Small but significant

I'm not quite sure of its importance, but last night I did something differently again and it's worth mentioning to remind me in future that this was the first time I chose to do it. At about ten o'clock I went downstairs to make supper and get a drink before watching Citizen Kane. On the way down I began to have familiar thoughts about... about, well, what other people do, I guess. I have a picture in my head of what "normal" people do and it includes pissing away their lives in front of a computer to pay an absurd mortgage on a house they don't want decorated by a woman they don't love and filled with children who barely tolerate them - but when they finally get two hours of freedom before it all begins again the next day, they like to pour themselves a drink "to relax" and watch a film.

As you may gather, that's not a life for me. But you see, I think up to now my reasoning has always stopped around the point where the story gets to them pouring themselves a drink, as if to justify me doing the same - if it's what "normal" people do, and I want to be "normal" about drink, then why can't I do it?

Maybe because of the amount of thought I put into everything I do at the moment, last night my reasoning went past that point and I thought back to times I've done that before. I don't drink "to relax" like a lot of people seem to, I drink in social situations to make myself more at ease with the group. When I've had a drink on my own at night before, I end up feeling barely different, occasionally slightly more maudlin than when I started, the contrast between social drinking and sitting around drinking because you can all too clear in my mind. Frequently I wonder what the point was at all and why other people do it; I've always known I don't like drinking on my own and never ever used to, but I guess the distinction became blurred around the years I started drinking at home with my mates and found that habit difficult to give up when living on my own again.

So, last night, I reasoned that there was no point having a whisky and hot water while watching Citizen Kane. Sitting around having one or two drinks in the evening just because I can isn't my kind of thing. Like a lot of my character, I'm all or nothing with drinking and this seems to be working for me at the moment - the interesting, different things to do in my free time more than making up for me not having drinks on my own in an evening just because it's what other people think is normal.