oxfordhacker

I know it's February, but it's my first post of the year so I'm going to write about my new year's resolutions (not least because one of them is to post regularly (oops)).

I've always liked the idea that being Better was an option, but it's taken me a long time to even begin to figure out techniques that might actually help me to get there. Years ago I went through a phase of making resolutions that (in retrospect) were bound to make me unhappy, either too vague or too strict for me to ever live up to. Perhaps understandably, I then went through a phase of not making them at all. Then I had an experimental period of making strict resolutions that lasted for January only, which was more manageable and helped me to figure out how to make more long-term change viable. Then, finally, last year, after all this thought and experimentation, I figured it out: I need goals that were specific, measurable, aspirational, realistic and time-specific. Yes, I had reinvented the SMART criteria. Here's hoping that the process of figuring this shit out was worthwhile, because otherwise I could have saved myself an awful lot of time just by reading a decent book about setting goals.

So, last January I set myself the ambitious task of writing morning pages every day, and succeeded. In May, I invented and adopted my Teepartial scheme, and have successfully kept that up as well. So apparently I do, in fact, have some capacity for self-directed self-improvement, though I have doubted this for most of my life. Having discovered this, I may have gone a little overboard with this year's resolutions. They are as follows:

• Continue writing morning pages
  I had hoped that it would make me better at writing public stuff (e.g. blogging) without so much agonising and procrastinating, but this doesn't seem to have been the case. Nor does it seem to have noticeably improved my general willpower. Nevertheless, it's sometimes useful and sometimes fun, and it would be a shame to break my streak now...


• Start reviewing morning pages at the end of each week
  Last year I was basically treating morning pages as a write-only exercise. That's all very well, but I wonder if rereading the entries on a weekly basis might help me to spot patterns which could be encouraged or discouraged, and to see if there are any lessons to be learned, things left undone or similar.


• Continue Teepartial
  This seems to work really well for me. I've reduced my alcohol consumption by at least a third without having much impact on my lifestyle, and I feel much happier about my drinking habits in general.


• Adopt 'Playtime'
  This is basically to apply the principles of Teepartial to computer games, including phone games. I would often find myself spending an evening listlessly playing computer games that I didn't really enjoy much because I couldn't think of anything better to do, then feeling like I'd wasted my time. It took me a while to realise that this was very similar to my attitude towards drinking, so perhaps the same approach will work.


• Read (and log) one book per week
  I love reading, but I don't always remember that fact. I hope that this will combine nicely with cutting down on computer games and nudge me towards tackling my 'to read' pile.


• Watch (and log) one film per month
  I also love films, but watch very few these days. Partially it's because tinyjo isn't a big fan of film, so we rarely go out to watch them together, and she watches a lot of TV when we're at home. However, I do have some lovely friends who are film fans, so I hope this will encourage me to join them in their cinema visits more often. Also, I know that tinyjo would be perfectly happy to cede the TV to me for an evening if I asked, so perhaps this will encourage me to do so.


• Attend (and log) one gig per month
  I like live music and Oxford's got loads of decent venues and bands, but sometimes I find it hard to track down promising-looking gigs and then summon up the will to head out into the cold and dark to attend them. Still, I don't feel like I need much of a push, so again this is a resolution that I'm hoping will serve as a reminder and encouragement to do stuff that I want to do anyway.


• Blog once a week
  Well, this was always the most ambitious and optimistic of my resolutions, but I'm a bit disappointed by how immediately I fell far behind my schedule. I know that I can write this much, as my successful NaBloPoMo attempts have more than demonstrated. I was hoping that a less punishing but still regular schedule might do the trick, but I never really managed to start the habit.

That's actually quite a lot now I come to write it all down, and I also have a couple of semi-resolutions which I'm trying out to see if they work but that are too vague or odd for me to want to commit to them here. Still, now that I'm already a month and a half in, I can say that they all seem to be going well except the blogging, and at least I've finally made a start towards that now. Let's see how SMART this turns out to be...

My final resolution is not, as some people insinuated, a 'January detox'. Yes, I have decided not to drink any alcohol this month, but I prefer to think of this as Straight Edge Month, thank you.

