Holy cow, I’m still alive guys. The space bar on my key board stopped working so I took a long hiatus from blogging, but I’m very much still in the game! Drinking is not even something that occurs to me to do anymore. Well almost never, anyway. I must be up front with the fact that on 2 occasions I did cheat. The first time was in November when on vacation to Arizona, where I was having lunch with friends on a sunny patio next the THE London Bridge. Did you know that it now spans the Colorado River in Lake Havasu City between Arizona and California??? Because I definitely did not. But anyway, it was such a happy occasion, that when my 2 friends introduced me to red beers (which in Arizona is beer mixed with tomato juice, CLAM juice, and spiced up with salt, pepper and Tabasco sauce and garnished with olives), I did not want to spoil such a perfect occasion and vacation with some faux highroad. I had 2 beers at lunch and 2 more at a sports bar in Phoenix later that night (which I really do wish that I had passed on the bar in Phoenix). The second occasion, I actually did not “drink” per se, but did partake in our annual Rum Hamsgiving (courtesy of an Always Sunny episode) with friends in Cincinnati. It is a great tradition and it would not be the same if I passed on the ham. 

But overall, I have stayed faithful with the program and have no problem passing on drinks when the occasions arise. And on only very few occasions, at bars or parties, has anyone cared to mention it. I don’t miss it at all, and my life is going great for the most part without it. In the last 4 months, I have been accepted to the DPT program at OSU, which is a top 10 program in the country and the best one that I can afford. I have increased my net worth substantially due to more focus and intentionality, and less impulsive drunk spending. Drinks with lunch and dinner, a weekly brewery visit, and the obligatory drunk food that accompanies such nights out on the town adds up much quicker than one might think, and that money invested in home equity or wise stock market trading with that money adds up very quickly too. I have also made imminent plans to join the military (most likely Navy Reserves) to help pay for school and build some non therapy-related marketable skills to carry forward.

If there is one small push back it is that my social life is a little less exciting than it was previously. I have not entirely replaced my nights out and parties with friends with regualr alternatives, and have mostly just spent more time working on projects and hanging out with Keino. Which is not a bad thing, except that I sometimes crave that level of connection again. I think that I will find it again in the OSU DPT program and am also putting focus on it in other circles of my life, like church and old friend circles. Relationships are the area of my life that gets neglected most often in favor of finances, career, and personal development, but I know that it is the area of my life that will bring me the most enrichment if I shift my focus to them. My next post will be New Years Eve Resolutions and the first one will be geared toward building high quality relationships and social networks.

Until the New Year guys! See ya next time.

It’s a Monday afternoon, and I’m about to go to my BJJ class and then play the first sand volleyball game of our new season. I play in a few coed leagues per year, and this will be a new 4 v 4 league at Grand Sands, which I have never played at before but am excited to get involved there. This past weekend was one that I have been looking forward to for a while. I got to run the Ragnar Michigan – a 194 mile relay with 10 other team mates, including 2 very old friends whom I haven’t seen in a while, and some of their Air Force friends. It was pretty tough, and my 3 legs added up to about 17.5 miles of mostly rolling hills with a few tough climbs added in along our course from Muskegon to Traverse City, Michigan. The course mostly hugged the Lake Michigan shoreline but the middle third featured a lot of cornfields, rain, and a mostly sleepless night. We finished in about 32 hours, and I could not be more proud of our team for powering through.

After the race, we attended an after party by the Lake and most of us stayed the night in Kalamazoo and went out to celebrate our success that night. I thought I would get some flack about choosing not to drink while we were out celebrating, but really no one seemed to notice or care. I was happy about that, and actually that seems to be a recurring theme since I quit the bottle. Nobody cares if I choose not to drink. I keep thinking back to my undergrad days when I would be considered kind of lame and a buzzkill for making that choice, and that is one of the reasons I took so long to pull the trigger on quitting. But nobody so far has cared at all, and many have even have been very supportive of my decision.

