Day 5

Getting bored of this yet?

So far this daily diary thing is working for me, taking the fight against alcohol a day at a time and keeping a written journal of the progress! I write this with the idea in mind that I have a captive audience out there following my story with encouragement and compassion, though I'm also not naive enough to believe that that audience is real, I doubt anybody else will ever read this. But in my mind it is real and it's helping me. If I lie or cheat I'm only lying or cheating myself, which is pointless and stupid, rendering this whole exercise a waste of my own time, so rest assured dear audience of binary numbers, this platform is me in all my honest entirety!

Last night I did feel like having a drink, as usual, but the urge wasn't as strong as usual. I didn't drink anything, that quarter bottle of J&B is still there, probably getting desperate for some attention, but I've ignored it. So 5 days sober now. I'm not going to be fooled into thinking the addiction is waning this quickly without a drink, I know it doesn't work this way, it waits for you to relax and then pounces unsuspectingly usually in the form of landing in a situation where having a drink is obliged, waking the monster and fueling it back into taking control again.

I have to not let that happen.

Besides, last night I had to go out late to fetch The Wife from a work party in the city at 10pm, so drinking was not even an option. That sort of situation tends to block out most urges anyway. So I used the quiet time while I had access to my computer to get a load of work done on my chili business, and chat to my sweet daughter about her day and stuff. That kid loves telling me all kinds of crazy stories and the scenarios in her head because I listen and I enjoy listening to her. She's so awesome, and she listens to what I have to say with genuine interest and without judgement or insult. It's a rare treat!

Prelim design for my bottle label

I finally got round to creating some financial and product costing spreadsheets and set up the costs per bottle of the two sauces I've made so far and worked out what my selling prices will be. I've also designed a (preliminary) bottle label for my flagship sauce, Pirate Sauce. I'm still deciding on the design details and will spend time in the coming days playing around with ideas, but at least the basic layout is there with the info section looking respectable. I sent it to a friend who's a graphic designer and offered to help and advise for a couple of bottles of sauce. Maybe he can spruce it up a bit.

This coming weekend is going to be a personal challenge as we're going away to Hermanus. The Wife has booked one of these Groupon getaway specials. We will no doubt be going to a few bars and restaurants. I'm going to challenge myself to not have a single alcoholic beverage. Apart from the obvious reasons I also cannot afford it. (I don't think Wife is even aware of what's going on in my life regarding the drinking, I haven't mentioned it). Depressingly I don't actually have any money for this trip, it's a bit of an unpleasant and awkward situation to be landed in this position where I'm going to have to find money that I don't have for food, petrol, entertainment, etc and still have enough to get to the next paycheck in three weeks and still buy my sauce bottle labels next week when my designs are finalized. So not drinking alcohol will save a load of cash!

This crap chair in my office is so annoying. The wheels on two of the castors keeps popping off, lobsiding my chair and rendering it unmovable. It's irritating, but I won't even ask for a new one, I know that conversation won't end in my favour! But more annoying this morning was walking into my office to the stench of death. I knew exactly why, we've had a mouse problem for a while, last week a company came in to lay poison traps. I haven't seen the usual mouse shit scattered on my desk for the last few mornings so I expected to start smelling it's rotten corpse soon. After an extensive search I found it in the file drawer at my colleagues desk in a nest it had made by shredding his payslips, covered in mouse shit and what looked like bloody piss. Disgusting sight, even worse stench. This colleague is the one who's in Uganda training shopfitters now. He's got some cleaning to do when he returns.

I'm so insanely busy at work this week with that plonker on his holiday in Uganda, it's too much, but I'm not pulling unpaid overtime, I don't get paid nearly enough for that nonsense and I have too much other stuff to do in my private time to even consider it, so I best stop blogging and get back to work.

Catch y'all tomorrow... all none of you! haha