Monday, January 9, 2023

The World is Nine Days Into Dry January

   


   Dry January may be very hard. Trying to stop even one day is very hard. Trying to do it by yourself even harder. The inability to stop on one's own is the reason that there are programs were groups can help encourage and support. I will be happy to talk to anyone or anyone you know if they are willing to talk to me---ANYONE, no matter what. Feel free to contact me. 

  If you are participating in Dry January, good for you---you are probably feeling better even after this amount of days (this link will tell you why)! Attempting this doesn't mean you are admitting to any problem, but it does mean you want to change things up, or resent your relationship from alcohol and drugs. From personal experience, Dry January meant a few things, but I had a few signposts that it was a good idea the rest of the year. 

You many need a Dry Post-January if:

1) You went hog wild New Year's Eve, and are planning to go hog wild on Feburary 1. 

2) You particularly pick romantic partners for the potential to drink/use with them, thus normalizing your own drinking. A social drinker in a relationship may, and will have something to say to you about yours. 

3) You pick events and locations you can drink at, and if you can't drink at them you SYO (sneak your own). You also have weird traditions, with silly names for non-social drinking. 

4) You always buy nips at the liquor store so you have something to drink on the way home, or if you are looking to hide it. 

5) You've lost a lot of friends, either directly from something you've done, or indirectly....people are just sick of your relationship with booze.  

6) You wake up feeling crappy and are angry that it happened again. 

7) You wake up exhausted because you thought you might, for once, get home early enough to get enough rest. 

8) "Just one" becomes the same old amount. 

9) Night time drinking at home used to start at dinner, and the time seems to be creeping up. earlier, and earlier. 

10) You have to monitor your own consumption.

11) You wish bad things would just stop happening related to your use, but you don't wish to stop.  

12)  It's January 9th and you are either pissed, concerned, or don't give a shit, that you couldn't do it. 

13) You are in bad health, need to stop and cannot. 

     


 If you identify with any of these, no problem, just objectively look at things, there are still 22 more days in January. 

      

  


Sunday, January 1, 2023

Tinkering into 2023 with a flash piece published in The Blue Lake Review.

      Mitchell and Diana Waldman have been tinkering around with their Journal, The Blue Lake Review since 2010, in fact, I was published by BLR in 2011.  Keeping up with a literary magazine is a lot of time and effort for two people to maintain.

SO HERE'S THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY:

           We all know tinkerers. They are the folks that are always doing things around their homes, sometimes major, sometimes minor. Usually you can find them installing dimmer switches, or reparing dining room chairs. Sometimes they re-wire things, or set up other devices, basically they are the at-home Mr. Fix Its, where most of the time they succeed, but at times, they do not.  

         This is a story about what happens to a family owned house which no longer is owned by a member of the family. How does one still manage to tinker? Read all about it!