So every few years when I feel like my life is beginning to spin out of control little by little I do a “Sam Cleanse”. Let me clarify all of this by saying that considering I am a control freak, when I say spinning out of control I mean it’s probably barely perceptible to others around me. These cleanses often come about when I’ve overstretched myself and am pulling my proverbial personality muscle. I’m a very social person, if you are reading this you must know that about me. This often means that after living in a place for several years I have amassed several groups of very good friends. Don’t get me wrong, I love all my friends here in Atlanta… they just all seem to know how to get me into trouble. So through a series of mistakes in judgment it is time for my cleansing. This has happened to me twice before… once at Wellesley, and the other time a few years into grad school in Philly. I won’t go into what brought around the latest if just to say that they were not so egregious as to corrupt me morally, have me waking up in a strangers bed, or having to call someone to bail me out of jail.
So you might be asking yourself what goes into the Sam Cleanse. Well I’ll tell you:
The first usually involves the correction of overindulgence on my part. Nope, I don’t mean I’m an alcoholic (highly functioning or not) needing a drink every night. I just need to remember that although I have a big personality I’m actually a wee person, and should never try to match drinks with friends. Not such an issue when I was in undergrad… the joy of having so many asian friends is that they can’t drink that much or they’ll get the asian flush, and for the most part I was into my fancy mixed drink or wine phase then anyway. Grad school was a different story and I still blame Tim and Scott for several incidents involving boot-and-rally on my part, since I am notorious for mixing beverages. Lately, for those that know me I’ve switched to hard liquor so as to not continue on the path of the feared beer gut my mom scolded me for at xmas time. Well, needless to say I’ve discovered that just a few vodka gimlets will do just fine, and I really should try to avoid any more than 2… if you really must know I’ll tell you the story, but I’ll be damned if I’m putting it in writing. This doesn’t mean I’m cutting out the fun that is involved with an occasional glass of happy juice, but I need to lower my tolerance again… cause cheap drunks are more fun right?
This leads me to my second cleanse… acting like a dude all the time. When I say this I don’t mean you’ll catch me walking around spitting, scratching my junk and catcalling women that pass by. What I’m saying is that my mind often times thinks like a 12-year old boys… always inappropriate. I knew I’d gone too far when I actually made my raunchy guy friends blush from something I said… once again it was funny, but not at all appropriate for print. I’m not saying that I will be able to change this about my personality, but I will just monitor the verbal diarrhea that seems to spew from my mouth and just think it rather than giving it voice. But if you ever look at me and see me smirk after someone has said something fairly leading you can rest assured I’ve just thought something that would make my grandmother blush.
My third cleanse is related to the second. All this time around guys… and a vast majority of my girlfriends (Heidi, Maura, etc…) has led me to have a mouth like a GD sailor. There is nothing more unattractive than a woman dropping the f-bomb all the time. I think I started doing it a while ago to announce my independence and feel like a grownup. It hasn’t gotten any better being in a male dominated profession, and so now it’s time for me to clean my own mouth out with soap.
The last isn’t so much a cleanse as a simplification. I’ve gotta be a little bit more ego-centric. I know it sounds a little ridiculous, especially considering I’m an only child and therefore already pretty selfish, but it should be all about me. I’m gonna get back to doing stuff that’s just for me, like going to coffee shops, taking walks/runs, maybe even throw in an adult education class (spanish, oil painting… pole dancing).
Well, we’ll see how it goes. It usually takes a few weeks/months to bring out the full awesomeness that is me… so let me know how it goes when you see me the next time.