But with masks? No one cares. No one can see your filthy scruff and it’s so comvient to not shave, plop on a mask, and pretend that you did infact shave recently.

Another thing to note. UPS’ package delivery drivers have a hygiene code from the 1950s or something. UPS drivers can’t have facial hair besides a mustache. Seriously, look at the next one you see. (Maybe they changed this recently, I don’t know…) While I’m not a driver myself, I’m curious as to how many are growing COVID beards and hiding them behind their masks.

Makeup Also Doesn’t Matter

Obligatory I’m not a girl and don’t wear makeup, but if you are one this is similar to the beard thing from above. If half your face is hidden who gives a fuck about makeup, at least on the lower half of your face. I’m assuming there are a few people who put makeup on the top of their face and ignore the rest due to the mask. Who am I to judge? Be as lazy as you want during this pandemic.

High Fashion

Face masks are another highly visible piece of clothing that you can personalize. Sure, the regular medical face masks have that awful, terrible sky-blue clinical color to them, but outside of those, masks are fucking stylish as fuck. You can wear whatever mask you want. Some people even wear masks that say “THIS MASK IS AS USELESS AS OUR GOVERNOR!” printed on them to show how pissed you are at wearing the mask, as well as how much of a goober you are for voicing this opinion while wearing the mask anyways. You know, people who complain about something just to complain. It’s 2020, we all should know these people by now.

But damn, have fun with your mask. I want to get a Kerbal Space Program mask but simply haven’t gotten around to it yet. A NASA mask? Sure. Does SpaceX sell masks? How about Tesla? Maybe I should get one with Elon Musk’s face on it and call it quits. That’d look super fucking stupid though.

There’s always the idea of the MAGA masks too. Had Trump simply jumped on the mask train and sold MAGA or Trump 2020 masks the dude could’ve raked in easy money, actually lowered the spread of COVID, and had free advertising on the faces of 30% of all Americans. Trump is a total fucking idiot for this oversight alone. Anyways, masks are great for style. Find a mask that fits yours!

Hide Your Double Chin

Over the past year I’ve gained quite a bit of weight. During the pandemic I’ve struggled to find a reason to do anything. Sure bike riding isn’t prohibited, but this year I’ve thought, “Why even bike ride? The world sucks and who cares?” And when you drink six beers a day the calories seem to find a way to stick to your body. I’m currently the heaviest I’ve ever weighed in my life and while I don’t think I’m exactly obese I’m well aware I’m overweight. 

My chin has doubled itself into two. Once again, not badly, but if I tilt my head slightly down it’s there and it’s obvious. Enter the mask. Put one on and no one knows how awful your chin looks. Keep eating, drinking, and living the sedentary life because the mask will hide it all.

Facial Expressions and Social Interaction

You never realize how much your social cues are taken from peoples faces until half of their face is hidden. A smile under a mask is kind of easy to notice if you really examine their eyes, but it’s not exactly as intuitive as it normally is. I’ll see my coworkers and constantly try to figure out what mood they’re in. Are they tired, hungover, angry, happy? Fuck if I know. Its hard to go off the eyes alone and I feel like perhaps everyone has a mild case of autism with all this mask wearing.

But look at the bright side, turn it around, and realize you can mask your face and emotions just like everyone else can. Be a mystery, be a blank slate of mood where no one can tell how you really feel. Like with glasses it makes it easier to hide away from people which really cuts down on bullshit social interactions. Us introverts are thriving during the pandemic.

I think that’s about it for this silly list. I hope you guys enjoyed it, found it entertaining/informative and please leave a like and subscribe and go check out my sponsor, some VPN company, and…

Aren’t I forgetting something.

Oh yeah…

Stop Sickness and Slowing the Spread of COVID

Yeah, I suppose that’s another thing masks are good at. This will probably backfire on me like most things do when I open my mouth (or type something), but I don’t remember the last time I was legitimately sick. Sure I caught a cold or something when I was living in the woods for a few days, but that was like a “half cold” or something. I didn’t get super sick or anything. And before that? Hell if I know. Its had to be at least a year though and I’m loving it.

I hope if this pandemic teaches us a single thing it’s the effectiveness of mask wearing and good hygienic practices. Use hand sanitizer like it’s going out of style, wash your hands like a germaphobe would, and wear a mask in public. Stay the hell away from people, especially the filthy and unhygienic general public. I used to think that getting sick was inevitable in some fatalistic way, or that if you did get sick it’d strengthen your immune system, but getting sick fucking sucks. Not being sick for a year is fucking amazing and I wonder how long you can prevent sickness just by following these pandemic protips.

So yeah, WEAR YOUR FUCKING MASK.

Check out my Instagram where I post pointless artistic pics and shitty poems every whenever I get around to it.

Or my other blog where I sometimes post stories.

Or Wattpad where I have a Morrowind fanfic ongoing also sometimes post stories.

Lessons From Substance-Free September: Life Goes On

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This is the second part of a ‘series’ where I write about what I’ve learned from Substance-Free September. The first part is here.

Another sad fact I’ve realized over the past month of being sober is that life continues on. There is no “finished” or “over” and there also seems to be no time to properly gain your bearings and figure out the best course of action. No time to take a break or reflect. Life is being stuck in an endless and problematic story where you never really get to take a step away from things and relax.

