Stopping to Quit: My Smoke Free Sabbatical

Recently, without any announcement, I stopped everything in order to stop one thing in particular: smoking. Today, I blog before you as a full-fledged member of the League of Ex-Smokers.

To join that group, I had to do something I’d never really done before: give quitting my full attention. I couldn’t snap my fingers and presto, change-o, make everything coolio.

Instead, I had to go through the temporary but, to me, frightening withdrawal phase when it’s almost impossible to concentrate.

I had to come up with better ways to handle stressful moments than sucking on the filtered end of a tiny pile of burning leaves.

I had to get real and stop looking for something else to blame for my lack of energy and shortness of breath while slavishly clutching my favorite brand to my chest.

To do this, I had to accept, once and for all, that nothing was more important than my health. Not any blog I hope to build, not any book I hope to write, not any craft I wish to master.

If I wanted to live life to the fullest, I first had to opt for survival.

That sounds like common sense, but nicotine addiction makes you crazy.

It makes you do crazy things like stand outside a restaurant in the freezing rain just to get your fix.

It makes you believe crazy things like the notion that suffocating yourself ten to twenty times a day is an effective way to keep your cool.

It can even lead you to think about doing something crazy like getting rid of a blog you love because you’re distraught for reasons you either don’t know or won’t admit you know.

I knew and I’d always known, but it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I was completely willing to admit it and do something about it.

And to do something about it, I had to stop, at least for a time, doing almost everything else. I’m glad I did.

Smoking? Been there, done that, and I’m never going to do it again. Now, maybe I can finally set my sights on doing all the things I’ve been dreaming of.

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