A couple of posts ago, I shared with you all my mentality of life being an experiment. I also mentioned the alcohol experiment I was participating in. I guess this post is a bit of a follow-up on that. I successfully completed my 30 day alcohol-free experiment. It went surprisingly well after the initial hurdle of the first week. I found the cravings for alcohol subsided. It became easier to do the things I wanted to do. Josh and I got along significantly better, and we were able to have some tough conversations that had been needed for a while.
On day 31 of that experiment, Josh and I went to St. Elmo Steak House for a Valentine’s Day date. It was our first time, and we were quite excited for the experience. We got all dressed up, and braved the wintry mix to downtown Indy. We started with the iconic cocktail shrimp, completely swimming in their horseradish sauce that takes your breath away (if you know, you know.) We also ended up enjoying some alcoholic beverages. We each had an Elmo Cola, which is St. Elmo Cherry Vanilla infused Bourbon topped with a splash of Diet Coke. It was very nice, and we received far more bourbon than we anticipated. At St. Elmo, most meals are served with your choice of navy bean soup or tomato juice. However, they recently added an option to upgrade to lobster bisque soup. Josh and I both went that route, and it was heavenly! For the main course, Josh had a 45 day aged ribeye, cooked medium with a baked potato. I ordered a small filet mignon, also with a baked potato. We also decided to get a side of the king crab mac & cheese to share (another heavenly choice). We each ordered another drink. A manhattan (served up) for me and an old-fashioned for Josh. We basked in the dim glow of the restaurant, enjoying each other’s company, and a shared new experience. To cap the night off, we indulged in the white chocolate blueberry bread pudding, served with vanilla bean ice cream.
It was an extraordinarily indulgent evening. We spent a pretty penny on the night, but in my mind, it was entirely worth it. I left with a new appreciation for fine dining. Throughout the night, it was important to me to be mindful about the way that alcohol made me feel. A part of the alcohol experiment is learning about subconscious beliefs surrounding alcohol and dismantling them. For example, many people believe that a cocktail after a long, stressful day at work effectively relieves stress. That could be true in the short term, but after drinking daily for far too many days, alcohol actually compounded to my stress, leaving me full of anxiety and depression in the day following a night of drinking. I wanted to see how I truly felt while under the influence, rather than the beliefs I’ve held as true for these years. Such as, alcohol makes me more outgoing and fun. Alcohol makes the environment around me brighter and more exciting. Alcohol enhances my experiences. So on and so forth.
I noticed that after my first drink, things became a bit more foggy around the edges. The light around me seemed dimmer. The conversations of the tables around us melted into a solid wall of background noise. I also noticed that my taste was impacted. The meal was incredible, yet it was difficult to differentiate the notes of the foods I was enjoying. As the night came to a close, I was feeling tired and a bit irritable. Once the alcohol wore off, I was more subdued and less interested in interacting with Josh. By the time we got home, I immediately showered and went to bed.
All in all, it wasn’t a bad experience. Drinking again after 30 days of not drinking wasn’t earth shattering. It didn’t feel like I was reuniting with a long-lost friend. It was fun to try the Elmo Cola, and drink an alcoholic beverage from a martini glass for the first time. It was even more fun to spend the evening with the love of my life, sharing a new experience that we will both hold in our memories for years to come. The next day, I braced myself for increased cravings, but they never came. I’m about a week out from that night, and I haven’t drank again. Somehow, I have come to a place where I feel I could take it or leave it with alcohol. I feel really grateful. A little over a month ago, that felt impossible.
As far as experiments go, I decided to embark on a new one. This one is less commitment than the alcohol experiment. Rather than lasting 30 days, the one I wanted to try next is a simple 24-hour “challenge.”
I often have this idea of what my “perfect” life would look like. I’d wake up early, drinking a glass of water and getting some sunshine. I would do some light morning yoga/stretching. I would read a book of my choosing. Then, I would bask in the morning glow, writing in my journal and reflecting on the day ahead. Afterwards, I would enjoy some coffee and perhaps a late breakfast or lunch. I would do some admin (such as reading emails, writing a blog post, working on my memoir), and once the food settled in my stomach I would go to the gym. After the gym, I would rehydrate and perhaps enjoy an after-gym snack. I imagine at this point it would be around 2 p.m. I would embark on tidying up my apartment, doing dishes/sweeping the floor/ weekly cleaning task. At that point I may decide to do something creative such as bullet journal (which I’ve been getting really into lately!), or watercolor painting. It would be a bonus if Josh decided to join me. Then, I’d begin to prepare dinner. Josh and I would enjoy the meal together, talking about our days and connecting. After dinner we may enjoy a television show or movie. Perhaps we would even play a game on our Nintendo Switch. Then, I would shower and begin an evening routine of skin care, hydration (internal and external), and perhaps reading until bed time.
When I look at it all laid out there like that, it doesn’t seem very complicated. It seems like a very simple life indeed. Yet, it’s something that I routinely struggle to accomplish. I may do a handful of those things I mentioned, but more often than not, my day begins with hours of mindless scrolling on the couch. Then by the time I’m getting started with my day, it’s half-over. I feel like I have to then cram everything I want to do in a few short hours before it’s time to take care of things like cleaning the apartment or preparing a meal. It just makes it feel like I don’t have much time to myself.
So my experiment is to live one hypothetical perfect day. A trial run. A chance to see if there are things I included that I don’t actually value the way I think I do. I think part of the reason I struggle to achieve what I want is because I put so much pressure on myself to be perfect all of the time. I have this idea that if I don’t have a solid morning and evening routine, combined with things to fill up my time in between, then I must be a lazy piece of garbage that can’t accomplish anything in life. It prevents me from even beginning. So what if I give myself permission to have an experimental day in which I attempt to do what I “want” to do. Any thing that I would typically view as “failure” will now only be used as data to inform my experiment. If I wake up in the morning and don’t feel like doing any of the things I intended, then how can I use that information to make a decision about a realistic morning routine. How can I give myself space to be imperfect, while also feeling like I’ve accomplished something/ feeling good about what I do in a day.