Maybe that’s just my life, but others probably feel this way too. It’s another trigger to my drinking: needing a break from life. Hell, that might be my main reason for drinking so much. It’s my way of having a few clear and foggy hours to not exist as fully as I usually do. It drowns life out to an acceptable level where I seem to be able to deal with it, until the next day that is. But that’s an easy problem to solve because you can always drink more!

Not a good idea, obviously. A friend of mine a few months ago pointed out that I feel too much, my highs are really high and my lows are supremely low. Apparently despite outward appearance I’m a highly emotional person and this friend being a very insightful person I tried to give him some credit. Sure, I didn’t see myself that way, but was he onto something?

To maybe prove this point, this friend moved away last month. People move, things change, but goddamn do I feel his absence in some way that others don’t seem too. Maybe they don’t verbalize  it (neither do I) outside of the occasional “I miss [person],” but stuck in my head I feel it differently. The fact that people always move, change, grow, decay, and that everything is temporary, everything is inevitably changing crushes my soul. I don’t like it at a visceral level. Something about it seems wrong even though it’s perfectly natural.

And this friend? He seems to be the embodiment of going with the flow and change, the total opposite of myself. I think I admire that about him. He’s the type of person who literally quit his job, embraced all the change through his own actions, and moved thousands of miles away with no guarantee that anything would actually turn out the best for him. No insecurity or hesitation about it, and the part I don’t understand, no fear of loss from leaving people behind. Leaving the memories behind. Leaving everything about your life behind for some unknown clean-slate where anything could happen, good or bad. It’s such a crazy and foreign thing to my insecure self that I just can’t comprehend how someone could go through with it.

It feels like I’m paralyzed by my emotions, hence the drinking to escape them. I used to be really depressive and have somehow managed to get better over the past six months. Still an episode of depression can be so intense that I want nothing more than to zap myself out for a while via alcohol. Strangely it’s not just the bad times I try to escape. Moments happen where something magical will happen; a good day where I see the beauty in everything and can savor every grateful second that passes. Inevitably, this feeling comes with the realization of loss. Why can’t everything remain beautiful? Why does anything ever change? Why can’t things stay in this moment forever? And obviously when that happens I can’t wait to have another drink to escape it.

So maybe I feel too much. Maybe it’s a curse, maybe it’s a gift. I recently read some story drafts I’d written and couldn’t help but see this is what I’m constantly trying to explain to my readers. I’m constantly trying to explain this bitter sense of loss, losing the entire point of life, and trying to understand the cycle of gaining and losing. Damn if I don’t have a heavy dose of loss, nostalgia, joy, and insecurity in everything I write. Everything seems to point to me feeling way too much about the smallest things in life, as if everything is a battle to find joy and survive, to appreciate those small moments when they decide to show up. Maybe it is a gift, maybe this form of suffering is a way to move forward? Maybe I’m just hopelessly bipolar or something.

See what I mean?

That was a hell of a rant. When you remove drinking as a solution there is no escape from life itself. No way to avoid the emotions. They fucking happen and it sucks. But even those are hopelessly fluid. Countless times I’ve been so happy and at peace that I want to cry, and this emotion always passes. It always fades into nothing. Countless times I’ll have a good day and try to force myself to remember the good times as clearly as possible, but I never find success…ever. You can’t remain joyful forever. The same is true for depression: the mood always changes given enough time even if you don’t realize it in the depths of it. Without fighting these emotions with alcohol I’ve learned to be clearly aware of them. Let them pass. It’s like being on a boat in the ocean; the waves pass by you, you’re up one moment and you’re down the next, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Ride the waves, let time pass, and learning to do this is nearly impossible, but you do make progress over time. No one wants to feel like shit, everyone wants to be happy, but it’s like trying to stop the earth from rotating. Find comfort in the temporary joy, and let the waves of depression wash over you. They’re equally temporary.

This has been my life the past month. Each day passes with its own joys and struggles and then…nothing. It happens again and again. A week passes. Two. Three. There is no break, this is no grand pause in drinking to reflect on it all. There is no award, trophy, or magical realization at the end to justify anything you work through. Just more…life I guess? More ups and downs. Endless emotions of ups and downs. In a way it feels like I’m slowly breaking down. I just want a break from life sometimes! Some way to not exist as fully as I seem to exist at all waking moments of the day. Is it just me? Is this how people are? Hell if I know.

There is no grand lesson in this blog post. Which kinda is the grand lesson in some strange way. Life goes on, it raises you up and lowers you like a boat on waves, and you’re nearly useless to do anything about it. Life seems to be about learning to float on the waves, dance on the highs and lows of life, where there is no respite from this dance of life. Up and down. Powerless at all times. Adrift in the ocean of life with no escape from the waves.

The next post: Lessons From Substance-Free September: The Endless Supply of Problems

Check out my Instagram where I post pointless artistic pics and shitty poems every whenever I get around to it.

Or my other blog where I sometimes post stories.

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Lessons from Substance-Free September: Don’t be too Hard on Yourself

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I think I want to do a “series” or something about what I learned during Substance-Free September. It probably won’t qualify as a series and will only be two or three posts, but I do hope I can churn them out together and quickly with few distractions.

Not that I will because I’m terribly flawed. Once again I’m going to shit on myself for not being able to write consistently. How hard is it to get the computer out and type? How hard is it to write a post once a week? It’s hard because I want it to be perfect! And perfection is always the enemy of completing something. Nothing is perfect, just fucking write and go with it.

