Tag: sobriety

In the journalism world that was more or less my life for two decades, between junior year in college and last year right about this time, the symbol — 30 — signifies the end of a story.

It’s now been a little more than 30 days since I closed the book on alcohol, and I have a beautiful red 1-Month coin from my regular Tuesday night A.A. meeting to show for it. But this is, by no means, any kind of ending.

Thirty days is where my story begins, and at this moment, the plot is an absolute mystery.

I’ve never made it past 30 days without drinking in my entire adult life, and only reached 30 days twice before. In 2016 and 2017, I messed around with “Sober October” experiments that were never borne out of a serious desire to quit. I celebrated the end of those dry months with Big Gulp tumblers filled with silver Jose Cuervo and flavored sparkling water, a concoction I dubbed “The Jengarita” and was so proud of that I regularly posted really compelling photos like this on my social media:

Continue reading “Thirty” →

I hate clichés. Don’t want to write them. Don’t want to say them. Don’t want to be one. I’ve always fancied myself a hard-core champion of originality, to the point that I can’t even bring myself to write “Happy Birthday” on someone’s Facebook page, because what’s the point of saying the same damn thing others have written 100 times already? If you can’t find the inspiration or time to give them something unique, might as well not bother!

Whew. Well, getting the f*ck over myself is a topic for another day.

Today we’re talking about clichés, because dammit, even though it’s difficult for someone like me to accept, clichés are often absolutely true and perfectly meaningful. You want to get all overthink-y and complicate things (and by “you,” I mean “I”) but in reality, a simple statement uttered and written a gazillion times throughout human history can really be the key to a happy life — if you internalize the message and turn it into action.

Take “One Day at a Time,” for example. Continue reading “24 Hours” →

I was already sweating, thanks to our ancient air conditioner that decided to break last Saturday — the day I took my last drink — and the home warranty company still giving us the business about fixing it four days later.

I was already on the verge of tears, after walking into a narrow room in a church basement packed with about 25 strangers. It was a bigger crowd than I had been expecting, a crowd that necessitated setting up chairs behind and alongside the main circle. I was an outsider, in every sense of the word. Continue reading “The Introduction” →