January Recap- How the f*ck is it February already?

January didn't quite go to plan. Not all bad, but enough to give me the sh*ts. Here's what happened.

Feb 06, 2023

G’day legends, I hope you’re all well!?

I was meaning to get this done late last week, but you know? Had to do some stuff and things. Life, eh? Apologies…

Like just about every other bastard around the world, I can’t believe it’s February already. I used to get really paranoid about how fast time goes and how it seems to go faster and faster as we get older.

There are some interesting theories out there. The one that makes the most sense to me is how one year is 100% of your life when you turn one. But when you turn 20, one year is only 5% of your life. As you get older, periods of time seem shorter, as they become a smaller and smaller percentage of the time you’ve been alive.

Whatever the case, two weeks of school holidays seemed to last for fucking ever. You could knock up a cubby house, and a few bike jumps in the first few days of the school holidays, then wear out your bike tyres before they were over.

These days a couple of weeks off work goes ten times quicker than a couple of weeks at work. Feels like I unpacked my esky on the last day of last year, did some shit, and now it’s fucking February!?

Anyway, I guess it's time to crack on with the Christmas break and School Holiday now a distant memory.

Sobriety

January was the worst month for my sobriety in a while. I’d come off the high of getting through my first festive season sober. Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s day… Let’s be real. The whole Christmas holidays used to be a boozefest for me. I was feeling good. I’d been going well for a couple of months now. Cravings for or thoughts of alcohol were few and far between, and I was fuckin’ happy about that.

I went to a festival in Wollongong on the long weekend, and I had some gremlins reappear. I wrote about it last week. You can read that here. Last weekend we spent some time in Sydney, where I had some more drinking-related thoughts, which I plan on expanding on later in the week.

I’m pretty confident I have identified the cause, and I’m proactively fixing that, which I’ll touch on below. I refuse to see this as a loss or regression. I passed another test that will only serve me well in the future.

Wins

I set myself the challenge of burning 1000 active calories a day over the holiday period, which finished on the ninth of Jan. Given holidays have been a sensible word for a “two-week bender” for me in the past; I was a little scared of what I would do with all that free time. So I set myself a goal to try to keep myself accountable and not return to work the size of a fucking house like I had done in the past. Pleased to say I pulled it off.

I took my son to his first-ever music festival! At five fucking months old. Lucky bastard! I was 13 when I went to my first concert. Incubus, at the national convention centre in Canberra. I’m pretty fuckin’ stoked that the first live band he ever saw was one of my all-time favourites, City and Colour!

We also took him to Sydney last weekend and stayed right in the middle of Sydney. I was concerned it could be a little overwhelming for him, but he fucking loved it. He’s so curious and eager. Just wants to look at everything all at once, all the time. He handled it brilliantly, and I was so bloody proud of him!

Lastly, I returned to work to start the new year with less anxiety about returning to work than ever before. It doesn’t take a genius to work out why. I used to spend all holidays treating my body like a dumpster, sleeping off a hangover until mid-morning each day to the delight of my partner, shuffling from the bed to the lounge where I’d stuff my face with rubbish, then spend the last couple of days of holidays riddled with anxiety and dread, terrified of going back to work.

There was none of that this year. I still enjoyed my break. I still ate too much bad food. But by sticking to a routine and some key daily habits, for the first time ever, I returned to work feeling somewhat mentally recharged, with no anxiety or dread and amazingly, at the same weight and rough level of fitness as I was when I finished work the previous year. Read about how I did that here.

Realisations

There was something inside of me telling me to title this section “Losses”, but fuck that. I’m learning that the language we use has an impact on the way we view both ourselves and the world. UFC’s Conor McGregor and his coach are famous for saying, “I don’t lose. I either win or learn”, That’s the approach I am choosing to take.

In January, I learned (again) how fucking important sleep is. I mentioned above how I had some of the worst cravings or alcohol-related thoughts that I’d had in some time. It was because I was tired.

I wrote last week about how a bad night’s sleep can send me into a spiral of continuous nights of bad sleep (read it here). I’ve always struggled to sleep. I panic about not getting enough sleep. It’s irrational, it’s fucking stupid, it’s embarrassing, but it’s real.

When I was struggling with sleep, I was making terrible decisions. The “fuck it” switch in my head was getting ultra-sensitive. The slightest disturbance would flick it so hard that sometimes it would get stuck on for longer than it should have. I was eating like shit. I wasn’t training properly, if at all. Even though I knew these things would set me back onto the path of improving my sleep. Essentially, I was boycotting some of the non-negotiable daily habits that I know work for me.

