Day 87: make like a tree.

After another frazzling day, I am going to do the only thing I can fathom: pack up my puter and head for the hot room. As I think I have pointed out before, without bottles of red or white at your disposal, the only effective way to unwind is to exercise. Tonight I'm choosing yoga because it should hopefully give me calmness in the head department, coupled with an energy shot for my bod (which this week it sorely needs). Whoopee whizz fizz pop bang wallop. I'm tired. Can you tell? So yeah, as I begin to contemplate the coming tree-pose, it is also time to do something else tree-like: leave. (Tee hee. Thank you Back to the Future. Although as I recall, Biff always got the joke wrong: "Why don't you make like a tree and get outta here!" Poor boy. Not very clever.)

Day 86: stuff, time, energy.

Today I wrote 13 letters, invited 22 people for lunch, signed off some proofs, and discovered swordfish is high in dangerous ocean metals. I am a little exhausted. I kind of have been all week actually. Lord knows why. It's not like I have booze binges to blame anymore, and I've been being pretty healthy on all fronts as far as I know. I suppose sometimes you just get a bit tired. And there has been quite a lot busying around under the surface that is quite likely sucking out its fair share of energy. Psychologically I've been preparing to leave a longstanding job (and all the friends and security that goes with it) and begin a new one (new people, great expectations, trial periods, new routines: cue secret freakouts!). Then there's all the physical stuff to take care of, like cleaning out six and a half years of work stuff (dismantling my work toy collection and picture wall is a big enough job in itself, let alone sifting through all the very important paper I have accumulated). Just trying not to think about it is tiring! And then you add the normal stuff, like working, exercising, socialising, and trying to become a rock star. Phew. But really, I'm going to have to find a way to boost my battery packs. Because while I've been doing some towards the music project, and it is chugging along quite nicely, every time I mention the jet fuelled words "rock" and "star" I realise significantly more is required. It would be okay if I'd said I wanted to be a moderately successful musician playing regularly at a range of local pubs. But I didn't say that. I also do not expect to go from zero to rock hero in the space of 365 days. But if I'm going to get anywhere near it I need to start putting a little more zoom in my action plan. Thankfully, the not drinking side of things is going well and hasn't become a taxing mission of its own. Now that it does seem to be under control though, it might be time to sharpen the focus again on the other side of the challenge, and get a little more rocking and rolling. There are three things I can see that should be done while we continue to build our material: 1. Get vocal training. 2. Record the vocals for our tracks in a proper studio with good mics. 3. Hit the practice room to keep our live skills up and work out how we play the new tracks live. Plenty to go on with then. And of course there's the small issue of what we call ourselves. Don't get me started. Naming is one of my favourite things, and band naming can keep me awake for days. Right now losing sleep is the last thing I need.

Day 85: help yourself.

Today I received an encouraging email. In fact, of late, a lot of people have been really cool and supportive of my little mission, saying plenty of nice things, but today's message was particularly positive. It was from Steve, father to my friend Jane, who volunteers on an alcohol help line in NZ (I've mentioned him before). He said that he thinks the blog (my blog!) could be helpful to some of the people calling in, and that he's already recommended it to a few. His colleagues have taken a look too, and might also recommend it. This is great. To think that I could have transformed from a not-so-secretly off the rails party person barely keeping her shit together, to someone helping people discover the awesomeness that is being off the booze and on the ball, is really quite amazing to me. Like, really?! But seriously, if you are reading, and this is helping, then please maintain the habit. Because let's not forget that your reading is helping me too. Focussing every day on the task at hand, and being able to vent when it gets hard, and having some sense that there are other people who can identify in some small way with what I'm up against, it all helps me stick to the plan. What also helps me stick to the plan, let's also not forget, is how good it feels to have a clear head, a clear conscience, and a generally happy outlook again. These are the rewards you get for not giving in. But then, by now, at Day 85, giving in isn't really the point. Not drinking has begun to feel so natural and so good that it's a lot less of a battle. Sure there are moments when a beer or a Veuve seem like more attractive options than a fizzy drink, but behaving like a cool person (as opposed to a cross-eyed, slobbering mess), projecting glowing good health, and waking feeling fresh and happy, kind of seem even more attractive again. Now if I could just get a cool boy to notice how freakin' attractive I am right now... Kidding. Not really. But anyway. Life is a sweet thing and it's worth not boozing your way through all of it. Thank you all for reading, thank you Steve for recommending, and please help yourselves to as much booze-free blog as you desire.

Day 84: Australia Day.

