Well, this binary 1 work thing is a trip. I am not used to working this long and hard without something like a deadline or final exam in front of my face. But part of the reason for doing it was so in the early days of the quit, I would have something to do beyond think.
Thinking is extremely dangerous in the early days of a quit and should be avoided as much as possible :) Thinking should be done before a quit. All lists of reasons and etc. get done then. After a quit, thinking is so not your friend. You might think about doing a blog post about the reasons behind this quit, versus the others, for example. (No! Don't think!) The reasons are the same as they ever wuz. But now you have brought up the spectre of failure, like the other times, the ones with the same old reasons. Or you might find yourself arguing against the reasons! Honestly, give as little time and energy to cigarettes, your quit, the deprivation of same, etc, etc, as possible.
If you are a badass meditator, you can practice switching focus when one of these smoking thoughts comes up, or repeating a mantra: "I take excellent care of my health", for example.
For the rest of us, there is binary 1 work week: now we are unloading the dishwasher. Now we are sweeping the doghair off the floors. Now we are inventorying the Tex-Mex auction lot. One is deliberately keeping the focus micro level and populating thoughts intentionally with stuff like "Ick. This cat hairball Max threw up all over my Japanese marine insurance sign is disgusting! I must rub very gently so the paint isn't disturbed, cleaning it. Where can I store it that isn't the floor? Damn cat. Spawn of Satan.".
Worked great Thursday!!! omg, Friday we had a strike action, though. The combined stress of the quit plus the work-all-day, work-all-night thing; I went AWOL. (I think it was the redolent scent of cat urine and slurried litter chunks from the bathroom floors and wall I was cleaning behind the litter box, for the first time in three years. I snapped! I lost it!) I recovered briefly, though. Kept working, ran some errands working, THEN lost it 'round noon for good. Popped into a restaurant on the way back from errands to treat myself to lunch with the saved $10-$15/day I no longer burn through. I looved lunch, my book, my New Yorker, SOO much, and came home and read my New Yorker all afternoon and went out for dinner, too, goshdarnit. You want me to quit, you better divert me with something to make this day less SUCKFEST. Yes, penne with shrimp in a rose sauce fits the bill perfectly, thank you. Mmmmmmmmm. Yes, and I had 3 glasses of wine, and finished my book. Slothtastic!!! :) And verry expensivo. I think I spent close to a weeks' worth of ciggy $ bribing my butt into "not deprived!" mode on Friday (Friday was a Bad. Day. Bitter, glum, po' me, low energy, enthusiasm well into negative territory. Mr. Grumpy).
It was worth it, though: still no smokey!!! So, I must say, I recommend the work work work work quit plan. Apparently if you make life entirely intolerable and no fun whatsoever, chain gang style, breakin' rocks, then you can up and quit the chain gang! And the whole leisure + no cigs + food substitution thing, is halcyon! It's not deprivation, it's 100% ahhh, gonna read my magazine now, dudes, and yes the zabaglione for dessert sounds great. Screw you, Mr. Overseer. Smell ya later.
I think working Thursday and not working Friday saved my quit. That is the point I'm trying to make here. I always seem to manage the first few days on raw enthusiasm and novelty, and then mess up mid to late, in the first week, is my quit M.O. But not this time.
Good golly Miss Molly!!! It is Quit Day Eight here (Saturday and today to date, I am back on the Werk binary 1 wagon, too. Can you stand the virtue? lol).
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Zero Switches to One
I must be quick. My week of zero (play, relaxation, restoration) has switched to a week of one (work, a financial focus, organization). For an explanation of this binary method of living and organizing one's time, please see Steve Pavlina's fascinating blog entry on this:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2010/02/one-week-on-one-week-off/
This blog will be as much about my experiences with that experiment, as about my smoking quit.
The smoking quit: Tuesday and Wednesday were very difficult. Although I seem to have cracked the craving code and don't have them much, a few other barriers appeared. Confusion, fogginess, the dropping of 50 IQ points, and a hair trigger frustration level (I had forgotten about these foes). For the non-smokers, let me illustrate: it is perfectly possible to mail the dog poo by mistake if you are walking your dog and simultaneously standing in front of a mailbox with 2 bills in your other hand, when one is in the grips of this pernicious mental foggo. (To a certain extent, I wonder if it is manufactured by the power of suggestion when we all read these quit smoking books: "you may experience blah blah and blah immediately after your quit". Oh boy, now you will, that's for sure :) )
Anyway, my solution for this has been 1) allow self to be retarded and completely ineffective by normal measures, and 2) get thee to a clinic post-haste and get some Wellbutrin (Zyban, whatever) prescribed; perhaps that will help. (I have switched off A and onto Z; for those readers who are fellow A-takers, combining A and Z lowers seizure thresholds and shd not generally be done. This is why I went to a remote walkin clinic: no way in hell any doctor who knew about the one would prescribe the other, as doctors tend to err on the side of caution and assume all their patients are complete idiots unable to understand simple instructions, but that is a rant for another time.
