Monthly Archives: January 2025

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Goals

I have this goal. I want to be a 150 average pin bowler. Last night, I crept toward it.

I bowled 170 in this first game and then had this hideous wrist twisting, side hitting game wherein it was 122. My final game was 147 only because I finished strong. Averaging 146 is flirting toward my goal, and I’ll take it.

Like everything, as soon as I get in my head, I can’t do very well.

That quality affects my climbing too.

The last topic to consider in this entry is that only one of our teammates wasn’t drinking at all. I am the only one of us four who completed a dry January. The thing is that it’s not a dry January for me. I just don’t drink anymore.

The main art museum here has a children’s friendly show, and I noticed driving home from work yesterday that it’s in its final weeks. I called my girlfriend so we can all three go together. I had planned it and it was going to slip away if I didn’t get tickets. We talked for half-an-hour last night.

Her ex-husband, who used to be my metamour, can’t wait until Saturday to have a drink. I told her that I’m looking forward to going to a beer garden on Lake Michigan that her best friend recommended to me in June. What’s been derivative for me having my last drink on December 30th is that alcohol is an easy substance to get dependent on.

I wouldn’t even really call my lack of drinking except once in a Blue Moon (That beer mostly sucks.) a goal. I’ve just had a change. And it was time. LA now has a gout flare up and is limping around.

Do you play sports? What are your sports goals as you age? Have you ever set a goal and it turns out differently than the one that you set?

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Boredom

I will forever be grateful for the woman who runs our Women’s Discussion Group. I know that she pushed my girlfriend to text me back in August of last year. I don’t think that I ever would’ve lingered and talked to her because 1) I thought that she was straight, and 2) I don’t often approach women.

I’m not sure if I trust my instincts with women who I’m drawn to. I have been with avoidant folks.

I went to the Women’s Discussion Group Leader’s birthday party on Wednesday at hibachi.

Then I got bored.

Next, I got mad.

Her girlfriend was 45-minutes late, held up dinner for 14 people, and the pacing for food got strange.

I just wanted to leave.

It meant that afterward, I could only connect with my girlfriend in her bed for just under half an hour. She has a gazillion things that she has to do before she starts her parenting and workday the next day.

I get really irritated with folks who are inconsiderate.

What are your hot buttons with respect to people?

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Moderation

I haven’t had a drink in 15-days. I didn’t crave beer at bowling last night, and I think it’s largely because the beer there is just ok. It’s also massively overpriced.

I’m not a sommelier. I don’t make beer. I can’t drink hard alcohol, because I almost immediately fall asleep when I do so.

I realized last week that I largely drink because I’m hungry. It’s quick sugar for me.

Since the pandemic, I would have one more beer if I had a stressful day. Otherwise, I was simply getting some calories into my system, which one knows are simply sugar.

I am still very funny without an ounce of alcohol. I don’t need it to be me. And last night, I was realizing that I am louder when I’m drinking because I was a quiet bowler and celebrator.

However, I’m wondering which of my friendships are beer friendships.

I can imagine that I will have some shifts…

It’s not that I judge what others are doing. I am just waking up. I saw LA as a vacation alcoholic and probably solo alcoholic when she met me at the end of my birthday trip last summer. Then, I am still in the planning stages of how we’ll intervene with my former colleague. I just don’t want to have my own clouding right now.

I am super close with five sets of my neighbors on my street. Two came over Sunday night to drop off a New Year’s gift and we talked. The man in this DINK couple is doing dry January… His wife told me about 2 intervention conversations that she had to lead with two friends.

Alcohol suspension and disuse is all around me.

I read this article today and a few points were similar ones that I’ve made when I entered this period of non-drinking. I will drink again, but I don’t know when. I know that I won’t be drinking excessively ever. I never did that much anyway, and was simply dependent.

I also finally have a plan for beginning psychedelics.

Before it was legal, I spent about 18-months to a couple of years smoking marijuana. I completely stopped when I was in a suite with friends and was convinced that a helicopter was landing on me and that dominoes on the table were going to crash and break. I don’t even care to try strains of it that friends recommend to me. I don’t like it. I hate what it does to me personally.

What do think dependency is? What is an addiction?

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Freedoms

I’m an 8 on Enneagram. I’m solo poly. I’m introverted. I guess that you could say that my personal freedom is incredibly important to me and is inextricable from my personality.

After I get the prologue to my book done and have whatever concluding materials I need, I’ve been thinking about making a TikTok account.

I don’t love the platform. I think that the algorithms promote you staying on it for hours. I also think that it preys on young girls to compare themselves to bots and folks who are way more than airbrushed. Some kids use it to roast and even bully each other when kids post themselves dancing–they’ll make fun of the person who’s danced.

Now, it’s in the news and arguments are being addressed via the Supreme Court. Opponents say that China uses it to spy on the activities of Americans. They also say that you can’t find information about Israel or Tibet on it. I’m no software engineer, but think that sounds plausible.

What is your usage of social media? Do you read the news on newspaper websites or in an old school paper? What do you think about with respect to platforms gathering our data and infringing on our privacy? Finally, are you on TikTok?

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Normalized

I have a list in my Netflix, but didn’t have the bandwidth last night for starting a new series. As Google is always monitoring and listening in, I saw a Harrison Ford movie article on my phone. I realized that I’d seen it as soon as it started streaming. I think I saw it when I had a DVD subscription to Netflix. However, I couldn’t remember how the premise tied everything up, so I watched it with my cell phone handy.