So I decided to do just that. On Tuesday, February 18, I set my alarm for 7:30 a.m. I could have gone earlier, but it felt like anything before then was too unrealistic. When my alarm went off, I hopped right out of bed. I picked up my Kindle and read The Bee Sting by Paul Murray for an hour. While doing so, I sipped on a glass of ice cold water. After I’d had my fill of writing, I followed along to a 20 minute yoga video. It was focused on mobility, and I paid attention to how I felt in my body.
Once I was done with yoga, I sat at the kitchen table and enjoyed a cup of coffee as I journaled my musings for the day. At that point, it was a little after 9 a.m. I found that I wasn’t really hungry for breakfast (I typically don’t eat breakfast.) Josh woke up around this time, so I connected with him briefly before deciding to go to the gym. I was really overthinking it. I thought that in a perfect day, I would eat before going to the gym, but I wasn’t hungry. Did that mean I should just forsake the gym altogether? What kind of exercise was I even going to do? I haven’t been to the gym in months, and truthfully, it’s been over two years since I was regularly attending the gym. However, I had some energy for movement, and as I journaled through those thoughts, I decided to stop making things complicated. I would go to the gym. I took my headphones and my phone. If all I could achieve were a 30 minute walk on the treadmill while watching YouTube, well, that would suffice.
I got sweaty at the gym, so when I returned home I took a nice shower. Afterwards, I moisturized and put on some clothes that made me feel good. This day, I had a therapy appointment scheduled for 1 p.m. By the time I finished my shower, it was 11. I had about 1 hour and 15 minutes before I needed to leave. I decided to begin the process of cleaning up my apartment. I started with the dishes, again, listening to something on YouTube as I worked. I enjoyed a second cup of coffee as well as a sparkling water. I connected with Josh once again before heading out to therapy.
In therapy, I told my therapist about my perfect day experiment. I realized that while it is indeed an experiment, what I was looking to unlock was permission to not be so rigid in my thinking. If I could live a “perfect” day in my life and come to the end of it with the realization that it wasn’t the silver bullet to a “perfect” life then maybe I would be more content to allow myself to just be. Without all the pressure to have everything figured out all of the time. And isn’t it funny that this whole blog is centered around the concept of “becoming b,” which in my mind, equates to learning to be. That’s all I really want in life. To give myself the space to exist without judging myself constantly. To love whoever I am, wherever I am, no matter what.
So what if I don’t have a perfect morning routine that I do every single day? Does that somehow make me less valuable? Before the experiment, I truly believed that the only thing missing from my life was this structure, these rules. After the experiment, I realized that there isn’t anything missing from my life. It’s just life. And I’m living it one day at a time.
Some days, I’m going to wake up and have energy to read, write, do yoga, drink water before coffee, go to the gym, clean my house, etc. But some mornings I’m going to wake up and it’s going to feel like a chore to even get out of bed. Maybe all I have the capacity to do at first is mindlessly scroll on my phone. And maybe that doesn’t make me a lazy piece of shit. Maybe that makes me a human freaking being, whose energy ebbs and flows. Whose motivations and desires change from day to day, moment to moment. Maybe I can stop beating myself up for not living up to these expectations.
I guess sometimes it takes a day of experimentation to realize that the beliefs we hold about ourselves are a bit silly. The rules we make for ourselves can be so restrictive and limiting that they actually accomplish the opposite of what we think we want. And sometimes, what we think we want isn’t even what we actually want.
I’m writing this post in the midst of my experimental perfect day. I have to say, doing the things I did this morning did feel good. Not only did I avoid the overstimulation of social media in the morning, but I also eased my morning stiffness with some gentle yoga. It also made me feel good about myself. Like I can accomplish the things I set out to. The part of me that believed these things to be key for a “perfect” day was at least right about how they’d make me feel. However, I can’t imagine spending every morning in exactly the same way. Life is far too fluid and unpredictable for that. And besides, it’s one thing to have things available to do each day, but quite another to tell yourself you have to do certain things every day or else you’ll be a failure. That mentality is not only extremely exhausting, but it feels like a physical constraint, preventing me from actually doing anything at all. Instead, I feel paralyzed, trapped in this endless cycle of thoughts.
I really don’t want to keep living in a way that makes me feel so negatively about myself. So I’m trying to stop.
This evening, I will still go on to do some of my perfect day experiments. I will enjoy an afternoon snack, maybe watch a show that brings me joy. I will have a shower before bed, and maybe I’ll do a face mask or nail care or something else. Then, as the day comes to a close, I will read a book in bed before drifting to sleep.
Or I won’t do any of those things.
Either way, I’m choosing to love myself today, just because I can. I’m going to be nice to myself, no matter what decisions I make. I’m going to connect with Joshua when he gets home from class. We will likely enjoy dinner together while watching Dexter. I think I’ll also brainstorm what my next experiment will be. I’m really enjoying the process of delving into a part of my life with an open, curious mind. I tend to come out of the experience with unexpected insight.
I began this experiment searching for structure, for answers, for some kind of proof that I was doing life “right.” But what I found instead was something softer—permission. Permission to simply be. To ebb and flow with my own seasons. To embrace both the days when I rise with the sun and the ones where I pull the covers a little tighter.
Because there is no singular perfect day, just as there is no singular perfect life. There is only this moment, this breath, this choice. And maybe, that’s enough.
