Starting on 1/1/17, I started to keep a running log of everything I did each day. I didn't go into too much detail, like I didn't write down literally every single thing I did. But I kept a list on my phone, and at the end of every day, I was type out the day's activities.
An example of an entry, picked randomly: "4/18 - woke up at 5 to do dishes and finish laundry, walked to work, slow morning, walked spring garden at lunch, got pretzel for homeless guy, stole salad dressings too, didn't get any major calls in the afternoon, read The Stand, left at 4:25, septa home, chilled with Pam, she left for work and I went to the gym, came home, listened to a couple Phillies innings, ate kielbasa on bread, showered, better call Saul, bed at 9:30."
First—yes! I have a very exciting life! Thank you!! Second, what was the purpose of this? Why did I need to be able to look back and see that, yes, I did watch Better Call Saul on April 18th? I wasn't sure at the time, and I'm still not sure now. But it was just something I did, okay? So I might as well put it to use.
Since I did this every day for the past 360 days, I figured I might as well tally some statistics from the year for your reading enjoyment.
Like I said, each day's entry wasn't super detailed, so there were only so many things I could count up, going through the logs. You won't find a stat, for example, of how many times I showered in 2017, because that wasn't a relevant enough activity to be included in most entries. But certain things were noted time and again, and I was able to count them up and get an overall picture about how I spent my time day-to-day.
Let's examine the minutia of my 2017.
An example of an entry, picked randomly: "4/18 - woke up at 5 to do dishes and finish laundry, walked to work, slow morning, walked spring garden at lunch, got pretzel for homeless guy, stole salad dressings too, didn't get any major calls in the afternoon, read The Stand, left at 4:25, septa home, chilled with Pam, she left for work and I went to the gym, came home, listened to a couple Phillies innings, ate kielbasa on bread, showered, better call Saul, bed at 9:30."
First—yes! I have a very exciting life! Thank you!! Second, what was the purpose of this? Why did I need to be able to look back and see that, yes, I did watch Better Call Saul on April 18th? I wasn't sure at the time, and I'm still not sure now. But it was just something I did, okay? So I might as well put it to use.
Since I did this every day for the past 360 days, I figured I might as well tally some statistics from the year for your reading enjoyment.
Like I said, each day's entry wasn't super detailed, so there were only so many things I could count up, going through the logs. You won't find a stat, for example, of how many times I showered in 2017, because that wasn't a relevant enough activity to be included in most entries. But certain things were noted time and again, and I was able to count them up and get an overall picture about how I spent my time day-to-day.
Let's examine the minutia of my 2017.
Days when I took SEPTA—95 (26.38%)
Days when I rode my bike—114 (31.66%)
This is a snapshot of pretty much the only thing I do to try to reduce my carbon footprint. Pam and I are a One-Car Family, so I usually end up finding other ways to get around on a daily basis. Despite buying a bike three months into the year, I still rode my bike on almost one-third of the days of the year. I'm proud of the fact that I spent so much time on my bike or on a bus. I want to keep living like this.
Bike flats—4
Here's really the only downside I can think of regarding bike-riding. It's a little unavoidable though. The route I take to and from work every day is littered with broken glass. That's never going to change. The bike I chose is lightweight and quick, but that also means that the tires are more susceptible to popping. So be it.
Taxi rides—9
Uber/Lyft rides—40
I probably only paid for half of these rides (some were group rides with people who didn't ask to split, some were Pam's treat because she would rather pay for a car ride than ride SEPTA, a couple were taxis in whose machine my card didn't work and the taxi driver basically said fuck it and kicked me out). But even if I did pay for half of them, this is still too many. True, our Lyft habits basically dried up when we stopped drinking and were able to sober drive everywhere, but even if and when I do get tipsy with my wife in 2018, I'd like to avoid these car services as much as possible. They don't make me feel good about myself.
Total runs—109
Runs for MBR—75
Runs on personal time—34
If we estimate that my average mileage per run was about 3.25, then I ran about 350 miles this year. That's a decent amount, but it's definitely lower than the past few years. After every single run, I was happy that I ran. I never feel shitty after a run, it's just that I always feel shitty before a run. It's tough to get motivated. Monday Beer Runners definitely helped, obviously. Three quarters of my runs this year were with that scrappy little run group. Unfortunately, the final MBR run is tonight, so I won't have the luxury of weekly group runs with friends next year. The time for motivation is now.
Trips to the gym—24
Oh yeah, there was also a little bit of time spent at the gym. Pathetic. I don't even want to think about how much money I spent on gyms this year, but I'm going to force myself to do so now. First, my membership to Planet Fitness. I switched in April from the $20/month membership to the $10/month membership, so that was $150 in membership fees, plus the $40 annual fee.
