Author: Teel

I eat too much. I drink too much. I want too much. Too much.

I am overweight. It isn’t so bad, but I don’t like it. Just to get into the range of healthy weights for my height and build I need to lose another 30 pounds. My body can do that. It’s like my body wants to lose weight, but I won’t let it. When I’m not grossly over-eating, my weight drops quickly. Except then I grossly overeat. I go in for the all-you-can-eat crab. I have 2nd breakfast, or 2nd lunch, or 2nd dinner, or sometimes all of them in addition to normal meals. Or sometimes I’ll just eat two meals’ worth of food in one sitting, or eat a meal and go right to sleep. Gluttony. Between trying to lose weight and gluttony, my weight just isn’t changing.

I got drunk on both Friday and Saturday night this weekend. This is beginning to get expensive. Friday night, at least I was drinking with a friend. Saturday I went down to the Have a Nice Day Cafe by myself. On Saturdays, a $20 cover buys $.01 drinks until midnight. I had $40 and 10 nickels when I showed up. I had three drinks before I even went out. I used a nickel a drink, and when I woke up Sunday afternoon I had $12 left. I remember running out of nickels buying drinks, but I know I bought at least two drinks for women there, so I probably didn’t have more than 8 additional drinks, but I had enough drinks that I don’t remember where the other $8 went. Or leaving the club. I remember getting home, but I don’t remember leaving the club. I went to sleep drunk enough, after having enough cheap drinks that I managed to get my 2nd hangover ever. Usually I manage to avoid that. I think I’m going to try to give up drinking now, for a while. Not just to save money, but because I’m slowly poisoning myself.

I have a whiteboard in my livingroom. When I put it up 13 months ago, I wrote a question at the top: “What do you want?” Since then I’ve slowly been adding things. The first word was “rest”. After a few weeks of focusing on that I felt I had sufficiently focused on resting, and was no longer deficient in rest, and added “write”. Balancing resting and writing is not too difficult, and did not interfere with any of my other responsibilities. Slowly more words appeared on the board: “paint”, “film”, “code”, “garden”, and in smaller text “follow a budget” and “learn japanese”. As each thing appeared on the board one by one, trying to accomplish them all became increasingly difficult. Each single word on the board implied so much depth; I find myself going back to school after four and a half years as a subtext of the word “paint”. There are some things I want that I can’t bring myself to put on the board, perhaps because I don’t want them to become too much a priority in my life; like “mate” generally, or worse, a specific name. I just added “house” to the board the other day. The weight of the board is now bearing on me, where it used to lighten my load by clarifying what I wanted from life. There are simply too many things there, and the board is just getting more crowded as I realise more things I want. Like “health”, which will probably be appearing soon.

I’m losing the balancing act, I think, or am about to. Balancing gluttony with health. Balancing drinking with health. Balancing my finances so I can pay all my bills in full and on time and maybe save some money to buy a house next year. Balancing all the things I want to acheive with each other and with my basic responsibilities and inside my financial and temporal availability. I feel tired a lot lately. I haven’t written anything outside of this website since MENoWriMo ended (except for summer school). I haven’t painted anything since January. I haven’t written a page of screenplay or even an updated treatment for any of the short films I want to make at all this year. I’ve barely kept up with mowing my yard even once a month, let alone doing any real gardening. Then again, I’ve been making sure I take naps in the afternoons. I’ve been writing more reviews and trying not to neglect writing for the website. I’ve coded some neat stuff for the site like the color-switcher for ME. I’ve gotten myself re-admitted to ASU so I can take Fine Arts classes so I can paint with a greater skill level and technical background. I’ve had at least one really interesting idea for a short film that is not unreasonably expensive to make, and am trying to iron out the details in my mind so I can write it down. I’ve been spending a few hours a week studying Klingon (I know it isn’t Japanese, but I’m more motivated to learn Klingon right now). I have, on more than one occasion recently, trimmed the trees that keep trying to make it impossible to park in my driveway. I am getting things done, but there are too many things for me to be able to do any of them with much focus.