This was also the first weekend that I have set foot inside a bar since quitting, which I thought would be a huge temptation, but it wasn’t. Part of the reason was that I was famished and a little dehydrated, so all I wanted to do was chug water and eat some protein/something filling. Although I’m sure I won’t be a frequent bar fly, it’s nice to know I can go hang out at a bar with friends without feeling tempted to drink if that’s what I choose to do. I still feel like my sobriety is a pretty fragile thing, and don’t want to break the cycle even once because I very well could revert back to being a regular drinker again, which would be a huge step backward. I like my new life. Whenever I do feel tempted, I think back to a girl I met several months ago at a social networking event. Pretty much everyone else was tipping back a few beers and trying to fit in. This girl (her name was Casey) was very poised and sociable, and obviously very in shape. I was later told by a mutual friend that she does not drink at all, which struck me most because of all of the people there, she was the most comfortable in her own skin. She is one of the reasons I don’t drink today, because the fact that she did not change herself to try to fit in made everyone like her more.

Alrighty, it’s off to BJJ for me. Till next time.

Zachary

It’s a Tuesday morning and the second day of Fall. I took the day off work to get some things done. Right now I’m posted up on a comfy chair at beautiful Summit Park in Blue Ash taking care of business.

I went public with my decision to quit drinking via a Facebook post Sunday night. I was expecting to be called lame, or boring, or too serious, or a host of other things by some of those whom I have been drinking buddies with for a long time. I had mentally prepared for that. That did not happen. In fact, everyone was overwhelmingly positive and supportive, and I feel as if I can now go on living happily without alcohol and not feel like I’m sacrificing anything at all. I thought it would definitely present a hit to my social life, but I haven’t seen or felt that, and it doesn’t look like I really will.

I have been debating giving up alcohol since 2013 – 6 years ago! And the reason I kept telling myself not to quit was because I would have friends drift away if I cut out that part of my life. I built up this huge obstacle in my head, and in reality I would have been fine the whole time, and probably would have built other relationships had I quit then vs now. I’m sure I’ve turned off potential new friends several times by being a heavy drinker, and it wasn’t infrequent that I would go to a social event with the goal of getting hammered rather than the goal of connecting with cool people. That won’t be the case anymore.

I won’t say that I’m never tempted to drink anymore. I was walking down the street a few days ago and started craving a Colt 45. Like, what the fuck?

I think that I will keep this lifestyle for a long time though, because I have a higher opinion of myself than I did before. That’s not to say I ever had a low opinion of myself, but I am proud of myself for making the decision to better myself and definitely think I became a higher value person because of everything that I am working on and doing in my extra time and that I plan to continue doing. I feel like a winner all the time, while before I only felt like a winner some of the time.

It’s hard to escape the adage that you should do what makes you happy, or that the goal of life is to pursue happiness. I’ve never really liked that idea, for a lot of reasons. Don’t get me wrong – I like being happy and it’s definitely preferable to being miserable, but I think that the idea that you can be happy all the time is unrealistic, and therefore kind of a pipe dream. Happiness is something that ebbs and flows, and isn’t a measurable thing to shoot for. I also think that both positive and negative emotions are equally important, so long as they are the right emotions. Hatred is obviously not an emotion to strive for, but it would be unhealthy to never be angry or disappointed, because there are great reasons to get angry/disappointed sometimes. So for happiness to be the ultimate goal of your life is just kind of stupid.

Instead, I think it’s better to aim for a sense of Purpose, or Fulfillment, or Connectedness, or Meaning, even if the things that will eventually cause you to feel those things don’t make you happy in the long run. The more I think about it, the more I think this was the biggest underlying reason for me quitting drinking. It might have made me happy for like, an hour or two. Maybe. But over the course of months and years I see all of that time as wasted and think about all of the things that I would rather have spent that time on. I think some people see me as a bit of a workaholic, since I work a lot even in my free time. This is Sunday evening and I have worked on various things for about 7 hours in total today, and am not quite done. But it makes me feel good about myself, and I love to train and get good at things and develop skills. I would rather train BJJ or take Keino for a run than go to a party. And that might make me an outsider, but I’m not worried about what others think of me, because most of those people are broke, or out of shape, or something else that I don’t want to be anyway. Self-discipline makes you free.

Okay, just wanted to get that down while the thought was in my head. Back to work!

