I WOKE up yesterday morning and found something missing in my morning wake up routine.
Firstly, there was no rhythmic thumping in the head. Then I noticed I wasn't moody at all.
I wasn't irked by the sound of the kids rushing to get to school on time. There were no bloodshot eyes when I looked at myself in the mirror. And most importantly, I didn't smell like the interior of a nightclub.
Yup, I woke up and I didn't have a hangover!
So this is what it feels like, opening your eyes to a morning without the ill effects of last night's excesses.
It felt great. So my decision not to get drunk last night was paying off.
Not that I didn't get a drink or two the night previous. In fact, I had four beers. Not even enough to put a buzz in my ears, but sufficient for me to untie some knots of my job out of the way.
You see, I think best when I'm a little tipsy. And with the challenges of the job pressing down on me this early in the year, just is more than enough reason to drink until I drop.
Actually, the heavy drinking started as early as the last week of November. The Christmas season was just starting and I was getting invitations for a "couple of drinks so we can talk" every night since then. Of course talk usually meant nothing more than chitchats over bottles of beer, or in some cases, cases of beer.
How can I refuse when most of the chitchats actually turned into ideas which can be used for the paper. In some cases, it can mean more business for the newspaper. And in some other instances, the small talk turn into actual stories which Baguio residents needed to know.
Anyway, there were reasons to follow through with the invitations. The downside of course is that I was drinking myself back to a life I thought I left behind.
It felt great without the headache yesterday, or the heavy feeling in the stomach, or the sleepy disposition for the rest of the day.
It felt great, now if only I had a drink to celebrate my non-drunkeness of the night previous...