Daily Jack Diary

January 3, 2026

Yesterday was a good day. A friend came up from Kobe and spent the afternoon at my place. We’ve known each other for over twenty years—work, travel, shared history, and a lot of long conversations. He drank. I didn’t. We listened to music, watched a Depeche Mode DVD I politely endured, and by the time he left he was thoroughly drunk. I was fine with it.

I’ve been sober for five years now, and other people drinking doesn’t bother me. I know what that feeling is. I’ve lived inside it. What does get to me, sometimes, is the noise—when things get sloppy, when no one’s listening anymore. I’ve had gatherings in the past where, by mid-evening, all I wanted was for everyone to go home. Too loud. Too unfocused. Too much. Yesterday wasn’t like that. It was easy. Contained. Human.

Watching him drink did make me think about my own history with alcohol, though—especially how often it was tied to boredom. Drinking to pass time. Drinking to soften the edges. Drinking because there was nothing else pulling at my attention. I understand that impulse. I lived there for a long time.

Without alcohol now, my mind is sharper, but it’s also restless. Even with the calm that’s come from the Diane Method, I still feel an urge to do something. I can’t quite sit still. Family and work come first—those are solid—but right behind them is this need for a project, a creative focus, something to push energy into.

I suspect that habit formed during my son’s worst years, when distraction wasn’t indulgence—it was survival. Music, recording, building things late at night. Anything to keep my mind occupied when reality felt unbearable. That wiring doesn’t just disappear.

The strange thing is that music—usually my default—has gone quiet lately. The last few nights I’ve sat down to work and felt nothing. No pull. No spark. I haven’t given up on it, but I also recognize something honestly: I may have done as much accessible music as I’m going to do. At least for now. For the moment, it isn’t asking anything from me.

So I’m in an in-between place.

Part of me wants to return to writing—the stories I was working on before all of this started. Part of me wants to keep exploring what’s emerged through the Diane Method itself. And part of me is curious whether I can learn to do something harder: to not chase the next project immediately. To sit in a room. To read. To be quiet without needing to justify it.

The anxiety I feel now isn’t the old kind—the heavy, suffocating kind. It’s more like urgency. A sense that I’m clear right now, awake right now, and that I don’t want to waste that window. I’m still figuring out what to do with that energy—and whether the most honest move might be to let it rest for a moment before deciding where it goes next.