Welcome in February…

My gosh the year is moving along. I just realized I head to Portland in 28 days and I really haven’t had a chance to figure out what to do with my time there when I’m not involved in the conference. Ah me! I should really take a few minutes and check out that Portland link myself. 🙂
I’m still not smoking! It’s been about 252 hours since I started not smoking and I haven’t attacked anyone yet. I have to acknowledge that admitting I needed help, couldn’t do this one my own, and using the patch seems to have done the trick.
I get the odd urge to light up at the times I smoked the most, or perhaps enjoyed it the most, but for the most part the psychological part seems to have abated. I even discovered I can sit for hours at work now (not necessarily a good thing) without noticing I haven’t taken a break. My boss is happy, but I can’t say I’m overly pleased. 🙁
Now I have to decide when to start going off the patch. I’m using the 24-hour variety, which means I have it on all the time. I’m thinking I may try taking it off at night and seeing if that makes me overly miserable in the morning. Mind you, I’m okay with being a little miserable (for a while,a short while), but not as a steady diet. That’s just silly.
I’ve been surprised by the reactions I’ve been getting from people I know. So far I’ve not gotten one comment suggesting it isn’t a good (okay, at least neutral) thing. Even those folks I know who still smoke, still advocate smoking even, don’t have a bad word. I’m grateful for that because I really wasn’t prepared to defend my choice to quit. It wasn’t quite the same when I quit drinking a few years back. I did have a few folks try to buy me drinks, cajoling me to continue, and saying things about my ability to handle alcohol. [I freely admit I can’t handle alcohol, even though I could probably drink most under the table were it to come to that. It’s not a brag. It’s the sad truth. I don’t know when to stop.]
Anyway, enough with the self examination for the moment. I need to get back to work here.
Aloha!