Thumb De Dum

Clean and sober (a drama queen’s account of going 1 week without alcohol)

So, last week, I finally admitted to myself that I was drinking too much, stupidly smoking again…and that the depression I kept feeling was linked to both of these things.

I mean, I obviously already knew that, but somehow I finally got the relevant centre of my brain to actually pay attention and help me out.

I’m not sure which part of the brain is involved in these things, but when I finallly get it on board, I can almost hear a ZING of reprogramming deep the recesses.

I’ve gone 6 (nearly 7) days without a drop of alcohol or a sniff of a ciggie.

The sad thing is that I feel so proud to have gone so long without a drink. Is a week without alcohol really such a big deal?

You know, I’m not really a raging alcoholic. Honestly. OK…define ‘raging alcoholic’ and I’ll let you know where I fall on the scale. The truth is that I do find it hard to go more than a couple of days without a drink. Normally, that involves just sharing a bottle of wine with alco-other half. Sometimes…just a single beer. The thing is, though, that it’s so frequent that I guess it is a problem.

Let’s see how long this dry spell lasts.

And while the depression has lifted (I KNEW IT WOULD), I’m still waiting for a surge of energy and clear-headedness. I’m still fricking tired all the time.

Two hours later…

…I popped out for some lunch. Fancied me some fish and chips. There’s a chippie down the road who does a weekday lunch-time special.

See? There are perks working from home. You can indulge in the weekday lunch-time special down at the fish and chip shop. The only other people down at that chippie are filthy rich housewives and tradesmen. Not together, I don’t think. Or maybe they are together. Wouldn’t surprise me.

Everyone in this area is wealthy. Super wealthy. Seriously. Fuck-off rich. There are 2 houses on the block across from me with their own tennis courts. Do you know what I mean when I say a block? The quadrangle of space that is normally bounded by 4 streets. That is then subdivided into properties - townhouses or blocks of flat (or units, or apartments, whatever’s your term). Well, across the road from me, that block is pretty much divided into just those 2 mansions. And their tennis courts. Tennis courts take up room, don’t you know.

It’s all tastefully hidden behind gates and shrubbery - naturally - but stealth technology is the Achilles heel in the armoury of these rich folk. A little peek on Google Earth and you realise that 2 families share one ginormous block of seriously over-priced real estate.

And what should one do with all that space? Build a tennis court. Naturally.

(Ah, I’m just jealous. And poor. Not bitter, though. Nope.)

So, are interested in where I live?

I live by the sea. That is really nice. Really, really nice. Really, really, really nice. I can’t overstate just how nice it really is to be living right next to the Pacific Ocean. I live on a little spit of land, you see. On one side, the big old ocean. If I was a really good swimmer, and set off one morning, and kept to an easterly course, and didn’t drown or get eaten by sharks or any of that ‘reality’ shit…I would eventually end up in America.

On the other side of the spit of land where I’m living, is a harbour.

There you go, sleuth-person. All the information is there. You can work it out.

p.s. how do I turn off that fucking annoying Wiki-monster thing that keeps interrupting me?

Today, about 2 hours ago, I designated today as a writing day.

Total writing completed thus far: zilch.

I’ve started up a business, you see, and I need to do all the things that an online business owner needs to do. Like writing blogs. And Tweeting Twitter crap. Doing the social media dance to attract ripe, rich business-mates. Who want to fuck the shit out of all my lovely business things. With their hard-dick money.

The thing is, I don’t want to write all those blog posts, and I am pretty shit at Twitter at the best of times. What I really want to do is OUTSOURCE that shit to the hot young things who think sitting on l’internet and tweeting and ‘blogging’ is a cool job description.

So that I can concentrate on turning at least 1 of the dozens of ideas that have been churning around in my brain for over 2 months since I quit my job and started on this thing into a real and viable prospect. I have never had so many ideas frothing around before, and it’s all getting stifled by the day-to-day reality of getting this thing to work.

I’ve never been good at implementing ideas. At the ripe old age of 35 I figure it’s about time I worked that shit out.

So. My compromise?

Is this. Writing for myself, by myself here. In my silly little corner.

Get the old fingers and brain loosened up to write about more mundane, business-based shit in which I’m not allowed to use the word ‘shit’. At all.

SHIT.

It’s OK. I’ll cope.

On feeling depressed and shit.

It’s a cycle. I know what causes it, and I know what I have to do to stop it. Yet, I can’t.

Here’s a confession. I’m trying to get pregnant and I still drink and smoke on average 4 days of the week. My boyfriend’s sperm test came back all fucked up, and that’s because of cigarettes.

We need to clean up our acts. He’s trying to stop smoking, but I’m not helping because I’m not encouraging either of us to sort this shit out.

We share a bottle of wine one evening, and the whole next day I feel down, lethargic, depressed. I even started thinking about suicide the other day. Not in a real ‘I’m actually going to do this’ sort of way…but just idle thinking about it.

Because I’m tired of life. I’ve been tired of life my whole life.

I don’t think we really want to have children. Will having children give me the sense of purpose that I’m missing? Is that any reason AT ALL to consider having children?

I’m going to be 36 in a couple of weeks. Time is really running out, and I can’t kick the wine-couple-of-ciggies habit. I mean, compared to my twenties, I hardly drink at all, but I guess these things are cumulative.

Is it just alcohol? I sure feel better on those days when I’ve not had anything the night before. Get 2 or 3 days in a row and I feel much better, thank you very much. So much so, that I just have to have a drink.

I gave up smoking for 4 years. And then I started again. About a year ago. How fucked up is that shit?

My dad is an alcoholic. My brother is a bigger alcoholic. He’s been in rehab, arrested, and JUST avoided going to jail. He’s now sober, and I think I need to follow his lead. My dad will never give up drinking or smoking. He’s over 60 now, and will probably live to be 100 on a diet of beer and fags. Those are the genes I’ve been given.

Addictive, depressed genes.

Genes that hate being alive, but stubbornly persist on doing so.

A little bit slow

I can’t work out how to find anything that doesn’t have >14,000 likes or kisses or bottom-rogering

or whatever’s going on.

I’m too old for trendy.

(I may have a secret fail of being never being trendy enough. Kinda close. But not really. Not really at all.

I am not bitter.)

OK

I’m only following 4 people at the moment. And so my dashboard is not filling up very quickly.

Off to rectify that. Need to find some people to follow.

To brighten up my dashboard.

Shit. The. Bed

This is addictive.

Tumblr is blogging’s cool younger brother.

(Yeah man!)

Although I do recall once reading something, somewhere, by a guy who claimed to be one of the B-L-O-G pioneers (it was an acronym for a different something, I’ve forgotten what) and the original purpose of B-L-O-Gs was to share links.

Which is a bit what Tumblr is.

But a lot more sexy.

And all I’m doing is using it to talk to the corner. In private.