january / drying out
been following my own advice – staying active, cleaning the house, trying harder. for the most part / all things considered.
i drove almost six hours home on january 1st. the monday i was supposed to go back to work, i woke up with a brutal tooth infection; had to get that pulled asap. gma ended up back in the hospital, small surgery nbd, then she left on a 12-day cruise(!). baby sister got into a car accident and walked away with a single scratch thank god.
there were at least ten hours of dance somewhere in there, a breakfast date in my office, a nickel + dime poker win, one book read, 2.4k anki reviews; i got tea with a friend, and we celebrated completing our fifth dry january together; i dyed my hair.
and also! there were snow flurries in my backyard!!!!
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an emoji journal:
🚗 📂 📂 🧹 🦷 🦷 🤕 🤕 🛀 🖥️ 📱 🚶🏻♀️ 💼 📱 💃 👔 🖥️ 🖥️ ☕ 🧠 🧹 🖥️ 🍳 🧊 💥 🧘♀️ 🤸🏻♀️ 🃏 ⌛ 🗺️ ❄️
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in my experience, there’s kind of a weird stigma around dry january. i’ve heard a lot of snide comments about how people who “do” dry january – abstain from alcohol for at least the first month of the year – sound like they have a drinking problem. which, like……… yeah, maybe lol.
before my first dj in 2021, i don’t think i’d gone more than a week without drinking since i was sixteen. things were gradually getting better until covid and then the world was ending so who cares if you stay up until 3 a.m. playing golf with your friends on discord, drinking your no-contact-delivery seltzer?
i had to white-knuckle the first january; it was terrible and i never wanted to do it again – at least until november, when i was back to feeling extremely unwell and unhappy.
the second year was better. still hard, i still thought about drinking every day, but this time there was a noticeable change in my energy, patience, clarity, and focus.
this year i forgot i was even doing it until the middle of the month. alcohol doesn’t really cross my mind anymore.
dj is only one of many catalysts that got me to this point, but i love having such a prominent marker for how my relationship with booze has changed over the past few years.
which isn’t to say, either, that it’s all fixed and i can imbibe or abstain like a normal person. but maybe that will be the case next january u know?
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