Missing Out? What Else Is New?

Even though I went to bed later than usual, and struggled to fall asleep even then, I woke up an hour early today, taking advantage of the early rising to get my four miles in well ahead of schedule, leaving me time to…
Well, what I did or didn’t do with the time is irrelevant. The fact remains that I got up early.
Once again because I was out at a different time I encountered a different group of people out on the trails. They were pretty much all joggers, mostly female, and in general appeared to be in their early forties.
There’s no real significance to that observation; it’s just an observation.
When I got home from my walk, soaked with sweat, I did some ab exercises and whipped up a protein shake. I then got to work on this picture, which Wendy had asked me to draw for her as a signature file for a Web forum she participates in. Obviously she’d need to pare it down (and I provided her with a .gif version that was smaller), but I figured I’d go all out in transforming Wendy into Dark Phoenix.
She’d simply asked for Phoenix, leaving it up to me if I wanted to go with the Dark version.
It was pretty much a no-brainer which one I’d pick. I mean, no one can resist a bad girl, and bad girls don’t come much badder than Dark Phoenix.
In any case, I think it turned out pretty well, and Wendy was pleased with it.
Of course, if I was going to work on a picture for someone I probably should have done some work on the picture of Scott’s D&D group, but as mentioned, I only have the male characters left to do, so naturally I jumped at a chance to draw a woman.
I will finish the D&D picture eventually, though. I promise.
Last week I had a dream in which I think I killed my friend Eric. I can be certain that I killed him, as it was never confirmed that he was dead, and I didn’t actually see myself killing him, but it seemed pretty likely.
In the dream I was at a bar with him. Of course I wasn’t drinking (I very rarely have dreams in which I drink, and when I do I feel extremely guilty), but Eric was enjoying a beer.
In fact, that was the problem; he was enjoying his beer a little too much.
He just wouldn’t shut up about how good the beer, a Guinness (which was my beer of choice), was, and he continued pointing out how I was missing out by not being able to have one.
“I don’t know what it is,” he said, between gulps, each one punctuated by an exaggerated sound of satisfaction, “but after you quit drinking beer just started tasting better. The brewers have done something. Beer in general is like a thousand times better, but Guinness,” and with this he paused to hold his pint up to the light (which was all absorbed in the thick, jet-black darkness of the Guinness from which not even light could escape), “Guinness has become some kind of Elixir of the Gods, the likes of which you’ve never encountered.”
As an afterthought he added, “And you never will encounter it.”
That was when things got hazy, and suddenly it was the next morning and various people were concerned about the fact that Eric appeared to be missing…
Of course, in real life Eric wouldn’t be likely to be that insensitive, and it would be impossible for brewers to improve on perfection and make Guinness taste better anyway, so this dream had very little in common with reality…beyond the fact that I really do feel as though I’m missing out.
Sometimes, anyway.
Obviously I don’t miss waking up in the morning wondering how much of an ass I made of myself the night before, who I need to apologize to and for what, and feeling like I’ve done fifteen rounds with a Mack truck, but let’s face it, drinking was a big part of my life for a long time, and the fact of the matter is that while I haven’t had to face the day feeling as though I had a stomach full of toxic waste and a head full of writhing maggots in almost five years, it’s also been nearly five years since I’ve really had any fun.
Oh sure, I’ve had some laughs here and there, but overall…well, life has lost a lot of flavor.
It’s not any real desire to drink that thrust this idea so forcefully into my subconscious. Whatever fun I did have clearly wasn’t worth what resulted from it, and not really having a lot of fun is a small price to pay for not having to wake up in the backseat of a strange car in a strange town, or worse, in jail.
After all, there’s something to be said for the simple pleasure of not finding that you mistook your closet for the bathroom sometime in the night.
What I think brought it to mind, speaking of flavor, was all of the cooking shows I’ve been watching lately, as many of them have had recipes calling for beer, wine, or other forms of alcohol. Sure, there are other things you can use in place of alcohol, but as I’ve watched the recipes taking shape I realized that I would no doubt be missing out on a lot of flavor if I were to make them on my own, sans booze.
Eric ended up factoring into the dream for similar reasons, as during our recipe exchange over the phone he’d begun, without thinking, to give me a recipe that called for Guinness.
So yeah. Alcohol got stirred up into the mix of my subconscious, and it was a recipe for a dream that contained the sort of blackout I used to have all of the time.
As for my missing out on things…so what? I mean, it’s hardly anything new. The very nature of my personality practically requires that I miss out on things. I’m used to it by now, and honestly, the hangovers, embarrassment, lost jobs, and hurt feelings aside, it’s not like I can honestly say I was enjoying myself when I was drinking anyway.
I will say this, though; there were times when Guinness really did taste like some Elixir of the Gods…
Last night while I was working on the “Dark Wendy” picture, I heard what sounded pretty unmistakably like gunshots nearby. It could have just been someone shooting off fireworks, I suppose, but it really sounded like a gun.
Not having the mentality of a teenager in some kind of slasher flick, I wasn’t about to stick my head out to see what was going on, though, and I didn’t see anything on the news about it, so I’m not sure what happened.
Hopefully it was just some dumb kids messing around with fireworks.
Anyway, that’s going to do it for this entry.