Been a bit, again. I fell off the wagon with marijuana (still staying dry regarding booze). That makes strike 3, and I’ve got to take a break from weed. It’s nothing near as bad as any other drug I’ve ever gotten hooked on, but there are discernible withdrawal symptoms for me–mostly melancholia and hyper-sensitivity, both of which contribute to a cycle of feeling pissy at work and wanting to go home, cloister myself, and get high again when work is over.
So I’m going to take a break from it, sadly. I don’t know if I’ll make it 6 months or a year yet (which probably means 6 months), but when that time is up I’ll try again to limit my intake to Friday nights and Saturdays, and I’ll have 3 strikes again before another break.
I’m less productive and more psychotic when I’m high every day. So I’ve got to not be high every day.
I am going to that Rolling Stones show in LA in a few months (less than 2 months away now, actually), and I’m likely to get high while I’m out there. Which is fine. I don’t mind allowing “special occasions” for weed. Just not for booze.
One thing that’s neat is that these next 6 months should be the time when the van build is happening, so being sober for that time will definitely make that process easier. I like the idea of getting high and fucking around with my van ideas on the weekends (which I just typed “weedends”), but if I’m working on a schedule, being sober is the way to go. Back when a friend of mine was finishing college, he made the observation that getting high before studying was a bit of a gamble. Sometimes it would make the material much more real and much more profound for him (he was premed, so studying biology), but sometimes it would leach away his ability to focus or retain information. Since then I’ve called this phenomenon “the alchemist’s gamble,” and I guess I won’t be gambling regarding my future housing situation.
Another idea I’ve had about this nascent period of total sobriety is to make a more formal log of my daily progress toward financial self-sufficiency. This blog is (currently) sort of a hybrid of a project blog and a personal blog. I mostly intend crowswood to be about self-sufficiency and sustainability on a shoe-string, but as this has become something like my personal journal, I’ve also been writing about my mental health and addiction issues. I do intend to keep writing publicly on those topics (out loud and proud), but I also think it would be appropriate to differentiate the content streams. When I’m watching videos on youtube about peoples’ tiny houses or van builds, I’m never interested in hearing them talk about how they’re recovering from the flu, or about how they just visited their parents in Milwaukee. So I recognize that others might not be interested in hearing similar from me. I’m hoping this weekend I can do some work on the site and figure out how to set up separate blogs. One will be as this one has been, wherein I just ramble about whatever has been on my mind, and the other will be a daily progress log, including my daily finances and progress made toward being financially independent.
It is a bit daunting, given my current schedule, to be thinking about taking on a project like the van. Right now my weekdays are completely full; I barely have time to masturbate. My alarm goes off at 5am, and I make tea and get back in bed (I’m not a morning person). I’m out of bed by 6, and start work at 7. I write and do math from 7 till 9, then it’s paid employment from 9 till 5 (I skip lunch these days). After work I meditate, eat dinner, and exercise for 1.5-2 hours. After showering and brushing my teeth I’m in bed by 9:30 pm or so, and that’s that. There’s really no time in that day for me to be learning the basics of CAD or van shopping. I can work on the van on the weekends, but I need some damn “me time.”
Summer may be better. I bet I can get away with working 6 hour days over the summer.
I’ve always idealized busy, productive schedules like the one I now adhere to, but I have to be careful about requiring inhuman things of myself. There have been multiple instances of me adhering to such a schedule for a year or so, then snapping and hitting the bottle. “People who cannot find time for recreation are obliged sooner or later to find time for illness.” Right. So I’m going to try to hold Friday nights and Saturdays sacred, and see how much domestic stuff/van-build stuff I can get done on Sundays.