Disclaimer: To the in*surance company lowlife plants, who I'm sure are monitoring what we say here to use for their own purposes--i.e., to rape us of our benefits when we need them the most--I claim that the following post is completely fictional. I am not a smoker. I don't use Nicotine. Never much cared for the stuff.
How to quit smoking? It's time. I quit once for four years, quit during and after pregnancy, but me and butts go way back. I mean way. And now I need to wean myself from this addiction. Again. The last time I quit for any substantial amount of time was when Bill Clinton won his first term as President. Bill Clinton didn't influence my decision to quit. I miss him, though.
But about smoking. Bill Clinton's winning the White House didn't make me quit. It was more, well, I don't know, I woke up and figured I'd always remember the day I quit by marking it with the Presidential election. I also assumed at the time that he and Hilary were health nuts--healthcare nuts--and that the personal freedom of smoking would go up in smoke as quickly as the price of cigarettes would skyrocket. I was right about some of that. I'm not sure which part.
I found seven benefits from being a non-smoker after a long long stretch as a smoker:
1) Freedom: No more having to remember to bring a pack with me. No more running out at 11 p.m. to get a pack because to wake up without one was just too much of a stretch for my imagination. No more buying lighters. No more running to the ATM to get money to buy a pack or a carton, depending on the week and my particular level of stress.
2) Acknowledgement of the "present moment": Smokers escape the present moment by smoking. They live outside the moment every time they light up. Smoking is a welcome distraction from what is actually happening in your life, in the world, in your head. Smoking allows you to be "half present" at all times. This may seem like a benefit. Well, it is. Yes. Oh yes. But it is also a challenge within the confines of human relationships--like relationships with people who don't smoke, like your children. To step outside for a smoke when a child wants your attention is to abandon that child a dozen--or twenty--times a day.
3) Key Realization = It's "Okay" to do one thing at a time: When you smoke, you are always multi-tasking, even if the other task is simply thinking. You are making all the physical and psychological movements it takes to smoke, and you are almost always doing something else in tandem: talking on the phone, walking to the mail box, looking at the stars, calling your shrink. Quitting is admitting, it's okay to only do one thing at a time. I can survive if I slow down. That's hard.
4) Health: This is redundant. The physical benefits of not smoking are a matter of record. Breathing in and out being one significant health benefit.
5) Smell: You don't smell like smoke if you don't smoke. You save money on perfume and breath mints; your skin is not so dry because you aren't washing your hands every time you're going to meet with your boss or HR person.
6) Social Conformity: When smokers were forced to take their dirty little secret outside, a sub-culture sprang up. We are the sidewalk dwellers. We are the cool kids grown up. We share a common bond as thick as a tobacco field. When smokers go outside--whether we've ever met before or not--we like each other. Smokers are really nice people. Sorry, but that's a fact. We've grown nicer and nicer as we've been humbled and humiliated and sent to the dungeon to complete our sacred rites with our own kind. Somehow, that only makes us nicer. Because we feel good about the rest of you when we smoke. But when you quit, you are allowed back into average society. It's not the place any former smoker chooses to live, but life is a lot sunnier up there on the second floor.
7) Financial savings: Yah, well, there's that. Baaah.
As I read the benefits I've carved out above, I think that maybe I am ready to quit, again, and let blogging replace my smoking habit. Because a blogging addiction can replace many of the comforts smoking offers:
1) No Freedom: Having to remember to bring your hiptop with you--putting off going to bed at 11 p.m. because you have to get one more post in, being "stuck" on vacation without a connection and the ability to partake.
2) Living Outside the Present Moment: Blogging lets us do this. I don't pay attention to anything much when I'm blogging. I can ignore my family, friends, and animals. I can live and bounce among hyperlinks and remain completely distracted there.
3) Key realization = It's "Okay" to do twelve things at once. When you blog, you are always multi-tasking. You can be answering email, cutting HTML text, talking on the phone with work colleagues, and adding people to your blogroll all at the same time, without missing a beat. This helps to reinforce #2.
4) Health: This is redundant. Blogging offers many health hazzards to help shorten your life, or at least make it more painful. Carpel tunnel, eye strain, back problems, and let's not forget about the very act of sitting still for hours at a time--we are becoming blogpotatoes. These are all very important health detractors that blogging offers.
5) Smell: Why take a shower when I can post a blog entry instead?
6) Social conformity: Bloggers are the cool people of the net. We've taken our nasty habit and our dirty conversations outside the walls of business, family, religion, and every other imaginable social construct.
7) Financial drain: DSL, hosting, hiptop, graphics program, phone bills--blogging is a fine new money pit.
So, on second thought, maybe I'll quit blogging and keep smoking. I'm still not sure which one will be my final undoing.
Stay tuned...
