Lithium Receipt is my new band name
Dry January surprises
My first serious Dry January effort ended last night at Blues Alley in Georgetown. I'm counting the month a success, even if I'm still a tiny bit hungover — from two drinks.
On January first, I was halfway down the New Jersey Turnpike, thinking about Dry January, wondering if I could pull it off. I decided to give it a shot, but not make a big deal out of it.
It didn't go anything like what I expected.
For context: I generally don't keep booze in the house, because I know I will drink it and regret it the next day. Instead I go to my local bar and have a drink or two, maybe 2 or 3 times a week. Add in live music events, and there can be times when I have alcohol 4 or 5 nights in a single week. What concerned me wasn't the amount I was drinking on a given night, but the frequency of said nights, how it was becoming almost routine.
Behavior experts recommend establishing new, healthier routines as you try to make these kinds of changes. That would have required more effort than I was willing to make.
Still, I learned a few things.
First, and most importantly, it wasn't anywhere near as hard as I thought it would be. I'm not gonna lie; there were a couple days where I definitely (thought I) wanted alcohol. But that "craving" was really either boredom (I busted my ass all day, I'm too tired to do anything else, it's only 7pm) or wanting to numb myself, to escape feelings of anxiety.
Which brings me to my second discovery: No alcohol meant way less anxiety. The thing I had been using to treat anxiety was, in fact, causing most of it.
And just like everyone else who's done this experiment, I dropped at least five pounds, slept twice as hard, and had significantly more energy.
So now what? Clear eyes, full heart, less booze? Reserving alcohol for special occasions, as if it's some kind of reward, sounds ridiculous. That's like saying "I've got a big date this weekend and I want to make sure I feel like shit the next day." For now, awareness of the alcohol-anxiety connection will keep me out of the neighborhood bar. Where, with a few exceptions, most of the patrons are pretty boring anyway.
Dead people's stuff
Last week I asked if you've buried a parent, what did you do with that person's stuff, and how did you make those decisions? One person outsourced and is determined not to leave their kids with a large physical burden:
"Ugh. Paid for storage for all my mom's stuff for years. We had such a terrible painful relationship. Eventually paid someone to take it all and give me personal effects. It didn't help that she once said never sell my antiques. But I thought about my kids. I told them I'm in your heart. That's it. Get rid of anything you want. That's not where I'll be. And now I get rid of almost everything. Almost. I have my kids' art digitized and all on our walls. Framed like Mona Lisas... My dad had nothing. A few photos of me and the kids. It broke my heart. On a walk today my friend told me how she's decluttering so when she dies the kids don't have to. Life is short. I want to spend it with the people. Not managing the stuff. Put your moms PhD on a tote bag (Etsy) and carry it?"
Another person is taking an artistic approach (if you are not from DC, Higger's was a DC drug store with an unfortunate name):
"Girl. At least your mother pre-sorted and got rid of some shit. I've spent the last year sorting and digging through boxes and trunks and crap that goes back 4 generations of kicking the can down the road. Literally. Back to the 1880s. And the photos aren't in albums, and the accolades and diplomas and newspaper articles are mixed in with grocery lists, old playbills, and printouts of TV listings from the AOL days.
"I'm the eldest daughter, but I don't mind. My mother kicked this can straight into my face.
"But quickly: Listen to Anderson Cooper's podcast about sorting through his mother's stuff. So good. I've saved photos and newspaper articles and boxes and boxes of letters. My great grandmother and her sister were genealogy nuts long before ancestry dot com so they did their research by handwritten letters. They were teachers, so the handwriting is perfection. (We have 2 garages and a basement.)
"What am I doing with all this crap? Art. Am I an artist? No. But thanks to the local community college I'm learning. I see a lot of collage and abstraction in my future. Thus kicking the can down to (my daughter) in a whole new medium. Because who wouldn't want collage with confederate money and my grandfather's Higger's drug receipt for lithium and booze from the mid 70s?"
And finally, from someone whose late father was a decorated war veteran:
"Kept the stuff in a large storage space for about 8 years and slowly whittled away at it over the years. Mom's stuff was only a lot of clothes and jewelry and photos — she didn't have the professional career or anything like that. And on top of that, she was not a pack rat at all because the house had to be super clean and super orderly. I then got rid of larger chunks as I became more emotionally stable (or I guess you could say more detached?) over the years. Mom passed in 2011 and dad in 2004. So I've had to deal with their combined stuff since 2011. Very glad that the Marine Corps is creating a museum exhibit this year for my father and erecting a building in his honor at their training camp in NC, so that forced me to go through about 5-10 boxes of things I was hoarding and ship all of his awards, medals, uniform, and digitize lot of photos and send to their curator over the past couple of months. Very quickly. Because I was traveling. I’m sort of glad I didn’t have a lot of time to do that because I would be all confused about what to keep and what to send and worried about where missing items are located. No time for all that, lol. If I didn't have to do this, I would probably just keep them downstairs in my apartment's storage (again, I had whittled away slowly at all the stuff over the years and all that remained was military paraphernalia and photos).
"Bottom line is, I didn't put any pressure on myself to do anything with the stuff until I was emotionally ready to part with things or until an event forced me to. So now, it's what — 13 and 19 years later, respectively. I still have a few things down in storage that I will eventually part with. But I'm pretty laid back as long as nothing is in my way and I have the small space to store it."
Links
Every night I stay awake to keep my brother from drinking. This is even sadder than the title suggests, and still worth reading. (Electric Lit)
Dry January was easy. No-spend January sounds impossible. (The Cut)
A NY woman freaked out on a dude she assumed was Palestinian. She's been arrested and charged with a hate crime, while he's still struggling with what "justice" means. Really good article. (WaPo)
"Justin Timberlake has always kind of sucked, at least on a personal level, and his new song, 'Selfish,' is just the latest turd to be floated across the surface of his long-stagnant career. It's not just sanitized, Bieberized, blue-eyed R&B; it's treacly schlock." And that's just the lede in the most deliciously vicious album review I've ever read. (Consequence)
A great interactive piece on how Williamsburg has changed. The photo for 1993 is of the NY Citizens! It was that singer's girlfriend who introduced me to amaretto coffee, and I still remember all the words to all their songs. (NYT)
Trauma dumping on Elmo. (Jezebel)
MAGA extremists outsmarted by NY subway turnstile. Boing Boing
How to comment on social media. (LitHub)