Hey, I’m Zach

Hey people! (just me so far, whoops). I am starting this blog because I have made the decision to quit the booze, at least until May 2020, but possibly forever. The reasons why I’ll get to in my next post. But suffice it to say that I have for a long time had a negative relationship with alcohol and have decided to come to terms with that and take a hard stand. I expect this decision to be very difficult for me at first, but I know that I will be much happier in the long term for it. But this blog will not be some melancholy drawl! I expect many areas of my life to continue to be exciting and fun, and for me as a person to just generally become more interesting.

I’ve always been someone who has used free writing as a way to sort through my thoughts and decisions. Sometimes (usually) it is just chicken scratch on the back of an envelope, but some of it I’ve deemed worth keeping over the years. This is my second blog I’ve started (peep my first one! click here)although the first didn’t last THAT long due to a lot of life changes at the time. Basically I’m writing this one because this decision is important to me and I want to have something to look back on in the coming months and possibly years.

For the time being, I’m not going to tell anyone I’m writing this blog, for several reasons. The first is that I think that some of the content will be controversial to my friends (we are often pretty hard drinkers) and I’m just not ready for that, yet. The second is that I need to prove to myself that I can do this before I share it with the world. For all of the times that I have told myself that I’m going to cut back on alcohol over the years, I realized that I have not strung together a complete dry month since I was 18, and that was a bitter pill to swallow. I think kicking the habit entirely will be easier than “cutting back on my drinking” because I can always find an excuse when I try to compromise like that, and it’s just really wishy-washy bullshit. Like I can think of 6 upcoming social events that I would definitely get hammered at if I make an indecisive commitment like that here.

My hope is that this blog becomes something that is at least kind of worthwhile, at least to me. If and when I’m successful for a few months, I’ll make it more public. I want this blog to be fun and empowering and I think that I’m going to do a lot of cool things in the absence of my boozey nights, but also I’m firmly taking a stance not to just post the positive aspects of this decision and the aftermath, because that would be worthless and part of the point of this is to remember how difficult it is for me, and have that to reflect on, and eventually be proud of it later. I want to be able to look back on my life and see more than just an endless string of nights sitting at the bar and waking up with a headache. Maybe other people will read this who are going through a similar thing, and maybe no one will read it but me.

A couple of things that I want to finish with is that this is definitely not a food blog, and I don’t know why the domain name indicates that is but I don’t know how to change it sooo… Also I chose the name “Iron Sharpens Iron” because it is one of my favorite mantras (comes from Proverbs, although I don’t consider myself to be Christian) and finding a like-minded social circle is imperative to me doing this thing. To date, most of my social calendar involves alcohol or at least have it present.

Thanks for reading.

Zachary