I also got totally ripped off at another gym. I should've seen the scam coming. About a block away from my place of employment, a new gym opened in the Spring, and they were offering memberships for $5/month, which was absurd. My plan was to start going to that gym before or after work daily. I did this once, and realized that the gym was kind of shitty, and that I would not be properly motivated to go daily. My contract indicated I could get a full refund in the first 30 days, so I asked for one. And I kept asking for one. I probably went to the gym 20 times, and they kept stringing me along, saying that it is "still processing." The day I decided to start threatening them with a lawyer, I get there, and the gym is gone. Disappeared. I have to think that the whole thing was a fucking scam, because the sign-up fee that I was trying to get refunded was 75 goddamn dollars. They probably took as many suckers as they could for $75 and got the fuck out of dodge.
So anyway, That's $265 I spent on gyms this year, for an average of $11.04 per visit. I am an idiot.
I also got totally ripped off at another gym. I should've seen the scam coming. About a block away from my place of employment, a new gym opened in the Spring, and they were offering memberships for $5/month, which was absurd. My plan was to start going to that gym before or after work daily. I did this once, and realized that the gym was kind of shitty, and that I would not be properly motivated to go daily. My contract indicated I could get a full refund in the first 30 days, so I asked for one. And I kept asking for one. I probably went to the gym 20 times, and they kept stringing me along, saying that it is "still processing." The day I decided to start threatening them with a lawyer, I get there, and the gym is gone. Disappeared. I have to think that the whole thing was a fucking scam, because the sign-up fee that I was trying to get refunded was 75 goddamn dollars. They probably took as many suckers as they could for $75 and got the fuck out of dodge.
So anyway, That's $265 I spent on gyms this year, for an average of $11.04 per visit. I am an idiot.
Times I ate pizza—70
Times I ate from Wawa—85
Okay, so I spent a few paragraphs talking about how I was allegedly healthy, so let's now pull back the curtain and show you, the humble audience, what's really going on here. I am not healthy. Exhibit A: there were seventy times this year that I ate pizza. Being conservative, I probably averaged three slices of pie per occasion. That's 210 slices of pizza in 2017, at least. Google tells me that the average slice of pizza is 272 calories. That means that I added at least 57,120 calories of pizza to my already fat gut throughout the year. No amount of running or working out is going to save me if this continues.
It's worse for Wawa. I attended lunch at that fucking place like church. I'm not even going to try to calculate the amount of calories I ingested from Wawa, it would be too painful to research it. I don't want to know how the sausage gets made, as they say. You wanna talk about addiction? I can't fucking stop eating Wawa, no matter how bad it is for me. How was it that I was able to quit drinking cold turkey and yet I could tell myself over and over that I need to stop with the Wawa, and still find myself, Sizzli in hand, morning after morning? Someone please help.
It's worse for Wawa. I attended lunch at that fucking place like church. I'm not even going to try to calculate the amount of calories I ingested from Wawa, it would be too painful to research it. I don't want to know how the sausage gets made, as they say. You wanna talk about addiction? I can't fucking stop eating Wawa, no matter how bad it is for me. How was it that I was able to quit drinking cold turkey and yet I could tell myself over and over that I need to stop with the Wawa, and still find myself, Sizzli in hand, morning after morning? Someone please help.
Movies watched—51
I am not a movie person, so even this number seems high to me. I only counted movies that I watched completely, from beginning to end. Occasionally attending a weekly movie-watching with friends helped (number of Beeritos attended this year—13). And this isn't a count of how many NEW movies I saw. I'm sure a lot of these movies I've seen before. But even so, I'm surprised that I broke the 50 mark. Sometimes it feels like I never watch movies.
TV shows watched—34
It feels like I never watch movies, because I spend a lot of my time watching TV instead. It's the new golden era of TV. There's almost too much to watch. Included in this statistic are only TV shows that I watched in full this year (every new episode of the show that was released this year, or the full series), so I'm not even counting, like, random episodes of The Office or anything like that. Here's a full list (check out some of my favorites here):
American Vandal, Better Call Saul, Big Little Lies, Bojack Horseman, Broad City, Crashing, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Dear White People, The Deuce, Easy, Game of Thrones, Girls, GLOW, The Good Place, The Grinder, The Handmaid's Tale, Insecure, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Jane the Virgin, The Leftovers, Master of None, Nathan for You, New Girl, Orange Is the New Black, Review, Rick and Morty, Silicon Valley, The Sopranos, Stranger Things, This Is Us, Veep, Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later, The Young Pope.
