One Explanation for a Reluctance to Commit

Commitment is a strange beast. In once sense, there's no such thing; it's just some words you've said that are interpreted by others as having lasting significance. Yet, at any moment you could, if you so chose, abandon the commitment and go about your life. Of course there may be major consequences, such as the betrayal others would feel, or a bad credit history, but those are all trade-offs you weight against the value of your freedom.

For me, freedom has always been the most important thing. Although I recognize that I may never exercise all of the freedom I pay to maintain, its presence is worth the price. By this I mean that I live a life which would be trivial to leave behind, should the mood strike me. This has its own particular costs: renting instead of buying for the sake of liquidity, and a general approach to interpersonal relationships in which I'm less likely to become deeply involved with people, due to my perception of their potentially transient nature, among others. These may seem like steep costs to some, but for me the opposite feels like blatant confinement. Again, it's generally only necessary for me to have the illusion of freedom on order to be happy, whether or not I ever choose to put it to use.

For a while now I've assumed that my reluctance to commit to a long-term relationship, marriage for example, was based on this same desire to maintain my freedom of choice. But after some deep thinking on the matter, I think I've determined a much more cause for my hesitation to spend the rest of my life with one person. Previously I had dismissed the notion on the basis that people change over time, and that it's impossible to know either what the other person will be like many years down the road, or what you yourself will be like. It seems likely that the person will change in some way that you do not find appealing, or that you own desires and preferences will change over time such that you no longer care for the person, whether they've changed or not. While both of these situations are possible, I eventually asked the question, "So what?" If that happens, you get a divorce, and move on with your life. If your goal is to be married some day, you need to take the chance on someone. Otherwise, you'll be along forever, always unwilling to commit for fear that it won't last. That's a ridiculous reason for not committing to marriage.

I realize that my reluctance isn't based on my fear that I or my partner will change. Instead, it's based on my fear that we won't change. What I fear is wanting the same thing for the rest of my life, being pleased by the same things for the rest of my life. Somehow, if I feel like my interests and desires ever get locked down, part of me dies. I haven't though about this enough to know whether the fact that I feel this way concerns me at all.

I don't want to get married, because I don't want to be happy with one person for the rest of my life. Note that I didn't say I don't want to be with one person. I specifically mean that I desire, in advance, to lose interest in people over time, because to me that's a sign of my continued growth. Of course I recognize that I could find someone who grows alongside me, but how would I know whether we're both growing, or both standing still?

I'm not justifying this feeling I have, I'm only articulating it. And I'm wondering, not surprisingly, how to be free of it. The answer is not simply committing to a relationship and just seeing how it goes, because I'm almost certain that would be like injecting slow poison into it from the start, knowing someday it will be lethal. Until I understand this feeling, I assume that any commitment I make will essentially be a lie.

DIY gradient backgrounds for mobile phones

This is a mostly pointless, but marginally interesting idea I came up with. This works for an iPhone, and I assume any other cell phone with a built-in camera. All you do is put your finger over the camera lens, aim it at a strong light source, and then take the shot. By altering how much contact you make with the lens, how directly you point it at the light, and which finger you use (due to the various thicknesses of your fingers), the pictures will be in various colors. By making more contact with one edge of the lens than another, you get gradients. You can use them for backgrounds.

Here are just some samples I took when I discovered the technique. I was impressed by the range of different colors I could get.

Desire as a Prerequisite to Participation

Although the title sounds maybe like a completely natural course of events, I'm talking about a very specific phenomenon in this post. My first remembered experience of this idea goes back to probably the most frustrating thing my friend Lew ever said to me, and I'd kind of let it go for a while. But it popped back into my head the other night while I was headed to the fireworks, and I realized that it plays a fairly large role in the way I interact with the outside world.

I'll just start by explaining, paraphrased, what Lew said to me. This was some time after he had decided to abandon reason for madness by believing in, and reorienting his life towards, God. No need to go into how surreal that was, and how for weeks I was waiting for the punchline to some elaborate practical joke. In any case, it wasn't a joke, and our friendship came pretty close to falling apart, entirely because I was convinced he'd really lost his mind. During the course of this disintegration we discussed his new found beliefs passionately. Our conversations would start off playfully, with me mocking something he claimed to believe but which I was convinced he didn't really believe. I would get gradually more annoyed with the reasons he gave me for his faith, until it got to the point where I was getting angry, the way you'd get pissed when someone's doing something dangerous and you know they're going to hurt themselves if they don't stop, but they keep doing it, and you just want to yell, "Fucking knock it off!" Maybe the best way I can describe it is if your best friend picked up a heroin habit, and he just kept sinking lower into that pit of addiction, trying to kill himself, convinced it was his calling.

