A more personal, positive check-in.

I did a reset on my eating and some other health-related habits* over our vacation a few weeks ago and am now at the level of toxin-free sobriety where my brain is firing on all 10 cylinders, and what I thought was an already inhuman forward drive has kicked into almost frightening levels.

I thought I was operating at a higher level over the last couple of years since I quit drinking**, but I haven’t felt this preternaturally sharp since I was a teenager! (And now with (hopefully) more wisdom!)

It’s kind of scary…but really exciting. And here I thought I was destined to remain a distant hermit, hanging as a shadow over my previous accomplishments. But now I feel a whole new chapter of possibilities opening before me.

(If I can ever quit smoking—the one addiction I've yet to be able to shake—I can only imagine what that would do for me. But for a guy who didn’t think he was going to live to hit 50, the way I feel now I makes me think I could make it to 90 (depending on which side of my family’s genes end up deciding the whole longevity thing…)!)

*For the curious, I excised a few bad health habits, but the one that's made the biggest immediate difference has the radical reduction of my sugar intake. I had gotten to the point where I was stress-eating 1–2 pints of Jeni's ice cream a night, and while that was delicious, it appears that was really throwing a lot of sludge into my system and slowing me down.

**It just occurred to me this is something I haven't talked about at all in this space, preferring to work through the first couple of years of freedom from my addiction to alcohol, only sharing progress with friends and family through Facebook. This has been because I've never been sure what I can offer to others with similar struggles to mine. But I've been free from alcohol for over 6 years now, and perhaps it's time for me to try and figure out better ways to share some of those experiences in hopes they will help others. Sorry for the digression, but since I broke the seal on that topic here for the first time, I figured a bit of context would help. Though I also imagine longtime readers put 2 and 2 together about this topic long ago.***

***I also realize that when I started this site as an extension of the original Tankboy email newsletter back in 2002, I often mixed my personal life with my cultural critical thoughts, and I think if I'm going to be more active in this particular space, I'll have to get comfortable mixing those two things more readily again.