‘It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to’ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring.
9th Jan – Days to go on 100 days dry: 94. Days until the Dartmoor Way: 127
Good Lord, I’m out of shape! Lockdown, working in the same 4 square meter space for the best part of two years, (and not taking that much care of myself before hand, if we’re being honest,) has made me heavy and breathless and generally ill at ease with my own presence. It has knocked my confidence, it has made me quiet, not willing to put my hand up in group discussions and worst of all, forced me to become a traitor to my own residual self-image.
I am heavier than I have ever been. Frightened to actually measure my own weight, let alone work out my BMI, I am without doubt past borderline obese and running headlong into scenarios where the loved ones I inevitably leave behind will say, bravely, after a couple of glasses of wine, ‘well, it wasn’t much of a shock’.
Excuses come to me like other people remembering verses of their favourite songs. “I have a lot to do at work this week”, or “Christmas is just around the corner, not much point doing anything before then”, or my particular favourite, “it’s cold outside, the fire is on and my favourite movie is about to start”.
But I wasn’t always like this and that is the thing I rage against the most. I was passionate, I was ambitious, I was active, sweet smelling and pleasant to be around. Now I am surly, fat and miserable.
Sure, I have endured circumstances that would make it easy for those at my wake to spill comforting crumbs such as, “the redundancy hit him hard”, and “two divorces would hurt anyone’s self-esteem”. The fact I cannot hide from however is that we are the navigators of our own destinies. We may not like the things that are thrown at us, bad things happen to good people, but if we are to truly make the most of the time that is given to us we should stand accountable for our conscious and reactive choices, own them and respond in the way that helps us to define ourselves. It is how we act that makes us who we are, not the circumstances in which we endure.
So this is the end of the first week of 14 without a drink. 14 weeks and 48 hours is 100 days, and I have 94 to go. 100 days without alcohol is the steel strand that runs through this part of my life. I am not addicted to alcohol. (Although there are trains of thought that say if you have to say it out loud, you may have a problem!) I am however one who enjoys patterns. Finish work, have a beer whilst cooking, bottle of wine with dinner, glass of scotch before bed. Most nights. Ah, who am I kidding, every night for at least the last 2 years. If not longer.
This week has been dry, I have not felt the pangs of withdrawal, no sudden urge to try the Limoncello bottle in the back of the cupboard from 4 Christmases ago, The other half is going dry during the week in solidarity, but likes a gin and tonic at the weekends, which I fully condone. The fridge is still stocked with left over beer from the holidays and the wine rack is half full. This week I have not thought twice about it. The reason for writing this is that if I do feel the urge further on, I want to re-read this and hopefully gain some strength of resolve from it. Future me, listen. You can do it.
All of this because in the purest form of the Stoic philosophy ‘Memento Mori’, I have been thinking about my bucket list. I wanted to do a number of things, so I have set about doing them. A global pandemic will do that to you. One of them is to complete the Dartmoor Way. A 108 mile, multi day hike that traditionally starts and ends at Ivybridge in South Devon and tracks the perimeter of Dartmoor.
There is no way under the blue sky that I would be able to do that in my current shape, so I have set about starting a new pattern. It’s tough, I hate it, but I think that’s because it is new and alien and requires a lot of effort, physical and mental. The payoff is to complete the DM108 in May of this year. 127 days from now.
As I write this I am painfully aware that this is all potential, ‘I will do this’, ‘I want to do that’, so far I have achieved little, 6 days dry, three short walks and a run. But it is a beginning, and according to Frank Herbert’s Dune, “A beginning is a very delicate time.”
