My sleep pattern is still not quite right and so I feel like the days are getting away from me a bit at the moment. Don’t know why I’m so tired!
I have managed to get a good bit of writing done this afternoon though. Now enjoying an evening with my ukulele and a few good books.
Hoping for an earlier start tomorrow!
Today’s earworm playlist:
Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth – See You Again
Duran Duran – Shadows On Your Side
Spice Girls – If U Can’t Dance
I slept in really badly this morning. Like, lunchtime badly. I’m going to put it down to needing to catch up on sleep now that I seem to have recovered from my cold.
As such, I didn’t have time to get much done today, but I did manage a bit of writing before heading out to ukulele class. I’m a bit obsessed with ukulele at the moment so I’m really enjoying the course – it’s been a long time since I was able to stick with an instrument beyond a quick bit of dabbling.
Hoping to get a bit more done tomorrow.
Today’s earworm playlist:
Elvis Presley – Hound Dog
Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber – I Don’t Care
Toni Braxton – Unbreak My Heart
Duran Duran – I Take The Dice
The Midnight – Gloria
Middle Of The Road – Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep
John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John – You’re The One That I Want
My cold has got worse. Urgh.
I just about made it to Slimming World this morning (not without incident), and have managed to lose three pounds this last week, which is not bad considering I was away at the weekend. Geth has gone off on a business trip, so I should have a fairly quiet time of it for the next wee while and hopefully lose the last bit that will get me back into target range. I’ve been trying for months now!
I did also manage to do some work for a client, but other than that I’ve just spent today napping (complete with fever dreams – fun!) on the sofa. I also finished watching the Good Omens TV adaptation, which has been absolutely brilliant and everything I wanted after reading the book. I really, really recommend it if you’ve not seen it already, and will do a more in-depth review in the next few days.
I’ve got two days left to get complete and total rest in the hope that I will be able to do the Blaydon Race on Sunday without collapsing at the side of the road. Here’s hoping.
Today’s earworm playlist:
The Midnight and Nikki Flores – Jason
Gunship – When You Grow Up Your Heart Dies
Calvin Harris and Rag ‘N’ Bone Man – Giant
Duran Duran – I Don’t Want Your Love
Duran Duran – Faster Than Light
Buddy Holly – Raining In My Heart
I slept in by about three hours this morning. I clearly needed a sleep catch-up! As such, I postponed my planned run and spent today getting on with admin, cleaning the house, listening to synthwave, and making lists of ’80s films I’ve not seen due to Geth being unimpressed with my lack of film knowledge.
Back to work tomorrow.
Today’s earworm playlist:
Meduza – Piece Of Your Heart
Duran Duran – Planet Earth
T’Pau – China In Your Hand
The Midnight – Gloria
Two months sober today. This is easily the longest period of time I’ve spent without a drop of alcohol since…well, probably since I was a small child. It’s been a strange month since my last sobriety update.
Early sobriety is a bit of a confusing rollercoaster, and I’ve found that if I don’t keep myself busy, I spend a lot of time reflecting and just turning things over in my brain. I also spend a lot of time thinking about drink, which is why I’ve been trying so hard to keep my brain occupied by getting on with work. Unfortunately, spending every waking hour working has been playing havoc with my stress levels, and so this week I’ve had to dial it back so I can try and relax in the evenings. I’ve not been very successful so far, but it has meant my brain’s not still racing when I go to bed, which is probably a good thing.
Sleep-wise, I’m not getting the bizarre vivid dreams every single night anymore, but they are still showing up occasionally. On the whole, though, I’m sleeping better than I ever have in my life. I go to bed at half past ten, read for half an hour or so, drop off as soon as my head hits the pillow, and tend to wake up naturally about ten minutes before my alarm goes off at seven. I only ever feel tired in a kind of satisfying way, after going for a long run.
I’ve reviewed a few more booze alternatives over the last month:
I’m still finding them a good alternative for that Friday ‘celebratory’ feeling, but the novelty of trying different things is starting to wear off a bit. I’ve found the second month to be tougher than the first in terms of cravings for alcohol, strangely.
On the whole, I’m finding it a bit difficult with everything churning over in my brain all the time, which is also making the process feel kind of insular and lonely. As such, I’m currently finding various strategies for feeling a bit less like I’m on my own with this thing – I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts on the subject, I’ve put a few recommended books on my Amazon wishlist, and I’m tentatively exploring online and offline community options. All of this is going to be a real focus over the next month, along with my mental health in general.
I want to say a huge ‘thanks’ to everyone who has got in touch over the last couple of months with messages of support, helpful suggestions, and links to resources. I appreciate it more than I can express.
Time, as ever, is flying, and in some ways it’s difficult to believe it’s been a month since I got sober. In other ways, it’s felt like a very long month indeed.
Mental health wise I’ve been keeping myself very busy during the day so that I don’t dwell on things too much, and I’ve got lots of things to do in the evening as well that help me to avoid thinking about missing drinking. I’m definitely not having the extreme mood swings that I always had when I was still drinking – things feel a lot more sedate in that respect – but I’m still experiencing generally low mood and depression most days, despite being on my full dose of antidepressants at the moment. The obvious next step is going back to therapy (it’s been tried in the past with mixed results), which I’ve been meaning to do for a couple of years. I’m very nervous about it, which is why I keep putting it off.