My reasons are, to be frank, vague. I've always had a slightly uncertain relationship with alcohol (in fact, you could say my attitude towards drinks is mixed^*). It's fun to get drunk sometimes, but at other times it's just depressing, and I find it hard to tell in advance which it's going to be. It's a mood-enhancer, I guess, but it doesn't consistently enhance the right mood.

Also, when I drink it's normally at a pub or party with my mates, and the purpose of the gathering is chatting (at least, as far as I'm concerned). What I'm hoping for is to hit that sweet spot where a few drinks have been drunk, the conversation's flowing, and fancy flies free. The conversation takes strange turns; schemes are hatched; jokes recounted, re-purposed or created; and we collaborate in producing a ephemeral structure, a house of cards of speculation and invention which pleases and surprises us all.

I'm not sure whether this blessed state is actually induced or assisted by alcohol, or just frequently coincident. The problem is that it requires a perfect conjunction of mood, circumstance and company that's rare enough that it's hard to draw firm conclusions. And for every time it helps, there's a time when it hinders, making me tired and withdrawn, or leaving me feeling (rightly or wrongly) that my conversational skills have been impaired. Perhaps bizarrely, if I'm going to say something really ill-considered or incoherent, I'd rather that it was because I'm intrinsically insensitive or rambling than because my judgement was clouded by alcohol.

The deciding issue is simply my biology: when I get drunk, my memory is the first of my faculties to fail. Quite apart from the slightly creepy idea that I then wander around like a philosophical zombie, it sucks to only be able to remember the start of the party or the support acts at a gig, even if other attendees can attest that I seemed to be enjoying myself.

So, I've jacked in the booze, for January and perhaps beyond. I'm in good company:
Richard Herring, comedy genius, does this on a regular basis; and white_hart & topicaltim are the ones that gave me the idea⁺. Part of white_hart's reason really resonated with me: 'I'm starting to wonder whether I even enjoy drinking that much now... in the right company I can have just as much fun sober as drunk; in the wrong company alcohol doesn't really make things any easier.'

The practical effect has been fairly minor. I've attended a few gatherings and not had less fun than I reckon a hypothetical drinking 'control' oxfordslacker would have had. I've been tempted a couple of times (I often feel like a beer after a few hours lugging books at Oxfam) but haven't caved in yet.

I don't feel any particular peer-group pressure (apart from the good-natured mockery I mentioned in my introduction), because my peer-group has always ranged from tee-totallers to fairly hard-core drinkers. I think I'd feel more self-conscious in front of 'new' people, but I'm not quite sure why. Perhaps I don't like the assumptions that I assume that they would make about me based on this. I'm sure I'd cope somehow.

I've lost a couple of pounds, which was not really part of my aim. It is quite reassuring though, as I've always told myself I'll give up booze if I start getting fat, and it's nice to know that that might actually work.

Ideally, after this experiment is over, I'd go back to drinking in moderation. As I say, I like the relaxation that a pint or two can lend. I do enjoy the taste of many alcoholic drinks as well, though (un?)luckily I'm not much of a gourmand, so I feel don't feel this loss as highly as another might.

However, I know from past experience that moderation is difficult, much harder (for me at least) than giving up altogether. I suppose imposing inhibitions on one's consumption of a inhibition-lowering substance is bound to be a tricky endeavor. This is especially true when the reasoning behind the inhibition is pretty flimsy. Perhaps the perspective that I have developed from performing and writing about this little experiment will help in future. We shall see...


* Be grateful that I scrapped the draft which had a pun like this after every sentence for the whole paragraph... It was nigh unreadable for several different reasons.

+ Though at the time of posting, I believe that both have revised their resolution to 'drinking only in moderation'.

Well, the votes are in, and the fate of my facial fuzz is fixed. To my surprise the actual voting was almost 2:1 in favour of my keeping it. However, after applying sophisticated data-processing techniques to adjust for other significant factors (tinyjo voted against, keeping a neatly trimmed beard seems more effort than just shaving, more than one comment drawing comparisons with Shaggy), I came to the inescapable conclusion that it had to go.

( Photographic evidence )

I'll miss it, a little, but I feel that I have proved my manliness (once again) and - who knows - maybe someday it will return; perhaps if being a beatnik comes back into fashion, or when my mid-life crisis kicks in...