If this was 5 to 7 years ago, going to a happy hour after work would have meant stumbling home sometime around midnight too drunk to brush my teeth or take off my bra before bed.

These days, going to a happy hour after work means first coming home to write a piece I should have written two weeks ago (note to self: write book review immediately after reading book in question, as re-reading an entire memoir to get the voice again is infinitely more difficult than re-listening to an album), submitting said piece to my editor, and then going out for a happy hour but staying for just two beers and being home by 7pm.

I don’t even know what’s wrong with me anymore.

Friday nights used to be for going out and drinking and acting like an asshole, and now they’re for coming home, taking a sleeping pill, and watching an hour of The X-Files  (did you know that Dale from The Walking Dead is a scientist who gets eaten by an alien in the X-Files movie? He totally does!) before falling asleep. I mean, I guess I’m getting fucked up either way, but it’s a lot more pleasurable to feel that fuzzy doxylamide succinate wave creep across my brain* than it is to shout across a bar at people who are drunkenly trying to hook up with one another. And at least a sleeping pill lets me sleep for ten hours straight. Getting shithammered drunk only lets me sleep for five hours, and then I’m a shaking, nauseous mess for three before I can even think about taking a nap. I know it makes me a big old square, but I’ll take the sleeping pill, thanks.

Tonight’s happy hour was for a friend who got a new job. A new job outside the company, which is pretty much the only way to be promoted if you’re us. Constantly applying for and barely ever getting called back about jobs within the company gets discouraging after the third or eighth or fourteenth time, so eventually, most people start looking elsewhere.

Which is why I’ll start job hunting this summer. In Seattle. Oh, yeah, Graham and I are kind of borderline seriously talking about moving to Seattle. Um. Yeah. Whatever, guys, we’ll discuss it later. The X-Files is probably on.

*These sleeping pills are completely over the counter (and generic, which means I’m saving money!) and I’m not abusing them at all, seriously, I take maybe one every three weeks, and usually only half a pill. So please save your non-doctor medical opinions for someone who doesn’t watch Intervention.