Day three hundred and sixty six ... Redundancy is the best therapy.

It's New Year's Day 2009.

No one can touch me. 

Not today.

Today marks a year since I have started this journal. It is by no means a stopping point; merely a mile marker. 

In fact, it was more or less like a little "ping" on the inside of an analogue alarm clock that has not been armed for duty. The hands move, as they are designed to, around and around until they hit the last chosen alarm setting. The device acknowledges the union, and then it moves on until either the time comes around in a few seconds less than twenty four hours, or the target time is manually changed.

And so, I will not make this post a grand gesture or blandishment of the events which transpired over the last year.

Or at least I'll try not to.

Instead, I'll make mention of a few things I tried to not do over the last year.

I tried never to convince anyone to follow my lead. Because I, myself, never did take kindly to the barkers in the halls of the 12 step programs. I didn't need another set of rules to follow. I just needed to know which ones I had created and was adhering to that I needed to abandon.

I didn't want to stop doing something by starting something else. I wanted to learn why I did it to begin with, and then--realizing how badly I wanted out--to stop doing it. Talk about keeping it simple.

I have tried not to be a braggart. In all these past months, weeks, days, hours, and seconds, I have done my best to not take the flashy approach and puff my chest out over the accomplishments I managed to accrue. I have merely given my take on the periodic ups and downs of a year struggling to live the way I have always dreamed of, and the way I now walk through each breath and heartbeat. 

In a day and age where we now no longer buy a product or service until we have pawed over enough reviews of it by current or previous users to deem it worthy of our time and/or money, what I have tried to do was offer a users review of the product of sobriety. I have written what I liked about it, what I didn't like, what I would change if I could, and what I did in order to deal with the resolute and unchangeable.

And the feedback I have received from many of you show me that you like what I'm doing, too. And for your support and words of encouragement, I thank you.

Keeping with things I didn't do:

I didn't mark my calendar.

In fact, I barely used one at all.

I realized--halfway through the year--that I was simply neglecting the calendar on my wall for months at a time. Sure I'd carry a little one in my bag to mark important dates on--that is something I hope I'm never able to forego. But, every once in a while, when I had to check the big one for one reason or another, I'd notice that a few months had gone by and the edges were curling down towards the middle on either side. I'd flip up however many months had been forgotten and reinsert the white thumb tack that was holding it up on the wall. And in November I just took it off the wall altogether and put it out with the recycling. 

It had become redundant.

And that is the crux of my goal: to make sobriety redundant.

I currently have two gallons of top shelf liquor in my kitchen cupboard, along with mixers. 

I have three cases of beer on my deck and I have a box of wine above the fridge (classy, I know).

And I have absolutely no desire for any of it.

It's not there for me. It was not bought for me. It will do me no good, and I understand this with every fiber of my existence.

It doesn't bother me anymore. It has no more leverage. And I have nothing to gain from intertwining its contents into mine. Moreover, in keeping my discrete distance, I derive power from where none could manifest at a closer proximity.

To think that I--a human being with a brain and a soul--could have control over a volume of liquid in a bottle.

Madness.

But like I said, today is more or less like a little "ping" on the inside of an analogue alarm clock that has not been armed for duty. The hands move, as they are designed to, around and around until they hit the last chosen alarm setting. The device acknowledges the union, and then it moves on until either the time comes around in a few seconds less than twenty four hours, or the target time is manually changed.

No one can touch me.

Not today.

Thanks for reading.

F.A.J.