I know that sounds overly dramatic, but there were nights back then that I cried for him the same way I did sometimes for my friend Hannah who had died; never for long, but with desperate loneliness. The worst part, the statement he made that convinced me that his mind had been overcome, came in the form of his explanation of how it was possible to have faith, to believe in God, and what I would have to do in order ever to believe. He can correct me if I misrepresent this, but what stuck with me most is the following statement, again paraphrased, that he used to explain the process: "To believe, you must first want to believe." I think both he and Kati explained in more in the sense of asking God to enter your heart and fill you with his love. More words for me to think about when I was alone--crying for the friend I had lost--crying because I gave up one night, alone, and in tears I said, "Okay" to no one, and I asked silently for what my friend had asked for and been given. For some number of seconds I said please. With my eyes closed I said please, and I felt the pain of the three people in my life whom I had lost. And suddenly the pain was gone, and I opened my eyes, and I was filled with terrible anger, and I swore, and I said fuck all of it, and I hated myself for being weak and letting myself call out to no one and ask for something I created out of nothing.

I didn't cry about Lew anymore after that. Our friendship went through a period of awkward ignorance, while I continued to interact with the parts of him that were the same as before, and pretended to forget the piece that had been replaced. That feeling passed eventually, and over time I came to accept that his faith hadn't obliterated his mind, as I had once believed. I never understood what he felt, but I became less convinced that what he felt was impossible. I certainly didn't believe it, but I couldn't rule it out, and I couldn't hate him for choosing from among any number of explanations the one that seemed true to him.

Well, this wasn't so much supposed to be all about how I almost abandoned Lew forever, or about how close I might have been to believing in God. It was about the first step I had to take, which was that I had to want to believe before I could believe.

I still can't tolerate that notion. I still interpret as, You have to choose to be deceived, to work to believe the lie until it stops being work, until you forget all of the work that went into it and all that's left is a product of your imagination that presents as inalienable truth. It reminds me of suicide, or of amputating my own limb.

This concept always seemed fairly specific to me, seeming only relevant as a requisite for faith. But it occurred to me that this isn't as remote an idea as I might have assumed. The thought that occurred to me, on the way to the fireworks, involved the simple idea of having fun, and why I'm sometimes so bad at it. I assume that most people are able to just experience the moment they're in, and get pleasure from it. That sometimes happens to me, but much more often I become introspective when I think I'm having fun. Instead of enjoying the moment, I'm partially enjoying it, while at the same time asking myself if I understand why I'm enjoying it, whether I should be enjoying it (according to my own sense of what are "appropriate" experiences to get pleasure from), and why everyone else with me is enjoying it (and whether they should). It's as though in these experiences, I'm two people: one directly involved in the experience; and one observing and passing judgment.

I feel like this ties in because for me, having fun isn't really involuntary. I have to first want to have fun, in the sense that I have to consciously suppress the part of my personality that attempts to keep me at a distance from the emotional part of the experience, or at least make an effort to ignore it. And as I've recently discovered, even drinking a lot of alcohol has no impact on shutting down the introspective part of me. If anything, it makes it more acute, but that may only be because intoxication is still novel for me, and there's a lot of new data to examine.

In order to have faith, I need to first want to have faith. And in order to have fun, I need to first want to have fun. I need to be able to suspend my disbelief, put aside my criticism, and be willing to experience it, without any buffer or filter. But I don't do that. Something keeps me from indulging. Maybe it's pride, or arrogance, or maybe it's a good thing. I don't know. But this whole feeling can be summarized in a single statement: I may want to, but I don't want to want to. This seems fairly clear, but what I mean is that although a given experience might feel good to me, and make me happy at the most basic level, another level kicks in and refuses to tolerate the idea of getting pleasure from that sort of thing. It's like there's some kind of morality to my sense of enjoyment. If I can't simultaneously enjoy the experience, and feel I'm justified in enjoying it, I don't really enjoy it. I can't tell if that's a bad thing or not. But it makes me wonder what things would be like if I could disable the part of me that constantly appraises my own actions, and just let the other side of me run on auto-pilot for a while, nothing held back. The idea is intriguing, but again, it reminds me of suicide or amputation.

