Day 263.
Back in Brooklyn after a vacation week in Santa Barbara. I guess that was my first full week vacation without booze, although I’ve done mini vacations and getaways. But good to break through the long, late airport layover without booze as well as all the regular vacation celebratory moments. I swam in the chilly Pacific with my husband most mornings and evenings, hiked and biked and went in hot springs with the kids and overall had a full, active, healthy week with the family. My husband had a drink here and there, but just one each time, and it was nice that we could be so active together. And the time with our 11 and14 yo was fully present and extra special. Somehow, we even had fun together during the 7-hour layover, going into town and then goofing around at the airport.

I’ve felt on a plateau lately with workouts and weight loss and what not, but I need to take the wide angle on things. This time last year, I was near my heaviest weight ever (though I packed on a few more pounds between Aug 2020 and Dec 2020),and we were so out of shape that when we went on vacation upstate my husband hurt himself *horseback riding*—like SITTING ON A HORSE—and was out of commission for most of the vacation, which I coped with by sipping bourbon on the sly every evening. The vacation was meh—no disasters but also nothing bold and adventurous and memorable. Of course some of that was Covid and the fact that I threw things together last minute. But my world was just small. My dominant memory of that vacation is probably me going to the kitchen to ask whether anyone wants anything and then sneaking myself another pour into a plastic cup.

This year may have been our best vacation ever, because we’re both healthier and more positive and engaged with life. I was so much more present and had so much more time and energy to think about locations and rentals and to plan a range of activities that would appeal to everyone.  And it definitely all started for me with stopping drinking.  I’m not crushing a marathon, but I’m living better and more fully, have made so many more memories, and have confronted challenges so much more directly this year.  

When we got back from a few days away, my 11 yo did a “Beat the Bomb” escape room in which an exploding paint bomb goes off if you fail to make the time.  She had a fantastic time, and it made me think about how much I’d trade my typical expected lawyer “social” activities for exploding paint activities, waterslides, dunk tanks, amusement parks, paintball, most of what my tween and teen do. I guess it’s not that surprising, as a good amount of lawyer / adult drinking generally is surely to make tolerable other wise dreadfully boring social activities. I notice it so much more now—how awful so many professional / social activities are. It doesn’t make me miss drinking; it just makes me want to revamp my social activities.