The month started great, a dry January. Which of course meant a few nightmare induced nights from not drinking. Which is crazy to me, as I usually have a beer and two shots and call it a night. All I can think is its sugar withdrawal or some such. Anyway, I love dry January since it gives me some time to feel what the absence of alcohol is like on a normal monday through friday. I definitely feel I lean into having a beer after the kids get to sleep with the excuse that I deserve it or that I need help relaxing. It's great to take a step back and just live without it.
With alcohol out of the diet, those dreams I had when I was in my early twenties feel way closer. When I was nineteen, I remember just being so depressed because I was a pack a day smoker, drank nightly, got terrible rest and figured that was going to my life. Now that ive been able to balance my habits, it feels really refreshing to look back and just see how much progress ive made.
For, January, I also kept up with a daily journaling habit. This has been great in keeping my thoughts organized and keep myself on target. Honestly it started out more as daily journal entries with some bare minimum of what happened during the day. Then over time the entries started expanding into more personal issues about daily issues. Its been wild watching those thoughts leave my mental echo chamber. I don't really go back and expand on those points, but I feel its good they are out on paper. The only real issue with the entries is that I don't feel comfortable writing very personal things, I keep thinking like someone is going to read the entries and be like GOT YA. Which is funny as a forty something.
Other highlights from this month... Going to the Denver Zoo lights was pretty awesome. I love the way they do up the zoo and I am really just a sucker for christmas lights in general. The kids definitely are going to more activities again which is great, but is stretching us a bit thin in terms of time off during the weekends. Getting back to an in person D&D session has been great (even though we most likely wont be doing 5e after this campaign). Oh, a big highlight this month was removing twitter and getting back into RSS Feeds. What a great change of pace to fulfill endless consumption of tech news. lol.
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updated: 2 February 2023.