Ginger Howling at the Moon

It can be pretty dangerous to overthink things when you’re inebriated. If you’re like me and you tend to over-analyze things, you know that it can be both a blessing and a curse. But when alcohol comes into play you lose the ability to sensibly analyze situations due to less activity in your faculties. So you can end up making a situation that wasn’t even bad to begin with an absolute train wreck.

I try not to regret the things I do when I’m drunk. I’m smart enough to know that as long as I didn’t deliberately hurt someone, there’s no damage I could have done that I can’t apologize for and fix when I’m sober. Of course it would be optimal to be able to have a drink and not cause trouble, which I usually manage, but occasionally stupid decisions will be made. That’s just being human. When that happens the last thing I want to do is blame myself or feel regret over something. No good comes from such negative emotions. Instead I want to focus on the positive, and learn from my mistakes in hopes of not making them again.

I don’t really have a point here, I don’t think. It just helps to get the thoughts out and clear my head.

It’s been 11 days since I last smoked. This is probably my 9000th attempt to quit, and it looks like the 9000th time might be the charm. I’m not saying that this attempt won’t fail like the others did, but I made it over the largest hurdle (the first 3 days, which were absolutely brutal) and feel like I’m craving a cigarette less and less. It’s even stopped bothering me when people smoke around me, which I avoided religiously during the first week.

I have a theory on why it seems to be easier for me to quit this time. I was a smoker for six years. For the first four I went through spurs of loving and hating it. But the past two years I’ve just loathed every cigarette I pinched between my lips. There was no joy there, just pure addiction forcing me to keep at this disgusting habit. And I think that’s what it takes to be able to quit. You have to hate the habit more than you enjoy the nicotine.

I work at a bar with a smoking terrace. Our regulars and most of the staff smoke, so I am constantly tempted to join them for a cigarette. But so far I haven’t.

I don’t know why I made this blog or how active I’m going to be. My guess is, not very. I just feel like I need to vent my thoughts somewhere, and figured why not do it on the internet? It’s not like that can come back and bite me in the ass someday, right?

There’s probably not going to be any real point or logic behind my rants. I’m not doing this for enlightenment or to preach my way of thinking. I may be a tad narcissistic, but I know people better than to assume anyone will listen.

I guess I could vent about that.

It’s becoming more and more frustrating for me to be on social media. I hated the idea of Facebook (and social media as a whole) from the start, and watching it grow into this monstrously dominant force in the world has been nothing less than spine-chilling. Yes yes, it’s great to be able to connect to people all around the world, and it’s giving people a platform and a voice to try and solve world issues. Blah blah blah.

That’s exactly the problem. It’s giving *everyone* a platform and a voice. And everyone thinks that they have the solution. Which would still be fine if they were willing to listen to those who don’t necessarily agree with their point of view. But hardly anyone ever is. Everyone is so convinced that they are right, and everyone loves to fight for what they believe, insisting on shouting over each other instead of having a calm, rational conversation where all sides of the issue are examined from all perspectives in hopes of finding a solution that works for everyone.

This has probably been said a million times before, but we need to stop hating the idea of being wrong more than we like the idea of getting along.