It was even noticeable on some of my key health markers. My resting HR became inconsistent, and my Heart Rate Variability and my training balance all took a dive through this period.

The first night with no medication was the 22nd of January, everything went to the dogs after that!

It’s no coincidence that it was in the middle of this period that I started to get cravings and thoughts about drugs and alcohol. To me, it’s a sign that my brain was fatigued. It got lazy. It began to crave those quick and easy coping mechanisms.

This all happened because I was trying to be a hero and reduce the amount of medication I take for my ADHD in the evening. I don’t even know why I wanted to reduce it. It’s not harmful to me. My Dr supported me in doing so but said I didn’t need to if I didn’t want to. Things were going brilliantly until this point, and I guess that lulled me into a false sense of security. I thought I didn’t need them anymore, but the truth was they were an integral part of my daily routine and recent success. Essentially I was taking something away that helped me, making things harder for myself. Why in my right mind would I want to fucking do that?

It’s a lot like when people start on anti-depressant medications and, in time, begin to think they no longer need to take them because they feel better. So they decide to stop taking them, and all of a sudden, they’re depressed again…

Stupidly, I decided to “ween” off them and not get any more. This particular medication is a compounding medication, which means I take the script to the chemist, they send it away, and they make up a special little potion just for lil ol’ meeeeeee! When I went to the chemist, they told me I had no repeats left on my script, so I lost a couple of days getting a new script from my doctor and then a week waiting for the medication to arrive.

The chemist gave me some other bullshit to take in the meantime, and it blew my head off. It took ages to kick in and made me feel like a fucking zombie the next day. I hate it so much. Luckily, I am back in possession of the good old stuff that worked so well for me, and things are improving already!

So what’s the realisation? Everything revolves around how we sleep! Everything! Don’t fuck with a working system, SAM! You Fucking Idiot! Or gentler, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

February Focus

Sleep. Somehow I’m going to have a strong focus on sleep without overthinking about sleep. Haha! Not really. I will focus on doing the little things right each day that I know are conducive to better sleep hygiene! I know I suck at stopping eating hours before I sleep.

When you eat close to ni-night time, your body is working to digest your food as you sleep, which can cause you to sleep poorly and wake up with less energy than you need. My problem is, even though I’m not as fat as I once was, I have a fat soul, and I love sweet shit after dinner, so maybe I need to have dinner earlier! Perfect!

I also need to start focusing on my running a little more, which will benefit from sleep, and my sleep will benefit from more running. Perfect. I have Batemans Bay Arthur (half-marathon) in March, where I would like to try for a PB. The Canberra Marathon in April, where I definitely want a PB, and then onto training for my first 100k in September at the Sri Chinmoy Canberra Trail 100, where the goal will be not to die and hopefully finish.

So that’s it. Sleep, run, done.

What I’m Excited About

After a fucking ridiculous yet lucrative December and January, we have closed our Airbnb downstairs for February. It’ll be an amazing opportunity for my partner to take a well-earned break from changing sheets and mopping floors while ranging a five-month-old.

And for me, a great opportunity to paint the fucker. I hate painting, I think. I’ve never done it. But it just looks like something I would fucking detest. I’m the kind of person who, if there’s a bucket of paint lying around, I’ll find a way to kick it over. Luckily for me, my very best mate in the whole world is also a very handsome and all-around great bloke! A good one too! So good, he has limited time to paint with me.

So, he’s going to set me up and try to limit the amount of damage I can do, and I’m going to have at it.

It’s part of me trying to force myself to have a go at things that scare me. Who knows, I might just enjoy it.

I’m excited to see how much of a difference it’s going to make to the space. It has wood panelling on the walls, and it’s fucking yuck. A good lick of white will make it feel much brighter, bigger and less like you’re staying in a fucking log cabin. Click here if you want to check it out. I reckon the paint will make a massive difference, but I would be keen to hear what you guys think!

I also bought a guitar from amazon for $89. I have no fucking clue how to play it. But I’m enjoying trying. I’m trying to commit to 20 minutes a day of fucking about on it and seeing what happens. Again, just trying to do something I’ve always been curious about but always told myself that it was something I couldn’t do. If others can do it, especially people on heroin like my childhood idol Kurt Cobain or arguably the greatest guitarist of all time Jimi Hendrix on LSD, maybe I can too, just without the heroin or LSD.

I’m also fucking excited about the big fella turning 6 months old and can finally start ripping into some solid food. He’s at the stage where he shoves anything he touches into his mouth. He’s growing, learning and developing so quickly at the moment, and I’m fucking pumped for this next stage and to see how much more he develops on some solid food. A little less excited about the impact this will have on his nappies!

Here are some photos of him being a big cute lump to finish off.