In the middle of the month, I passed 300 days sober. With my role as a busy study assistant at universities and private tutor, returning to drinking seems unappealing and going back to binge-drinking feels unthinkable.
The only real hurdle left to complete One Year No Beer is my headline gig on November 11th. It would probably be wise to have some strong drinks afterwards to send myself to sleep, because the adrenaline could keep me up till lunchtime the next day.
Activities
In recent months, I have started to take the approach of “ask not what the Internet can do for you, ask what you can do for the Internet”. In the middle of the month, some of my videos got impressive numbers despite a marketing and production budget of $0. These included a comedy video about Gaelic football, and an online guitar lesson.
However, this past week has involved some unpleasant collisions with reality, having released half-a-dozen YouTube videos across various channels, and averaging less than 20 views. This included a lesson on contemporary Chinese poet Gu Cheng. Barring an outlandish stroke of luck, my approach to the Internet needs a lot of work to ever build up a serious public profile.
Output
I have been rehearsing the new material that will be launched at The Bread Shed on November 11th, and it is shaping up to be another special night.
I also got some radio play
And another cover of one of my songs was recorded
This month’s miscellaneous movie cover was ‘Turning’ from Les Miserables, but I had a cold for most of the month, so will hopefully re-record the vocal performance at a later date.
Wider World
Creative writing and music may be what make life worth living, and I am thoroughly enjoying the writing course I am completing at Oxford, but world events are never far away from reminding us of the limitations of what we do.
The murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust is disappearing out of living memory, and the more people forget history, the more likely it is to be repeated. The situation in Israel is at its bloodiest since at least 2006, and both Israel and Hamas have been credibly accused of war crimes. Of all the territorial disputes in the world, this is one of the most ancient and intractable. The way I’ve busied myself this month reminds me of this poem by Thomas Hardy:
‘I Looked Up from My Writing’ by Thomas Hardy
I looked up from my writing,
And gave a start to see,
As if rapt in my inditing,
The moon's full gaze on me…
You can read the rest here.
The cold sounds very Miserables! I hope you're all better now.