G'day everyone! This post is coming a little late this week. Truthfully, I haven't really known what day it is since Dec 19. Sunday then came and went without me realizing.

But have no fear: I am here and the tradition of the Sunday blog is somewhat intact. This just happens to be a belated version. No problem.

I want to start this week's post by talking a bit about booze. I wrote a bigger post on my feelings re: alcohol on the main blog. Long story short: I had a problem. Perhaps not a full-blown debilitating problem, but definitely a problem—which had fairly significant affecrts on my life.

So I went about sixteen months without getting drunk—starting in Ireland on September 3, 2019.

Cut to this past week, where I wouldn't say I've gone hard—but I've had more to drink than I have in a very long time. This post isn't about falling off the wagon though. I don't really see the way I've behaved this past week as destructive.

I'm here to talk about the guilt around breaking this "streak" I had going.

See, I'd taken some pride in pseudo-sobriety. (Pseudo-sobriety meaning not getting wasted.) But like a lot of things for a lot of people, the satisfaction of "behaving" kinda got away from me. Yes, it felt great to avoid hangovers. Yes, it felt healthy to avoid using drugs to cope with things. But there was something else going on. IS something else.

I wanted to keep thr streak alive not because sobriety was good for me; I was chasing glory. In a similar way to someone who must run everyday—it stops being about what's good for them and starts being this weird obsession.

Maybe that's not quite right. I wasn't obsessed with not drinking. But I got a kick out of it. Part of it might have been a comparison thing as well. Sort of, "look at my self control; look at my good decisions; aren't I great!?"

As I'm writing this, I'm now wondering if all this is just a part of me that's trying to coax me back into old habits. I don't think that's it though.

My takeaway isn't that I should go back to binge-drinking. It isn't even to deviate from the new relationship with booze I've established over the past year.

It's just to keep an eye on why I'm doing things. I don't want my thinking to get hijacked by this goal-chasing. I think that has side effects, and I think it takes away from the actual benefit of doing things for the right reason.

Still much to learn on this front.

now for some commentary:

In the age of shifting social norms and a push for equality and all these powerful changes, I think more attention should be paid to the consequences of putting someone on defence.

That didn't fully make sense.

When issues are pointed out, they're often accompanied with accusations. Sometimes it's ignorance, sometimes privilege, sometimes more egregious sins. When accusations are thrown around, people get defensive.

Defensive people aren't helpful. No one is productive when they're drawn into their shell.

I started thinking about this when the Defund the Police and All Cops are Bastards chants were going around (maybe it's not fair to put those two in the same sentence.)

I thought about it some more when looking at straight white men everywhere (myself included) getting butt-hurt about...pretty much everything.

If you tell us we're part of the problem, we're going to push back. I think it's human nature. No one wants to be the bad guy—no one feels like the bad guy. We're all doing our best to be decent people. So when confronted with the idea that we might not be as sweet and pure as we hope, we get defensive.

When people get defensive, they get selfish. They get scared. They enter into a form of survival mode. They feel pressured to clear their name—lest they be labelled a pariah and cast out of the tribe.

When on defence, people are more inclined to fight the narrative that paints them as a bad guy than they are to solve a problem. That's what's created this massive ostrich-culture of decent people who refuse to believe real issues exist. That's why communities grow and cult-heroes emerge to fight back against progressive ideas.

It's tough though...I don't want to say, "hey, go easy on these fragile folk." (again, me included.) If someone is wrong, you have to be able to tell them they're wrong. If someone's part of a problem, you have to call them out. But maybe more mind should be paid to the HOW of it.

What are you trying to accomplish, after all? Are you trying to make people feel like shit for mistakes they've made or things they don't understand? Or are you trying to educate them? Are you trying to bring them around? You can't do those latter two if someone is on defence. They aren't open to change if they're focused solely on survival.

As funny as this sounds: I think a little more empathy needs to be paid to those part-of-the-problem people—not because they deserve it, but because that's the most productive approach.

In other words: don't patronize the fragile white men out there for their sake. Just try to understand their knee-jerk defence mechanisms and work around it instead of drawing lines int he sand.

'Cause again: no one wants to be the bad guy. If your worldview paints me as a bad guy, I'm going to go to war with your worlview. I'll figure out how you're wrong before I accept blame. Yeah, that's my problem, but if you're after solutions, I might need help overcoming it.

And that's it for today.

Love to everyone who made it this far.

(And to those who didn't.)