Sleep has been the biggest change. I’ve got into a new routine where I’m up early every morning so that I can work a roughly nine-to-five day, and this extends to weekends because my marathon training plan includes runs on both Saturdays and Sundays. I never used to be able to get up for anything unless I had an appointment or work deadline that I absolutely couldn’t miss, but I’m finding that, with my improved sober sleep, once my alarm’s gone I’m able to wake up quite briskly. This new pattern has also meant that I’m falling asleep straight away at nighttime, whereas I used to toss and turn for hours if I hadn’t had a drink and pass out into unrestful drunk sleep if I had.
While it’s nice to be sleeping a lot more efficiently, the dreams that go along with it are mental, and not in a good way just yet. I’m having a lot of vivid nightmares that wake me up in the middle of the night. The strange thing is that I go straight back to sleep. It used to be that when I got woken up by dreams, I wasn’t able to sleep again for several hours.
As for the day-to-day experience of not drinking, it’s mostly been evenings in the house where I’ve had to find alternatives. I’ve tried quite a few, some of which I’ve reviewed already:
Ginger beer, I think, will be my new go-to in the long term. It’s tasty, sweet, and spicy, and it feels special and celebratory without reminding me too much of alcohol (I’ve been finding that some non-alcoholic drinks are not a good idea for me as they set off the mental compulsions and behaviours I always had around actual booze).
I’ve not socialised much in the last month, as January is always quiet once Christmas is over. I went out to a restaurant with Geth, and the large array of non-alcoholic options on the menu was exciting enough that I didn’t feel as though I was missing out (so long as I kept my eyes off other people’s tables!). I also spent a weekend in Lancashire for a family gathering, where there were plenty of non-alcoholic alternatives (and several people doing Dry January), and although it was strange to sit in the bar of the inn where we were staying without having a drink, there were plenty more dry options to try, including more ginger beers.
The Six Nations also started this last weekend. I was a bit worried about it, because the Six Nations used to be synonymous with weekend benders (it’s a lot easier to deal with Scotland getting the wooden spoon YET AGAIN if you’re ten pints down). However, as Geth was just watching the games in the house (we’ve never really developed a rugby drinking cohort in Newcastle), I found it was manageable to pay semi-attention and keep myself busy on my laptop without reminiscing too much about the sweet, sweet crate of cider I always used to get through on rugby days.
The next month will include a few firsts – first gig since going sober (but not my first sober gig, ’cause I did actually go without drinking at the Culture Club gig in November due to having to run a half marathon the next day!), first sober weekend with parents in Newcastle (I hope their hotel bar, where we always spend a lot of time, has ginger beer), first sober visit to the in-laws, and maybe, possibly – if I’m brave enough – first sober club night. We’ll see.
I’ll do another sobriety update in a month’s time!
I’m one week into an extremely busy work period at the moment, with one major project plus multiple smaller ones meaning I’m working twelve-hour days, seven days a week. I have these every so often – it’s just the nature of freelancing – and thankfully it’s never more than a few weeks at a time. Still, a period like this requires some fairly big coping strategies, and these are the ones I’ve developed:
The first thing I always do with a major project is sit down and plot out a schedule for the work up to the deadline, so that I know exactly what will get done when – if I don’t have an idea of this, I find it very stressful. Sometimes this means that if things take longer than expected, I have to work a bit longer on that particular day, but having plotted everything out means that this is kept to a minimum.
By ‘non-negotiable’, I mean things that I can’t back out of. For this particular project, the busy period happens to coincide with my ongoing mission on this blog to review one Now! compilation a day leading up to 20th July; each review takes me a couple of hours, due to the length of the compilations, so that’s time that I absolutely have to spend doing non-work stuff. During my last busy work period, which was in October to November, I had NaNoWriMo going on during the latter part, so I had a commitment every day to spend a couple of hours writing fiction. Writing is nice and relaxing for me, but a less ‘thinky’ non-negotiable thing might be meeting up with friends, such as for the birthday afternoon tea I’m going to in a couple of weeks’ time, or some ‘me time’, such as the vintage fair I’m going to on Sunday (my first vintage fair trip since the house move! I can’t wait!), or a scheduled class that I pay for every week, such as Slimming World or my Pilates class. I’m also having to make running a non-negotiable during this particular busy work period, otherwise I’ll struggle with the Sunderland 10k in a few weeks’ time!
When I’m working twelve-hour work days, other than sleeping, eating and keeping myself clean and presentable, I only have time for work and the scheduled non-negotiables I described above. Everything else gets shunted to ‘afterwards’. This generally includes cleaning the house, catching up with TV and the music charts, and, for this particular period, the ongoing project of sorting out the new house. It just means I will be doing all that stuff with a renewed appreciation when the work period is over!
During a busy work period, looking after myself often takes a back seat. It’s simply not possible to get as much sleep as I usually would, as I have to be up at the crack of dawn every day to start work, but I make sure I’m at least getting six hours a night. Similarly, I need to schedule my food preparation time, otherwise I’ll end up just grabbing something unhealthy and feeling worse for it.
These periods are always a bit of a slog, but they are manageable. Obviously it would be nice if they’d balance out a bit better with the weeks where I don’t have any work at all, but the benefits of being a freelancer are absolutely worth it for me!