Off Dry
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Hi! I'm Kristi Coulter, a writer living in Seattle. Off-Dry is my blog about getting and staying sober in a world that's often three sheets to the wind. It's also about music and running and my neurosis du jour, but it was born when I decided to clean up my act in June 2013, and sobriety is still at its heart.
Off Dry
3y ago
This counts as a messy desk for me, believe it or not. I’m slightly stressed just looking at it now.
I’m nearly finished with the draft of my next book, a memoir about the twelve years I worked for Amazon as, you know, a woman. I have a fairly granular list of what’s left to do on this draft and every day I look for something that seems doable and I do it and then I get the incredibly disproportionate satisfaction of crossing it off. (I was one of those kids who was a sucker for a chore chart. LOVE to cross things off.)
I’m starting to run out of the tasks that seem doable, but I can’t think a ..read more
Off Dry
3y ago
Aimee Mann is, of course, second to none in the Deadpan Kiss-Off genre. But for me, this somber ballad from Welcome Home delivers a much more devastating blow in its recognition that when two people split, what’s lost is not just the attention they paid to each other, but the specific, inimitable quality of that attention. I’ve been hearing it in my head lately because I’ve been thinking about what it means to be watching someone and then to stop. Over the past couple of years, I had occasion to spend a lot of time doing the former, and now I don’t, and it feels strange, by which I mean uncom ..read more
Off Dry
3y ago
A prefatory note: This post is not about my sobriety, though it was written in sobriety. I’ve been sober for almost eight years now, and I don’t have brand-new things to say about it as often as I used to. And yet, it informs every bit of who I am and the decisions I make. Sobriety is my landscape. So I’d like to widen Off-Dry’s aperture a bit and occasionally share parts of that landscape that aren’t quite as directly on-topic as you may be used to. I hope you’ll come along? (And not to worry, I’ll still be writing about sobriety when the mood or insight strike.)
John gave me this necklace ye ..read more
Off Dry
4y ago
Elijah Muhammad with Malcolm X. No, it’s not random. Patience! Read the post! (Also: isn’t Malcolm so handsome?)
At some point in this pandemic I lost the ability to carry anything lightly. It’s never come easily, has always required effort; yes, I’ve worked hard at lightness. But now there’s no fighting it. Seriousness has descended on me like a giant hoop skirt; it sways in front of me, clearing a path, establishing a perimeter. It might repel people if there were people around to repel.
I suspect the rapid-fire, largely unmarked deaths of one hundred and fifty-nine thousand Americans ..read more
Off Dry
4y ago
Heyyyyyy party people! It’s been a few months. Is everyone having an awesome summer?!?!
It’s funny because it’s sad. Ha! Ha!
I generally try to write some words of reflection or wisdom on my soberversaries, something about what I learned in the previous year. But then came the spring of 2020. Fuck, man. I’m not sure I have a lot to offer this time around. Unless you’re low on cortisol, in which case, bring your own barrel and fill it up! No charge.
Seattle went into lockdown early and stayed there for over ten weeks. It was absolutely the right decision. We had America’s first major clu ..read more
Off Dry
5y ago
I laughed yesterday at the start of this otherwise long, dark chat with a friend freaking out over, you know, the possibly post-Constitutional state the United States is entering. ‘Don’t drink’ was probably sincerely meant on some level, but hearing it in his sardonic Boston voice—”two words of advice for you, boss,” I imagined him saying, “boss” being his nickname for me (I have no idea why)—kind of cracked me up.
Then I gasped at the realization that drinking hadn’t even occurred to me. Which is a huge, huge fucking change that happened when I wasn’t looking sometime between the night Don ..read more
Off Dry
5y ago
[First, a quick announcement that I have an essay called “Yes, And” forthcoming from Amazon Original Stories on July 30th, and you can pre-order it here for just $1.99! This is a long, meaty piece about marriage, monogamy, and secrets. It took me three years to write and I really hope you enjoy reading it. (AOS publications are only available in the Kindle universe, but that doesn’t mean you need to own a Kindle–you can also just download the free Kindle app to your computer or phone.)]
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My early soberversaries felt like all-out celebrations. Now I also recognize them as the anniversaries of ..read more