Life Changes - RTOTD #756

Day 756

With age comes change. An evolution of sorts. Things that were once good become bad, and many that were once bad become good. Things that you thought were stupid become fun and so on and so forth. It was once said by someone who I don't really care to look up that if you were under 30 and not a liberal, you have no heart, while if you were over 30 and not a conservative, you have no brain. Your life changes and you change with it. Sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse. I wanted to talk about that today.

But not the "for the better" shit. Cause that's just really useless for cracking jokes. Fuck that.

No, the "for the worse" side of getting older is a lot more fun. For instance... do you know what the last few weeks have taught me? That I'm not nearly as good at punishing my body with a constant and mostly-steady stream of poison being poured into it as I used to be. Maybe the decade and a half of pouring that poison into my stomache and lungs and liver has just finally taken its toll. I've drank at least a little bit every day for almost 2 weeks, with the exception of Monday evening. And I've got more drinking to go tonight. And fuck, tomorrow is the weekend? So looks like that bottle is gonna be calling me again!

It started to resonate this morning. Yeah, sure. Saturday morning/afternoon/whatever, when I walked into LAR's birthday brunch thing and could barely keep my eyes both looking in the same direciton or quiet the construction crew working inside my skull to a dull enough roar that I could actually hear the people around me, that was bad. In fact, that was the most hung-over I've been in years. But this morning is really when it's beginning to resonate.

After waking up at about 4:30 yesterday morning in order to take the roomie to the airport, I spent a full day at work. Sadly, that 4:30 had not been preceeded by going to bed early and all of those other things you might use a bunch of big, fancy words like "mature" or "responsible" or "good idea" to describe. Fuck those things. No, I finally went to sleep at just shy of 1:30. Because 3 hours of sleep is fucking plenty.

Well, that would have been fine. I could have done the smart thing and went to bed at a reasonable time last night and getting aa full night sleep. I could have napped after work or any number of other things that you'd go back and use those same big fancy words to describe. But no. Fuck that and fuck your "reasoned, mature, and non-self-destructive" ideas of how to take care of your body and not have it hate you. It's like you don't even know me at all.

The muslims like to say that their bodies are temples. Granted, temples that they sometimes need plastic explosives to demolish, along with the 30 or 40 other temples all around them, but still... temples. Well, I think they're not as smart as me. Temples are boring. They're filled with stuffy old people and you have to whisper and all that's really in them are hard, uncomfortable long couch things, and well... they just smell funny. I, on the other hand, because I am smarter than them, treat my body like an amusement park. Because amusement parks are an awful lot better than temples. And they have motherfucking rollercoasters. Temples are quite rollercoasterless. This is a major selling point in the "temple" vs "amusement park" argument. And why I'm smarter than them for chosing rollercoasters at the amusement park to their stuffy little "temple" bullshit.

Well, as I was saying, I could certainly have done something intelligent and went to sleep at a reasonable time. I could have. But where's the fun in that shit? I had poison to pour into my body and I'll sleep when I'm fucking dead. So what did I do instead? On only 3 hours of sleep and after being awake for almost 16 hours before I even left my house last night? Did I sleep?

Nope. A friend was having a birthday celebration and let's be honest here... can you REALLY call it a party until I show up? Fuck no. I AM the motherfucking party. And so, in a fit of genius I got to the birthday celebrations around 8:30 last night and began drinking purposefully. I was diligent in my drinking. Beer after beer. Shot after shot. And 5 more hours later, I was finally venturing home.

The problem is... I was back up at 5:30 this morning. After not getting home until 1:30ish.

6 or 7 years ago? I'd call that a typical wednesday. Today... I'm very ashamed to say... that my drinking tires are starting to get a little threadbare. The wear and tear is showing. They don't grip the road in the way that they used to, leaving me skidding and screeching a little more and a little more every time I turn the car left towards "get up and go to work" or right towards "be a responsible adult with a real adult job".

Maybe I'm in need of some re-treads?

Or maybe it's not analogous to wear on a car part that can only get more and more worn down until it has to be replaced. Maybe it's the way that I saw it in highschool and college. As a sport. And I, am an athlete in the prime of his career that hasn't been doing enough practice. I've been just playing the games for a while now, and skipping the practice. The solution is not to "SLOW DOWN" as some would lead you to believe. But rather, the real solution is to "DRINK MORE OFTEN". But maybe not to in the same quantities daily. I need practice days where I only drink SOME but not as much. And then, when game day hits, I'm not going in cold.

See, I forgot that practice was needed. I had natural drinking skills. Drunk on a weeknight was nothing. Drunk and waking up in the morning? Fuck, I called that Tuesday. 3 nights of drinking in a week? Pshhhh... no fucking problem. 4 or 5 nights of drinking? Now we're getting somewhere. 5 or 6 nights a week? All of them ending with "wake up and go to work in the morning" attached? That's what I call the big leagues.

Or, maybe a doctor would call it, you know... functional alcoholism. But what the fuck does he know, right?

So yes, I think that while I'm not 24, I have all the natural drinking skill needed to remaster this form. I just need to practice to keep up my conditioning. I relied on pure skill when I was younger, and I will NOT allow myself to become the Alexander Daigle of drinking. All the skill, none of the work ethic to make the effort and keep up on conditioning.

And while I'm at it? I need to remember the one axiom I was taught in Pee Wee Hockey. "You Play Like You Practice, So Practice Like You Want To Play". So gimme a couple months to work on my conditioning and rebuild my stamina and recouperating abilities. And then... then you'll remember why I walk into a room and people start chanting "The Champ is Here! The Champ is Here!"