American Vandal, Better Call Saul, Big Little Lies, Bojack Horseman, Broad City, Crashing, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Dear White People, The Deuce, Easy, Game of Thrones, Girls, GLOW, The Good Place, The Grinder, The Handmaid's Tale, Insecure, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Jane the Virgin, The Leftovers, Master of None, Nathan for You, New Girl, Orange Is the New Black, Review, Rick and Morty, Silicon Valley, The Sopranos, Stranger Things, This Is Us, Veep, Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later, The Young Pope.
Phillies games attended—6
Phillies wins seen in person—0
The Phillies were not a good team this year, and I didn't see a single goddamn win the whole goddamn year in person. Didn't matter how many runs they were up, didn't matter if I was surviving a rain delay with family or drinking contraband gin with friends, didn't matter if I was shivering in the stands in Philly or shivering in the stands in Chicago, the Phillies never pulled off a win. And don't get me started about the game I went to by myself.
Church services attended—8
The sole reason I stepped a foot inside a church at all this year was because my friends and family still insist on getting married inside churches. Six wedding ceremonies and two wedding rehearsals account for my total church experience this year. I hate to jinx it, but I didn't attend any funerals in 2018.
Strip Clubs attended—5
Even at the low number of five, this number is totally inflated. Two of the five were at the Republican, both with my wife. The Republican is barely a strip club; it's more like a dive bar that happens to have strippers on a platform. One strip club trip was for Monday Beer Runners, when we ran to the Pennsport Pub, and stayed long enough for one beer and two single bills dropped in front of a stripper dancing literally on the bar. One strip club trip was on a Friday at noon; we were the only two people in the whole goddamn place, and we really were only there for the free lunch. So that leaves one cliché night at a strip club. It was a bachelor party, it was two in the morning, I was with the boys, I didn't get a lap dance, and I left for a half hour to walk around and look for food. Not too many strip club experiences in 2017. This is unequivocally a good thing.
Hung out at McNally's—3
If the strip club count didn't indicate how things changed in 2017, then maybe the McNally's count will convince you. There were years in my life when I would go to McNally's three times in a single week. But in 2017, I was there three times total. One was for a single beer. One time I was sober. Only once did I have a traditional "McNally's night" with sloppy beer drinking and dancing, etc. And that's okay. Things change. I'll live.
Did not sleep in my own bed—49 (13.61%)
There isn't really a broader thesis that this statistic encapsulates. There was a wide variety of reasons as to why I didn't sleep in my own bed 49 times this year. Maybe a level of how much of an adventure 2017 was? A lot were because we were traveling (Ireland, Wildwood, etc.). Sometimes, depending on what we were doing on a particular weekend, it was easier sleeping at the houses of family or friends than make our way back home. Twice I slept on the couch because I was in deep shit. I'm surprised that last one wasn't higher. Speaking of which...
Reasons me and Pam fought—21
I've debated for the past few days how much I should reveal here. I don't want to overshare. I think there are certain things I could talk about here that might add another tally mark to this count when Pam finally reads it. So I've decided to split the difference. I'm not going to talk about the number of times total that Pam and I fought this year. I will say that I believe that how often we argue is lower than average. This article doesn't give an average, but it indicates that arguing isn't necessarily a bad thing, since it shows that you care about a relationship. And fuck, do I care about my relationship with Pam. Literally the most important thing in my life.
(Note: I hope it goes without saying that when I am talking about me and Pam "fighting," not once do I mean we physically fought. I'm talking purely about verbal altercations. Domestic violence ain't cool, yo.)
So when in tallying up and reflecting upon the times that me and Pam came to disagree on something, it didn't necessarily make me sad. I mean, it makes me sad in the moment, when we are both yelling at each other. But ultimately, the important thing is that a lot of these arguments ended positively, with both of us coming to an understanding. Sometimes that understanding took a few days or weeks or months to find, but found it we did, eventually.
Here are the reasons me and Pam fought in 2017:
(Note: I hope it goes without saying that when I am talking about me and Pam "fighting," not once do I mean we physically fought. I'm talking purely about verbal altercations. Domestic violence ain't cool, yo.)
So when in tallying up and reflecting upon the times that me and Pam came to disagree on something, it didn't necessarily make me sad. I mean, it makes me sad in the moment, when we are both yelling at each other. But ultimately, the important thing is that a lot of these arguments ended positively, with both of us coming to an understanding. Sometimes that understanding took a few days or weeks or months to find, but found it we did, eventually.