The part of me that keeps me from believing in God, that keeps me from just enjoying the moment, is the part of me that I most identify as my "self". To shut that off, to think letting something else be in control, is actually terrifying to me. Which I suppose is why I don't get swept up on my emotions, and why I don't accept the idea of God being in control of the direction of my life. What does it mean when about the highest virtue you hold is your sense of independence?

Shower Haiku

High as you can go
The summit makes slaves of us
And forces us down


Privacy's a cage
With bars we build out of shame
Honesty's the key


Our world is a leaf
On a tree in a forest
The locusts take wing

Microlationships

(This post describes an as-yet theoretical concept in interpersonal relationships. It is my sincere hope that I have the courage and social tact to put this theory into practice. We'll see.)


A Basic Definition


A microlationship is most simply defined as a romantic relationship between two individuals that is voluntarily terminated as soon as either partner realizes that they are less excited about the relationship than they were the day before.


Romantic relationships tend to begin with a period of heightened passion and excitement between the two partners. Over time the common opinion is that the initial passion begins to subside as the relationship transitions from one form to another. Although by all accounts this is normal and arguably necessary for the stability of a long-term relationship, I'll make the uninformed observation that most members of such relationships look back with at least some sense of longing and nostalgia for the days when they were just starting out, when they were so much more romantic and passionate and couldn't stand to be apart from each other. They contrast this with the current condition of their relationship, and frequently find it lacking in many ways.


For a variety of reasons, microlationships are designed to endure only until this initial passion begins to taper off, ending before the relationship has a chance to reach that next step. I'll provide my reasoning for why this type of relationship is practical and beneficial for certain people at certain stages of their lives, but I'll start by explaining what a microlationship is not, to dismiss the most obvious condemnation as early as possible.


What a Microlationship Isn't


1. It isn't about meaningless sex or one-night stands


It's easy to interpret this concept as being a fancy way of describing an attempt to engage in shallow encounters that are primarily motivated by the satisfaction of physical desires. Conceding that sex is generally assumed to play some part in most microlationships, it's not necessarily a requirement. One of the primary goals of a microlationship, as we'll get to, is deep, engaged interaction with another person. In many cases, sex increases the magnitude and duration of that interaction, and is much more about the non-physical connection it promotes than the simple physical pleasure of the act itself.




2. It isn't about fear of commitment


As I write this I'm aware that I am a man, and I'm aware of the common stereotype regarding men and commitment. Although a microlationship, by definition, is not intended to develop into a long-term relationship, it's important to clarify that a given microlationship with a given person is not expected to evolve into a long-term relationship with that person. One of the primary motivations behind microlationships is to prepare individuals for eventual happiness in long-term, deeply committed relationships.




3. It isn't about hedonism


The basic description of a microlationship tends to give the impression that the individual seeks to maximize his pleasure above all else, abandoning one relationship the moment it reaches a point where it stops being as rewarding as possible. Although microlationships certainly encourage people to be very aware of what makes them happy, and to reject the notion that relationships necessarily involve a significant amount of self-sacrifice, it's not as much about experiencing as much pleasure as possible as it is about figuring out what you're really looking for.


Preference and the Unimaginable


The absolute core assumption behind the motivation to microlationships is this: that people generally can't know a priori exactly what they want in a romantic partner. What I mean is that I can write a list of characteristics and qualities that I believe my "ideal" woman must or must not possess in order for me to be optimistic about the possibility for long-term happiness with her. And despite my best efforts to be honest with myself in composing this list, I'm convinced that if I ended up with this incarnation of my most exacting requirements, I would end up being less satisfied than if I had picked a woman at random from some pool of reasonably attractive women.


The problem is the general inability to predict reactions to events that have not yet been experienced first-hand. The example to follow will no doubt seem shallow to many. I believe that many people elevate relationships and romance to such a point that it becomes very unpopular to consider them as anything short of mystical. Attempting to make objective comparisons between "love" and more mundane phenomena is perceived of either as being merely ignorant in the best case, or heartless in the worst case. I think most people just want love to be a magical, indescribable experience that can't be thought of in rational terms without destroying that magic (more on that later). Nevertheless, I'll continue with the example.


