Depending on when the last post was read, you either read the hot off the presses I’m so glad it’s finished version, or the more finely tempered sober second thought version. Sober second thought is not a figure of speech in this case—it actually was the version I edited this morning while sober.
It goes like this: I sit down at home after a productive yet incredibly busy and unfortunately long twelve hours of work and pour myself some sort of delicious alcoholic beverage. The brain cells concerned with the stress of the day are killed off immediately so they can’t incorporate themselves into my mind and a quiet calm takes their place. It is in this quiet calm that whatever has blocked me from completing any given post (there are so many) will vanish and I can see how to complete the post. It’s a wonderful feeling, so I will head to my computer, pour the second delicious alcoholic beverage, and start typing.
Keen followers might be able to track through the initial versions of so many posts and be able to pin-point when I likely poured the third drink. By this time there may be unusual and challenging sentence constructions, verb tense and singular/plural problems, spelling mistakes, and things like &hellp; showing up instead of …
I enjoy writing. It’s a sign to myself and those around me that I am happy and content, even if I am writing about unhappy things. True, I have written while unhappy, but that’s usually about unhappiness itself, and I’m likely trying to wake up my own happiness through words.
I also enjoy drinking. And the drinking I do while happy is always the best, so when a drink or two happens to trigger a writing spree, I enjoy the process that much more, I keep pouring drinks, and I keep writing. Then the headphones go on, and I listen to music that happens to fit the mood of the words. I might listen to the same track over and over again because it helps focus a mood that works for whatever it is I’m working on. The music itself might even end up in the post.
Past experiences have taught me to stop at the forth or fifth drink, depending on what I’m drinking. During a particularly reckless evening of drinking and writing, I wrapped things up at a pizza place near Spadina and Bloor having walked there at 4AM from my place at Spadina and Lake Shore. And the trouble with all that is the resultant post remains one of my favourites in terms of theme, construction, and execution.
Does this mean I’m only able to produce things I’m happy with while walking the line blurry lines between being sober and not?
No.
I have other sober posts I’m just as pleased with as non‐sober posts… The as of yet unfinished Reykjavík series of posts are sober posts. I would expect the subsequent Berlin series to be as well—a somewhat cheeky statement as Berlin itself was not a sober experience. I’m reasonably confident that most posts to‐date have been sober posts. Certainly almost the ones leading up to my move from the Spadina apartment are.
This is a sober post. I can tell because I started it about half an hour ago and I’m already here. The sober posts have a directness to them. They happen, and I try to let them go where they want without overthinking too much, since they usually end up where they’re supposed to be anyway.
The non‐sober posts weave. They’re more chaotic—a product of one busy mind my hands and fingers are trying to keep up with as they get things typed up and another busy mind that’s trying to keep what is getting typed up within the realm of coherent. But when I look at what is up on the screen the next day (and try to correct all the many little tiny mistakes that creep into usually the last parts of the post) there is that little something more I see in the post that, if I’m honest, I’m not sure I may have expressed in that way had I been sober.
Perhaps that is the distinction I need to make clear to myself. Sober or not when writing, when I revise and edit the work, I am always sober. Whatever jumbled mess I may have left myself as a draft the night before, or decided was ready to be published much earlier that morning, it is my sober mind catching the last of the mistakes and refining the last of the words. Drinking me might get the words out, but non‐drinking me decides if the words get to stay.
Weed—or cannabis, as the government now legally calls it—is a whole other beast. It, I, and writing do not work together the same way I do with writing and alcohol. After I smoke weed I’ll sit and marvel at the ideas, watch them spool in my head as entire epics play out in my mind’s eye, and I’ll decide the most important writing project of my life is about to take shape and form—right after I eat just a few chips. But it’s never just a few chips. It’s all the chips. And as I eat them feedbag‐style in front of the TV watching old cartoons, I pass out on the couch.
I’ll awake later in a daze with a distant memory of a profound literary work in progress, but when I return to my desk all I’ll find is a half‐scribbled note on the back of a credit card statement. The words never leave my head with weed. It’s a highly unsatisfying experience in that regard.
Last night’s post was a five drink post, and it required a lot of clean up today. It never should have been posted in the state it was in when I found it this morning. But I was so happy to be working with words again, to be having fun with them again, that I cannot possibly be upset with my past self for publishing it. This space is for me after all.
But knowing that it is a public space as well, I invite you to revisit last night’s post, now fully complete, sober second thoughts and all.