With the neighbourhood pub no longer an option for a Tuesday, I needed another way to occupy myself in the evening hours. I made a pact with myself, I was going to work out 4 days a week starting right now. This proved to be a difficult pact to live up to, seeing as I have never been too keen in the physical activity department. The quest to replace 4 days a week of watching football and drinking a beer with running endlessly nowhere in a sweaty gym ended almost as quickly as it was introduced.
Instead I thought to myself Hey! I've always loved to read! and shifted my goals to involve reading for at least an hour or two every day. The first night, I chose a book I had been meaning to start for the past few months and decided to give it a go. Within the first few chapters I was hooked; this novel was just right up my alley. I couldn't put it down! When I eventually had the mind to take my nose out of the book and look out the window, I was surprised to find it very dark outside, and further realized it was 2 a.m. I'm the sort of person that needs more than 4 hours of sleep. Now that I know the dangers of reading in rooms without clocks, enjoying a good book has become a favourite hobby in these tough times of no football and beer.
But it wasn't enough. Something was missing. Books are an amazing resource to me, I'm very grateful that I have them so readily available to me. But there wasn't the discourse. The random conversation, the melodrama, the good laughs, all the things I really loved about my pub friends were missing in books alone. Most of all, I've come to realize, a way to express myself fluidly. Once we've seen the bottom of a few, we all loosen up and get to say what's really on our minds. This was something I valued above and beyond, and I was determined to recreate it in a less self-destructive way. But how?
This is an experiment.
