Been working more to finish up my stuff before it's time to go. Yesterday I zoned out again for a good two hours at work where I just did about nothing and then got back to work. I hope my new job will be easier to stay on track. It's better if I have defined goals so that I can tell if I am being productive or not.

Still staying sober, but feel like very little else has changed. I might not be drinking for the time yet I'm dissociating instead. Concerned this is what they mean by "dry drunk" - still going through the same thought patterns that lead to drinking with only pure willpower keeping one back. My emotions seem to have flatlined; have felt pretty numb for past few days except after workout when I get short term endorphins.

However have some tools in SMART recovery if I get around to reading them. Using both types of meetings for motivation. AA meetings are more often but they pretty much just talk about their past drinking days, which makes my cravings worse just after the meeting. Might use one of those phone numbers I got from guys there to find out what the deal is with that.

SMART meetings are more rational. We talk about how our week went and then talk about some of the tools to use against cravings. It's a new skill to learn, and learning new things is probably the one thing I love more than drinking. In a way it's also why I like being around kids in that in a similar sense I always learn something new interacting with them. Adults tend to have ritualized ways of interacting that repeat with less variation, so it's less interesting.

Yet people are people. It's not anything that we lose as we grow up; we only learn to hide it behind the shell of socially approved behavior.

In that sense I think everyone is young at heart, or rather the term young at heart is a misnomer. Perhaps the term is more realistically understood as we are all of the same nature at heart, but the young, and the very old, are less prone to dissimulate. Not being a parent though I am not qualified to speculate on that point, but I can conclude that interactions with adults and with children both tap the same skill set except with an additional layer of negotiating relative social status in the case of adults. People are weird. No wonder they have driven me nuts.