Operation Achieve Anything: Day Fifty-Two, Dateline 2-21-2018
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“Life is a game - play to win.”
Good morning Crickets. Welcome to day number fifty-two of Operation Achieve Anything. Yesterday, I was a bit low energy due to a bout with binge drinking where I polished off a box of wine by myself over the past two days. This is my new pattern when it comes to drinking, I’m now down to giving into my drinking temptations only once a month where I buy a box of wine that contains thirty-four glasses of wine to then drink over half the box on the first night then polish off the rest throughout day number two.
The morning after day one of drinking is always a tough one but by the time I finish the box on night number two, I’ve usually found my drinking legs and don’t get a hangover the next day. Over the past several years, I’ve evolved from being a daily drunk to a weekend warrior to an every other weekend drinker to my current state of being a once a month alcoholic. Now, looking back, I find it hard to believe how I lived like this on a daily basis for so long.
I mention my current relationship with drinking not only because it’s what I’ve been up to for the past couple of days but also because drinking actually plays into yesterday’s assignment where I was supposed to look back to a time where I was there for others during moments where their life got tough. I’m sure the book is expecting more sentimental moments where I brought soup and sat with someone while they were sick but I’ve always tended to show my support by being a silly distraction when friend’s lives were falling apart.
This takes me back to my early twenties when all of my friends and I would get ossified drunk to both celebrate the good times and also cope with the bad. I was always drunkenly destroying myself while romanticizing rejection to the point where I would get sicker than anyone was aware because, at the same time, I had a nihilistic, devil-may-care, attitude that also helped me cope with the concept of existence.
One day, after weeks of destroying myself over a girl who dumped me to hook up with my roommates, I was sitting on the porch with another roommate and started to open up about how I needed to take a break from drinking because I was really starting to hurt myself. Where I was expecting to be cheered up because this was also my best friend at the time, instead I was told about how he had just broken up with his girlfriend.
Right away, I threw all of my needs to be cheered up right out the window as we rushed off to the store to grab a bunch of forties for an epic bout of daytime drinking that ended with us playfully breaking every plate in the house after discovering how awesome the explosions where when we would break them over each others’ heads.
This crazy distraction seemed to work to the point where the two got back together the very next day, or at least by the end of the week at the latest. Meanwhile, I just had a bunch of fun but zero effort was put into comforting me over my failed relationship, in fact, the girl who left me was in the other room with the roommate she hooked up with the entire time we were trashing our own house for fun.
I’ve always seemed to be the type of friend who was always there for anyone in times when they needed to be cheered up while no one was there for me. I know part of this is due to the fact that I redirect any efforts toward serious talk into a silly conversation to avoid showing my hypersensitive emotional side but it would have been nice to have at least one person to call me out on my avoidant bullshit.
Did you know that to this day, no one has asked me how I’m feeling since drastically changing my life out of the blue by leaving everyone who I cared about up in Seattle in order to move back home where I knew I would be left alone. It’s been close to four years, five if you count the year before I left where I really started to fall apart while no one seemed to notice a difference and if they did they never brought it up to me.
Again, I think a big part of this is due to the fact that I put out an energy where I don’t seem to want to talk about any personal stuff but that’s mainly because I hung out with more groups than individuals and I always felt the personal stuff was meant for one on one time where I’m even more awkward at coping with life. This is why it’s always been easier for me to aim for a shut-in’s life.
I’m sure the response that I’ve given isn’t the shining example that the book was going for, especially since today’s assignment is to stop focusing on the negative and try to figure out a way to make life a little more fun by treating it like a game where you have nothing to lose as long as your participating.
It’s sad how most of these assignments are very fitting with the pre-shut-in me when I just lived a dark but optimistic life where just because I was miserable didn’t mean that I wasn’t also genuinely having fun. Now, I live by such a strict routine that assignments like these, that ask me to actively switch my day up to learn from the novelty of change, are hard to complete, with the same enthusiastic energy that I used to have within me.
We’ll have to wait until tomorrow’s update to find out how I turn this day where I don’t plan to leave my home, into something exciting worth reporting on. Until then, it’s now that time for me to wrap this up and sign off 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.