Let me circle this back to the topic at hand: not being too hard on yourself. I excel at being hard on myself almost consistently with regards to everything, and the previous paragraph is a perfect example of it. Or when I gave up on the Morrowind story. Sure, I came to some ‘positive’ conclusion that sometimes you have to throw in the towel to move on, but the entire post is me shitting on myself with the conclusion being some half-assed attempt at not being quite as hard on myself.

I do this all the time too, and not just with writing. Why can’t I stay motivated? Why can’t I keep the house clean? Why does it take me so long to fix a car? Why can’t I just stay sober? Why aren’t I an airline pilot right now? Why did I drag my feet so much in my 20s and even today? Why can’t I do anything right? And why do the things I do right seem to be outweighed by the things I do wrong? I am a perfect example of endless self-loathing.

It can’t be just me either. Countless people certainly do this. We’re all our own worst critics and enemies. No one sets a higher standard than we ourselves do (at least most of the time) and it’s easy to be unnecessarily cruel to yourself.

A good example: I wasn’t completely sober last month. I drank two nights one weekend due to a notably stressful and shitty situation that happened. I felt bad, I felt like shit, but I was able to get my act together and completed the rest of the month sober. It reminds me of when my work buddy said she smoked a few cigarettes: she felt like an utter failure over it but I tried to be positive. “Well, you mess up. Just acknowledge it and move forward!”

It’s strange how we view other people as opposed to how we view ourselves. Other’s problems seem so easy to solve when it’s not us personally experiencing them. Nearly everyone who has some issue going on I find myself thinking of the most obvious (and easy) solution to their problem. They still don’t see it though and the problem somehow makes itself harder to solve if you’re the one going through it. Friend smokes a cigarette on the weekend? No big deal, just realize you fucked up and move on. I drank two days mid-month? Holy fuck I’m an utter failure and why can’t I do anything right and damn I suck. Like that.

I find it helpful to switch the situation and to try to see yourself as someone else, like a form of ‘reversed empathy’ or something. Tell your story to yourself as detached as possible; think of yourself as a coworker or a friend and see how it sounds. If the roles were reversed, I wouldn’t tell this person who fucked up by drinking during a sober month they’re a failure because no one is perfect! Everyone messes up! By being so hard on yourself you’re treating yourself as perfect while everyone else is flawed and forgivable. It’s kinda selfish in a way, being too hard on yourself. Why are you so deserving of high standards and perfection when no one else is? You, like everyone else, should just acknowledge the problem, move forward, and do the best you can. Obviously it’s hard to reflect this upon yourself and really believe it — it’s always a struggle — but eventually maybe you can move forward and not be too hard on yourself.

I think this became apparent to me during September because I didn’t have anything to distract me from my problems. Maybe drinking so much made that the prime problem in my life so when that was gone I noticed the slew of other issues. My lack of writing. My lack of progress in flying. My inability to shop around for a house. My inability to wake up before 2 p.m. and so on. Or maybe the drinking was my way to ignore the problems where they never bothered me. Either way, I’ve been a lot more loving to myself the past few weeks, and much more willing and able to love myself for the flawed person that I am.

I had a therapy appointment October 2nd. Towards the end of the sessions she always asks me what my intentions and goals are moving forward. I sat there and spaced out, thinking as hard as I could for which goal I would chase after during the next month. I couldn’t think of anything. “Uh, I don’t think I have any intentions or goals this next month,” I said. She then mentioned that not having any intentions was itself a valid intention and I went with it. “Oh, okay! Yes. My goal this next month is to have no goals. I’m just going to exist.”

It reminds me of Peter in Office Space. He’s asked what he would do if he had a million dollars as this is supposed to be what you should do for a career. His answer: “Nothing. I would relax, I would sit on my ass all day: I would do nothing.”

“Two chicks at the same time, man!”

Why was that my goal for the month? Because I’m too hard on myself. I’m too goal-oriented. I feel the need to achieve to the detriment of myself. I see myself as perfect (that sounds awful) and that I should hold myself to this standard of perfection to my own detriment. When I’m inevitably not perfect, I feel like a failure, like I let myself down, that I’m flawed in some way. So I’m not going to have any goals or intentions this month because I want to try existing as this flawed person that I am. Not dangle carrots in front of my face in mosty-wasted attempts to ‘move forward’ in life or ‘accomplish’ some undefined goals. That is my goal: nothing, and I’m doing it because I’m trying to not be too hard on myself.

Think of yourself and think about all the ways you’re hard on yourself. Would you treat friends and loved ones the way you treat yourself? Or would you show them kindness and grace and forgive them for their flaws? You’re just another person like anyone else, not special, and are deserving of forgiveness just like anyone else. Don’t be too hard on yourself and be willing to forgive the most fucked up person you know: yourself.

The next part of this series? Lessons from Substance-Free September: Life Goes On

Check out my Instagram where I post pointless artistic pics and shitty poems every whenever I get around to it.

Or my other blog where I sometimes post stories.

Or Wattpad where I have a Morrowind fanfic ongoing also sometimes post stories.

Or my Facebook page where I don’t do much of anything at all, but I do appreciate more followers.