When school starts in a month, I don’t know what life will be like. I will be working from 6AM to 3PM M-F & in class from 4:40PM to 7:30PM M-Th, and will certainly have plenty of work to do outside of class, just to keep up. I suppose if I’m working or studying all the time, I won’t be spending as much time or money on entertainment, which will be an important thing in the next 6-9 months as I try to save enough money to afford closing on a house. If I do decide to get the Bowflex,

I’ll need to set aside another hour every day for exercise (resistance training on alternate days with Yoga). They say idle hands are the devil’s, and I’m all for having definite, specific things to do with my time. I like being occupied. I like having an idea of what I’ll be doing at any particular time in the future, or at least the near future.

I think I’ll call Bowflex and ask them if they will easily let me use my MBNA Gold Option loan (the loan I got for my iMac) to buy the Bowflex Ultimate. If they make it too difficult, I may have to put off buying it for a while. I think I’ll try to devote myself in August to finishing my novel. I think I’ll figure out a way to re-arrange my whiteboard to clear up my focus.

Take a look at this article: “Ailing Man Sues Fast-Food Firms“.

Basically, in a move similar to smokers suing tobacco companies because using tobacco products caused medical problems, a new class-action suit is being created by the obese suing fast food companies because eating too much fast food made them obese & caused medical problems. Smokers won. Maybe eaters will too. Maybe the obese can be financially compensated, we can introduce new taxes on fatty foods (this is already in the works, actually) and put warning labels on all potentially dangerous fast food items. “SURGEON GENERAL

Some would say it has something to do with buried feelings about the death of my mother. Some would point out that since both of my parents are alcoholics, there was a good chance I was likely to “catc the disease” of alcoholism from them. Some would say that I’m finall relaxing my inhibitions and joining the party.

So, lately, I’ve been drinking a lot more than I used to. Last weekend at 12:15 or so I all of a sudden walked down to the local liquor imporium and bourght two six-packs of a nice (5%) alcoholic fruity spring water in all three of its flavours. I have known for years that I don’t like beer, but all these fun, light malt beverages like DNA, Hard Lemonade, Twisted Tea, Bacardi Silver, Schmiroff Ice, etc… these don’t usually taste like beer to me, so I can drink quite a lot of them without thinking “this tastes awful”. Per a suggestion of a friend, I recently discovered that while Twisted Tea is not so good on its own, it is great over ice.

So, whereas I used to drink carefully before, only once a month or so, and in moderation so I never vomited, right now I’ve been drinking non-socially lately. Like right now, I’ve had what.. (Teel walks to the next room and counts the empties in the trash…) seven bottles (5%) in the last couple of hours, sitting at home by myself, watching TV and ripping the CDs I’m about to go sell to Zia (if they take them) for store credit, since I spend so goddamned much money on CDs and DVDs there. I drank a couple drinks (before) and a shot and a couple of rum and cokes at Beer Club this Thursday. I drank last Sunday night when Zoe and Amy came over (and drank nothing). I drank last Saturday night (when I bought the DNA t Tops Liquor).

What’s going on?

What happened? Why am I doing this to myself? Why am I sitting around at home by myself and drinking, faster and faster until I can hardly walk straight enough to get the next drink? Why am I buzzed enough to post about my drinking? Normally I censor myself enough to not post when drinking. Normally I censor myself enough to not post at all about drinking. I guess this is part of the change to my posting that I was discussing with my mother before she died a month ago. Or maybe this is incorporating the changes since the death, and the changes before it into some sort of I drink too much and now I’m free enough to post about it sort of thing.

What do you think? Since my mother died, I’ve turned comments back on, so feel free to tell me what a sinner I am for drinking. Or drinking and posting. Or about typos and spelling errors I may have made because I’m typing at 40wpm while totally buzzed. Or about your own problems with yoru mother.

Now that I think about it, that sounds like fun. I can’t really fight with my mother anymore, so if you could post about your ongoing conflicts with your mother, whether about your drinking or your sexuality or her debilitating diseases and refusal to seek proper treatment, post it here, or post it in the forums/

I can’t believe I remembered how to write an HTML tag for a link, just then, as I was writing. Excellent. Time to stop ripping and go sell CDs. Type at you later.