I'll just have a Diet Coke.

So, I'm clawing back to normalcy after an extremely rough work week last week. My company had its annual conference last week, and it involves many, many extra hours, mostly on my feet, with very little sleep. I've decided I'm getting too old for all that.

I'm also much too old to do things like getting shit-faced drunk in front of my co-workers and professional peers, to the point that I'm drunk-crying in a service area beause I can't find my purse, and other professional people who are actually *working* the event I'm at must be assigned to me as a "keeper" because no one is sure I won't end up falling face-first down an escalator in the foyer. I have discovered that other people in my industry are NOT too old for this, despite the fact that they are a good 10-15 years older than I am. There's a word for that: pathetic.

Now, I'll admit that I pretty much don't drink anymore. J doesn't drink and doesn't like it if I do, and it wasn't an important enough activity for me to keep doing it if it bothered him. So, I'm admittedly out of that lifestyle to a great degree. But even before I started dating J, I had come to the conclusion that heavy drinking was probably something I'd do best to avoid, based on how I felt the next day. Yes, there's the obvious: a hangover. I despise feeling sick and losing the entire next day to feeling like shit and knowing I'd done it all to myself. It rarely seemed worth it in the light of day.

But there was also the anxiety. I'd often find myself replaying the night before and wondering how big of an ass I'd made of myself. Had I been annoying? Had I said something embarrasing? Did I just plain look like a stupid drunk? I never, ever came away feeling like, "Wow, I really did myself a favor last night!" So, J notwithstanding, I'd come to the conclusion that large amounts of alcohol really didn't serve me well on the whole.

So, it surprises me that other people go year after year, getting older, growing wiser, but they don't seem to learn that lesson. I'm not talking about a glass of wine with dinner or the occasional extra cocktail or two that leaves a gregarious buzz - I'm talking about can-barely-walk, might-throw-up, slurring, gonna-wanna-die-in-the-morning sauced.

And if you didn't want to give up that lovely experience for life, wouldn't you at least decide at some point that your best bet is to reserve that condition for family and friends, who love you, not people you have to work with, either in-house or customers - people who need to believe in your competence and judgement in order to do business with you? If nothing else, it just doesn't seem like a good professional choice.

But maybe I'm missing something important in the corporate culture. Maybe that's why I haven't climbed "the ladder" any further than I have. Luckily, I'm not really interested in climbing much higher. I'm pretty sure I'd just end up falling off after a few drinks.