fire and forget

Status: Rich is giving up drinking for 1 year after CES. For reals this time

And I wasn’t even drunk. And I think I mean it. The thing is, everything that I’d like to change about my life can pretty much be traced, either directly or obliquely, to the amount I drink.

I’m always skint: because I spend most of my money on going out drinking. I don’t take holidays, rarely buy clothes, books or CDs and then usually second-hand, I eat reasonably cheaply and I don’t have any expensive hobbies… except going to the pub. Spending thirty to forty quid a time on a night out, including breaking out my cash card to buy a round at last orders, is not healthy.

I’m in debt: because I spend most of my money on going out drinking. See above: this is why I constantly teeter on the edge of an overdraft. I don’t owe a huge amount, ignoring student loans obviously, enough that I could probably pay it off in a year or two, but enough that I’d have to make a fairly drastic lifestyle change to do so. Plus, I now pay interest on my overdraft, and I’m sick of paying those chisellers at Barclays over the odds.

I’m not in great shape: because I drink too much beer. I’m happy with what I eat, it’s reasonably healthy and in reasonable amounts, and I’ve cut right back on fast food. I lost a stone this year and off and on I’ve been getting to the gym fairly-regularly. Now I’m back to ‘normal’ I want to actually get in trim. Cutting out beer and getting to the gym proper-regularly will sort me out.

I’m always hungover: because I spend too much time going out drinking. I like having a bit of a reputation, but I don’t like my colleagues commenting when I’m clear-eyed and fresh-faced because it’s so unusual. I also don’t like never getting enough sleep, and waking up late so I can’t get to the gym and have to get on the Northern Line at the busiest time, and still ending up late for work. Edit: Plus, I’m always slightly ill. In 2009, I’d like to give my immune system a fighting chance.

And the biggest reason: I never do anything. I’ve been going to the opening of an envelope most weekdays for the past eighteen months, and every action having an equal and opposite hangover the weekends have been pretty unproductive as well. So my long-planned webcomic lies half-finished, my attempts at writing a novel never get off the ground, and I hardly ever blog.

Disclaimer: I will be drinking at Paul’s stag do in April and wedding in May because he’s my best mate and it would be rude not to. Also I might fall off the wagon on press trips, as long as it’s not beer. Finally, a warning to all my friends: I will be dull as shite this year.

There are some who say I can’t do it (mostly my friends, thanks guys) but that’s not what I’m worried about. The real kick in the the teeth would be if I knocked the booze on the head, and discovered that yep, I’m just lazy. That could drive me to drink.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 at 02:02 pm and is filed under wtf. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.