Skip to main content

Day 50 in which I go completely off the rails.



So I have this friend. I know, it’s surprising.

In fact, it might be more apt to describe him as an “accomplice”. I assume we all have one of these: the person you’d go to if you really wanted weed (and didn’t have tenants). The one you text when something hilarious occurs to you that’s waaaaaaay too inappropriate to go into your Facebook status.  The one with whom you either drop all pretense of being offend-able, or else get offended, a lot.


Every time the Smartboy and I hang out with him, there is drinking (not by the Smartboy, who maintains his skinny frame by avoiding all alcohol, and replacing it with, basically, milkshakes. Screw him.) There is, in fact, a LOT of drinking, interspersed with a lot of razzing about how the other one can’t handle all the drinking. Yes, it’s very much like being in a fraternity. Or so I would imagine.

I don’t actually spend a lot of time with this guy; he’s pretty much the poster child for millennialism (which is why I’m not worried about him reading this blog; it’s not on video or in the form a GIF, so it’s unlikely he’ll ever see it); as a result, a lot of our “plans” to hang out consist of a series of vague texts, followed by non-specific invitations and even less specific commitments, followed by one of us bailing and then blaming the other for not being clear enough. Which works well for me; I’m an introvert, so I want to be invited to things but not actually expected to show up.

Anyway, Smartboy and I have unexpectedly found ourselves graced with the presence of this friend for the last 2 days in a row. Which means I’ve more to drink in the past 48 hours than in the prior 48 DAYS. On the morning of day 2, I felt so bad that I missed my bootcamp, so not only did I consume 10 million calories worth of beer, I also did nothing to burn it off.

There’s a backstory to why it was important for SB and I to hang out with this guy at this particular time, and why it’s probably OK that I did the whole bonding-over-booze thing in this instance. But now that that particular conflict/drama is (hopefully) over, I’m left with the question of how to deal with my accomplices in the future.

Because he’s not the only one. I have several friendish people (there really needs to be a word for people who are more than acquaintances, but with whom you don’t spend enough time to really be friends) who seem to be related to me by food. I have several others with whom I mostly drink. I’m not actually sure what happens with these folks when I say, “Sure, I’ll go to the Bacon and Bourbon Festival with you, but I’m not eating any bacon. Or drinking any bourbon”. Or worse yet, “Can we go canoeing instead? I can’t control myself around the bacon and bourbon right now”.

I’m back on the rails; it’s all water and green vegetables for me for the next few days to make up for my little adventure in drinking. But I have to carefully consider what a commitment to health means to my relationships with other people, when I’ve come to relate to those other people through things that aren’t good for me.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 1, in which I say WTF.

My name is Vena. I'm a 39 year old single entrepreneur in a long-term relationship with an ADD smartboy who is 14 years, 9 months my junior. The first thing you should know about me is that you can't believe anything I say about my age. My boyfriend isn't 25, he's 36. I've been in business for myself since 1989. Do the math if you care to; all I can tell you is that I'm a lot younger at the age I am now that my mom was, and that many of the people I went to school with are, so the number literally makes no sense to me. I've never blogged about anything personal, but I'm blogging about my #100DaystoHealth because I'm worried. I'm worried that, even though I have no chronic illnesses or pains, I'll find myself on that downhill slide that so many of my older friends accept with complete equanimity ("I was so strong 10 years ago, now I can't lift a sheet of drywall"; "I'd go hiking in Vietnam, but my knees won't t...
13 comments
Read more

Day 4, in which I commit to taking my own damn advice

In one of my businesses, I spend a lot of time educating and coaching grownups to achieve some big goals around money and finance. I've been doing this for, like 20 years, which is a lot of years for a 39 year old, and so I've noticed some things about how mindset and behavior correlates to success, at least in this other business. There are some things I say so often that they've begun to sound trite even to me, but which I really, really find to be true. So much so, in fact, that I believe that if I could actually make any one person believe and act on them all, that person would quickly morph into the Captain America of my business, growing in size, strength, skill, success, and all around goodness in mere moments. Here's all of it: The difference between the 20% who make it and the 80% who don't isn't how much information they have; the same information is available to everyone in our business who seeks it out. It's inner game: are they telling t...
3 comments
Read more

Day 34, on which I see a bad moon risin.

Two things are happening that are conspiring to throw me off track in my #100DaysofHealth efforts. First, I’ve developed a bit of an injury. My left knee (which has no known problems but which does occasionally flare up like this) has been bothering me for more than a week. In the past couple of days, it’s gotten bad enough that I have a hard time walking downstairs (though up seems to be fine) and doing some of the things that are part of the bootcamp I take every other day.
2 comments
Read more