If you want to talk major piss-ups, Australia Day is your humdinger. It is a day when the nation that prides itself on (among other things) its beer consumption and prowess at handling its drink, comes out in force, stubby in hand, to celebrate in the scorching summer sunshine. It's a fun day. Barbies abound (for the uninitiated, that's barbeques, not a pack of blonde, leggy dolls), beaches pack out, radios pump out Triple J's annual Hottest 100 countdown, and Australians everywhere wet their parched throats with ice cold beer, wine and bubbly, plucked from well stocked eskies and beer fridges. And hordes of bogans (sorry, this is getting very jargony) roam the streets on their way to or from events, draped in Australian flags and plastered in green and gold face paint and southern cross fake tattoos (this part I find a little scary, and generally try to avoid). This year, in an attempt to minimise violence (the not-so-fun side to sinking lots of piss), alcohol was banned at most of the major beaches. I hope it made a difference, although people I know who did the beach thing still managed to get pretty plastered. For my part, I attended another notoriously boozy Aussie institution, the races. As I have found often to be the case when attending events known for their drink factor, my only pangs hit on entering the place. The pre-programmed expected behaviour patterns kick in and you find yourself thinking you're about to order a glass of champagne. But then your actual brain snaps back into action and you order... a lemon lime and bitters usually. It's the drink that alcohol drinkers will most readily and happily allow you to order, I've found. They find it less appalling than if you started straight in on the mineral waters. In fact, the sum total of my liquid intake at the races was three drinks: one lemon lime and bitters, one sparkling mineral water, and one, wait for it, raspberry and coke! This last drink I reserve for moments when I feel like going a bit ape. Hilariously enough, the colouring and sugar content does seem to give me a hit, akin to the kind I experienced at birthday parties when I was a kid. My first sip always makes me smile sort of uncontrollably. Happy associations I suppose. And it's delicious. My race day experience was indeed, pretty much pure fun. My drinking pals tended towards the giggly, funny and happy end, and weren't drinking excessively. We were all frocked and suited up fabulously, and the amazing looking animals that were the horses themselves kept thundering by in all their shiny-coated, muscle rippling glory. Splendid. I followed this very pleasant event with another equally enjoyable one: a fair dinkum Australia Day barbie thrown by real Aussies, my work mate Kylie and her partner Ian. As a New Zealander, making it to this all-Aussie event felt like an honour and an achievement. And it had all the trappings I would expect, including beer infused barbequed chicken, Australian flag stubby holders, and Triple J tunes filtering out over the grassy, nicely styled back yard. We dined on an awesome array of gourmet nibbles, fresh salads, barbied fare and tropical fruit, and I drank dry ginger ale with fresh lime. Maybe it was just the nature of this relaxed yet sophisticated party, with its emphasis more on good food and conversation than on pissing up, but I genuinely did not notice that I wasn't drinking. My drink was exactly what the warm evening called for, and I had no hankering whatsoever for anything of the alcoholic variety. And while not drinking on Australia Day might be construed by many as "un-Australian", I didn't feel any less celebratory as a result. Certainly, none of the Australians I encountered felt strongly enough about the booze factor to even mention it. People, I think we're making progress.

Day 83: grazia Grazia!

My story just hit the stands in Grazia magazine! Hurrah! (If you're interested, check out page 82 in the "Would you call these women fat?" issue. (the answer is no!)) Oh and according to the article, it seems there's even a whole charity supporting staying off the piss. So if you'd like to join me in soberland for a month, check out www.febfast.com.au As for me, I'll just be bouncing around the place, high on the zing that is acknowledgement by the media. What's this? Someone wants me to do work? How mundane! Do they know who I am?!

Day 82: boy troubles.

