Now it's been a couple of months - before the Christmas rush, since I've been well and truly sober, by which I mean neither drunk, hungover, or looking forward or immediately back at either of the two. It was a long Christmas, and the parties and late nights were the only way of coping with an otherwise untenable schedule.
And having noticed that it was becoming far more habit than occasion I put a slight brake on it over the weekend, drinking, yes, but in far more moderate quantities, a reasonable bedtime and absolutely no hangovers.
The weekends are too short, I'm flawed enough without adding more vices to my list, I'm sure the boy would appreciate a less-hungover father...
Some observations, then:
#1. The job I do is almost impossible without some alcohol or chemical anesthesia. I marvel that I do it, and frequently find reason to prematurely throw in the towel, I haven't the patience. 4 more months, I suck it up, breathe deep, find the patience, I oscillate, I stand outside the kitchen having a cigarette, listening to the cursing in the kitchen, the thrown pots and pans, I haven't the patience, need the patience, the owner on his tirades, customers with preposterous requests, or reasonable requests in preposterous quantities, it's all trying me to the limit.
#2. I work in the realm of great drinkers. Customers who can down a bottle, 2, 3 of Amarone over a lunch hour and still find the legs to return to work. And while I've practiced, gotten the knack of it as it were, I'm not yet able to get back to work, and there's a lot of work to be done. A bit of a shame that my lifes work begins when I finish paying the rent, and having to work around that can be a bit of a pain, but for the moment it's the way it is. So it goes.
#3. Sobriety is over rated. Greatly. Nothing feels better, true, than the day after hangover day when you awaken fresh and well rested and ready to take on the world - to address that three day or three week old list of chores and errands, but that greatness is quickly destroyed by the realization that one must change and return to work. One solution would be to make post-hangover day a national holiday, in the line of Christmas and Easter, but I don't think it's going to happen. On it's own sober is merely sober, in line with the other vices, as a day in a timeshare with the rest of the demons it becomes an altered state all to itself. Mind a few days sober and the novelty quickly evaporates, the routine of the job becomes a sort of numbing anesthesia to any of the greater joys in life.
Still, there's #4...
#4. Dreams come back, nighttime, each morning with the quickly evaporating shreds - "I'll remember that" I tell myself as the coffee percolates, by the time I've returned the dream has gone. And ideas, stray ideas or flying in formation like some winged migration, not always with a pen in hand to jot them down, but they're obvious, now, like a flock of geese in the winter, obvious, because for the past couple of months they've been absent, vanished, south for the winter, now they cut a line into the sky....
And there are the remembered plans and ambitions, waylaid, the recognition of a thousand things that must be done before going up North, only now in the heightened light of temperance they acquire an urgency that was somewhere postponed or forgotten....
***
These are only the initial observations, curious, Sobriety exercising it's rather limited appeal, G swore on with me, then waited until I'd left on Friday night to reunite with his demons, Saturday, a little annoyed that I was left out, but to see his face, recall that feeling of working misery - well, I can do without that as well. 4 months and counting.