Once again I’m taking off with my family and heading overseas. As I write this our backpacks are half stuffed and waiting for a final check over before we load them onto our backs and head to the airport in the next few days. I’ll be turning 40 next week and we’ll be celebrating in Munich, at Oktoberfest more specifically. I plan on having my first beer in years to mark the occasion. I can’t deny having mixed feelings about giving up on my disciplined stint of sobriety.

I took my last sip of beer while camping in September of 2019. I didn’t know at the time that it would be my last drink. It was simply the end of a cool camping trip and I was toasting with my friend before we departed on our separate ways from the camp site. After a couple days straight of drinking I felt the effects the following week at work. The hangover creeping into a multi-day venture. Long gone were the days when a hangover might last a few hours in the morning. Either way I felt like I’d had enough of drinking for a while and a break of a couple of weeks felt right.

What I decided would be a month break turned into two months, then three, and so on. Before I knew it, this sober streak had morphed into a thing. The weeks and months piled on–and bam–a year had passed. I’d been planning on calling the sober stint quits after that first year. A year sounded nice and round. It sounded complete.

A year off sounds just about right. I’d tell myself. A trip around the sun without alcohol would complete the loop. It was easy telling people I was taking a year break too when they’d surely inquire.

But then the year came.

I’d never taken such a long hiatus from alcohol before. And I had a year down. Why not extend it a bit? Just a bit. I made it this far, why not go just a little further.

Each day and week thereafter became more momentum for not having that next drink. Like a snowball rolling down hill, my sober stint gained size and speed as it accelerated, tumbling down towards level ground. While my sobriety was hard at times, very hard, especially during lockdown in 2020, the benefits outweighed the annoyance of not having fun while out at social events.

After becoming sober my sleep improved. I became way more productive on the weekends. My energy came roaring back. My anxiety has nearly gone away completely. I saved a ton of money. I started writing more. Started sailing. Started this blog. I read more. Meditated regularly. I felt and feel like a better dad and spouse, more present in the moment, not nursing a hangover on our rare time off together. My discipline and will power went into overdrive. During this sober time I discovered FIRE.

I wouldn’t be where I am right now, on the verge of early retirement, if I hadn’t of taken a break from alcohol and faced myself. In a way, beer placated me. It kept me idle, content with things as they were (is being content a bad thing?), much like someone stuck in a comfort zone.

I can’t think of any real bad things that contrast the goodness my sober streak has done me; maybe a few awkward feeling out of place or boring moments, where a beer might have livened up things for me at a party or bar.

Handling stress has been one of the biggest challenges of being sober. I never drank with the idea that I was letting out steam or unwinding, but man, not drinking makes you really face your stress and find other outlets. Unbeknownst to me, drinking a beer on a Friday night or Saturday was a big outlet for my stress from work.

For someone who’s been regularly partaking since 18 as a sailor in foreign ports, going hard in my twenties, taking this break in my mid thirties has been worth it. It helped me discover who I am without alcohol. Alcohol it turns out, was some armor I wore over who I was when I wasn’t working and out and about. It made things easier for me. I’m much more introverted than I ever thought I was…or maybe I just changed over the years. But with alcohol always a constant in social settings, it took some time for me to just be myself. Have fun without alcohol at sporting events, dance with that drink, watch fights with friends sober, travel abroad with no chance to try local drinks, or a cold one by the pool in a tropical location.

I’m still not sure if I’ll be going back to “drinking” after Oktoberfest, but I’m going to enjoy the milestone of having been on this earth for forty years with some of Munich’s local brew.

The ending of my alcohol free streak, while sad in a way, is something I’d been thinking about for a while now. I’d never planned on being sober from alcohol my entire life. This is just a part of my ever changing self, abstaining from alcohol was a change for me at the time. Taking a drink at 40 will be another change.

As much as I excel in routine, changing and shaking things up is a part of who I am. It’s time to shake up the sobriety, if only for a few days.

Travel Prep

I’ve been digging into some really good non-fiction as of late. I always like to read about a place before I get there when I travel abroad. It sort of sets the tone and gives me a better appreciation for a city or country. I’ve read Hemingway while in Spain. Orhan Pamuk before Istanbul. 100 Years of Solitude before touching down in Colombia. Villasenor before Peru.

The first country I’m heading to is Germany. I’ve been reading a story not so much about Germany, but about the Cold War, which Berlin (where I’ll also be staying) seemed like a main character during the events of that long run of near war the world found itself in following the Fall of Berlin to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Even modern Germany seems a fascinating place. A place I’m so excited to see first hand. My book shelves have whole sections dedicated to Germany, and now I finally get to go to this country I’ve read so much about.

The Traitor and The Spy is my current book. After a good chunk of time spent reading fiction I thought a nice non fiction history spy thriller would do the trick. So far so good. The author, Ben Macintyre, is an amazing writer. I have a spare book I’m bringing, a Le Carre thriller titled, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, that I hope to start on this trip. I’ve also been listening to a decent podcast series titled The Cold War: Prelude to the Present, my only criticism of the series being the advertisement used being off putting and too political for my taste, and nearly made me stop listening. But so far the stories have been well told and accurate based on my past reading of events.

Work

The timing of my trip works out well with my job too. A few months ago it looked as though I was going to miss the “final inspections” on my project, the end and most important part of a job, but events have moved our final inspections out a few weeks and I’ll be back in time for them. After so much hard work getting our building buttoned up, I would have hated to miss being there for the end of the job.

For the first time in a long time, I don’t dread waking up to go to work. I like my co-workers. I like that we’ve overcame such a challenging project together. The light at the end of this tunnel is getting much brighter by the day.

The economy has slowed a bit in my region, especially for construction, but luckily my company has a few big ones in the bag that are ready to go right when my job ends. There are so many things I’m looking forward to, not just my vacation away from work, but surprisingly work itself. I enjoy the position I’m in at work. After years of grinding I’ve finally made it; not just to a position of being in charge of a job, but of having the experience to back up my decisions. I’m looking forward to my next project, wherever and whatever that will be.

Enjoying work really does make my life better. When I’m miserable at work, it impacts me dramatically. I’d love to lie and say there’s more to happiness than work, but when you spend ten hours a day doing something, if that ten hours is spent in unhappy surrounding or doing things that don’t intrigue or use your mind to its full extent, yeah that impacts me. I love planning and watching my plan come to life to get things done. Right now work is that for me. It’s problem solving and seeing the end results of months of hard work and struggle come to fruition as we near completion. I can physically see what we’ve been working towards at work. Tile floors. Light fixtures in the hallways. Fine millwork in the lobby. Fresh paint and new appliances. My building finally looks like a place where people can live. I can’t help to compare what I’m doing now to typing into a computer making schedules, as I’d been doing previously.

Again, it’s all about gratitude for me. It’s about being mindful of what I have and don’t have. Right now I pretty much have it all…with a few exceptions of course. Those exceptions being the fuel I need to keep going.

With this new decade staring me right in the face, I’m happy to be in the fortunate position to have the funds to go travel and do the things I want to do without worrying about money. I’m happy that I’ve finally worked my way into the position I’ve always wanted at work. I’m happy for keeping the course with my investing despite the recent bear market. And of course, I’m happy for my family. My thirties have been a spectacular decade for me and I’m looking forward to the next ten years as I hit the big 40.

Prost!