A rainy Sunday. The best time to stay home, read books, write this column, and reboot, refresh, reset the carnivore diet. Much like how last Sunday went.

I’ve been keeping myself busy this year, with Sunday as my only rest day for the week. Busyness helps me forget. It’s when I’m not doing anything that I tend to make muni-muni, so, I avoid reaching that point of no return as much as possible.

But avoiding that included high-carb goodies in the last few months. Definitely not required. Still, I somehow ended up including them. 

The Christmas season and the parties, gatherings, and reunions that go along with it can be the worst time to go on a diet. That’s why there’s the New Year’s resolution to lose weight. But while in the midst of the season, the resolve is to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we will eat, drink, and be merry again. 

The post-pandemic Christmas partying has been particularly rabid. After being forced to stay home for so long during the lockdowns, people have learned to party as if tequila would be banned the morning after.

But there’s also the other side of the lockdowns—some people realized how peaceful staying home could be. No dressing up, no socializing with toxic people, no face-to-face meetings. It was the introvert’s turn to shine.

And then the economy reopened, and even the introvert heaved a deep sigh of relief. Staying home forevermore was blissful, but when the law of supply and demand is morphing into no supply with lots of demand, even the introvert would prefer to go out and help that law find its purpose. 

The pandemic was so yesterday, better forgotten and classified as part of history, much like World War I, World War II, the Marcos dictatorship, his martial law, Ninoy Aquino’s assassination, the 1986 People Power… Wait, the more they’re forgotten, the more the lessons are not learned. 

So, what have I learned this year? Hmmm. 

I learned that high-carb food is definitely not for me. That a movie could make me sleep not because it’s boring but because I’m sleep-deprived. That a carnivore diet is the best but difficult to stick with. That the Big Bad Wolf could come back to Cagayan de Oro within a year, therefore, no need to hoard books when it’s here. That halo-halo doesn’t always have suman. That finding the best cheesecake could become a hard habit to break. That going to the gym daily except Sundays is not a must. That if you’re sleepy, sleep. If you’re hungry, eat. If you’re weak, exercise. 

And since I’m sleep-deprived, three of the seven books I bought at Big Bad Wolf (BBW) on Tuesday are about sleep or the lack of it: Dr. Michael Mosley’s “Fast Asleep,” Aric A. Prather’s “The Sleep Prescription,” and Miranda Levy’s “The Insomnia Diaries.”

Yes, I bought only seven books—miracles do happen. Haha. I was sleepy and wasn’t in the mood to browse. 

Since BBW will be here up to December 16, I may go back to find more books about sleep.