Dry Month

Boy oh boy, it has been an exceedingly long time since I wrote a blog. What is the reason for that…?
Being so busy that my life force has been effectively drained.

First there was the month of December, which I’m sure you all know is a crapshoot of trying to stay calm and stress-free. You have battling families of whose home you’re at, for which part of the holiday, gift purchasing, gift wrapping, decorating, the mountain of Christmas parties… and work.

Then comes January- getting back into the swing of things, and then… you’re in the swing of things, and dead tired.

There, I have gotten you all caught up.

Have I maintained my workout…?

Not at all.

And I intend to justify this in one sentence.

It was stressing me out, and it left me with even less energy.

I got a promotion at my work (Yay!), and I have been so busy maintaining my teaching, and this new wave of responsibility, that it was either go back to my former weight management of counting calories closely, or be too stressed or tired to enjoy my life.

While I agree that working out is important, my mental state of well-being is even more so.

That being said, I haven’t completely abandoned all health ventures, I just once again had to modify my methods.

This month, I have taken it upon me to forgo all intoxicants. I had been noticing that my weekly drink average was climbing, and I was using it to de-stress far more than I should’ve.

So I decided to take a whole month off to try and gain perspective on how much I actually want to be consuming, and re-establish some better stress management.

I’ve discovered that I want to try to keep drinking to special events, or one night on the weekend, and that to manage my stress I’ve found that; reading, taking a moment in complete silence, or even just lying down with Evan to just be still, has helped in letting go of the day-to-day stressors.

There are a slew of other things I have noticed as well, however I intend to not bombard this post with all of the observances, for now I will say that the regularity of the consumption needs to be tailored.

Now some of you may be wondering how I came to this point. Where the consumption needed to be halted and observed, and to be honest a lot of it came down to the normalization of it from main stream culture. Drinking is propagated constantly, folks drinking regularly and in large quantities is portrayed as normal almost everywhere (TV shows, movies, advertisements etc).
I bought into it, and I was foolish and naive to do so, even if it wasn’t consciously done.

So, following my own principles of: ‘if there is something you don’t like about yourself or your life, do everything you can to change it as quickly and effectively as possible. Otherwise you’re wasting your own time’, I decided to complete a sober month.

I will write about one of the most interesting changes that this has brought about, potentially for my next post!

Until then, I raise my mug of tea to you all, and bid you good night!