Zachary

This week I gained a new reason for not drinking – a group of friends and I were accepted to run the Big Sur Marathon in April 2020! Race day is only 30 weeks away, and the last respectable marathon I ran was in 2013. I have run a few since that time, but it has been at least 5 years since I did any focused training for any particular race season. I’m hoping to end that streak now. The pressure is ON since a small handful of friends just crossed the line at the Erie Marathon in sub-3 hours and qualified for Boston together, and some of these guys I will be racing with in Big Sur.

Since it has been a few years since my prime training days, I reached out to some friends who are still pretty successful in the competitive running community for some H-E-L-P up in here. I made a really basic base training plan that I will follow for the next 12 weeks, and then starts the 18-week grind leading up to race day. I have yet to hammer out the details of my 18-week training plan, but I was advised to check out the book “Advanced Marathoning” and also have notes from some of my favorite training seasons completed by myself, friends, and competitors from previous years. So I think that on race day I’ll basically be a killer.

Historically my training and winter have not been friends. But I think that this year will be different since I am not at all burnt out from running like I have been in some years past. I plan to join the Beyond Exercise training group that a few friends of mine are involved in for motivation, accountability, and friendly competition. I may also sign up for the Flying Pig half, which is a week later, but have yet to commit to this. I started base training yesterday, and went out for an easy 4 miles. Tonight I’ll do another 3 before bed. I need to remember that base building is not all just slow junk miles though. This weekend I’ll throw in some short intervals and hammer to another 8-10.

This week I also told my first non-family friends about my decision to stop drinking, and it was not too big a deal to them. That was exactly the reaction I was hoping for. I have a few party situations coming up that are unavoidable, which will be pretty tough for me, but I’m going to stand my ground.

I have to admit, I came so close this week to caving this week and going to a free wine tasting yesterday. I don’t know why I found it so tempting. I really don’t even care for wine, but it was a part of a Loveland Young Professionals social event, which I have attended before to make good connections and just out of curiosity. I met some pretty cool people at the first one I attended a few months ago, and going to a wine tasting just seems like a cool “classy adult” thing to do, and it was free so I justified it that I wasn’t setting myself back form meeting any of my goals. But in the end I decided not to go, because to cave in once would definitely lead me to cave in later, and I am really proud of myself for making it this far. Like, really 28 days is not very long AT ALL, but I have felt tempted several times and have persevered, and I think the ability to persevere is an important thing to cultivate in oneself. I just love to train and build my life. That’s what I love to do.

This weekend is Oktoberfest, which is huge in Cincinnati. Obviously I’m not going, and I live far enough from the city that I’m not tempted to go (about 35-40 minute drive). But all of my friends are posting their nice beers on Snapchat tonight. I’m not envious. I’m happier doing me than getting roaring drunk. Every day I see my dream. And every day I wake up all I think about is paper. Every minute and every dollar has a job. And alcohol represents a big waste of both. I don’t need it anymore.

Thanks for reading.

Zachary

Hey all. It’s a Sunday morning and it has been beautiful outside all week. I took advantage and got some things done, but not as much as I wanted to and actually ended up wasting a good bit of time this week getting sidetracked. One of my first posts was called “Being on my Purpose” and in my opinion, it is the most important post I have done so far because the biggest thing that drinking took away from me is the resources (time and money) that it diverted from the things that actually matter to me and that I want to accomplish and become. I don’t like wasting time. AT ALL. I can come across as impatient at times, but I actually am very patient about things that SHOULD take time or that are important to do the right way as long as we are working towards them. But I am VERY impatient when nothing is getting done when it should be. Maybe it’s a character flaw and I should chill out sometimes. But that’s not me.

