I’ve never been a new year new me person. In fact I’ve probably thrown around a few back-handed comments at some of you that base your lifestyle changes on the new upcoming year every year only to have it fall through the cracks before President’s Day.

Resolutionaries as I’d call them

2021 on January 1st, I had made a overnight decision to put the bottle down. The idea hadn’t occurred overnight it had been weighing on my mind for about 4 months. I woke up that morning and thought this would be the ideal date for me to come back to mostly due to it’s symbolism of fresh new number/start/calendar year.

So yeah, I get it. It could be called a resolution. I have never named it a resolution I’ll stick with my word “reckoning” it just fits what my mindset needed. It allows me to take it more seriously.

It was around 4 months in the making but it was the last 6 weeks that pushed me to my own little, personal salvation. I’m always good with the talk. It’s the walk that takes a moment to follow through. I’m an analyzer. Analytics is my strength if it’s my focal point and well, I am by nature my own biggest focal point seeing is I’ve only got one accurate POV to cling to. I’m with this guy 24-7 and I’ve started paying attention to everything he does and asking him (me) why? It’s a simple right of passage I go through now. Accountability as to why I do some of the things I do and the path that brought me here and there. Not a “what makes me tic?” I know how I tic. More of a “what got you here and where are we going next?”

I’m having a difficult time describing this. Also I received a new laptop from Santa to encourage my writing so I don’t journal from my phone and it’s taking me a minute to find my rhythm. I haven’t used a laptop in years. I went a little luddite after Covid and I’m ok with it. In fact soon I’ll be going even more unattached to some technological themes.

If it all falls into place.

I do miss auto correct instead of going back and fixing all the red squiggles that crop up while I peck at my keyboard like a hen.

Anyway

I have been going through this wild and ridiculous transition every year at this time for the last three years. I label the time frame as 6 weeks although it fluncuates a week or two here and there. My business ramps up for the stretch and it becomes a slow moving avalanche that as long as I stay healthy and focused I remain a safe distance from that avalanche then all is well on the coochie front. Sometimes that avalanche gets close enough to feel the snow on your shoulder. That wall of ice touching my cheek. My job is 90% timing. I don’t have a set schedule for the day. I may look at my calendar for the night before and think I can go in at 7am and within half an hour of more orders rolling in it becomes 4am. I’ve said it multiple times this is my harvest season. You can make as many boxes as you want or can. It’s entirely up to you. Every year I try to beat the year before and I do. And it takes a piece of me away for good.

This year it started slowly rolling in mid October and never stopped so my marathon extended a few miles. I usually don’t start my cadence until the second week of November. By November I could feel the ice breathing down my neck, my back.. It’s not with a sense of dread mind you I get myself jacked for it. It’s my time to shine. A point of pride of what I can accomplish.

It’s just a back breaker. It takes me about a week to recover. I’m on day two currently.

We did a fuck ton of charcuterie. I havent counted and probably won’t. It was more than before and then some.

What happens to me during this time frame is I go into work hibernation. My hobbies and resets also go into this status. I focus on charcuterie and nothing else. Christmas shopping is done online in one day after collecting ideas in September. I guess the positive side is it doesn’t allow me to procrastinate anymore. I don’t really see my family until Christmas Eve. I’m around them everyday. I pass them as I walk in the door after my shift, shower, eat and we will catch up in the living room for half an hour and then I go to bed. Jess is in the deli with me four days a week but it’s a blur and it’s all business when we work.

The first week is all about “HERE WE GO!” and by late December the word charcuterie makes me want to drive my car off a bridge.

Currently where I am right now. I have two boxes scheduled today and it will feel like someone is peeling my skin off. Not to worry yall story writing involves hyperbole. I’m grateful for the work I’m just tired and temporarily burned out.

It’ll pass it always does until it doesn’t.

What happens during this time is I sort of go into a meditative state and routine. My daily habits and rituals get pushed aside which takes me out of my comfort zone. I don’t get my daily walks or hikes, workouts, camping or my home toiling that keeps my mind going. It’s all work, no play, no habits.

