Last week, I sold my beloved wine rack to a friendly older couple who had found the listing on Facebook Marketplace. They turned up at the arranged time in an old ute, with a folded piece of underlay lining the tray. As the lady inspected the item, the man looked around inside my garage like he had some sort of right to.

“Got anything else for sale?” he said, wringing his hands together. I’d given them a significant discount on the wine rack, see. I’m sure I did. My garage is full of stuff (I won’t say junk). But who has the energy to deal with that? To put price tags on chunks of our past? Not me. Not at that moment, anyway.

It was a handsome piece of furniture. Solid Baltic pine, nicely finished. It had held pride of place in my office for years. Full, that was, with wine. Beautiful wine. A pinot from Senator Peter Whish-Wilson’s vineyard, that he gifted me at my son’s birthday. Another red, the label of which I couldn’t even read, from my sister-in-law’s hometown in Russia. Bottle after bottle, each with their own origin, own back-story – like characters in a book. And on top of the rack lived my collection of expensive single malt whiskies. But I was happy to be rid of the wine rack. At any price. And not just because it was taking up space.

The end of September this year marked two full years since I’d given up drinking. The anniversary fell while I was on the west coast of Tasmania, undertaking an artist residency with my seven-year-old son. I booked us in for dinner at the Empire Hotel in Queenstown that night. The irony of celebrating my commitment to sobriety in a pub wasn’t lost on me, and I shook my head and smiled as I chinked my 10oz raspberry against my son’s lemonade. Two years is a big deal to me. My biggest achievement of 2021.

To me, that is saying a lot. I released my debut book this year, resigned from a long-held day job and committed to a life of creativity. Some big changes and much to be grateful for. But it’s hard to beat the satisfaction of kicking a habit – whatever that may be. It feels like more than a win.

The weekend prior to selling the wine rack, some friends had travelled up from the coast for a pizza night at my place. They had chosen to impress me with their punctuality – knowing how much I hate lateness – rather than stopping at the bottle shop.

I had moved my collection of alcohol to the garage about a month earlier, following the resignation from my day job. I needed more space in the home office if I was going to work from there. We went to the garage to select a bottle of wine and for my friend’s girlfriend to try some of my whiskies.

“The real reason is that I’m just getting too old to maintain that sort of lifestyle. But I never say that. Who wants to admit that?”

I took up one of the peatier options. A litre bottle I had bought duty-free on the way home from Bali, back in another life, when we all took international travel for granted. The cork released with a satisfying pop, and I held the bottle to my nose and inhaled the vapour. It’s funny, even sober, I still consider myself a bit of a whisky connoisseur.