Nine o’clock came and went unnoticed. I put a load of laundry in to dry and one in to wash and played a game of checkers with my niece. Then, off to deal with the vicissitudes of sobriety. My remaining waking hours were a study in tedium. If, as Voltaire said, “Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need,” so do vice and need save us from boredom. As I had already worked, then eliminated the vice, all that was left was a sense of mind-numbing ennui.
It was after I went to sleep that things took a turn. I suppose at some point my neurons got tired of looking for Jagermeister and tried to find some way to amuse themselves. My unfettered mind started dreaming the dreams of the damned — aliens, mutants, plane crashes, old girlfriends, saving a drowning kitten. Had I been awake, it would more rightly have been called a psychotic episode. From my experience, though, this lasts only a night or two before old patterns re-establish themselves and I’ll sleep like a babe.
How’s the cigarette thing going? Any craziness?
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Night two with no Jager. It was like opening the shutters on the window to my soul, allowing an uncomfortable amount of introspection. That’s probably why I don’t do this too often; I see too many wrong choices and too much wasted time. I did think of several things that need to be written as soon as I get my computer fixed. Drop the booze, find the muse, I guess.
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A pall has settled over the office as we realize the last UPS pickup is looming before us and we are almost certainly going to miss our deadline with the candy client. It’s time I started working on backup plans to get the stuff to the client, because I know it will come to that. And yet, as I steel myself for a late night of last minutes, I don’t really care about “communicating the functional benefits of hunger satisfaction” ... I just want to take a nap.
