| Chendaddy: Mom, I know you and Dad like to stay up waiting for me to come home at night. Well if you stay up waiting for Mark and me, you guys won't be getting any sleep.
Mom: In Shanghai? I don't worry about you in Shanghai.
Chendaddy: That's right. You shouldn't be worried about Mark and me; you should be worried about Shanghai.
Mom: David.
Chendaddy: What?
Mom: NO CASUAL SEX WITH CHINESE GIRLS!!!
Happy Mother's Day. 
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| I have been committed to sobriety for 19 out of 30 straight days now. I've actually been sober for longer than that, but I believe that a relationship begins the day you decide to make a commitment to it, not the day you happened to stumble ass backwards into it. So I've been going steady with sobriety for 19 days, and she is every bit as underwhelming as I feared she would be. Originally I had thought that perhaps sobriety would open up new avenues in life, new outlets for fulfillment, or at least more original venues for entertainment on the weekends.
Nope.
19 days, as with most commitments you should be taking seriously, is far too short a time to judge a relationship, but this sucks. And unlike a real relationship, there is no pressure to try to make this work. I will grind out the last 10 days I've committed to sobriety, like a broken-up couple who still live together and are waiting out the lease, then dive headfirst off this wagon.
One aspect of my life that sobriety has had no effect on is my work ethic. Being in a drunken stupor every weekend doesn't affect my discipline a fraction as much as the absolute lack of passion I have in all regards to my life today. Remember field trip days back in grade school? The times when you were going somewhere really cool, like an amusement park. You'd beat the alarm clock getting up. You couldn't wait to get dressed and out the door. You had energy for days. To anyone who can still stir up that type of enthusiasm when you wake up in the morning, I applaud you.
I wake up in the mornings, and I wait. Wait for the alarm clock to go off. Wait for the last possible minute to get up and still make it to work on time. Wait in traffic. Wait for the day to end. Wait until I'm too tired to keep waiting for something to get accomplished. Then close my eyes and wait to do it all over again.
I wait for other things, too. I wait to get fired, first of all, which I think is unlikely. My manager thinks I'm a great employee because I stay in the office well into the night. I don't know if he realizes I just don't have anywhere else to go. I wait for a sign of change. I wait to discover that I'm not tied down to this life. I wait to discover that my future is not bound by the choices I've made in the last 24 years. I wait to discover the type of success that fills all the holes left in me by all the people and places I've walked away from.
It would be so easy now to say that I should stop waiting. Stop whining. Stop feeling sorry for myself. That I need to get out and get things done. That I need to set goals and accomplish them. That if I am confused, I should look for what I want instead of waiting for it to find me. Obtuse thinking. I have goals. I have dreams. I know what I have to do and what has to happen to get there. Yet every day I open my eyes, I see those dreams fading further away as the current takes me in other directions. The further they get, the less inspired I am to pursue them. I don't even like talking about them, as it only reminds me of how far I am and how difficult it would be to cover that distance. I am gripped by weakness, and I've empowered it by accepting it. The fact is I've run out of aces a long time ago, and now I've even run out of tricks to deceive myself.
30 days of sobriety. It was a desperate measure to discover something new. Yet all I've discovered is that I'm still asking the same questions I've been asking the last three years out of school. That success by someone else's measuring stick I insipidly crave but do not find satisfying. That though I've given up on God long ago, I still pray for miracles. And that being awake and alone at 4:00am on a Saturday night; drunk, sober, or otherwise; is a painfully empty feeling.
Day 20.
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| I thought tonight's Golden State-Dallas game would be a great game, because we'd finally see Dirk Nowitzki take over the series, rescue his team, and be the dominant player everyone says he can't be.
Nope. 2 for 13. 8 points.
Dallas sucks. Dirk sucks. I haven't seen a team choke this bad since ........ well, since this same team choked last year in the Finals.
I hope the Warriors get swept by the Rockets or Jazz, just to rub it in more for the Mavericks.
Can't wait to see Dirk get awarded the MVP trophy in street clothes at a game where his team isn't playing because they suck.
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