Vacation 2020 Sucks: Pissing it All Away

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I’m roughly halfway through my yearly vacation. This year I took all my vacation time in a solid three-week block and do not return to work until August 3rd. I could also take a fourth week off until like August 10th but I’ll probably work that week because I have the option to work it; it’s basically an extra paycheck for free so why not? But the current three weeks? Those are mandatory and I have zero choice but to not work. This sounds great but…well, I’ve written about that struggle before.

To recap: I’m lazy, unmotivated, and too unstructured to do anything on my own volition. I didn’t enjoy school but it gave me something to do and added some structure to my day. The same is true with work — I don’t like it because it’s something I have to do — but without it I just can’t get myself focused, hyped up, or motivated to do a damn thing. I require work for some structure and purpose and I feel aimless and lost without it.

People usually tell me to “relax” on my vacation, but I think relaxing is something I’ve never gotten the hang of in life. I hate sitting around. I hate doing nothing. Fishing? I hate fishing and never understood it because it seems to me you sit around and wait for something to happen. I hate sunbathing and never understood how my mom could sit outside for hours in a day relaxing. Or the drunkards that sit on the porch relaxing with a few drinks. I can never do any of these things for extended periods of time because I just get bored and antsy.

(Fun fact: I complained to my therapist about my ‘vacation dread/anxiety’ and she laughed and said something like, “Wow, first-world problems, huh?” I immediately felt like an ass. Yes, I was complaining about how hard life was since I couldn’t work for three weeks and that does seem like a ridiculous thing to complain about. But I’m going to complain more here.)

Despite complaining about being bored and my inability to relax, I’m a week and a half into my vacation — about the halfway mark — and what have I done? Nothing. I’ve pissed it all away. Before my vacation I promised myself I’d make it worthwhile. I’d go on bike rides, go to parks, hike, write tons of shit, read, figure out how to be genuinely happy, find a career I really want to pursue, meditate, eat better, look for another job, be a flight instructor — basically figure things out in a big way — and what have I actually done? Nothing. Nothing at all. This is only my second blog post despite being on vacation for as long as I have. A blog post takes an hour or two at most but I’ve never gotten around to it, so you know damn well I haven’t done anything ‘big’. And fuck relaxing.

In fact I totally spiraled into alcoholism the first week of vacation. I literally drank everyday from Friday to Sunday and I mean the next Sunday and not the one immediately after Friday. It was a 10 day drinking spree of like 12 or 15 beers every night. I’d wake up the next day, stay sober until about 3-5 p.m. and do it all over again. It’s no surprise I didn’t do anything that first week. Once again I wasn’t relaxing during this either.

This week is looking slightly better because I realized if I’m trying to figure shit out drinking wasn’t going to cut it, in fact drinking seems like one of those big things I should be figuring out. Drinking is a great motivator sometimes but after a multi-day binge you find all motivation to do even the smallest thing disappears. I found myself procrastinating texting someone, going outside to look at a comet through binoculars, or paying my credit cards on my phone; little things that’d only take a minute to do I couldn’t drag myself to do, and I didn’t even listen to music while driving somewhere. I didn’t have the motivation to decide on what to listen to! It was a bad time. Not a bad-depressing time, but bad-blah time. Bad-bland. Bad-“is this what I’m doing for vacation?”

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more #comet #neowise

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This is one of the more notable parts of my vacation thus far.

I haven’t drank since Monday last night (but I did go three days sober before that…) and am already feeling more motivated. Hell, here’s this post which is something, and I even went on a 14-mile bike ride yesterday. I’ve posted like three things on Instagram too! I still feel like I’m nowhere near having anything ‘figured out’ by the time I return to work but it seems like I’m finally off to a good start. Sadly it’s taken half my vacation to reach this point. Baby steps, right?

Here’s another post you guys might be interested in: Drinking Sucks: 10 Reasons to Not be A Drunkard. Maybe I should read it myself?

Check out my Instagram where I post pointless artistic pics every whenever I get around to it.

Or my other blog where I sometimes post stories.

Or Wattpad where I have a Morrowind fanfic ongoing.

Or my Facebook page where I don’t do much of anything at all, but I do appreciate more followers.

My Sobriety is…Meh

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Today is my fourth day sober. It’s nothing to celebrate, but after the past month it kinda is. Before this recent streak, I had been drunk for nearly three weeks. Not perpetually drunk but just drinking everyday. The worst days were those where I pounded down 15 or 18 beers (although it’s hard to count after that many drinks) and the best days were those where I “only” had six. It was a mess and my life was a blur.

Only one day out of those three weeks did I stay sober. Somehow, during all the haze, I called the airport and scheduled a flight lesson to become current with flying again (three landings in the past 90 days). The night before that I didn’t drink because one thing I’ve learned is that you don’t want to fly a plane hungover; you get hot, you sweat, you get airsick, and everything is generally awful and uncomfortable. Add in the anxiety of an instructor judging your skills the entire flight and it’s a recipe for disaster.

The flight went okay, by the way. He was impressed with my professional flying skills, until my first landing that is. I bounced the plane three damn times and it was embarrassing like nothing else. Here you are trying to show an instructor that you’re good to fly and you bounce the plane a few hundred feet down the runway. Yikes. I vaguely remember trying to get the plane under control while muttering to my instructor over the intercom, “God…..damnit. Jeez…Man…” as we hit the ground, went back up, hit the ground again, went back up, until the plane finally decided to land.