Consider a person who has only ever eaten or heard of a single food in his entire life. It doesn't matter whether you imagine this food as being flavorful or bland, simply that it's the only thing this person knows about food and the experience of taste, but let's call it oatmeal. (I realize this may appear to resemble the cliché statement of ennui expressed by men who bemoan having to "wake up next to the same woman for the rest of my life", but that's not where I'm going with this.) Having no other basis of comparison, it's fair to say that it never enters into this person's thoughts that there might be other substances that, when placed on the tongue, would lead to radically different experiences than the oatmeal he's used to. For someone born blind, and having no one to explain to him what "sight" means, it's impossible to have a meaningful desire such a sense. Everything we imagine must necessarily be connected, however tenuously, to some other thought or belief we hold. As a very practical example, simply attempt the following: imagine something that has nothing to do with anything else. It's an impossible task.


So the man with his oatmeal, if asked to list all of the things he considered essential to a satisfying bowl of oatmeal, might decide that he prefers the oatmeal at a certain temperature or thickness, but would not list attributes of its taste. To close this example, I believe this is very close to the situation that we're in when we try to decide what we think we want in a relationship. We can list all of the attributes with which we're familiar, but we can no more predict what will actually make us happy than this fellow could predict what a difference a few strawberries in his oatmeal would make.


Pseudo-preference and Option Paring


But that new experience doesn't solve the problem. In fact, they it has good chance of making things worse. If complete lack of experience with a phenomenon prevents us from ever considering it as an option, experience with that phenomenon tends to give us an inappropriately strong opinion that the thing we've discovered is profoundly important to us. Assuming this guy with the oatmeal tries the strawberries, and enjoys them, he will tend to gravitate towards strawberries even when other new options are available. Given alternatives, he will generally choose the strawberries over other unexperienced options, given his past affinity for them. It's a "safe" choice. Instead of learning a general truth, that the world is full of unknown experiences waiting to be discovered, his preference for strawberries limits the chance he will consider choices that appear conflictual with or redundant to his preference. 


As a practical example, imagine you're at a restaurant with a very limited selection. Breakfast costs $5.00, and you're on a budget with no money to waste. On the menu you've got pancakes with maple syrup, and some foreign word you've never heard before. Looking around the restaurant, some people are eating pancakes and a few are eating bowls of some brownish-greyish stuff you don't recognize. Chances are, you'll order the pancakes (and if you don't like pancakes, swap in some other food you like.) You might be curious about the other choice, but it's not worth the risk of not liking it and being unable to get the pancakes at that point.


For the most part, people want to be in long-term, committed relationships. We desire this before a relationship even begins. Most people, when imagining an ideal relationship, will probably think of an initial period of bliss, followed by a longer period of deepening dependence, following by a much longer "rest of their lives together" with the person they love. With this preconception in mind we go into new relationships with the hope and expectation that it will turn into something very significant and long-lasting. For this basic reason, we are less likely to take chances in new relationships after we've identified a short laundry list of traits we think we're looking for. Let's say you've found that you like people who are well read, and you believe it's important that your future partner be well read. Although there's always a chance that a non-academic person could be perfect for you, it's hard not to worry that two or three years down the road you'll find you regret not having been more "selective" when the relationship began.


The more strongly we hope that the next relationship we enter will be "the one", the less likely we are to tolerate any deviation from what we've already decided are important characteristics. This self-imposed limitation, while perhaps reasonable in certain contexts, tends to narrow the range of individuals we would consider for a relationship, to our detriment.


Microlationships - An Opportunity for Growth and Discovery


First, in order to get any real value from microlationships, it's necessary to engage in many of them. A single microlationship alone is probably indistinguishable from just another relationship that fizzled out quickly, leaving neither partner with much of a sense of value. It's only in repeating the pattern many times, and deeply and honestly considering what you came to learn each time, that microlationships offer any practical long-term benefit.


The primary purpose of the time spent in a microlationship is to develop a deep bond with another individual, learning as much about them as possible in so far as it broadens the scope of your experience. When the microlationship ends, you will hopefully have a new aggregate opinion about what you feel is important to you in a partner. Ideally, many of these traits will be completely contradictory. I'm not trying to say that the end result should be the realization that your preconceptions are all unfounded. However, a fundamental part of the microlationship experience is not just to discover what you like, but to discover that some of the things you felt you preferred aren't as critical as you might have otherwise expected.


Because you go into a microlationship knowing that it will not develop into a long-term relationship, you can "afford" to be less selective about the partners you choose. I can fairly confidently say that I would probably never consider a long-term relationship with a woman who has a tattoo on her face. But if I could spend a couple of weeks with such a person, I'm equally confident that it would have a significant effect on my perception of others and benefit me overall. Microlationships are an opportunity to experience the world without being laden with the sort of long-term thinking that leads us to be both self-conscious with and overly critical of other.


