Thursday, December 15, 2011

Hi, I'm Eric...

I never really understood addiction. Even as a smoker, I felt like I could quit any time, I had done it, several times. I just couldn’t understand how someone could be powerless against a chemical, how they just couldn’t say I’m not going to do that anymore. Until recently.

As a kid, I hardly drank alcohol, I really only remember a couple of times in high school and a handful more times in college. It just wasn’t a priority, and it was always just for “special occasions.” In the army, I drank more, but still pretty much kept it to weekends. After I married, it was even more rare that I would have a drink. I don’t think that it was a conscious thing, it just wasn’t something that I did.

After Y left the kids and I, I still didn’t drink much. I was just too busy. When Z and I started dating, and later married, drinking became more common, socially and at home, but it still seemed under control. We’d go out for a few beers on payday, and on the weekends we’d share a six pack.

When she left, I didn’t even touch a drink for a month, I just didn’t want to get drunk and all that that might bring. It was probably almost a year before I really started drinking a lot, that summer was…stupid. I spent lots of nights sleeping at the cafĂ© because I was too drunk to drive home. Sometimes, I drove anyway.

Now, I’ve quit a dozen times. The longest time was six weeks, the shortest a couple of days. The thing is, I don’t even want to quit. I like beer, I like to take a shot of tequila, I like to hang out with my friends at the bar. If I could just do that, have a drink or two and then stop, that would be fine, I wouldn’t even think about quitting. The problem is that when I start, I don’t stop until late in the night. On my worse days I start before noon, grabbing a beer from the walk-in at work, and will then drink all day long, and be pretty much sober the whole time. On the way home, I’ll stop and get a six pack to drink while watching TV or a movie. When that six pack is done, I’ll wish that I had gotten a twelve pack.

It’s easier to stop completely than it is to slow down, or to stop once I’ve started.

I quit smoking again a few years ago, but I still smoke one every once in a while, sometimes they taste and feel really good, and sometimes they don’t, but I never really feel like going to buy a pack and starting up again, so I don't beat myself up over it. I sure wish I could do that with alcohol.

I never really considered myself an alcoholic, I always preferred drunkard, until Sam pointed out that only alcoholics keep track of how many days they’ve gone without a drink.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

So, Eric, what's been going on? Well...a whole bunch, and not much at all. My kids are all moved out (at least for the time being), with both of the girls attending UNM, and my son living nearby with his girlfriend. He still works at the cafe, so we see each other regularly, and I try to get up to Albuquerque to see the girls at least once a month.
So, I find myself living alone for the very first time in my life. The dirty dishes are my dirty dishes, the laundry piled up is mine, the reason there is no food in the fridge is because I ate it...and I kind of like it.
Work is still the same, a hectic summer, trying to get caught up on back taxes from the previous winter, only to be sliding behind again already. Ah, the life of the small business owner in a tourist town!
I met a woman, actually we'd known each other in high school. She messaged me out of the blue on FB one day in March, and after that we messaged, texted, or emailed back-and-forth nearly every day until July when we finally met and spent a day together. At one point during our correspondence, while we were talking about relationships, she wrote that she believed that she felt that she would KNOW when she met the right man. Apparently, I am not him.
Up until our meeting we had really connected, there was a solid feeling of friendship and the beginning of something more, I think, and I really wanted it to...be. Since then, we talked on the phone a few times, we always laughed a lot, but then we just sort of drifted.
So, still no prospects in that department, but that's alright...you get right down to it I'm a 44 year old, out of shape, twice divorced, struggling business owner, whose credit rating is in the toilet from putting his business's and his kid's needs ahead of the need to pay his bills on time. Oh, and I've got a bit of a drinking problem. Not exactly the types of things nice ladies are looking for. No one that I would be interested in being with is going to look at the above description and say, "Wow, this one's really fucked up, I can have a great time fixing him!"
Am I beating myself up? No, it's an honest assessment, and I'm okay with it, because, on the other hand, I've somehow managed to raise three very good young adults, in spite of their mother leaving when they were young and their step-mother doing the same later, and in spite of some serious miss-steps in my parenting techniques. I also think that I'm a pretty nice guy.
I'm not going to go on patting myself on the back...I just don't want to give an inaccurate sense of how I feel about myself. Could I be better? Of course. I could also be a hell of a lot worse.
I'm thinking that I'll examine a few of these sentences in a bit more depth in some future posts, and I don't think it will be too long of a wait, if you're interested, because I'd forgotten how therapeutic writing can be, how it can help one see things from a new perspective.
I hope everyone is well, I'm slowly getting caught up on your blogs.

Monday, October 31, 2011

Wow, I’ve got some catching up to do…well, with Maria and John anyway. Everyone else that I came to look forward to reading over the years has either stopped, or considerably slowed their writing, but you two continue to pump out the posts.

I’ve scrolled back and think I know where to pick everyone up again; now that we are entering one of the slowest times of the year at work, I hope to be able to get some reading done again, blogs and books. I’ve got a whole stack of books I’ve been buying and setting aside for just this time of the year.

Hopefully, I’ll also get some writing done. Lots of things have happened, though they really don’t seem that interesting in hindsight…really just more of the same that I’ve commented on over the last few years, but there are some cool things in the works for next year. I’ll try to get some thoughts on “paper” soon.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Winter's Bone



Another great one.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Get Low

This is a fantastic movie...absolutely beautiful.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Monday, February 28, 2011

Friday, February 4, 2011

Last year, before winter even started, we were hearing predictions that our area wouldn't have any real winter weather until February...wow, they nailed that one.

Went to bed Monday to a dusting of snow and crystal clear skies and woke up on Feb. 1st to eight inches of snow and colder weather than we've had here in something like 25 years. By that night I had a broken water pipe and a near brush with frost bite.

It's official: I hate winter. I really, really do. I don't ski, or snowboard, and I hate being cold. Remember that scene in Unforgiven where the fat deputy is asking the others if they'd rather be shot when it's warm or when it's cold? "Everything hurts worse when it's cold," he observes.
I'm with him.

Winter sucks.

Monday, January 31, 2011

Folks, do I have a wicked bad case of writers block, or what? I know that you're supposed to get through it by...um...writing, but I really haven't been able to. I've sat down and started posts probably ten times in the last month and haven't been able to come up with anything. I start and then maybe a paragraph in delete it all and log out.

I'm not doing that this time though, nope, I'm going to write something and post it.

The problem has mostly been that things have just pretty much sucked lately.

Business has sucked, my love life is non-existent....my life is non-existent...and I've done a lot of soul searching lately and I haven't really liked a lot of what I've come up with. I did decide that I'm probably an atheist (blame Ricky Gervais), so "soul" searching isn't really appropriate. I guess it was just taking stock.

And now I'm running out of steam. I will say a couple of things though:

1. If someone states that they really like the Green Hornet movie with Seth Rogen just know that they are not a friend and they probably mean to do you harm. Seth Rogen should be punched by David "The Hayemaker" Haye until I get tired for what he did to the Green Hornet. I walked out after 40 minutes and only stayed that long to save face and to finish my popcorn.

2. Castle is a great TV show. Watch it.

There was actually something else, but now I can't remember.

Please note that I am not drunk and thanks for tuning in. See ya in March.