Over the last maybe week, I have been vaguely troubled by the lack of a boy in my life. I say vaguely, because in general I’ve been feeling ace about just about everything. I don’t feel like I need a boy to feel good about myself or like a completed human being, but the thought has occurred to me that it might be nice to have one around. Sydney is a tough town for boys. No, let me rephrase that: Sydney is a tough town for single females. Finding good boys is the tough bit. By good I mean clever, interesting, spunky, successful, but mainly with any clue in their head about how to treat a female, or any interest in treating one well. Of these there are very few. Mainly men in Sydney are gay. Of those who are not, a large percentage are arrogant, dim-witted players with bad style, or just so emotionally retarded and commitment-phobic that any meaningful interaction is almost impossible, and certainly infinitely pointless. Or maybe I’m just mixing with the wrong crowd. This could well be the case. For a start, I know plenty of really cool, emotionally stable and genuinely interesting and charming boys all of whom are of course taken. Surely some of these boys had to be single in Sydney at some point? Which means maybe there might be others out there somewhere, right? Maybe I just need to try going to different places. Which brings me to another problem: going to places at all. While I have definitely made an effort not to completely avoid popular watering holes (in fact I have seen it as a test of my metal to see whether I can go out sober and still have a fun time), I haven’t been going to bars as much as I used to. The appeal of hanging out around increasingly drunk people into the wee hours has not been as strong as that of getting more sleep, getting up earlier and going out for a jog (for example). Which is all well and good, except that in Australia (as far as I know) you don’t meet boys on jogs. You meet them in bars. Or at parties; drunken ones. “What about yoga boy?” I hear you ask. You’re right, he may well be the perfect man, but I haven’t seen him in class for two weeks, which could mean he’s on holiday, or that he’s stopped doing yoga, or merely that our schedules are out of kilter. Do you see how difficult this is? Even the fact that I’m thinking so much about a boy who I haven’t had a proper conversation with, indicates just what a dearth of good available men there are in this town. But honestly, worrying about it really isn’t something I currently have energy for. So I suppose I will leave my level of “troubled” about boy or lack thereof at “vaguely” (or maybe turn it down to “not at all”), only resolving to at least try and put myself more in the way of the miniscule scattering of quality boys remaining in this town. Getting up the courage to talk to said quality, should it happen along, without the aid of alcohol is of course another matter. But then, if the man is indeed as quality as he looks, he shouldn’t have any trouble in taking care of introductions himself.

Day 81: alarming behaviour.

The more I don’t drink, the more I am alarmed at how much other people do; the quantities, the frequency, people’s social reliance on the stuff. I know “they” are simply “me” 81 days ago, but as the distance grows further between me and that whole routine, I am starting to appreciate the enormity and ferocity of the beast that is our drinking culture. Drink is everywhere: at dinner parties, at picnics, in bars, at work, at lunch, in homes, at the movies, the rugby, the cricket, on aeroplanes, at the hairdresser’s. It is used for celebration, for sadness, for relaxation, for courage, for socialising, for stress relief, for meeting the opposite sex, for sex itself, for having a good time, and for forgetting a bad time. Versatile stuff yes? That or we’re hooked on it, to the extent that any excuse will do. Let’s imagine for a minute that instead of alcohol, it’s donuts people are consuming. Let’s map out a not abnormal week for a twenty-to-thirty-something Sydneysider. “Well, I’d usually have one or two donuts with dinner on most weeknights, and anywhere from two to five donuts with lunch on a Friday depending on if it was someone’s birthday at work, or we were having a long lunch at the pub. Then I might have say four more donuts later that night out with friends if it wasn’t a big night, maybe eight if it was. Then on Saturday night I could have anywhere from four to twelve donuts depending on when I started, then on Sunday I might just have a couple in the evening, to ease me back into the working week”. If you knew someone who was eating between 14 and 35 donuts a week, you’d think they had a problem right? (And don’t even start to give me question marks on where that mystery layer of lard sprang from.) For a lot of people I know, that little run-through constitutes a modest estimate. Why are we doing it? Are we trying to fill gaping holes in our lives/personalities/confidence/personal achievements gulp by gulp? The problem with that approach (I have found) is that the alcohol quickly drains away, taking useful things like brain cells, energy, good looks and good moods with it, leaving a bigger hole than before and fewer resources with which to construct something more satisfying and lasting to fill the void. As I have pointed out before, you’ll notice that quite a lot of the world’s more conspicuously successful people, aren’t big on getting hammered. They know the value of keeping their beady eyes in sharp focus, and their minds whirring and tick-tocking in the best possible working order. (Not to mention the general helpfulness in any career or endeavour of good skin, bright eyes and perky, lean muscles.) In any case, what I think is starting to dawn on me, is that where before I thought alcohol overconsumption was a symptom or manifestation of other problems, now I’m starting to think it might be the source of much that hampers us as humans. Depression? Frustration? Stagnation? Unhappiness with our bodies and appearance? Antisocial behaviour? A lack of energy or motivation? Feelings of failure or not being in control of our lives? Just not having your shit together? All of these things can be linked directly to drinking too much. And then we drink more to try and block out how bad we feel about the whole sorry state of affairs. Alarming right? And an alarming proportion of our society is geared towards behaving this way. The problem is enormous. It’s sprawling and almost impossible to control. It’s like some fast-moving runner bean plant or vine, squiggling like a maniac on some zooped up fertiliser. It’s freaking me out! I think I need a drink (of green tea or camomile or something).