My Hawaii Via Instagram
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Category Archives: Everyday Life
The Crash
I haven’t ever been able to sleep on an airplane. I’ve made some long hauls “over the pond” before and for all of those journeys, I was conscious every bitter second.
Today was par for the course.
I hardly slept last night so I was aware that that today’s flights to Vancouver and then onto Honolulu were going to be exhausting. The amount of “hurry up and wait” that goes along with air travel is astounding which translates into stress as well as both mental and physical exhaustion. If I could get a wink of sleep on the plane, this might be acceptable.
But right now, in the hotel room in Honolulu, I’m having trouble keeping my eyes open. More tomorrow.
Day 75
It’s been 75 days since the last time I had a drink and, in that time, I’ve dropped 15 lbs of excess weight. I haven’t even been exercising; this is purely attributed to not drinking alcohol and eating better/at normal times during the day.
Pretty wild stuff. Who’d a thunk it.
The Written Word
I haven’t written anything since the 20th, Day 43. Between this place and my handwritten journal, I haven’t connected with myself in over 3 days. I actually had to write it out to figure out what Day it is.
Skullmuggery
Hey, I am still working on getting through my first cup of coffee so fuck off. LOL
Anyway, I’ve been dealing with the effects of a flu for the past few days which has not made me overly introspective. At the same time, I started physiotherapy for my shoulder and the exercises are pretty tough; my shoulder and my entire back are a complete mess after doing them. Add the muscle pain and joint ache associated with the flu and… well… I’ve been in a particular little slice of Hell for the past few days.
Well, it’s Christmas-fucking-Eve. December 24th. Despite the fact that I haven’t spent a penny on alcohol, my bank account is still running on empty.
I’ve funnelled all of my limited resources into this friggin’ holiday… and so soon after returning to work. My last paycheck was about ¾ of what it normally would have been since I was on short-term disability leave but with all of the same expenses. I had to get another damn payday loan to buy gifts after all that.
I hate payday loans.
Having spent what I have, I have nothing left until New Years Eve. There isn’t a lot of food in the house and I’m all out of painkillers for my shoulder. But at least I’m almost out of the woods with this flu.
All of this sounds a bit “bah humbug” doesn’t it? Really, I’m not that cranky. I’ll make it through. It’s Christmas time and I’m relaxing right now. I don’t really have anywhere I need to be and having nothing that I really need to do right now. I have as much wrapping done as I can do right now and I have a bowl of Mac N’ Cheese in me guttyworks. It could always be worse.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Day 40 rerun
On Wednesday, I was trying to find an image of the number 40 that I would find suitable for yesterday’s Day 40 post. I didn’t have any grand ideas for the post… 40 is just a nice round number to comment on.
After entering ’40 days’ into Google, the search results came in with an unusually heavy weighting in Christianity and the bible. I’m not religious but this caught my interest. What is the significance of the number 40 in the bible?
It seems that there are many biblical stories where God would test man with various trials and, often, the duration of these trials were… 40 days. Weird. I didn’t look into thoughts or theories on why this was; I only have so much tolerance for preaching and every website had just too much preaching for me. I did take note of the biblical stories in question and, unfortunately, none of these trials would have starred Charleton Heston or involved Jesus riding a raptor. Sorry.
I’m not making any religious parallels here. Unless there’s a parallel that involves Nic Cage… then, why the hell not? 40 days… it’s just an interesting coincidence.
But, yeah, yesterday was my 40th day of sobriety and, holy fuck, it was boring. I had text messaged a friend earlier in the day saying, “I don’t need a drink but I could really go for a beer right now.” It wasn’t like I was going to actually have a beer but it was just one of those days where I was needing to unwind. A beer was just my old familiar way to unwind. Instead, I relaxed in my chair after work, watched some hockey on TV and ended up in bed around 9:30 pm out of pure exhaustion. That’s kind of been my modus operandi lately. Chillaxing.
Crashed
Day 40 of sobriety has passed, uneventfully. It’s 9:30pm and I’m so exhausted that I can barely keep my eyes open.
I wish I could write more.
