Good morning crickets. Welcome to day number two-hundred-three of Operation Achieve Anything. I think I’m having a Pavlovian response to the fact that it’s Sunday because I’m feeling a bit hungover even though this was the first weekend that I’ve gone sober in the last month and a half or so. I think I’m over the increase in drinking to where I was growing to be an official weekend warrior, sedating myself through the weekend to celebrate the fact that I have no official work to get done.

Meanwhile, this increase in drinking has lowered my weekend productivity towards the things that I actually do want to do, since I’ve also evolved to where I no longer like to write while I’m drinking, at least when it comes to nonfiction work for this blog. I still find it hard to believe just how much I used to drink on a daily basis while still managing to hold down a full-time job, be and prolific writer, and also have time to hang out.

Granted, I still put in the same amount of work in you count both my personal and paid efforts, but I still struggle to see how I use to pull off being such a degenerate. Then I remember, I didn’t start to get hangovers until I hit my forties. Looking back, I think I may have actually been hung over the whole time, it was just what was normal to me, so I got to the point where I just didn’t mind. I probably also helped that I used to romanticize my misery by punishing myself with this discomfort to emphasize my struggles as a starving artist. If you read this post with any regularity, you may already know that I still romanticize my misery, just in different ways.

I really wish I could turn this into a smooth transition into talking about today’s assignment but, this time, fate didn’t really work out that way. Maybe it could have if I had some sort of great epiphany to get me to slow down my drinking, but no, I just got old and discovered marijuana as a much better sleep aid, which I sware to this day was the main reason I did drink so much outside of social situations. I guess that could be the learning transition, considering the fact that I did slow down my alone-time drinking after learning to use weed as a tool and not just a paranoia-inducing party supply.

Either way, yesterday I was supposed to learn something new in an effort to gain a better understanding of my world. Though I was excited by this prospect when it first came up, thinking that I’d sign-up for a free/cheap online class or spend all day watching educational documentaries. Unfortunately, my back really started to act up around 2:00 in the PM which led me to rush over to lay in bed and smoke my meds to hopefully feel better today.

While I was in bed, I did watch a documentary and a handful of educational shows, but this challenge slipped from my head, and I watched more as entertainment to distract my high head from the pain than with intent to find something to write about. That said, I did still use the day to learn so I’d say that I fulfilled the assignment.

As for today’s task, I’m supposed to acquire more knowledge by visiting a bookstore and picking up a few books. I’m not sure how I’m going to pull this one off, considering that I’ve spent my paycheck, have no car, and there is no way in hell that I’m venturing out in this heat, but I’m sure that I’ll figure out something. Of course, you’ll have to wait for tomorrow to see what that something is. Until then, it’s now that time for me to wrap this thing up by saying, good day and good luck to you and all of your projects.

Talk to you soon.

Sincerely,

The Wicker Breaker

P.S. Below are links to my novel, which I plan to promote as part of Operation Achieve Anything, as well as a link to where you can buy the book that is providing the structure to this project in case you would like to purchase it in order to play along.