In about an hour I’m going to church. Not for the reasons that people usually go to church. I don’t consider myself a Christian, and I don’t have kids. A lot of families go to church because they don’t want their kids to be assholes and so that they can meet “the right kind of friends”. Which, fair enough. I go maybe once a month, for other reasons. The first is that I don’t meet new people THAT often since I am usually either at work, at the BJJ gym, or at the fire station surrounded by the same people. I meet people in passing on the bike trail and around town when I’m walking Keino. But for the most part I see the same people over and over. So I like the variety of walking into a building where I know nobody’s name. I am not shy, but I also am not that great at starting conversations with total strangers. So sometimes I just workshop and chat up whoever happens to be in the area or sit next to me and practice my social skills with strangers. Maybe that’s weird. I don’t care. I also go because I usually do take away some new perspective from the preacher dude. I usually go to the same church, called Northstar, and I don’t even know the preacher dude’s name. But he is a good guy and I enjoy his energy and his perspective whenever I go. It’s basically like listening to a podcast. The third reason I go is because I like to people watch, and the herd mentality of a church from someone who does not believe what everyone else does is really amusing to watch. Sometimes it makes me feel like an outsider and I end up just walking out before it even starts. But sometimes I decide to stay and listen. At worst, it is an hour where I can chill out and not be thinking about work and stuff.

Anyways, the real reason I wanted to write today is to revisit My Purpose and check progress on that. And I am basically defining Purpose at this point as who and where I want to be at 35. From memory, I want to be completely out of debt including mortgage and student loans, be either married or with the person that I will marry, be starting a family, have completed the DPT program wherever I end up going, make $100,000/year, have a net worth of $500,000, prioritize spending time with family and friends, in great physical shape, and consistently travel and spend time working on personal projects and hobbies, like BJJ. By focusing on my life at 35 rather than my life right now, I get a lot more satisfaction from putting in the work and time it takes to get there. It is easier to sacrifice fun and nights out, so that I am in a better position tomorrow. I always say that I am building my future, or building my life, because it makes me appreciate all of the foundational work and the process it takes to make my vision happen, even though the frame work might not resemble the finished product yet. That being said, it is very important to make sure I am using those extra time and money resources to build my future rather than wasting that time.

I am only 3 weeks into this thing, and I think that I have done a lot of things well. My PTCAS application is submitted, which was a huge undertaking, and now all I have to do is wait a few days before I can submit all of my individual grad school applications, which is way faster and easier, and I have that high burden lifted off of me now. I have also spent a good deal more time at the fire station and volunteering at community events. And I have cleaned up the house and yard pretty well, which is an area that I sometimes let fall through the cracks. So those are the three areas where I have done well.

I have not really increased the amount of time I have spent practicing jiu jitsu, so that is something that I am going to prioritize this week and going forward. Not just attending more classes, but practicing my foundational moves, base fitness and strength, and reviewing lessons at home instead of wasting time. I also don’t work out consistently enough to see the results that I would like. I am definitely stronger and more in shape than the average person, but I have always considered average to be a terrible benchmark to compare oneself to because the average person is not doing very well, whether you are considering financially, physically, sexually, with their relationships, or even with mental health. Average sucks. Aim higher. When considering physical fitness, I want to maintain a level at which I can do anything I want to at any time without having to consider if I’m able to do it. If I want to climb a big ass mountain, I can do it without a problem. Bike all day? No problem. Run across town? Easy. Push that car out of the ditch? I’m your man. Need an extra for your volleyball team? I’m there. It takes a fairly high level of strength and fitness to have the confidence to be that way, but not unattainable by any means. I have a little work to do before I’m there, particularly in the running department.

I also wanted to spend the extra time spent not drinking to improve my relationships, and I haven’t done that yet. It’s not that I’ve been a weird hermit or anything. I’ve hung out with some good friends a few times. But I haven’t socialized quite as much as a should have. Part of the reason is that I was in a financial bind and had to cut back on spending a lot, and so spent a couple of weekends in. But in reality I need to make more of an effort to build and strengthen relationships. I can get into a “lone wolf” mindset when I am working on something, and it is important for me to remember to prioritize relationships with positive friends and family even at those times, and to build new relationships when I come across the right people. Over the next several weeks, my social calendar upticks quite a bit so I will have lots of opportunities to do better in this area.

Alright, I’m getting out of here. Thanks for reading.

Zachary

They say that 21 days make a habit. If that’s true, then building a habit happens way quicker than you would think. On day one, the span of 3 weeks seems like a long time, but the time floats by faster than you think, especially when you keep busy for those 3 weeks.