The mighty Cessna 172 SKYCOCK

I told my therapist about my total two-week binge (it was only two-weeks at the time) fearing she’d shit all over me and tell me to get the hell out of her office. How I’ve fallen, how much progress I’ve pissed away since the start of the year. Remember the “drink once a week” goal from January? Whoops. Surprisingly she almost seemed supportive of it, mostly worried that I was drinking to cope. “No,” I said, “I don’t know why I’ve been drinking so much. I’ve been in a good mood and I’m not depressed or anything. It just seems like something to do I guess.” She kinda smiled and said something along the lines of, “Well, sometimes you need to do whatever works, and if you’re mood has been good…” That sounds really bad but it wasn’t worded that strongly; she didn’t seem to be encouraging me to drink. Like she was acknowledging that maybe there was some reason for it all and that maybe I had to abuse my body until I felt I was done with it or something. What she said felt very cryptic.

And damn if there doesn’t seem to be some good to it all. In the final week of my binge I was starting to feel pretty worn down. Just tired and exhausted and burned out all the time and feeling like I should take a break for a bit. Not for my mental health (because I wasn’t suffering from depression/anxiety issues for some reason) but for my physical health. Anyone who has drank that much should know what I’m talking about here. That ever-present exhaustion with life that comes with drinking all the time.

I also realized that I wasn’t taking sleeping pills every night either. I used to have issues with sleeping, but during my binge I wasn’t taking many pills to sleep. Sure, I’d stay up until 5 a.m. but I’d go to sleep “naturally” (minus the alcohol, of course) without the need for Benadryls or Alka-Seltzer Night Time — Lemon Flavor. In my three-week binge totally abusing alcohol I somehow stopped taking sleeping meds like I had been doing the past three or four months. Is this progress?

And towards the end of my binge I realized I wasn’t even drinking coffee when I woke up like I usually did. Sure, I’d try to drink my usual three or four cups of coffee, but when you’re hungover, jittery, anxious, hot, sweaty, and nauseous the last thing your body really wants or needs is caffeine. I’d make my coffee, drink maybe half of it, and head off to work. As before, is this progress?

I decided I’d just stop consuming caffeine and sleeping meds during the final days of my drinking binge. The sleeping pills were mostly gone, but I was still weary of the dreaded caffeine withdrawal, most terrifying of the symptoms being the headaches. Caffeine headaches aren’t like any other kind of headaches, and luckily I can’t explain why they’re different because I weened myself off coffee this time. Sunday, I had two cups, and Monday I had singular cup of coffee, just enough to ward off the headaches. But Tuesday, my first sober day with alcohol, was also my first day with zero caffeine. I was mildly hungover and sleepy and really wanted a cup of coffee, but stayed strong and felt okay the entire day.

I did have a Coke from Chick-Fil-A today but that’s like, what 90 mg of the stuff at most? That’s not going to do anything and my main goal was to not require like hundreds of milligrams of the drug to function during the day which I’m glad to say I’m succeeding at.

It really makes me notice how much I’ve been forcing my body to do what I want it to do by using drugs. Can’t sleep and want to sleep? Benadryl/Alka-Seltzer. Wake up groggy and nonfunctioning (probably due to the Benadryl at 3 a.m.): caffeine! Hundreds of milligrams of caffeine! Can’t sleep because of the caffeine? Benadryl! And repeat this over and over. By not taking either of these drugs that seem to lead to the other, it’s like I’ve broken the cycle and don’t need them anymore. I feel worn out and tired at the end of the day and it’s a healthy and natural exhaustion; my body is ready to sleep and does so easily. Amazingly, I even wake up and not feel dead either! Who would’ve guessed! Sure I still need my nicotine to get going, but it’s tons better than needing nicotine and caffeine to wake up.

It’s strange that by abusing alcohol for three weeks I’ve somehow came to this random idea to not drink caffeine or take sleeping pills every night. I doubt this is what the therapist was hoping I’d do, but I still feel like I’ve made some positive life choices by abusing alcohol for three weeks. I’m not saying that if you want to stop drinking coffee or needing pills to sleep you should go on a three-week drinking binge (any week-long drinking binge isn’t smart for any reason) but I’m rather surprised that’s what it took to get me where I am. I’ll take any minimal form of progress I can and try to be happy with it.

Lyme Disease Sucks…Or COVID? Or…Huh?

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I don’t even know where to start. The last post left off with my second night in the woods questioning everything about life. And this post is written from the comfort of our living room, and although things still aren’t alright or back to normal, they’re a bit better than they were two days ago.

I’d like to think my past week would make a really rivienting story if I could have peace long enough to piece it all together. As an example: after my second night — this post here — I experienced cops at 8 a.m. (one with a fucking AR-15 by the way), ended up in a mental center, found myself wandering through the woods with a friend drinking beers, calling into work, getting sick, being tested for COVID, and being unable to return to work until I get my results. Despite being back home my life still seems to be in a downward spiral where I can’t grasp onto anything.

So…what was I writing about? What day is it? Oh. Friday. Friday, yes. I came home Tuesday night and set my tent up in the yard. The cops earlier that day gave me 12 hours to get the hell out of the park and I planned on doing just that. My wife apparently panicked when I sent a text saying the cops found me and I was being hauled off to a mental institution and this was enough to muster her effort in helping me pack my shit up and move out. So after two days in the woods I was back home. In the yard, but back home.

