Focusing on the Give…
…more so than the Give Up.
To me, the point of an experimonth is to learn more about yourself and your habits, not necessarily to deprive yourself. My favorite experimonths have been the ones where we’ve tried to add something to our daily routines to see if we could make it into a habit. Taking a picture a day, writing a haiku every day, walk a mile a day — I think most of us did well at and enjoyed those months. Giving up something (cooked food, television, alcohol) is a lot harder in my opinion.
I’ve ended up having drinks each of the past 7 days — with dinner with friends and with my siblings while we were decorating the xmas tree and hanging out while we were all home for the holidays. So everyone who told me it was crazy to try to give up alcohol over the holidays, you were right. There was just too much eggnog around and it felt too abnormal to not have a glass of wine at dinners with my family this week.
Even though I’ve fallen off the wagon, I am still tallying up how many drinks I’m drinking and am still planning on donating the grand total to my chosen charity or cause (yet to be determined). Once I realized I was basically giving up on my goal of giving up alcohol, I decided that I would still donate money for each drink I had as well (essentially paying twice for each drink — when I drink it in the first place, and then as part of my donation total at the end of the month).
