Four days left. I can drink and smoke and indulge again on Friday.
I’m going to too. I’ve been waiting for a month, and I still have Blackbeary Wheat beers leftover from our camping trip that I’m excited to taste with fresh, rested taste buds.
This month has been really tiring. I feel like I haven’t slept very well in a long time. I don’t have as much patience as I usually do, and I haven’t enjoyed things I typically enjoy as much. I’m not reaching out to my friends to play as many games, I’m streaming later and after a couple weeks of uneventful attempts, I don’t know how much I’m looking forward to that either.
I am looking forward to my first beer in 31 days.
I didn’t do this challenge because I think I’m an alcoholic, although, honestly, the break was probably a good stopper for the bottle the boozer genie lives in. I do miss smoking weed though, since that really helped me to sleep, and let go of whatever stressors were invading my thinking space. Vaping I could take or leave, I do miss the head buzz a bit, but that was more of something to do with my hands and mouth during the day. Surprisingly though, what I miss the most, is caffeine.
I just can’t wait to wake up Friday morning, and to put the percolator on the stove and have the apartment smell of fresh coffee again. Or to enjoy a cup of tea during the midday slump. I didn’t think caffeine would be the most influential substance I was doing, but here I sit, thinking if I could have any of the above in front of me now, I’d take the coffee.
Caffeine and weed was also like a power combo for me, where the caffeine would wake me up and get things going, but the thoughts would be too fast, or too many, maybe disorganized, and smoking would add the tinge of slowness and clarity I needed to focus the coffee energy. Next week, I bet my writing will improve, and I’ll (hopefully) have the energy and creativity to write for both blogs regularly again.
It all made me a little more sociable. I could reach out to friends more often, engage with strangers online a little better. It reduced my introversion, which was big, since sometimes I get so locked inside myself I don’t want to deal with anyone who isn’t me. All the small mistakes they make are so blatant and poignant it’s hard for me to listen to someone or something and not instantly identify errors and critiques.
Four days. Including the rest of today. I’ve been going to bed between 1 and 2 am, so maybe I’ll be awake for November first, and I’ll have a beer and a bowl at midnight before getting what I hope is some of the best sleep I’ve had in weeks.
I don’t think being sober was a huge issue for me. What I really needed was a “force myself to exercise every day and then I wouldn’t need to worry as much” October. I exercised a couple days. There’s this 15-minute at home video I guess I tolerate. It’s a cardio circuit and cardio is really what I need, even though I really don’t like it.
I don’t know how to motivate myself to exercise. I have disdain for every waking second of it. I’m going to try to make myself do it while my SO is away, because for whatever reason, I don’t like anyone seeing me exercise. I identify strongly with the idea of hikikomori, a dominantly Japanese trend where people will stay in their rooms and not interact with another human for weeks, or months at a time. I’ve read only a couple accounts of hikikomori, but the gist I’ve identified with, is that they don’t want people seeing what they haven’t done, mostly related to school, work, or other mainstream ideas of what “successful” people do.
I’ll write more about hikikomori in the future, but I just wanted to mention it. I don’t want to run, especially in the city, where I know people will see me. It’s hard to explain why, and the idea of hikikomori is the closest scientific explanation that I’ve seen so far.
So I’m going to do that today, my stupid 15-minute thing. I would like to be healthier. I was a really healthy and almost athletic kid, but that was back when exercise was part of school, and you had to do it, and if you had a good teacher, it was gamified and fun. It was socially acceptable to play games with your friends in the middle of the day.
Poor, poor, ignorant, adults. Why have you lost your dinosaurs? Do you forget how you used to laugh and play? Do you forget what your dreamt of being when you grew up, because you took the comfortable job, with the stable income, so you could do the adult thing and buy a house, have a family, etc.? When I say “lost your dinosaur” I’m thinking of the movie Step Brothers and the father’s talk near the end about how he had dreams as a kid, and lost them when he “grew-up”. Billions of people have lost their dinosaurs. I feel so sad for so many people.
This post isn’t about other people though, I’m not ranting about society today. This is about me, shamelessly about me, and that’s okay. I’ve been sober for almost a month and that’s kind of a big deal. It’s going to end on Friday, and while I’m proud of what I’ve done (kind-of) I’m glad for it to be over.
I know this sub-chapter of the blog (and my life) will end, but I’ll still be here writing away, trying to turn my speck of nothingness in the universe into something meaningful for someone somewhere. I don’t know how long I’ll keep streaming. Hopefully start up a couples show with my girlfriend when she returns from her trip.
Ever wonder how to get an SO into gaming with you? Or how to understand why your SO games so much? Stay tuned because in a couple weeks, we’ll be bringing you some answers and discussion on the topic.
For now, this is the last week of #SoberOctober. I’m taking some pride in that, and making it through this week, which I feel like will slog on for what feels like much longer than it is.
Though, we’ll see.