The reason for the relatively short duration of a microlationship is to compel you to continue to process with a new partner. The assumption is that you will discover the most when your excitement about the relationship is at its growing. As the excitement subsides, the opportunity for new knowledge and experience also falls off. Again, the goal is not to hoard the pleasure of the "initial bliss", but to take advantage of the accompanying passion, obsession, and thirst for discovery. It's such a remarkable thing to find out that another person actually exists in this world, and it's in that initial phase of being swept up in that person's narrative that we're most attentive to every little detail, and most likely to be open-minded about them.


Logistics


So far, this concept is entirely theoretical. As such, I don't have a sense of how best to go about starting microlationships. I'm making the rather generous assumption that greater than 90% of women (depending on their age, I suppose) would flatly refuse to consider this type of thing. Chances are excellent that anyone on a "dating" website is looking only for a long-term relationship, and would interpret a microlationship as a synonym for a "No Strings Attached" hookup. It's probably not possible to convince such a person otherwise, at least not in the context of proposing a date.


The other side of the coin are women who are explicitly looking for casual relationships primarily motivated by sex. I would assume that such a person would have a much higher standard for the physical attractiveness of their partner, which probably restricts their pool of applicants to the top 98th percentile in terms of looks. That said, this isn't really an appropriate candidate for a microlationship anyway, owing to the importance of deep and meaningful, however brief they may be.


So, while this idea looks good on paper, it may be prohibitively difficult to put into practice, unless I'm lucky enough to start a movement that sweeps the nation, and Microlationship dating sites start popping up.


I should briefly talk about the ethics of this, specifically with respect to how much the partner should know about your intentions. It's probably borderline evil to begin a microlationship with a person who does not know that it's a microlationship. Unless the person is prepared for the relationship to end at around the time things seemed to be going perfectly, the sudden break up is probably going to be ugly, and harmful to the person. In no way are microlationships meant to take unfair advantage of the other person. It's possible that the value of a microlationship may be dependent on whether the partner is informed or not, but I'm just not going to consider that at this point. For now, every microlationship will begin with full disclosure. 


That said, there's no guarantee, or even high probability, that two people voluntarily engaging in a microlationship will reach the critical point at the same time. While you may have decided that it's time to end things, the other person may still be ascending that slope. Although you both theoretically know what to expect, and that the relationship won't last forever, it's possible that this sudden severing will still come as a shock. There's a good chance that despite the verbal agreements and conscious decisions of both partners, one or both of the individuals will still harbor unconscious hope that they will stay together for the long-term. I guess what I'm saying is, assume that when the microlationship ends, so will any kind of relationship with that person. I don't know how likely it is for a microlationship to transition into a traditional friendship after, but I assume that will be the exception.


Purging the Mystical, and Distilling Happiness 


Many will condemn this concept for apparently trivializing the value of relationships. Those people may have a right to be threatened. One of the benefits of engaging in a series of microlationships is the change it is likely to produce in your perception of the significance of relationships with others. Microlationships shrug off the burden of "soulmates", "Mr Right", and "True Love" in favor of greatly increased honesty with oneself, and a more realistic and genuine appreciation for your partner. It casts aside the notion of "Fairy Tale" romance in favor of clarity. The goal is to see things for what they are, and not to be deluded either by fictional accounts of relational bliss, nor by the chemicals our bodies produce to convince us to get on with the pair bonding and reproduction in order to ensure our genetic legacy. 


I don't want to think of relationships as magical, or mystical, or fated. I want to think of them as a mature, honest, happy experiences shared by two people. But to be truly happy I think it's necessary to have broad exposure to a range of experiences, instead of unconsciously fabricating a reason why the relationship you happened upon is perfect, and that you could not be happier with anyone else. Eventually the self-deception will catch up with you, and will generally signal the mortality of the relationship.


In Plain Words


I don't know what I want in a woman. And I don't think I can know simply by thinking about it for a few hours. I worry that I will either choose to be alone for the rest of my life, motivated by my inability to commit to something unknowable, or I will eventually make an uninformed decision for the sake of approximating a "normal" life.


Perhaps for some, microlationships are redundant. Perhaps they dated a lot throughout their lives, unconsciously engaging in microlationships along the way. For my part, I can only claim to have been involved in two real relationships, both of which lasted years, with one awkward romance in between. The thought of going out and seeking another long-term relationship is as daunting to me as expecting to enroll in a PhD program in a field I've never studied. I believe I'm not only unqualified to be in a long-term relationship, I don't have a reasonable sense of what I'm actually looking for. 


