No Alcohol October (NAO) 1

Hello to those readers who are still around. I’ve decided to go no alcohol for the month of October (NAO), and I might try to update here how it’s going. I don’t know if I’ll update daily, but I will try to as I have time. Along with that, I’ll also update with some things that have been going on in my life for the past couple years.

The main reason I’m doing NAO is to get control back of my drinking. I’m not in any kind of trouble, and mostly things are fine, but I can see a path to drinking more and more until I don’t even try to stop. Also, the extra calories from the drinks aren’t good, nor is the increased snacking when I’ve got a good drunk going. Plus, on those increasingly rarer occasions where I haven’t had anything to drink the night before, I do wake up more refreshed and clearer of head, so I want to see how going more long term will feel.

This isn’t the first NAMonth I’ve done, but the last time I tried it a year or so ago, I bailed after about 10 days. Since then the wife and I will agree to not drink during the week, save it for the weekend, and usually by Wednesday (if not earlier) we’re back to drinking. The wife originally said she wasn’t going to join me, but would cut back during the week. Now she says she will do it with me, and I think that will make it easier.

So yesterday was the first day without drinking, and except for a mild bout of anxiety earlier in the evening, we made it through okay. I’ve felt that anxiety before on nights when there’s plenty of time to drink but for whatever reason I’ve decided not to, and it kind of bothers me. I took a longish walk after dinner, worked up a good sweat, so I felt pretty good about that. I need to get more exercise in, regardless of my level of drinking.

Today started fine; I woke up feeling clear headed and didn’t feel like I was dragging all day. Work was kind of stressful and frustrating (I’m with the same company as before, but I have a different job now) and there’s a small voice trying to convince me that maybe I need a drink tonight. Well, it’s only day two so I think I can resist it. Hopefully I’ll be as strong at day 10.

I want to go walking again tonight after dinner, but we’ll see. The wife had a last-minute thing to take care of, and we don’t know how long it will take. I’d go walking now, but I’d feel compelled to cut it short in case she got home sooner. Well, we’ll see how that goes either way. At least with her being gone right now I have time to write this update.

Anyway, yea, I started a new job in March/April last year. I was the office administrator, and that job was fine, but I felt more and more that I wasn’t really involved, if that makes sense. My job was important, but I didn’t have a direct hand in what my company does. So when a job in the manufacturing department came up, I asked for a chance to see if I can do it. Fortunately my boss at the time was willing to let me try, despite not having any direct experience in what I’d be working on (fiber optics, in short.)

I started working with the main guy in the fiber lab in January of 2018, and though he can be a dick at times (and I think he resented that I was coming in with essentially zero experience) after a few months I did show that I could learn the work and do it well enough for an entry level position. I got the job, and it came with a substantial raise.

I enjoy the work for the most part, but there are a lot of elements of the devices I build that are still a mystery even to the engineers who develop it. They’re easy enough to build, but when they don’t pass their Factory Acceptance Test it can lead to a lengthy trouble-shooting process that gets tedious and frustrating. Today I worked on a system I’ve been trying to get out the door since before the summer, and though I’ve made substantial changes and replacements in the system, I’m still more or less where I started. The engineer who has been working with me (he’s in Houston, so that distance makes it even harder) is apparently stumped, but I’m getting daily reminders from the shipping manager that the system has been due for some time now and we have to get it ready.

Anyway, that’s enough for now. I’ll try to update again in the next day or two with the NAO progress and with other things going on.