It’s not a healthy lifestyle. It almost feels like a short annual prison term. 6 weeks (10 this year) of hard labor. One difference is I don’t have a bullet proof window or bars separating me from society. Just a yellow oak counter. I have a love/hate with it at the moment.

Love the cash.

Hate the crash.

But

BUT

Every year, each time, each post holiday I come out a different person on the other side.

Imagine an annual cycle of you getting your ass kicked on the regular, body beat to shit, high anxiety, under nourished, sleep deprived and unrelenting stress. There is no hyperbole in this statement this time. This is real. It’s wash, rinse and spin cycle without being taken out to dry.

But when I finally come out to dry it’s like breaking out of a mental cocoon. I’m no fucking butterfly by any means but it does change me every year. Sometimes and often times it’s my perspective on things. Sometimes it’s physical but always mental.

Charcuterie boot camp

Hell week volume 6 to 8

I come real close to either giving in or quitting but I don’t. Boy do I want to.

When I get into this time of year I don’t see food I see shapes. I see triangles, circles, angles, arcs, radius.

Food geometry.

High volume jigsaws

I’m building boxes and boards but my mind is elsewhere. Half the time if you’re talking to me I’m responding in trancey sentence fragments. I’m a thousand miles away. Some days I’m looking backwards. I’m sitting on my tailgate somewhere to help me take my mind off my back. I’m sipping coffee in my camping chair overlooking the gorge. I’m wrapped up in a blanket next to a campfire.

Other times I’m in my head thinking about tomorrow and that’s when I dream and manifest.

Assembly doesn’t require much thought once muscle memory kicks in. This is why I get selective on custom orders. Boxes take no thought anymore. Volume takes over.

This is also when I get in my head. When I’m tired and vulnerable. My interior dialogue gets raw. There’s no distractions when you’re tired. I mean real fucking tired. I’m not talking about sitting down on your sofa after work and channel surfing because you’re too tired to focus on 30 minutes of subject matter. I’m hyper focused in my own thoughts. This is probably why when my deli phone rings I flinch like someone swung at me. It breaks me out of my little trance.

I become analytical. I’m in a zone of self evaluation. I breakdown the filing cabinets in my mind, open the tabs and lay out all my folders in front of me.

Manifesting

Sometimes I’m fantasizing about a new camping adventure to take my mind off of the tasks at hand. Other times I’m planning my ideas like seeds for post holidays. Charcuterie has been great! The deli side took a dive while I dealt with it. Time to balance again.

Often times though I’m tearing myself down piece by piece. In my head I’m addressing shortcomings, mental conflict or bad habits I’ve accumulated over time. This is when food becomes shapes to me. I’m no longer focused on the actual task. Muscle memory takes over and I’m somewhere else in my mind. I seem to always be somewhere else when I work nowadays. If I’m interrupted during my cadence I’ll stop and just stare at my boxes at hand for a minute or two. It takes my brain a moment to wind back up to where I was before. It’s almost like stoic meditation. I go there to cancel out the exhaustion and old body aches and pains.

It’s hard to describe without sounding a little dramatic and yeah I know better than anyone else I have the tendency to lean that way it’s just how I’m wired

But

I get put through the fucking tree chipper and when I come out the other side I feel like a completely different person.

Every year (for the last three) I experience a shift in my thinking. Almost like a post grad course I just completed. There’s no specific subject matter involved, no light bulb or interjection of EUREKA! By Jove I think I’ve got it!

I come out of that exhausted work cocoon on December 24th and slowly over the progression of a few weeks I begin to notice different thought patterns from before, perspectives, habits and lifestyle changes.

Resolution from being stripped down bare for a few weeks?

Breaking my regular thought patterns to cause me to alter my interior dialogue?

New habits can form by going out of your comfort zone. I lose a few and gain a few after this tribulation. When you are inside your head long enough you get to ask yourself all sorts of questions. Really uncomfortable ones. I do this a lot and then I try to reckon with them.