It's possible that my experiment with microlationships won't get off the ground, and I realize the irony of spending the time writing up a paper on Microlationships before even giving the real thing a try. My hope is that I am able to make progress on this front. I predict that these experiences would cause me to be more open to the world, more likely to engage with other people, and less pessimistic about the worth of strangers. 


I guess, in the end, I don't want to be alone. That doesn't necessarily mean I ultimately hope to be with one person for the rest of my life. It means that I don't want to feel like I spent my entire life only within my own mind. 

The effects of alcohol

For the first time in my life that I'm aware of, I drank a "significant" amount of alcohol on two consecutive weekends. I think it's not being too conservative to estimate that in all the time I've been alive, I've probably consumed alcohol on fewer than 50 discrete occasions, almost always in the form of a single beverage, such as a beer or a glass of wine. Of the times I've had enough alcohol to have an effect on my perception of behavior, it's not more than 10 times, and I'd say about half were loosely-controlled experiments to see how the alcohol would affect me. For me to drink socially, without strictly monitoring how much I consume, is very rare.

But last weekend Heather came down to help me move into my new apartment, and then we went out to a bar in Cambridge to meet some friends of hers. Since I lived within walking distance of the bar, I wasn't concerned about having too much, and so I did, in the form of three beers over about two hours. Then this weekend I went up to visit my sister Dianna, and proceeded to play a game of Catan with her and Arthur while Arthur instructed me in the the technique I'd heard about before involving a short of tequila, a lime wedge, and some salt on the back of your hand. I believe in this case I consumed 5 shots of tequila over the course of about as many hours.

For whatever reason, I can't get intoxicated without becoming curious about and introspective of my intoxication. This typically manifests itself in my desire to stack blocks if I've been drinking, to observe to what degree the alcohol has reduced either my physical dexterity of mental reasoning skills. Last night may not have been a fair test, however, as all I had to stack were Catan pieces, and those are hard to stack while sober. However, at the point I considered myself the most "drunk", I had no trouble rejecting Arthur's plan to leave the house and ignite an illegal firework.

Dianna can give her appraisal of my behavior while drinking, but I believe that aside from being more inclined to lean sideways in my chair, and introduce more non sequitur topics, my impression was that I was not significantly different than I would otherwise be when sitting around playing a game in the company of people with whom I'm generally comfortable in the first place. I'm fairly confident that my concern over appearing stupid is significantly reduced though, making me more likely to blurt out things that pop into my head that might have been filtered when I was completely sober.

In any event, the most profound thing I've noticed, this weekend and the last, with respect to drinking alcohol, is a curious phenomenon that accompanied each new intake. This only occurred once I already believed myself to be intoxicated. From that point on, about five minutes after every new shot I drank (or beer I drank last week), I entered into a brief period where I suddenly believed myself to be extremely sober. The physical effects of the alcohol were not apparent to me. That is, normally when I'm drunk I feel a little bit like I'm under water, and that there's some delay in my perception when looking from one thing to another. But during this short window, I felt like I hadn't had anything to drink at all, which is extremely curious. Of course, within five minutes of that I was completely obviously intoxicated, but those periods of clarity are interesting.

I've heard that drunk people often over estimate their abilities while drunk, especially with respect to their ability to drive a car. Perhaps I am beginning to understand why that is.

Well, it's good to have a sense of how much alcohol I can drink before it has a significant effect on me. But at the end of the day, whether I have anything to drink or not has not impact on whether I will enjoy myself, it turns out. Maybe it's useful in cases where I'm meeting strangers, and I'd otherwise me insecure if completely sober. But I'm definitely aware of a sense of satisfaction of being completely in control of myself, compared to the feeling I have when I've had a lot to drink, in which case I feel like I'm more inclined to shrug my shoulders and let things play out without my direct involvement.

The thing I find funny is that in sitting here thinking, "Do I look forward to drinking again?", the vast majority of my motivation to drink is to have another opportunity to observe the specific effects it has on me, provided I'm in an environment in which I'm confident that a complete loss of rational judgement on my part would not get me into trouble. However, that kind of introspection doesn't combine well with the social aspect of drinking, which I suppose is to let go a little and enjoy myself. The obvious solution, as a way to combine the two objectives, is probably to bring a Jenga set with me the next time I'm planning to drink.