Happy Hour or the Gym?

Matthew McConaughey hot and
muscled in Fool's Gold

So tonight I did something that I usually do: I went to the gym after work. It's what I always do. I finish my work day and if I am not supposed to have a rest day from working (the dreaded rest day! I hate those! What are you supposed to do if you can't go to the gym!!!) I can usually be found heading to the gym for a workout. But tonight there was a happy hour with people from my LGBT group from work and to be social and meet some gay people I do not know from my office I could have gone and had some seltzer and maybe made some new friends. But nope, I went to the gym. And I wouldn't have had it any other way.

It's amazing what can happen in a year. Pre-clean living, I wouldn't have thought twice about what to do. It would have been the bar, hands down. Even if I hadn't gone to the gym the last two days, which is the case so far this week (I went four days in a row prior to that without any rest so I was due a few days off), I would have made somebody convince me to go to happy hour with the group.

Actually, I would have been the person instigating everyone to go to the happy hour. I would have been excited knowing it was coming all day. I would have longed for the vodka tonic and the cigarettes that would have come along with it. I would have ordered more than one and smoked half a pack and it would have resulted in me coming home tipsy and eating crap food and not sleeping well and feeling guilty in the morning for having skipped out on the gym and I would have gone the next day and not been 100% and pushed myself and felt like crap.

But that is no longer the case.
That is what the former version of myself would have done. Now I didn't even consider the happy hour. The moment I saw the invite to the HH I thought to myself "oh, I can't make that because that's when I'll be working out." There was no debate. There never is. I have replaced my previous addiction with a new one. I guess at least this one is healthy for me.

This addiction is helping me try to attain a better body. This addiction is helping me achieve a goal, a dream, an obsession even, that I have wanted to achieve for years. Yes, apparently I have an addiction problem.

People used to ask me how not drinking has affected my social life, and I tell them it has irrevocably changed my social habits. I used to be the guy every bartender knew, the guy who was "the local barfly", the guy who would get free drinks from the waitstaff. Now I'm vaguely familiar to some people, living off the heyday that once was. I've sort of started the transition from smoker/drinker Matthew McConaughey to healthy/muscled Matthew McConaughey. I'm still working on the muscled. But I'm trying. And hey, trying is all you can do, right?

But it's just funny to think that at one point in my life happy hour would have won out over working out and now it's the complete opposite. Priorities change. I can say I'm happy that mine have shifted. It was important for them to change for my health and I get an added benefit that helps my vanity. :)

If only my gym had happy hour at their smoothie station...