Glossing over everything, because I’m not sure of it all anyways, I was back at home, drinking, talking with my wife into the early morning hours of Wednesday. I felt bleak, but hopeful in a way: I was back home at least I’d have the occasional company, but then something happened around 1 a.m.: I felt like shit. I instantly became achy and got the chills. I felt strange and off and I couldn’t stand another night in the tent. It wasn’t cold out but I had a chill I couldn’t shake and basically begged to sleep inside. She was loving and caring enough and I didn’t have to really beg but I was so miserable I felt like I needed to beg. I couldn’t take another miserable night in the tent alone, especially with the aches and the chills.

Inside I started to overthink. I had a strange bite on my arm and assumed it was a tick bite. Or a spider. Whatever. But then the thought of “Lyme disease” popped into my head, I Googled it, and then started to panic. Each of my symptoms fit those of Lyme disease to a tee. Worst of all was the symptom of “confusion” or “slow thinking” and everything seemed to fit that as well. I felt strange, I felt funny, and I felt a way I couldn’t even explain. I felt off and slow and stupid. Everything felt as if it was happening in slow motion and required much more effort than usual. I couldn’t even move my arms to pick up a PS4 controller and it took minutes of dedicated effort to do so. At the time I was totally convinced: I had Lyme disease. Because I got bit by a goddamn tick. Because I was living in the woods. Because I panicked and moved out on Sunday. It’s what I deserved and was fitting. If you act like an idiot, stupid things happen to you.

Somehow I managed to sleep a few hours and awoke totally conflicted at my situation. Did I have Lyme disease? Should I see a doctor? How did all of this work with COVID? And what if I had COVID? I had no idea what to do. Eventually I decided to ignore the possible Lyme disease until I showed more symptoms — swollen joints, constant aches, and a bullseye shaped rash — but thought it was proper enough to get a COVID test just to be safe. Just to protect others. To do the right thing. Luckily, we have a testing center a mile away from our house so it was a quick drive there.

The test took about 15 minutes. I filled out a form on a clipboard and then had a swab shoved up my nose for 15 seconds — the longest 15 seconds of my life! — and then I went back home. But what to do about work?

I wasn’t sure what the UPS policy was about COVID and sickness — and I didn’t feel good at all — so decided to call my full-time supervisor to ask for some details. He’s a good friend and I feel like I can tell him whatever is happening, so elaborating on my Lyme/COVID/woods story didn’t feel too awkward. He didn’t know what the policy was so referred me to a lady and gave me her number. I told her my story and she gave a very simply and straightforward recommendation to me: no work until I got the results back.

And like that my already rocky life was flipped even further upside down by not having work to go to. I love routine. I love having a plan and something to expect from my day so this indefinite lack of work totally threw me off at a time where my life was already thrown off balance. Hell, I was looking forward to work just to have some purpose to my life and that was cut out from underneath me.

So now what? Well, I’m drinking. Heavily. Each day is an alcohol fueled mess where I’m just trying to grasp onto anything — alcohol included — just to keep myself together. I know it’s wrong, I know I’m totally fucking up, but I just want something to do to keep myself distracted. I don’t have work anymore and I don’t have routine. So I drink. Just pissing away minutes, hours, and days until I get my results back where I can have some structure to my life, where I can have some routine to rely on. I don’t feel too bad about it because I know I’m not making excuses or deluding myself at all — this is a problem and this is how I’m coping and it’s not sustainable or healthy — and I know I’ll pull myself together eventually. Despite my endless pessimism when it feels like I’m drowning in the waters of life I still know that I’ll make it. I’ll get through. As shitty as this phase is I know it’ll pass and I’ll be fine.

So today. I don’t feel sick at all. Kinda achy, but nothing special. No COVID cough. No bullseye rash on my arm or body. And I feel even more like shit. I overreacted. I had a COVID test and admitted it to my supervisor. I’m off work until I get results. I feel like I’ve gamed the system to get a free two weeks of vacation for being dramatic. I know in my heart I did the right thing — I was sick, I was tested, and I admitted it to my work place — but I still feel bad about it all. I feel like I’m fucking over my coworkers, being an even lazier and useless slacker than I usually am. Just completely worthless and useless and lazy. And that’s where I am today. Time to crack open another beer…

Here I am, another victim of COVID even if I am an indirect victim of it. I’m out of work, and tossing that on top of my marital problems only makes the week one of the worst weeks I’ve ever deal with. In the meantime I’m doing random pointless things to pass the time until my life pieces itself back together, most of which is drinking: unapologetic drinking to cope with life. I’m living on a very basically level where I’m just trying to survive the next day, and that’s it. This is another bleak blog post, but trying to be positive, the past few days has been quite the adventure. An adventure through hell, but an adventure nonetheless.

Check out my Instagram where I post pointless artistic pics every whenever I get around to it.

Or my other blog where I sometimes post stories.

Or Wattpad where I have a Morrowind fanfic ongoing.

Or my Facebook page where I don’t do much of anything at all which I deactivated and the link doesn’t go anywhere now. Check back later though!

Drunken Writing Sucks

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God, do I hate myself right now. I can’t do a damn thing with writing. My thoughts are a jumbled mess that I just can’t make sense of. I’ve had five beers already and nothing is inspiring to write about, but damn am I determined to get something out. It feels like a strange form of writer’s block which I’m sure I’ve already written about at least a few times in the past year. Like where you have a ton of ideas but no inspiration or motivation to actually put the puzzle pieces together into a coherent blog post. I’m going to write here and see what happens. Maybe it’ll break up the mental jam that I’m suffering through. Say what is in your soul, as I’ve been telling myself.

