Sometimes A Man Just Has To Drink Alone

Alright, let's drop the life drama for a bit and talk about other things. When I decided to bring back this blog a couple of weeks ago, I explained this as the reason for starting A Drink Alone:

"I was in a transitional period in my life. Just home from university and just starting a new job, I wasn't really in a happy place in my life."

So here we are three-and-a-half years after the first post and I don’t think that much has changed.

There are less people at home than when I came back. I’m at the same job. Sure, I’m a couple of promotions ahead of where I was in 2011 but I’m doing the exact same work three years later with half as many people working with me and some pseudo-supervisory responsibilities piled on top of the same old.

I've never understood how someone could do the same thing day-in and day-out and be happy. Though I may not sound happy with the work part of my life, I have the advantage of doing something different every day. It might not always be exciting or glamorous but there’s variety.

Apart from that little bit of variety for a large portion of my day, there’s not much in my life that feels different than when we first met three years ago. A couple of new friends (or maybe they’re acquaintances or text buddies) and a more colourful wardrobe but that’s about it for changes.

For the most part, I don’t like same old, same old. Same old, same old get boring quickly. I once got bounced out of a job interview because the panel (there were like six of them and the lead questioner was in a miserable mood that day so I had no one to play off of in our interview) didn't like that the reason I wanted to teach one course over another was because the course I applied for is a multidisciplinary course instead of just a single discipline.

The challenge is trying to change it. Inertia is a powerful force. It's a term used in physics that essentially means that an object travels in the same speed and direction with  In life, inertia is the tendency to get stuck in a rut with nothing changing.

If this was a life advice blog, I would give you advice on how to cure the inertia in life. Many people have made lives out of being what are effectively inertia curers. Councillors, relationship therapists, those sorts of folks.

Making that first change is the hardest one. Getting past that and seeing the positive effects of change will set the next change in motion.

As for me, the only change I see coming soon is a fresh glass of bourbon.

Cheers

I'm not sure whether my life is turning into an episode of Seinfeld or Friends or some sitcom or if I'm just going insane.

After my last post about the power of ideas which was really about the strange relationship I have with a friend (which if it sounds weird to you is probably because it's the weirdest relationship I've had with a woman that I haven't dated), I grabbed some takeout Chinese food. The fortune cookie is the focus of today's post.

The fortune cookie read: "If you wait too long for the perfect moment, the perfect moment will pass you by."

I'm not a huge believe in fate or superstition or God or divine plans or things like that. I consider myself an atheist so I naturally don't believe in divine intervention. However, the original title for that post was "The Waiting (Too Long) Game." It would have been impossibly ironic if that post title went live and then I got this fortune cookie.

If I believed in fate, superstition and the like, I would say that fate is taunting me. Some cosmic way of saying either "you blew it, you colossal idiot," or "don't be a bellend and make a move before you never get another chance, timing be damned." If I believed in fate.

Maybe I need to back off the bourbon a little bit. When I'm thinking that fortune cookies are providing advice worth following, I've probably killed a few too many brain cells.

Cheers.

It may shock you considering the other stuff I've written on this little tumblog of alcoholism but I don't exactly have the best luck with women. Meeting women, asking them out, maintaining relationships. You think with all the failures I have, I'd be able to write the world's greatest blog about how not to pick up women. Of course, no one would want to read that because it would be a completely useless blog.

So that brings me to a friend of a friend. I met her last year and we do a bit of talking. She's cute. She's funny. She's smart. We have a few shared interests. It never really goes anywhere at the time because she has a boyfriend of a few years. That's okay. I'm not going to encroach on that. Plenty of fish in the sea and all that.

So fast forward some 14 months. We keep running into each other now and then in the interim. Again, still dating that guy. And then something changes. One of our mutual friends tells me that she really likes me and she'd be really into me if we started dating.

I had briefly considered asking her out last year but boyfriend so it was a no go. Now, a dangerous thing happened. An idea is the most powerful and most dangerous thing in the world. Anything can come of an idea.

I hadn't really considered asking her out since I first met her but that idea starts the wheels turning in my head. Of course I like her. She likes me too. Maybe if her current thing doesn't work out, you two would be great for each other.

And I warm up to the idea. We start running into each other more (partly by design and mostly by coincidence). We talk more. Start texting each other. There's some flirting back and forth so I read that as us being pretty receptive to each other. It's all going pretty great for being a backup guy. (And 50% of women have a backup guy in mind.)

