Burning the candle at both ends

I don’t know whether to be embarrassed or proud but I did it. I managed to get through the day. I woke up this morning at exactly 10am in an absolute panic.

I ask myself, “What day is it? What do I have to do today?”

“Oh yeah, it’s Wednesday. I have to deliver CityPages and shit I’m running late!”

While driving to the paper it dawned on me that today was the big Best of the Twin Cities issue.  It’s three times as big as a regular issue with a glossy cover and hard spine. This is the biggest issue of the year and a good deal more work to deliver. It’s the kind of day where getting a good night’s sleep would have really helped.

That’s not what happened though. Instead I stayed up until four in the morning talking on the phone and drinking. What was I thinking?

My plan was to spend the evening writing a new blog post. I have a couple great ideas for articles I want to write. Instead I wound up going over and over my last post, rewriting and correcting errors. Turns out I’m a pretty shitty writer, especially when I’m drunk. Sure the words flow easier when I’m lubricated but perhaps that is not always a good thing. Since my blog is starting to get some attention I think I owe it you, the reader, a fresh re-read in the morning before hitting that “publish” button.

By the way, I did just reread that last post and still made a few corrections. I offer no guarantee that future posts will be much better. I really need an editor!

So I never got to writing last night. Instead I took the time to drunk dial some of my friends. I got to talk to one of my closest friends who lives out of state. We only had about 10 minutes to talk but it was really good to catch up.

I went on facebook to see which of my friends were up. There I found a musician friend of mine who I hadn’t heard from or seen in months. I’m used to him randomly drunk dialing me but it had been quite a while since that happened. I wanted to know how he was doing so I gave him a call. Turns out the reason I hadn’t heard from him was because he has been sober for the past three months.

I told him I thought that was wonderful and promised my support in any way possible. We talked about sobriety, the importance of friends, bands, music, songwriting, and writing in general. We talked for almost three hours.

By this time, I figured that one of the mutual friends we had been talking about would be home from the bar. I decided to give her a call. I knew that she would also be supportive of our friend’s sobriety. I talked to her for a couple minutes and then she handed the phone to her co-worker who was hanging out with her.

I don’t know if I have ever talked to my friend’s co-worker before but we talked for a good half hour last night. This was another great, deep conversation about age, knowledge and wisdom.

Next thing I knew it was approaching four in the morning. I really needed to get some sleep. I needed to work in the morning. Really, what was I thinking? I never should have gone to the liquor store the day before the Best of… issue.