I drank yesterday. Only eight beers over the course of about six hours which isn’t really bad although I did break my “drink on Sunday” rule again. There is an exception to the rule: long car drives or big adventures. I drove to Davenport, Iowa yesterday to help my sister move out of her wife’s-but-soon-to-be-ex-wife’s home — only a two-hour drive — but once again I realized I hate car drives. Long ones at least. There is something uniquely exhausting about sitting in a chair for hours while driving that doesn’t compare to anything else I’ve experienced. Hell, I’ve been on this couch for the past five hours and don’t feel exhausted at all. Something about the drone of the road, the hum of the engine, and dealing with people that can’t seem to use cruise control on a highway wear you out; I don’t know what it is exactly but something about driving is exhausting. So I treated myself with some beers when I got back home.

I drank and then my mind went into hyperdrive. I came up with about five or six blog post ideas, all in the stream of consciousness where I found myself laying in bed and thinking out the posts with my inner monologue. Boy did they flow wonderfully and I felt there was some magic in the thought process. Something that made me think, “This is it, this is how you write!” but I couldn’t put it down on paper or on a computer. Something held me back from actually sitting down and writing the posts and I was happy to just “mentally write them” or some shit.

Which made me hate myself more than usual. I cannot get my mind in line. I cannot capitalize on the gifts that have been bestowed upon me. It almost feels like an uncontrollable power — all these thoughts tossed at me randomly that I cannot process or contain long enough to do anything with — that I should do something with and use but just can’t get around to it. I went and took a shower and continued to mentally write posts, trying to conjure up some way to contain the lightning of my brain into some sort of bottle. I didn’t find any, obviously. I tried to write something at 4 a.m. but it never pulled itself together into anything coherent. It’s a mess, my brain is a mess, and I can’t seem to do anything with 90% of the shit that randomly enters my head that I feel is a good idea.

I shouldn’t forget that I still need to write my Morrowind story for this week either. The past four weeks has only had two chapters published meaning I’m totally dropping the ball on my goal which leads to more self-hatred. Once you fail it’s so hard to pick yourself back up and get on your goals. I’m determined to write something today, even if it does end up being a mess, and I think it being a mess might make the story better in a way. I think that’s why I’m struggling my way through this post; I want something to show myself to say, “See?! You can do something if you only try hard enough!” I’m constantly telling myself, “You’re a good writer! Have confidence! Just write! Go for it! Say what is in your soul!” but it doesn’t work very well. I’m not depressed, just unmotivated. Wondering what it’s all for. Thinking of my past blog posts about motivation and realizing your goals and being yourself and wondering where the person who wrote that shit actually disappeared to. I know I wrote them, but at the same time it doesn’t feel like myself. It feels like the successful me that actually has things figured out wrote them and I’m not that person anymore. I know I’m still the same and I’m just in a funk, but it’s hard to convince yourself of that fact.

So the struggle to write continues. I suppose there is no need to bitch or whine about it (even though I just did) and the only solution is to get the fuck down to work. When you’re left with nothing else to distract yourself with the only way is forward. Progress because there is nothing else to really do. Another day is over, another blog post finished, and I’m progressing towards some unsatisfying conclusion or goal somewhere in the unclear and foggy future. Here’s to progress friends. Cheers.

Check out my Instagram where I post pointless artistic pics every whenever I get around to it.

Or my other blog where I sometimes post stories.

Or Wattpad where I have a Morrowind fanfic ongoing.

Or my Facebook page where I don’t do much of anything at all.

Long Distance Drunk

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“Hang it up now or never, hang it up again

Doesn’t seem like anything you’re saying or doing or doing is making any sense

Long distance drunk, long distance drunk…”

– Modest Mouse

As stated somewhere, I only drink on Sunday. This has been working wonderfully nearly two months into the year. I get to satisfy my inner alcoholic and give him something to look forward to while not forcing myself to be a really good person and be sober all the time. It’s rough being a raging alcoholic that drinks every day and it’s also rough being perpetually sober with no way to temporarily escape life. One drinking day a week seems like the best solution for me, at least until I slip and fuck up my entire plan.

Sunday, a friend of mine needed some help moving furniture at his mother’s house. This happened around noon and naturally we like to unwind by grabbing some food. We went to Old Chicago around 1:30 p.m.; this was way too early to start my Sunday drinking, but what the hell else are you supposed to drink at a restaurant while talking to a friend you haven’t seen in a long time about really heavy stuff? Water? Juice? Coffee? Hell no. I purchased a big 22 oz IPA that sported a whopping 7% alcohol by volume. This was basically like 2.25 Regular Beers and of course I ended up drinking two of these over the course of an hour: 5 or 6 beers by 3 p.m. (To make the math simple, I’ll consider these two 22 oz IPAs 5.5 Standard Beers.) What a start to the day.

I’ve always had bad experiences being drunk all day but couldn’t seem to recall why these days were so bad. This was probably because I was miserably drunk and had some memory impairment from it. I knew I was signing myself up for another completely drunk day by starting so early, but surely there wouldn’t be any problems, right? 