Then two months ago, she breaks up with her boyfriend. Here comes The Barfly, right? Oh, but wait. Barfly doesn't know that she's broken up with her boyfriend. By the time I find out, she's already a few weeks into a new relationship with a guy that she's really into (where did I hear that before).

So one little idea throws my entire perspective out of whack. I thought that I had a good thing coming but I don't know whether I blew it, my friends blew it or it's some combination in between. Did I not make my intentions clear to my friends? Should I have made an obvious play while she was with her now ex? Should I have talked relationships with her more often? Should I have not read into it that she never talked about her boyfriend ever with me? (If a woman brings up her boyfriend to you, she's not interested in you in the same role. Trust me. I have experience there.)

The biggest question that's the most dangerous one is was she actually ever into me? Was that idea planted into someone's head who planted it into my head and then allowed to grow wildly all a figment of my friend's imagination?

We still talk at roughly the same frequency as we did before. I haven't seen her lately because our schedules seem to clash. The last time I thought we were supposed to be at the same place at the same, she cancelled at the last minute. Whether by design or coincidence, I don't know.

The part creating doubt is that she never told me about her breakup or new boyfriend. It's all steady as she goes to her. We never talked about relationships before or after her breakup. Maybe I got the wrong impression from the wrong impression. Maybe I wanted the wrong impression all along. Maybe I just need to have it out with her, see where we stand with me coming out on the "losing end" and go our separate ways.

I've found that the next relationships out of long-term relationships work one of two ways. It's either a quick rebound fling before moving onto the next serious relationship or a real quick descent into serious territory.

And none of this would have troubled me if it wasn't for an idea. They're fantastic and dangerous all at the same time. This idea- These ideas can hurt you though.

One idea that never hurts: More bourbon. It's the thinking that comes after it that's the problem.

Oh, and she's dating The Asshole's best friend. She doesn't even like that guy and is dating his friend. That's a bigger kick in the nuts than anything.

Cheers.

I'm pretty sure that it doesn't matter who you are, where you live, or what point in your life but there is always someone in your life that, no matter how hard you try to cut him or her out of your life, is a complete and utter, unforgivable asshole.

I tend to write these posts in chunks (I'm not always at the end of the bar, after all) so the last few I got out in one go. Oddly enough, things started to seem to be making a turn. And whether by coincidence, design or weird cosmic intervention, one of my friends who I considered "one-way" actually texted me to start a chat a couple times on the day of and in the days following that post.

Of course, it's not like I can stay in a good frame of mind for very long. I like to think that my lifestyle isn't completely self-destructive to all the positive influences in my life but it tends not to cut out the negative ones.

In this instance, it's that one asshole that inspired me to write again. He's that asshole at work. If he looked at my phone, he'd see that I'm not firing off a memo or text but actually writing about him bringing down my positive attitude while he's just right there. I'm trying hard not to smirk about that right now.

He's that guy that a complete fake that most people see through except for those who you need to see it. The guy whose jokes aren't funny and are actually kind of insulting. He's that guy that knows exactly the right buttons to push to elicit a reaction regardless of how much you know that you have to watch out for and avoid those comments.

Unfortunately, it's not like I can get away from him because of a small complement at the workplace and having mutual friends (who are romantically linked with friends of friends which also keeps him in my circle). As much as I want to get away from him, I can't. I'd have to cut out people that I like to remove the cancer in my life and I'm not sure that the cost of one asshole is worth many friends.

Now, I know you're thinking (because I'm thinking), "But, Barfly, if they're really your friends, they won't just abandon you. You'll try different things. Meet at different times. You guys will make an effort to make it work."

Part of me really wants to believe that, almost to the point of actually believing it. However, I'm a pessimist at heart and have a hard time believing things will end up for the best. Okay, what I say now and what I say later are two different things. I was okay with the circumstances of that old Just Go For It post then, and increasingly regretful for a few weeks/months and eventually okay with it. Maybe I'll get to the same point here.

You didn't come here always expecting an advice column, did you? We're all just trying to figure out life one day at a time. Sometimes I can reason my way through it while writing and come to a smart answer. Today, my heart's not in it. Today, my heart is floating at the bottom of a glass.

Cheers.