Back To The Grind
Today was my second day back at work; my first day back in the office was so tiring that I ended up in bed at 8:30 pm and I was only there for about 6 ½ hours.
It was very mentally stimulating though because I was asked many, many, many times what happened and how I’m doing etc. Being ‘on‘ and engaging was mentally tiring and then traveling to the clinic to find out the results of my MRI didn’t do me any favours either.
The good news of the day yesterday was that surgery on my shoulder is not required. Two more weeks of wearing this brace and then 2+ months of physiotherapy and I’ll be tip-top. My rotator cuff was not torn and the bone fracture in my socket (I don’t know the technical term of where the fracture is) apparently looks like it hasn’t changed or grown larger and should heal on its own.
Today, I started doing a lot more work. I should maybe be a lot more tired than I am but I think that, in a way, the work was less stressful and helped me to be ‘off‘ a little. I am also re-learning my job since I was relatively new to the position before having my seizure and was then on Short Term Disability for a month.
My biggest point of contention is that I’m now a one-handed typist. Specifically, a one-finger typist and I was a relatively adept typist with two hands. Now, I’m ridiculously slow and it pisses me off.
Both yesterday and today were challenging though. I wanted a drink at the end of the day… not a real hardcore craving but just the feeling that a drink would be nice to relax. Regardless, the feeling was fleeting and I maintained my sobriety. It’s been 30 days since my last drink and I’m feeling proud of that and it’s something I want to maintain.
This is reading to be a very short, disjointed collection of anecdotes rather than some kind of proper blog posting. I think this is a signal that I’m maybe more tired than I thought. Time for me to close this off before I crater completely.
Idle Hands Are The Devil’s Workshop
I’ve been keeping busy today. I have been cleaning, doing dishes, getting some laundry done. I’ve also been watching TV in between my duties. Plenty of dinosaur programming on the National Geographic channel followed by my first exposure to AMC’s new show Into The Badlands (which is pretty solid, by the way) and now for the all-time classic, Predator, starring Arnold Shwarzenegger.
I’ve had no cravings for booze either but feeling some lingering pain and ache in my left arm from the shoulder all way to my forearm. The pain is significantly less than it was when I first put it out but the locations and depths of the pain have me concerned that this may require a little more than just physiotherapy. We’ll see on Monday though. That’s my appointment to discuss the results of the MRI.
Today is Day 27.
Day 26
I was about to write, “I’m not sure if it’s stupid to keep writing posts like this,” but fuck that noise. This is my blog, my journey and my little space to track whatever I want. I’m not fishing for a virtual high five or a pat on the back; I’m making this statement as a matter of public record.
It’s Day 26 of me being sober. It’s also the fifth session of a five day workshop at Edmonton’s downtown Addiction Services office for Self-Evaluation & Support. This session is about Relapse Prevention.
So far, I haven’t felt a lot of challenges with respect to wanting or needing a drink. I’ve learned a ton about addiction and substance abuse; some of the things apply to me and some of the things, I feel, don’t apply to me. But that’s one of the things about addiction, it’s not the same for everyone. It’s pretty much like anything in this world, the experience can be vastly different because people are inherently different.
This workshop has taught me first hand, amongst many things that I will likely write about in the future, is that addiction and substance abuse affects people from every demographic of society that you can possibly imagine. I base this statement upon the fact that there are all kinds of people from all walks of life in these sessions.
While I know that I have had it pretty easy with respect to cravings and challenges to my sobriety, I know that I haven’t been living within the exact same routine that got me to the point of having a seizure at my workplace because of alcohol withdrawal. I’ve been off work for 4 weeks with a significantly reduced stress load.
I realize that, besides my stress load at work, there are significant triggers for me that are based around not having a supporting family environment. My home isn’t terrible (I know there are people who have to face violence or other people’s addictions or abuse) but the thoughts of not having a spouse who I can talk to or rely upon to just listen has caused me to well up with tears in these sessions (and right now just writing about it) and I’ve had to redirect just to not break down.
But that’s something for Future Jeff to deal with. Right now, this Jeff has to get his ass to the Churchill station to hop on the LRT for home.