The problem with drinking is that sobering up is the worst feeling in the world. You feel tired, slightly nauseous, and end up yawning every few minutes. You don’t even have to drink a lot to feel awful; one or two beers makes me sleepy and lethargic. I notice my mood is usually shit as well. You toss some caffeine into the mix to offset the sleepiness and then you get an awful jittery feeling along with a hefty dose of anxiety. It’s terrible and I cannot sober up while awake, it’s one of my unwritten rules in life. When I start drinking, drinking will occur until I go to sleep. Considering I go to bed around midnight (or even later) once I started drinking at Old Chicago I knew I was signing myself for another totally drunken day. And I knew it was a bad idea; some part of me recalled that being drunk all day was a terrible idea that made me very uncomfortable, but I couldn’t grasp the feeling clearly enough for it to matter.

We left Old Chicago and I decided to stock up on beers at the gas station so I wouldn’t have to do it later. Usually I drink a six-pack on Sunday, but since it was 3 p.m. I’d have to get quite a few more beers to make it through the day. For some reason I thought a 12-pack would be “safe” enough (safe from running out of alcohol too early in the day) and was able to talk myself down from a 15-pack. How many beers did I think I’d need to survive the next 8 hours?

I made it home about an hour later and was already feeling the awfulness of sobering up. I went outside to “put air in the car tires,” which wasn’t a lie, and ended up sitting in my car shotgunning a few beers for 20 minutes. I had two and felt somewhat better. This brought my Standard Beer Count up to 7.5.

We had to take the kids to Red Robin for their birthday. This was around 5 p.m. and I was feeling good. I was drunk again, fending off the hell of sobering up with those few beers shotgunned quickly while hiding in the car. One of the step-kids was inside putting makeup on as we all waited for her in the van (she’s always makes everyone late) and I thought shotgunning a third beer was a fantastic idea! That would ensure full drunkenness until we made it to Red Robin, which had an ample supply of beer. Things were looking up. Standard Beer Total: 8.5.

At Red Robin I order another two heavy-hitting 7% IPAs that tasted awful. Standard Beer Total: 14. I don’t even like IPAs, they just have a really high ABV percent so sign me up for a few of them. Struggling through the second beer was where things really started to go downhill. It was a challenge to finish it with each sip making my stomach turn, but you can’t leave undrank beer at a restaurant! I was drunk, like stumbling around and slurring my words drunk, but didn’t feel good anymore. I just felt tired, lost, and kinda confused. Like I had no sense of time or anything and was floating through life in a haze or something. Time didn’t make much sense and looking back at the day just seemed like a blur. Usually more beers clears these dirty feelings up, but on the verge of being unable to function I didn’t have much choice: sober up and feel burned out or drink more and pass out/vomit somewhere and feel like total shit the next morning.

We went to drop one of the kids’ friends off and I was playing some music that for some reason just slapped the shit out of me emotionally. There I was riding shotgun in a van full of teenage girls totally crying over a song I was listening too. It was beautifully embarrassing and I didn’t even care. And surprisingly I still don’t care about it; I have zero regret about my actions. I’m an emotional person and the music speaks to me, okay?!

We get home and I had another beer. (Standard Beer #15. I didn’t think to tally these up Sunday — not that I could anyways…math is hard when you’re blasted drunk — and I’m glad I didn’t. Oof. 15?!) Wife cut my hair. I wanted to take a shower to clean away all those annoying hair clippings so I hauled two more Icehouses upstairs and pound those down while I listen to more music. Standard Beers #16 and 17 — shower beers! Shower beers are some of the best beers, but not the ones on Sunday. They just weren’t doing it for me.

Life was really cloudy by this point and it was only like 10 p.m. I have an outstanding goal to publish a chapter in my Morrowind Fanfic story every Sunday; this was the singular thing I had to get finished. Luckily I had the story completely written and the only real challenge left was to edit and post it. Somehow I realized that there was zero chance this would get done because editing while drinking — let alone being legit drunk — was a terrible idea. I’d have zero ability to edit the story, clean up grammar, and decide if it even sounded good. Looking back it makes perfect sense because I could barely walk without assistance from the walls or talk properly. There was no fucking way I could edit a story in my state. This only made my mood worse too, so I laid on the floor feeling miserable, confused, drunk, but also not really drunk or enjoying myself. Just a miserable drunk feeling. Heartburn, lack of motivation, feeling like a failure from my inability to edit a fully written chapter because I drank the entire day away. And to really wallow in my self-hatred I played the song I cried to hours earlier and ended up crying again to it. Jesus Christ, was this my life?

In my state I finally realized why I don’t do this day drinking thing: it’s terrible. The last time I recall was in the summer where I had a case of beer and was drinking the entire day away. I thought grilling out was a good idea and I vaguely recall standing outside grilling while my dad was visiting while I tried to drink away the exhaustion that kept creeping up on me. Not actually enjoying grilling or cooking but just trying to get the damn thing finished to where I didn’t have to do anything. Total laziness and exhaustion. It’s hard to explain but Sunday cleared things up for me. Drinking all day is a terrible idea. Drinking for a few hours where you pound a six-pack is great — it always puts me in a good mood — but trying to drag it out into a perpetual drunken state does not work. In some ways I think no one is meant to feel that good all the time, as if your mind is worn out by being too drunk and happy. After about five or six drunken hours you feel exhausted, tired, and depressed, and eventually reach a point where more alcohol doesn’t improve the situation. So that was my weekend. Sounds fun, huh?