That being the case, I’m going to try to add on another good habit to my current non-alcoholic policy. For the next 21 days I will do a home workout every day before work. These workouts could be plyometrics (push up variations, pull up variations, core work, squat and lunge variations), going for a run, yoga, or BJJ specific workouts (like shrimping, get ups, and bridging exercises).

By compounding great habits, I can continue to make a big difference in the quality of my life without sacrificing my life.

Now that I’m fully committed to this lifestyle, at least for the foreseeable future (definitely until May), I need to make sure I don’t turn into a total lame since the bulk of my social life has revolved around drinking for most of my adult life. I am comfortable with shaving off some relationships that I have either outgrown or are not conducive to what I want for my future. But this means a definite switch in the way I operate in many areas of my life. Like when asking a woman on a date, one of the highest success and least threatening approaches is “let’s meet up for a drink”. That’s not to say that I don’t have other date options, but that’s a pretty easy one to open with.

So basically, I need to replace all of my “let’s meet up for a drink” dates with friends and women, with other ideas. This I think is actually a great opportunity to pursue a lot more of my own interests, because I often have felt that I don’t have time anymore for hiking, weekend trips, exploring downtown, kayaking, biking, etc and yet I have always found time and money for nights out.

I also think that I can use the extra time to pursue some personal projects and learn new things. If I am accepted to the UC DPT program, there is the option to do one clinical rotation in Italy, which I think would be super cool to do. So I downloaded the DuoLingo app and have started learning basic Italian so that it can be a cool experience I will always remember, should I choose to do it, as well as an incentive to learn another language and have an actual reason for doing so.

My main problem is that I have few friends that I don’t regularly drink with, and I have told very few people that I have even quit so they are still unaware, and so I think that my biggest challenges have yet to come. I think that in the next 6 weeks, I will have 3 significant challenges: my friend’s housewarming party and party bus (which I have opted to do and have fun but still not drink), my friends’ wedding in October where there will be an open bar and many of my longtime drinking buddies will be there with me, and Halloween weekend which I usually take part in but may sit out entirely this year. But I don’t want to be some weird loner so I’m going to see what my options are that weekend, and probably just make other plans.

When I make decisions, I always envision my life at 35. At 35, I will be out of debt, with my house paid off with over a quarter million dollars in retirement savings. I’ll have a beautiful wife and starting a family. I’ll be in fantastic shape and will live an active lifestyle. I’ll be a purple belt in BJJ. I’ll go on killer trips every year and not worry about money. I’ll have a great work life balance. I’ll be involved and well-liked in the community. I’ll have made positive friend choices and have a great mix of fun, exciting, positive, and successful friends and will prioritize spending quality time with friends and family. I will be generous with my time and money. And I will have set myself up so that I never have to make a decision based on money again. I am already on the right track to be this person, but I have a long way to go. And I’m excited about building this future for myself.

It’s a Sunday night, and I have all of the windows open in my house so I can hear the crickets and so that the house feels like the outside air. This weekend has felt like Fall weather and I am loving it. I had a few weak moments (okay, a full weak evening) but continued my streak. I am pretty sure I haven’t gone 16 days without drinking in several years.

Yesterday evening I volunteered at an event in downtown Loveland for about 5 hours and was working in a booth by the band’s stage. Our booth was right next to the alcohol booth, and facing the crowd and the stage, and it drove me a little bit insane. The reason I like drinking is really nothing to do with the alcohol itself or any particular way that it makes me feel. I love the scenes that are associated with it and that when people are drinking, they throw their bullshit masks to the side and let loose and have fun. I love being surrounded by beautiful women who are just there to have fun, and mingle with whoever shows up without any inhibitions. And to watch everyone getting their drink on and dancing in front of the stage and flirting with the girls had me going out of my mind. It was my weakest moment so far. In fact, it was my only REAL weak moment so far, since up till now I have been able to simply avoid tempting situations. But immersed in it for hours at a time, when the band was hot and everything, made me rethink my decision to quit the booze.

So this post is dedicated to an honest reflection of if my life is better with or without alcohol. This is not me letting myself quit, I’m really not even contemplating it. I am hoping that an honest reflection of what exactly I’m giving up, and leaving behind, and accepting instead will strengthen my resolve.