Here are the reasons me and Pam fought in 2017:
- Pam was grumpy about having to go to work
- I didn't do my fair share of housework, or didn't appear to care about the general state of our home as much as I should have
- I was too depressed about trump
- I talked too much about not doing enough for St. Valentine's Day, instead of actually just doing enough for St. Valentine's Day
- The way I look (clothes are ratty or stained, physique is unappealing)
- Pam hated the music I just put on, and I was in a bad enough mood to take offense
- I tried to have more sex / I was unable to have more sex
- My past/future/fictional sexual dalliances
- I wasn't trying hard enough to have a good time
- I am too cheap / Pam is not frugal enough
- I got us lost (mostly in Ireland)
- Pam didn't want to go to the Naked Bike Ride
- I was being annoying
- My big fuck up of the year, which shall remain unwritten here
- I was texting and driving
- Pam didn't want to take SEPTA to the hospital
- A Scrabble game ended prematurely
- I am really bad at Christmas shopping
- I drank too much
- I drank too little
- Reasons that were too unimportant to even note
Dates - 40
I am thankful for every moment I spend with Pam, whether we are chilling at home with a pizza, out with friends, or, yes, even fighting. I miss her when we are apart, every fucking moment. But my favorite is when we get some time out on the town to ourselves. There were 40 times this year that me and her went out for a meal (mostly dinner, some brunches and lunches), just the two of us. I didn't include nights we stayed in and shared a meal, or were out with others, or the times we were on vacation just the two of us already. All that considered, I think that 40 is a great fucking number. I know the number is going to drop a little in 2018. We're having a baby, and life happens, man. But no matter what happens, I'm gonna cherish every goddamn moment I get to share with her.
Days I had at least a beer - 184 (51.11%)
Days I got drunk - 79 (21.94%)
Sorry for the bad pun, but, these statistics are sobering. If you include the final stretch of 94 sober days, I drank more than 1 out of every 2 days, on average, and I was sloppy drunk more than 1 out of every 5 days. That's a lot. If you take out the final 94 days, it's even worse. Out of the first 266 days, I went to bed drunk almost 30% of the time, and almost 70% of my days included me ingesting one beer.
(Note: when I differentiate being "drunk" from just having a few, I'm not talking about the clinical definition of intoxication, which is probably like "more than five servings." I'm not a lightweight. When I say I got drunk 79 times, I'm saying that there were 79 times when I had at least ten servings in one day, if not more. Which makes this all worse.)
I've spent a lot of time on this blog bitching and moaning about my sobriety. I've spent a lot of time talking about it with friends and family and my wife and bitching about it some more and struggling with it emotionally. I've spent the past 94 days beating myself up about it.
But confronted with cold, hard facts, things are a little easier to understand. Clearly, based on my own written accounts of 2017, I was drinking too much. It's clear. You can't question statistics.
I will begin 2018 sober as well. At least for a while. Probably at some point next year I will have some alcohol again. I can't go my whole life without having another beer. I don't want to, honestly. But scrolling through my year in review, and seeing just how many times I drank, I know now for certain that I need to take it easier than I did. I can't live like I did for the 266 days of 2017. It wouldn't be right.
I'm not sure if, to you the reader, this post was boring or monotonous. To me, compiling these stats was a great joy. It took me a while, but I had to reflect on each and every individual day of my year to compile it, and that was fun. I had a lot of good days, and plenty of bad days, and a lot of medium days in between. Overall, though, I lived a good life in 2017. Only better things to come.
(Note: when I differentiate being "drunk" from just having a few, I'm not talking about the clinical definition of intoxication, which is probably like "more than five servings." I'm not a lightweight. When I say I got drunk 79 times, I'm saying that there were 79 times when I had at least ten servings in one day, if not more. Which makes this all worse.)
I've spent a lot of time on this blog bitching and moaning about my sobriety. I've spent a lot of time talking about it with friends and family and my wife and bitching about it some more and struggling with it emotionally. I've spent the past 94 days beating myself up about it.
But confronted with cold, hard facts, things are a little easier to understand. Clearly, based on my own written accounts of 2017, I was drinking too much. It's clear. You can't question statistics.
I will begin 2018 sober as well. At least for a while. Probably at some point next year I will have some alcohol again. I can't go my whole life without having another beer. I don't want to, honestly. But scrolling through my year in review, and seeing just how many times I drank, I know now for certain that I need to take it easier than I did. I can't live like I did for the 266 days of 2017. It wouldn't be right.
I'm not sure if, to you the reader, this post was boring or monotonous. To me, compiling these stats was a great joy. It took me a while, but I had to reflect on each and every individual day of my year to compile it, and that was fun. I had a lot of good days, and plenty of bad days, and a lot of medium days in between. Overall, though, I lived a good life in 2017. Only better things to come.
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