What's Your Brandy Alexander?



Brandy Alexander: a sweet, brandy-based cocktail consisting of cognac and crème de cacao that became popular during the early 20th century. No wonder it always gets you into trouble. Goes down easy.

I suppose I am returning to the roots of my blog in this post. As much fun as analyzing The Bachelor, begging you people to "follow" me, and destroying childhood memories of winter wonderlands past is, figured it was time to have some more substantial discussion. Don't worry- I'm sure I'll be inspired by something random again soon enough.

I would also like to credit Feist with tonight's title. What a timely track to pop up as I sit down to start writing.

Do you ever notice certain patterns and bad habits that you just can't quit? Ok, stupid question, of course you do. And if you don't...well...this is not going to be easy to hear...but...you're in denial. We all have our Brandy Alexanders, our vices, our Achilles Heels, our Kryptonites. This is not unique to any of us. If you recall, I first started writing this blog to help myself take a look at the things that I am doing in my life, whether right or wrong, and basically use you all as a forum to bounce ideas and thoughts off of. Mostly a way for others who may have similar challenges or who have experienced the ones that I can't quite conquer to share. So tonight, this week, lately really, I've been mulling over the idea of bad patterns and poor decisions. Not so much why do we make them- afterall, mistakes are important to make- but why do we continue to make them? Is there any easy way to break the cycle?

Here's one of many great examples that has been on my mind: my calendar and the way that I schedule it. I have a consistently bad habit, for years, of overbooking and over commiting myself. Almost anyone who has ever made a plan with me can speak to this point. I am always running from one place to the other and cutting timing just a little too close, often leaving myself with no down time and lots of stress. Yet I continue to do it. I don't just take the easy way out and say "no", instead I have clearly had too many years of brainwashing by Nike's "Just Do It" campaign so this is obviously not my fault. But, what if for just a very brief second, just for hypothetical purposes, we PRETEND that maybe this is of my own doing. Crazy, I know, but see if you can picture it. Why do I keep doing it? It's not as if I think "Hmm, this is an awful plan, but I think I'm going to do it anyway". It would almost be easier to fix this issue if I were able to recognize in the first place that I am repeating my own cycle. But 99% of the time, I don't even recognize what I have done until I am mid-act. And at the point, it's just too late. A checks and balances system would be helpful, but that's hard to do when I'm doing this alone. I suppose I could ask Mickey, but unless the decision is in regards to who can help me finish the last piece of cheese, he's actually pretty useless. Especially so, because I always finish it, duh.

But let's go back to our hypothetical situation where, hard as it would be to believe, I would be responsible for my own deicisions. I could only imagine that it would make said scenario even more frustrating if you actually make attempts to break these recognized patterns, yet somehow manage to make just a different version of the same bad decision. You notice that you are about to order another Brandy Alexander and realizing that you can't stomach another sweet cocktail, you go with a tequila shot instead. Different decision. Same vane. Still bad. The right decision? Order a glass of water. But you never come to that conclusion until the next morning, and then there's no going back.

Per usual, no answers, just food for thought. So make a drink and talk amongst yourselves :)