Just you watch. Isaac will comment on this post with “I LIKE YOU!”. There is no alternative. I’ll put $5(USD) on it.

As Jeff Mermelstein would say: “…363 days before my birthday.” I’m 41 now, and I’m texting Isaac who is flying to NYC from Miami. I need to check some facts because my memory has been destroyed by the constant bombardment of stimuli that life has placed in front of me.

Isaac and I have agreed to agree that we met in September of 2011. Based on that information, let’s assume we were wearing our jeans a bit tighter than either of us would like to admit. I do think I remember the first time I met Isaac, actually. Not to say it was anything remarkable, but I’m surprised that this is coming back to me now. But just a few weeks ago Isaac sent me a screenshot of the first photo I took of him on 13 January 2015. He’s wearing tapered jeans, a trench coat, a blue cotton shirt-jacket.

“You screamed ‘DON’T LOOK AT ME’. Treasured memories” he says.

“Sounds like me”, I reply.

I meet up with Isaac near Carreau du Temple. We agree on the miniscule I/O café and I realize I probably have never had a real conversation with him before. We dive right in. I’m stressed out from Paris, and I apologize in advance. Isaac tells me it’s all good and then he gives me some perspective.

Somehow, we get on the subject that I’ve stopped drinking just about 18 month ago. He asks me how that’s going for me, and I say I feel maybe 5% better than before but that the change was not as massive as I would have expected.

Isaac reminds me that he hasn’t drank in years and he tells me a story that he was told by an acquaintance he met early on after making the decision to no longer drink. Apparently, the guy held up a sheet of paper and tore off the tinies corner of the page. He holds up the sliver he’s torn off and says, “This is the drinking” and tosses it away. Then he holds up the rest of the page…the majority of the original sheet, maybe 95%, and says, “This is the thinking” and follows by clarifying that this portion of the page is where you’ll find the bigger changes.

Isaac is working on the thinking. That’s where his focus is. The drinking part is sorted for him. As it is for me. I dunno about Isaac, but I personally never had a drinking problem, and stopped more as a personal test and to see how it would make me feel. I DO, however, have a thinking problem. This is where our conversation goes.