I have spent a fair amount of time lately thinking about where I should go next.
Maybe another rehab.
Maybe Belize.
Maybe somewhere completely different where I could sit near an ocean, drink whatever I wanted, and pretend I had escaped something.
Maybe pack up again and start over.
Then a much simpler thought finally occurred to me:
What if I just stay here?
I have a home. I have my computer. I have BluSup. I have people I care about. I have food in the refrigerator, coffee in the morning, and an eighty-year-old body that is still perfectly willing to argue with me.
I don't need another geographic solution to a problem that follows me wherever I go.
And I sure as hell don't need to spend my remaining years drunk on a beach somewhere.
So the new plan is considerably less dramatic.
**Stay here.
Quit drinking.
Exercise.
Eat better.
Get stronger.
Keep building things.**
That's it.
Yesterday I bought one of those little abdominal exercise contraptions. Nothing revolutionary. It isn't going to turn an eighty-year-old programmer into Mr. America.
But that's not the point.
The point is that I bought something intended to make me stronger instead of something intended to make me drunk.
That's a pretty damned good trade.
And because apparently I cannot encounter a problem without eventually writing some code around it, BluSup now has a Sobriety app too.
It's not Alcoholics Anonymous. It's not treatment. It's not a lecture, and it certainly isn't a substitute for professional help when somebody needs it.
It's simply another little BluSup tool intended to help me pay attention to what I'm doing and where I'm going.
BluSup Sobriety:
I have already done the rehab thing.
I've done hospitals.
I've done recovery facilities.
I've done the broken ankle, the wheelchair, the boot, and the whole miserable process of learning how quickly an ordinary life can get turned upside down.
I've also done enough drinking to know exactly where that road goes.
So maybe there doesn't have to be another grand adventure right now.
Maybe the adventure is waking up tomorrow morning in the same place.
Sober.
Making coffee.
Doing a little exercise.
Opening the laptop.
Writing some code.
Talking with the people I love.
And seeing what an eighty-year-old man can still build when he stops trying to escape his own life.
I'm staying.
And tomorrow, I'll work on getting a little stronger.
One day is enough.
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