Negotiating the new.

Hello. Me again. I haven't disappeared. But you'll notice I haven't been posting with my usual regularity (usual being every day of My Year Off The Piss, give or take the odd holiday). That's because I've been in a bit of a Bermuda Triangle of projects, blogs, drinking and diet decisions. And by being in a Bermuda Triangle I mean lost. Sort of. Not totally. Let me try and explain. Last "year" (November to November. We're talking Claire years here, my personal and newly patented variety.) I unwittingly slotted myself into a beautiful little pattern of security. In one desperately hungover moment of clarity, I set a pattern of behaviour (not drinking) and set up an extremely helpful and deeply satisfying (for a writer) mode of talking about it and keeping myself on track (my blog). The way it happened, it could have been an accident, but it served to focus my life and take me in a really interesting and cool new direction. As I often said to those of you who read me then, I was very happy in my ordered yet exploratory little pocket. And then the year ended, and with it the rule of sobriety and my blog. And then in a flurry, because I didn't want to lose the awesomeness I'd discovered, I started this blog, full of celebration for my newfound freedom, full of gusto for my various projects, and full of fuck-off alcohol confidence. "Bah! Alcohol's not a problem for me anymore! I can drink what I like when I like now, because I am chill like that!". Well, we know what happened in that department. Anyway, the upshot of all this is that I've kind of been all over the place with a few things. The projects are still cool. I am still happily shunting them along, and I still believe entirely in each and every one of them. I know they can happen. The alcohol is a slightly different story. I am still very much in a state of mental negotiation with where I stand on my consumption of the (evil?) substance. At this point I'm thinking alcohol is probably not my drug, and that if I consume it at all it will be in very limited quantities, presuming I can work out a strategy for successfully consuming it in very limited quantities. Anyway, by choosing a new dietary path, I have managed to postpone any decision-making on that front. I have just started the first stage of a new way of eating (yes, I'm a food freak. We know this by now.), a diet called the Perfect 10, that requires me to quit alcohol entirely for the first three weeks. Somehow I think I can manage that. And it gives me a little more time to think. So we're cool. But then there's the blog - this blog. This blog has been giving me some conceptual troubles. And I apologise, because now you're going to see just the kind of whacked out shit that keeps me up at night. I like the idea of using this blog to track my projects, and I like the idea of it not being about alcohol anymore. But in practice, just writing about the day-to-day trials of putting projects into action isn't nearly as fun as talking to you guys about...well, just stuff really. Alcohol included. What's more, is anyone really interested in my miniature quests for stardom and self-fulfillment? Naturally I'm interested, but really, are you? I suppose once the projects start to take shape a little more they will become more interesting. Presumably. But anyway, what am I really trying to say? I think it's this: firstly, I am very thankful for you reading at all. Secondly, while I negotiate the new and decidedly Wild West-ish territory I now find myself in, I may have to rove "off concept" with this blog every now and then, and talk to you about all manner of whatever. I hope you don't mind.  There has been the odd thing going on with the projects by the way too, but nothing concrete yet. I promise I will tell you when something cool happens. But meanwhile stay tuned for more random wanderings through the exciting (and sometimes slightly psycho-obsessive) world of me. (I bet you can't wait.)