A day off, a day off, my kingdom for a day off

Boy, do I feel better. (Except for feeling like crap, thanks to the ducking and weaving of this hybrid alllergy-cold thing that has me trading off between like 6 kinds of medicine in an increasingly futile attempt to find an effective treatment.) I'm finding myself thinking about things -- money, career, dating, identity, etc. -- and realizing that I no longer have the ominous specter of the divorce floating in the background. I didn't really realize how much I was allowing the divorce to define me until I stopped doing it all the time. It's awfully liberating not to have to use it as the starting point for everything. I'm not clear of the whole affair, of course, and won't be for quite some time, but, oh, this is what moving forward feels like.
Also, boy do I feel better drinking less. I didn't really realize how much I was drinking, and how it was affecting me, until I cut back. The whole thing just kind of snuck up on me a bit at a time, a couple after work, a couple after work again, three or four turns into a six-pack on Friday, and so on, until I looked at my recycle bin and had to blink a few times. So no more drinking during the week, and all of a sudden, I'm in a better mood, less tired, more alert, and feeling miles more responsible. An entire trip downtown to see my friend perform and I stop at two beers and get home at a reasonable hour. It's like I cleaned my windshield and realized how dirty the damn thing was and how badly I was driving as a result. So, whew. That's much better.