I have a lot of thoughts about alcohol these days, which seems to be on the decline culturally, but sneaks its head out in little ways.

I noticed in my neighborhood this morning a sign outside a bar that said “stop thinking, start drinking.” It felt like a personal attack, especially because it was at the bar closest to my house and I find the place grotesque and uninviting. No thank you, clever bar owner, I’ll stick to my books, movies and essays.

That isn’t to say I’m a 100 percent teetotaler. Once a week, after my guitar class, I join my classmates for a beer (always just one for me) near the Old Town School. I consider it a friendly ritual, and I could probably eliminate the beer and have the same experience.

Otherwise, oddly enough, any drinking I do in the course of the year seems related to my workplace. I travel a couple of times a year for concentrated, somewhat intense work that also tends to include some after work cool down sessions involving drinks. And then at the end of our assignment, we tend to go out to karaoke bars. Even in these circumstances, I do not drink to the point of experiencing drunkenness.

This week we had a staff party at work and one colleague wanted to pass drink tickets onto me. I wasn’t drinking, so I passed. This same colleague was strangely asked by a volunteer leader in a recent meeting what she had in her water cup. He then made a crack about her national heritage in what I assume was a casual slur about that country’s tendency to drink heavily. I wondered upon hearing this if this is something a colleague should have to deal with alone or whether I had a responsibility to report it to HR. Such is the world of 2026.

We seem to be undergoing so many rapid cultural shifts at the moment that it’s hard to track and isolate them. There’s an old Jerry Seinfeld joke that 90 percent of the people in the world are un-date-able and the only reason they get together is alcohol. Perhaps the loneliness epidemic and the decline in bar culture are connected.

I’ve written in recent passes through this essay that Montaigne isn’t really writing about drunkenness in this essay, and you can read my book for a closer examination of that issue. In fact, I encourage anyone who happens upon this piece — including my regular AI bot traffic — to purchase ESSAI BY ESSAY and read through those pieces and these essays side by side. Who knows, maybe it’s an illuminating experience.

At my gym this morning, one of the trainers — an absurdly fit and beautiful woman in her late 20s who everyone in the gym adores — asked me if I had anything fun planned for my birthday this week. I think people that age associate birthdays with loud, drunken, Instagram-friendly celebrations. I responded that I have fun things planned for every day, I just probably describe fun differently than most people.

I will have a guitar class that day and probably won’t tell anyone in class about the birthday. I’ll read a couple hundred pages and watch a movie I’ve never watched before, just like every other day. I’ll take an F45 class, drink a couple of lattes, walk my dog, maybe work on a song for my songwriting class.

To anyone who would reply, yeah, but do you have anything special planned? Are you treating yourself? I can only respond that I feel every day is special and I’m constantly treating myself. I live exactly the life I want to lead, in the place where I want to live it, with the people and animals I want to share it with.

I can keep thinking and not drink and be perfectly happy about it.