I Don't Beer Anymore.

They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated; men of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground.
Hebrews 11:37-38

Reputation is an oddity. Rotten, despicable people are fawned over as the world pets their every image, the sick selfish have reps as philanthropists, but good and Godly people are branded as haters and cast out. Who can control how others see you? There's perceptive whimsy to every reputation - and many times it's simply inside out. If character is Who You Are When No One's Looking, reputation is Who You Are Depending On Who's Looking. Beauty based on the eye of the beholder.

There was a distant time when the World's Biggest Dallas Cowboys Fan was my reputation. I would get coffee mugs and baseball caps with blue stars on them as gifts. So pleased to have outlived that. 

I've spent the last year and a half repeating the same line to everyone who talks up beer with me, verbatim: I don't really drink beer anymore. Some few are warming up to the notion that there's truth to it. Some of even my closest friends and relations still haven't heard my seriousness, though. A reputation is hard to overcome.

After a Christmas of getting gifted with bombers of IPA This and Crafty-Stout That from co-workers, on New Year's day 2015, I stopped and looked at the back of my car. Over time, most of the space had gotten covered with stickers for brewery This and IPA That, and in the seeing, I hit the realization that not only was I now known as the Beer Guy, but I'd been feeding the notion that I was the Beer Guy. I didn't like that. I didn't want to rep the Beer Guy anymore.
That was the initial impression - just a mental note: Beer has become too much of your identity. But I didn't make a New Year's resolution to stop pouring beer down my reputation's throat. Beer took a while before its glass was emptied, even though there were layers of reasons to stop beering during 2015.  

When you're a homebrewer with 10 gallons of exactly-the-beer-you-love-because-you-custom-made-it in your fridge, having a beer every night as you walk in the house is an easy habit to cultivate. A tipping point telling moment was reading some of Dan John's wisdom, as he pointed out that most of evening drinking is simply thirst. Snapping out of that impulsive reaching for a beer and instead, grabbing a water required a nudge. Right at that time, I caught the Bakersfield-air-sucks-in-January respiratory infection and felt like crap, drinking only bottles of Perrier and eating nothing. After getting well, I just stuck with the bubbly water, reaching for a bottle of Pellegrino in the evenings instead of a homebrew for refreshment. 

Also, I spent 2015 depressed. Drinking a depressant while depressed, should be an easy out - who needs to drink to feel worse? Not the wise course. I was wise enough to try to exercise right and eat right and sleep right to work at elevating right up out of the blues. Beer wasn't part of the elevation plan. This is a fact, and it cannot be disputed: Beer is bad for you. Worse than bad; maybe the worst foodstuff ever. Sick and sad and sloppyfat and sluggish, thank you beer.

Later, with some household financial belt-tightening, beer money became food money. It's easy to cut down on your brewing and brewery sessions when you don't have enough money to buy beer. And when you don't have enough money to buy beer, your beer drinking friends stop calling. So peer pressure diminished with the bank accounts.

So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord…
Ephesians 5:17-19

I'm not playing on the ragged edge of dissipation anymore. Dissipation is a strong word. Can you say it and hiss the esses, and hear the air going out of your spiritual tires as the Holy Spirit evaporates? Life without God in it is flat. This is just an extension of why I don't beer anymore: why I don't whiskey anymore, why I don't wine anymore. Whiskey and wine won't make you sloppyfat, but they will make you sick and sad and sluggish, and drunk. And, if there's any truth to the Bible, then drunkeness is trading the indwelling presence of the God of the Universe for a buzz. Not a trade up, in my Biblebook. I want the Holy Spirit more than anything.

Like I said, lots of reasons why to Not Beer. I haven't been a pilgrim about it; I've had a beer here or there to be sociable, but most of the time, I've not finished them. I was always a beer snob, and truth be told, most of the best of what's brewed out there now doesn't taste good to me. 

I don't really drink beer anymore. I've said it for a year and a half now. I don't really drink beer anymore. I don't really beer anymore. I don't beer anymore. I don't beer. I don't.

Beer's a fading echo of someone I used to be, someone I'm not now. People who don't know who I'm becoming still don't know it yet. Because, a reputation, once earned, is a sticky thing to outlive. I hope to see if I can't replace it with something else. Someone else. Man of Whom The World Was Not Worthy has a nice ring to it. I will pour myself into that.