Public Commitment

At the beginning of this year, I coined the hashtag #equilibrium2012 as a way of summarizing a journey I was undertaking to become more emotionally healthy. It has most definitely been a journey. To start all this, it took a series of admissions. First, I had to admit I was not emotionally healthy. Second, I had to admit that I needed to hone some "tools" to become emotionally healthy (because I didn't, unfortunately, have the capacity to be emotionally healthy I think), and I had to admit that I couldn't do it alone. Even getting to those conclusions was difficult because I'm honestly pretty stubborn and don't like to admit that I have deficiencies in anything that's generally considered to be in the arena of "strength".

Now, I have to make another admission, well, two admissions. Moreover, I have to do this publicly (even if it's on a blog that just about nobody reads) because I struggle follow through on commitments unless I make them publicly.

• I'm not only emotionally unhealthy, I think I'm unhappy.  Or overwhelmed or stressed. Or ambivalent. In any case, I'm not "happy" in the traditional sense of the word. What's terrible is that I'm probably much happier than most people in America. But, I've never been much of a relativist and I don't plan on starting now. 
• Alcohol and indulgence culture has without a doubt been the largest contributor to my state of stress and unhappiness. I haven't made many bad decisions (thank goodness) but the ones I have made have all been associated with alcohol or indulgence culture. [For the record, I have not done anything illegal or exceedingly immoral as a result of alcohol or indulgence culture, just things that are not healthy to me and sometimes others. I bring this up because I'm applying to graduate school and I don't want to lose admission to my dream school because I happen to be honest but not detailed about the truth on a blog, which as I mentioned before, nobody reads anyway].

So, I've made a decision. Much like the stance I took before I turned 21, I'm abstaining from consuming alcohol for a time. I'm not sure how long or what exceptions I will make to this rule. I'm not even sure if it'll even help. But much like when trying to cut costs when restructuring an organization, I think it's worth examining the biggest ticket items on the books. Luckily, in this case, taking a break from alcohol has just about no opportunity cost.

I even floated this idea a few months and some friends convinced me out of it. I suppose that simply making this decision is probably a step in the right direction because it's a decisive move to take control of my own decisions in the face of peer pressure, which is probably something I'm too influenced by anyway.

Let's see how this goes.