After 4 months of daily beer tracking, I must say I'm feeling a little over the whole thing. I'm beginning to remember why I stopped using Untappd in the first place and the mere act of having to put every damn pint into it is beginning to feel like a second job. I mean, I've written a daily beer review on Instagram for almost 2000 days in a row...wait is that right...yep, 1997 and counting...there's a post in there I'm sure that will get somebody angry at me or something, but that's not what this is about. I gotta keep on, keepin' on
I persist because that is what I do, always.
So let's get into the numbers and what we've learned this month, the very first one to average less than 4 beers a day...albeit at 118 check-ins in 30 days it comes in at 3.93, so just barely. Honestly on the 30th I was gonna have a couple more beers but when I saw that number I kinda wanted to hold it down just to say I did it. Overall I liked the direction the month took, more than half the days were under 3 beers a day, especially pleased that on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday (typically work nights for me), that average was 2 beers or less, something I actively worked on. The struggle remains those evenings when there is no work the next day or the ones where I let my stress and anxiety get the better of me or just want to blow off a little steam with a couple extra pints.
I'm trying to quantify the hard to quantify here, so I also don't want to come off as glib or dismissive of my life or how I live it. I like to drink beer and talk about what's going on in my world while I do it, so I'm trying to find the right balance in the whole thing and I hope this is helping somehow...
First 15 days rolled in with a solid 60% of the 56 beers to pour in my glass unique entries, a good indicator that this was part of trying to focus on talking about different beers and not just pounding a couple of go-to pints just because. There are still a couple days well over what I consider to be the upper, normal limit, but with the weather warming, I feel like this is an indicator of where we could be heading despite more than half the days being 2 or less.
The back half of April had some real work stress giving my ability to stay on that under 4 line a run for it's money. Toss in some real patio worthy afternoons and you can see that 33 of 63 beers were just for enjoying and not so much about the writing or discussing flavour profiles and the like. It felt like there were some days I wanted to just chuck this whole thing onto the waste bin of bad ideas, but I still think there is some merit to keeping myself honest and real, regardless of whether I like the numbers or what they say about me and my self control...or lack thereof.
Perhaps I have just become bored by this or that the numbers seem to be relatively the same and constant. around 4 beers a day with a good smattering of single beer days coupled together with some nights of 8 plus pints seems to be the story every month. I am not sure it does much good, although I do enjoy breaking the information down, it gives me an inside look at things I already suspected were true. I do have a lot of free time away from work, I don't really have hobbies or people to distract me, I drink some beers, write about it and then go read a book or watch something to distract me from the dwindling hours of freedom left before bed time. I know this is a self indulgent look at a tiny slice of life that I dare share with the world. I am not pretty or tied up in a bow and presentable to an audience. I basically am as I seem, leaning into a life lived at full speed for a long time, now idling and waiting for the light to change. What's next isn't really on my mind as much as why? Why do we do this stuff? Why do we feel compelled to share our beer online or take time to write and photograph this fraction of who we are? Why are their people invested in what I do when I could care less myself? It's become an inward looking, outward facing 6 year experiment in examining my life using craft beer as a backdrop. I am compelled to tell stories and wander through the vague and never changing landscape that is my rather sedentary world.
I re-read this last part and it seems a little maudlin. I could delete it, but let's leave it in for the sake of argument when we get to the end of the year and look back at each month. April was a stress filled slog at work and while I did get my first dose of vaccine, there were a lot of days I struggled to get motivated enough to get out of bed and head in for my ten-plus hour shifts. I feel better now, but something about last month was just off. Lucky for me I have beer to drink and talk about, pints to be inspired by and words to try and help me explain myself to you all out there doing you're very best at the same time. I'll put this out there now, May is off to a bit of a roaring start, so I'll see you in 3 weeks or so and examine what the hell that all turned out to be.
Stay safe.
Polk
Now for the raw numbers, nerd Polk approved...
Beers by the day
Sunday - 13 (3.25 per day)
Monday - 5 (1.25)
Tuesday - 6 (1.50)
Wednesday - 22 (5.50)
Thursday - 23 (4.60)
Friday - 25 (5.00)
Saturday - 24 (6.00)
Unique Beers - 63/118 (53.4%)
Beers by Brewery
Collective Arts Brewing - 8 unique beers
Nickel Brook Brewing - 6
Fairweather Brewing - 6
Badlands Brewing - 5
Great Lakes Brewery - 5
Grain & Grit Beer Co - 5
Overflow Brewing - 5
Beers
Nickel Brook Brewing Headstock IPA - 8 timesCollective Arts English IPA - 4
Wellington Brewery Faces DIPA - 3
Fairweather Brewing Menagerie Motueka 3
Merit Brewing Young Rival IPA - 3