My life with alcohol is pretty good. I have been a pretty heavy drinker since shortly after I had my first beer over 9 years ago on my high school graduation night in my buddy’s garage. I have met many friends and a lot of beautiful women through drinking in the past. I’ve been to a lot of parties, bar crawls, met for drinks countless times, holiday events, and dates where drinking was our primary activity. It was easy – the ultimate thing to do when we had nothing to do. What do you want to do? Let’s meet up for drinks. I was pretty happy with my drinking life most of the time, but even as a junior in college, I began contemplating cutting back after missing early morning classes, waking up with a hangover, debating whether or not I’m good to drive home and how to get my car home if not, debating whether to meet my buddies for beers before going in to my college job (which I would never do now), or missing out on important and meaningful events to pound beers with the guys.

The past few years, a lot of the benefits I received from drinking fell by the wayside. I usually drink with the same groups of friends and rarely meet new people in a meaningful way while drinking. The exception is the occasional house party where new people are invited, and sometimes they are cool and sometimes they aren’t. I’ve been on a few good dates over the past year or two with women I met at house parties. I live alone now after buying my first house over a year ago, and so the habit of drinking a beer with dinner is not as fun as when you have people to share it with. And I really don’t need it as a social lubricant because I am comfortable with the fact that I have chemistry with some people and less chemistry with others. I want to focus more on the people I am with than on pounding beers and getting hammered. Sometimes I feel lonely even while out with drinks with people, and I think that is because I am with the wrong people and having that social lubricant is masking that fact. Also, I am already feeling the financial boost after quitting the booze. This month I am putting significantly more money toward my house payment, for example. And I am also getting a lot more done as far as keeping the house in order and working on my professional goals go. And physically I already look and feel better. You know that glassed over facer that people get when they get too drunk and that body hangover that accompanies it the next day? Two weeks without experiencing that and I feel great about my health.

I don’t think that this decision is one to never have another drink again for as long as I live. But my very obvious truth is that my drinking habits are not healthy, and that they have cost me a LOT in my relationships, my finances, my career (probably), and my health. So I would like for this hiatus to last at least a year, and maybe longer. And if I do return to drinking eventually, I hope that this long break will allow me to recalibrate my habits such that I am not drinking mindlessly just because I can, and I’m not getting wasted at parties or wedding receptions, and I don’t feel the need to bring a 6-pack when I go to hang out with my friends or go on dates. Like, once a month is more than plenty. But right now my habits are reckless and leading me down a bad road, and so I need to take this time away to find out who I am without it.

I think that the decision to quit the booze would have been more difficult if I had nothing meaningful to replace it with. Like if on Saturday nights I sat at home with an endless stream of TV dinners for the rest of my life, it would be very tempting to go back to the party scene or at very least hit the bar with some friends for some old fashioned revelry. For about 9 years, I was that guy that would always show up with 6-pack in hand and be down to drink hard. And for a while I thought that having that persona made me fun and interesting. But now I just think that it made me lame. Less successful. Less able to social interact when alcohol wasn’t present, because I wasn’t “drunk enough for this”.

I’m very happy with the new life that i am building without alcohol, and it has made it easy that every day I have several meaningful things to do. In the past 12 days, I have made the decision to apply for a promoted position at my job (which I am doing today), have made good headway on my PT school apps, have spent more time practicing BJJ and working toward my Combatives belt, volunteered more at the fire station and for community events, contacted my realtor and property management companies to explore possibilities to turn my home into an investment property, built the foundations of my financial house stronger, and enjoyed my healthier and happier lifestyle.

For several years I debated making this life change, and although I do wish that I had done so sooner, I am very happy that I have finally pulled the trigger on this decision. I was apprehensive to losing friends that I have historically drank while hanging out with. Maybe a few will drift away. Maybe not. But the happiness I feel about my new life is more than worth any small liabilities that may come along. I will say that I have yet to be really tested, like skipping an important event or choosing to remain sober during a wedding reception where everyone else is drinking. But I am good for the challenges and accept them with open arms. Because I am the boss of my own life and lions are not swayed by the opinions of sheep.