So yeah, it’s been over a week since I last wrote. Wasn’t feeling well. That’ll be a popular but regular topic here (so you might want to get used to it). I’ve been stopping smoking for the millionth time. I’m really good at it. But nicoteen is really good at keeping me emotionally stable, providing me regular breaks from monotony, and helping me focus. Trust me, if there were some other (legal) means (say an anti-depressant or what have you) I’d be on it in a minute but I’ve tried pretty much everything and anything with results varying from a) nothing to b) nothing but bad side effects to c) something with unpredictable bouts of extremely bad side effects. So Nictoteen has always won out. Haven’t smoked a thing since Saturday morning, so the worst of the first hump is over. Now just have to get through the week.

Enough of that. Here’s the rundown of the weekend.

Saturday

• Slept in until 11:20am
• Smoked to Swisher Sweet cigarellos, drank one Rock Star, and perused Facebook
• Showered
• Put on nicoteen patch
• Headed w/ wife to Starbucks for the weekend coffee
• Headed to St. Johns to seek out a rock and mineral store advertised a few days before (she’s the rock hound)
• Headed to Ikea to look for something specific, instead found a few other small odds and ends
• Ordered tickets for Guardians of the Galaxy Part Three and headed back home
• Got home, used the restrooms, headed for the theatre
• One bottled water, one iced tea, one tub of popcorn, sitting down, watching
• Film finished, but by 9pm the nearby restaurant I wanted to hit had already closed (gotta love post-COVID restaurant evolution–more on that another time)
• Whatever, one last Little House on the Prairie, and bed

Sunday

Slept in, got up, read, read, read, read, watched tv, read, ate something read, mostly read while struggling with my mind turning inside out from the lack of nicoteen. Yeah, patches and the real thing simply aren’t the same, despite advertisements to the contrary. Yeah, truth in advertising, more on that later…

Here I am. I’ve gotten through Monday. Was a bit ditsy feeling in the morning but physically I’ve felt better and mentally things have started to slowly feel more “normal” which, based on past experience, could revert the moment I wake up tomorrow morning and my mind decides it’s absolutely, positively, not going to function even remotely properly without a smoke. It can be a little hairy and something non-smokers (or at least those x-smokers who have other ways to bring stability to their moods whether medical, social, or something else). I did get to the gym today, so that should help. Back home, cooling off, watching another episode of a series on Apple TV that I started earlier today while doing the programmer thing (today: testing, testing, testing, testing). Thinking about all the things that go through my mind on a daily basis that I want to write about here and how, all too often over the last few attempts at blogging, my mind goes blank once I start typing. But that’s okay today, I’m giving myself a little extra slack this week because I’m going to kick this fucking smoking thing once and for all (or at least until I’m really done with this life). In the meantime I’m taking notes, sliding myself towards patterns of behavior that will facilitate sitting down and getting these thoughts out into paper in meaningful ways. That whole Who What Why Where thing that’s been puttering around in the back of my mind and the middle of my notebook.

Gonna finish the show, change back into my 501’s, then head downstairs to finish a chapter.

Cheers and g’nite

…asm…