I’m a football fan. I know, I know… a lot of people my age have issues with what the league has become, but the NFL was a lot of fun to watch this year, until the Cardinals decided to shit on their own lawn for the last half of the season. But that’s a different post.

Unlike the NHL and MLB where the offseason is truly an Off Season, the NFL never stops. They roll from a championship spectacle, straight into measuring and evaluating college kids who dream of being drafted, to the beginning of Free Agency (read: a shit ton of money flying around like one of those game show tubes), then to the draft itself – all of this within a 60 day period. It’s fun, if I’m being honest. We get to Armchair GM our favorite teams, complaining that this guy wasn’t taken or this shortcoming wasn’t addressed, while we gather at parties of like-minded individuals and celebrate Persephone’s emergence from the underworld of defeat, warm in the hope of a brighter future where Kyler Murray will hoist the Lombardi trophy over his head, hopefully in a Cardinals uniform.

But for me, though, it’s a reminder of a different change, a shift in which, this particular year, I can quietly and personally celebrate five years of sobriety: It was on NFL Draft day, 2017 when I took my last drink of alcohol.

Five years is a long time. It’s not quite here, but it’s coming, and today, I need to pat myself on the back for something I have accomplished rather than punching myself in the dick for things I haven’t.