I used to discard them.

I don’t have to write them down they’re in my head 16 hours a day when I’m in this realm. A mental dissertation.

I’ve heard of rehabs where they strip you down of all your belongings, outside communications, habits. They keep you in silent seclusion some places not even allowing you to speak. I felt this on the free range side. When I come out the other side generally I’m about 5-10 lbs lighter, weak and a tad malnourished. Just an example on my random days of rest I’ll eat from the moment I get up to the moment I go to bed. My body is trying to regain what it’s lost over the last month.

It leaves you feeling bare and empty.

But

It gives you an opportunity to refill, restock and rethink.

It’s like an annual mental oil change. Do I recommend it? I’m not entirely sure because I sure as fuck don’t like the process and terms. There’s no door to walk into or waiting room to fill out paperwork beforehand. One day you’re working and look at your schedule and your brain says “ok.. here we go” and then 6-8 weeks of your life are about to be whisked.

There isn’t hyperbole in that statement.

How is this beneficial it sounds miserable?

Let me tell you

It is

But

In retrospect this was exactly what I needed to answer and deal with my alcoholism. I wanted to stop drinking for years I just didn’t have the strength, the commitment. It terrified me. I had tried a few times and fell short embarrassingly quick each try.

My first holiday was fairly busy as was my second. It wasn’t until the second one that I got a full taste of charcuterie boot camp. 2021 I was in my feels about my drinking it had ramped up to championship level. While I had it in my mind that summer that I needed to quit it was the reckoning in my head during the holidays that secured it. Add to the environment that my work space at the time was a small 10 ish by 10 ish kitchen with no windows or even ventilation where I did my time for 60-70 hours a week. It messes with your mind when you’re knee deep in high volume and anxiety all the while feeling like you’re on a deserted island.

I had zero distractions to deal with my crumbling mental health. I do not recommend this for everyone. I’m not sure breaking yourself down while in solitary confinement is the best way to accomplish something. But it worked for me. At the end of that 6 week trial my interior dialogue “if you can get through this then why can’t you do the same with drinking?” And I said fine! I’ll try it.

1091 days later I have zero regrets

There was a little more involved than that but I’ve gone over that story quite a few times.

These 6-8 weeks weaken my resolve to the point of almost tears. I come out limping. I don’t wake Christmas Day with the hallelujah chorus playing in the background. I can barely recall my last three. It’s fuzzy. It may take a week or two to restart my computer but it comes around and I feel the changes in me. My mind is manifesting while I go through this process and I don’t even realize it.

“How can I improve my mind?

My body?

My soul?”

I come out the other side and perspectives change.

Gratitude

Relief

Mental strength

It makes sense to me now when my mind wants to dilly dally with new ideas and habits this time of year. I’ve been hyper focused on it subliminally. Your brain slowly starts to move in another direction.

It sees new scenarios on the horizon.

Exhaustive clarity

It changes your channel surfing

I’m doing my best to describe something that I’m just now discovering so if it seems like I’m all over the place it’s because I am all over the place..

Some fantasy took over this time. A change in direction of how I do certain things and what occupies my time and mind. It gives me a vague blueprint of what could be next if I take the time to manifest it. Last year the journey took me to build Graze. At the end of my season I rolled out of the Meadery with the thought of “this time next year I’ll have my own spot come hell or high water”

Manifestation

What’s next? Welp I can’t say yet it takes a little bit to wrap my head around my visions they aren’t exactly scripted.

But

It’s gettin there I can already feel some enlightenment in my instincts. You can exercise your instincts just as easy as you can do sit-ups once you know how to read yourself.

This isn’t to conclude that in 2025 my whole ass life will change. It may just do that but it’s not the requirement nor the quest. It’s only awareness that I have the ability to manifest improvement, balance and change at my fingertips.

I’m tired. I’m beat and have zero focus on anything but food and rest at the moment. My deli will be on autopilot for a few days while I reckon with my mind and physical health.

Prioritizing

And then

Manifesting into the new year

Cheers to 2025.