My girlfriend has Flu A. Because I was sick over Thanksgiving week, which is a week that I never work, I didn’t get a flu or COVID shot. That means that I have Flu A too, but I’m not running a practice or raising a toddler, so I simply have a sore face and jaw today. Yesterday sucked and I slept 11-hours in total. She ran a fever of 107 at one point last night and that’s so scary. She’s taking her daughter into the doctor today.

I texted back and forth with my girlfriend and few other folks and watched, “The Age of Adaline.”

This post isn’t about suspending disbelief.

It’s not about medical miracles or neurology.

It’s about alcohol.

I’ve had nothing to drink since 12/30/24.

I go back to work tomorrow, and there will be reasons that I justify for myself to have 1-2 beers.

I won’t though.

Alcohol usage is so normalized.

Let’s get back to this movie.

The love interest tells the protagonist that lovers and glasses of wine should never be counted when she says that she doesn’t want another drink.

The protagonist and her love interest split a bottle of wine in a 1950s convertible that is sitting in a warehouse. They’re not eating.

The characters eat a little bit of dinner and drink two different wines and then have cognac at night.

I don’t think that without my choice that I’ve made, I’d ever have given these scenes a second thought. However, watching the copious amounts of booze that’s consumed in this movie about never aging is alarming. Alcohol is the normal backdrop of every evening shot in the film.

What is your favorite series or movie? Do the characters drink? How much? Why do you think that drinking is a “normal” part of our collective habit?

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Bad Ways

The Photographer and I had a walk and lunch yesterday. I was shocked that she said yes when I texted her that it was a shot in the dark, but would she be able to meet up with me? I asked her if she and I could walk and then I’d take her to lunch. It’s her birthday very shortly, so I wanted to do that.

Initially, I had plans with Vegan, and she was operating under the information in a text rather than our calendar notice so we didn’t get much time together. She may have been a little irritated with me, but I still saw Vegan.

The Photographer had been travelling with a new partner. They were all over Brazil, which is an easy lift for her as she is multilingual. Their trip sounded magical. I was so happy for her.

Until lunch.

There are just bad ways to do polyamory. I know that often discussion group leaders say that you can do polyamory any way that you want to, but I don’t agree.

The Photographer’s partner had been emailing off and on with her ex of 3.5-years. On their trip, she learned that they would be meeting up. She asked her how she felt about that. And her partner kept saying that she had no feelings and would feel like she felt when they met.

Well, they both felt some kind of way.

They spent NYE together.

The Photographer had to make quick plans with her friends so as not to spend it on her own.

The Photographer has been dating lots of people right now. She’s a great date. It’s funny because she’s a great date even when you’re not on a date!

While on these dates, she has had people who have dated her partner say that her partner has told them not to date the Photographer. Her partner is also going out on dates with other people who date her ex and she is talking to them also about not dating her. She wants the Photographer, her current partner, and her ex to be at her disposal. The Photographer also told me that she is seemingly incapable of romance and doesn’t plan any dates with her.

The Photographer said, “You look angry.” I said, “Of course, I’m angry! I am an 8. And this is confusing and shitty behavior.”

I told my girlfriend about it last night and she said that it gives polyamory a bad name.

Except that this morning, I don’t think it’s polyamory.

I think that the Photographer’s partner is manipulative, unethical, and wants to control people and that has nothing to do with her sexual orientation or how she designs relationships with another person.

I think that if you’re going to be in concurrent relationships that all people at the very least need to know one another. Hopefully, they’ll be friends, but you can’t control that! I’ve had a terrible experience in 2009 – 2010 because I wasn’t allowed to exist to my girlfriend’s other partner. I should have broken up with her then.

I run this difficult balance of being protective and letting go while watching others engage in interactions that will hurt them. I think that writing about her this morning has helped me. I’ll just wait for her to text me after she’s met with and talked to her partner. I want to support her fully.

How do you listen to your friends when you know that they’re putting their hands in a bear trap?

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Sober

My metamour is doing a dry January.

I have decided to not drink until after Groundhog Day, and I may stop for 60 or 90-days.

My colleague who almost died is probably 80-pounds again. We got her out of the house moving her walker so she wouldn’t fall on her face on Christmas Eve. It took us 3-4 minutes to get her into my colleague’s house. Everyone had to tend to her.

Her neuropathy is so bad that she can’t bare weight on her feet really. I didn’t know that neuropathy is related to having liver disease.

She smelled like Listerine after my son got her into my car on Christmas Eve.

Then she was drinking a glass of white wine. She fell asleep right after gifts and she bitched about her gift.

I can’t do a dysfunctional relationship.

I can abstain from alcohol at bowling, karaoke, after I’ve had a hideous day and I am cracking 1-2 beers while I cook.

I am doing some of it because I promised my colleague that I’d do 30, 60 or 90-days dry with her. When I said that she said that she didn’t know which she wanted, because that was “a big question.”

I also am engaging in this activity because no one can ever make me do something. I have enormous willpower. My son said, “Mom, you’re going to want one beer,” and I said that while that was true I don’t need one.

I’m toying with the idea of becoming a social-only and special occasion-only consumer of alcohol. I’ll write about this journey here.

How much do you drink? Have you lost family or friends to alcohol abuse?