Frustration levels still very high today, but successfully mailed my letters and nothing else. Go team!!!
Must return to bustin' it out here; my goal is a ten hour day today. Let's roll!
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2010/02/one-week-on-one-week-off/
This blog will be as much about my experiences with that experiment, as about my smoking quit.
The smoking quit: Tuesday and Wednesday were very difficult. Although I seem to have cracked the craving code and don't have them much, a few other barriers appeared. Confusion, fogginess, the dropping of 50 IQ points, and a hair trigger frustration level (I had forgotten about these foes). For the non-smokers, let me illustrate: it is perfectly possible to mail the dog poo by mistake if you are walking your dog and simultaneously standing in front of a mailbox with 2 bills in your other hand, when one is in the grips of this pernicious mental foggo. (To a certain extent, I wonder if it is manufactured by the power of suggestion when we all read these quit smoking books: "you may experience blah blah and blah immediately after your quit". Oh boy, now you will, that's for sure :) )
Anyway, my solution for this has been 1) allow self to be retarded and completely ineffective by normal measures, and 2) get thee to a clinic post-haste and get some Wellbutrin (Zyban, whatever) prescribed; perhaps that will help. (I have switched off A and onto Z; for those readers who are fellow A-takers, combining A and Z lowers seizure thresholds and shd not generally be done. This is why I went to a remote walkin clinic: no way in hell any doctor who knew about the one would prescribe the other, as doctors tend to err on the side of caution and assume all their patients are complete idiots unable to understand simple instructions, but that is a rant for another time.
Frustration levels still very high today, but successfully mailed my letters and nothing else. Go team!!!
Must return to bustin' it out here; my goal is a ten hour day today. Let's roll!
Monday, March 22, 2010
What Fresh Meadow Is This?
What fresh hell is this? - Dorothy Parker
This could be your lucky day in hell! Never know who it might be, at your doorbell... - The Eels
Um, deliverance? Is that you?
Aw, doood!! Good ta SEE ya, man! The heck was the holdup, dawg? Ahhh, riiight... the bumpy gravel back roads... ooh, man, I forgot to tell you! My bad! Yeah, it's only paved for the first bit. Ran out of good intentions, was the story we got. Highway to hell is just one of those urban legends, I guess. Hey, let's get outta here! You eaten yet?
Deliverance wears many faces/ and grace is
An acquaintence of mine... - David Sylvian
Well, apart from being in a strange state, halfway between giddy and confused, this is going darn well, doggies!!! (For the record, Dear Reader, it is Day 2 of an historic Cigarette Hasta La Vista Fiesta, for those of you joining us late, here).
Specific advice and/or notable signposts for others, may be summarized in a later entry (COUNT those chickens, kiddo! :) Nae worries). But let me just tell you about the previous attempted quit, a year ago. The premise was decent: cold turkey. Nicotine has a very short half life. Get the worst done, on the flights from Toronto to Australia! By the time my father and I get to Australia (and it was quite a tortuous network of flights...), I'll be bog tired (cannot smoke while asleep), and from then on, Easy Peasy Street. None of the triggers of home will be around. No comfy chair. Phone won't ring for me, and its chirp will be different. I'll have three vigilant and interested babysitters in the form of my father, sister and brother-in-law, to keep me on the rails. And we'll be having a blast! How mopey can I get, in 27 degree bliss Downundah with 'roos around the Roo? (Roo is an old nickname of Ian's for Minerva -ed.) (Minerva is a pseudonym. Iz anonymous blog. Sort of. -ed.)
It was a good plan. It went awry almost immediately. I left myself a loophole. No more purchased cigarettes. Surely I could bum one or two. Since bumming cigarettes is actually extremely difficult for the average non-street person, I could count on this behaviour to fade, just help me over the hump.
Careful, young Skywalker. The Force will be with you. Things got very weird, very fast. Long Vancouver layover. I pop out-terminal, to enjoy a luxuriant bummed ciggie. The two flights to this point have gone spectacularly! Not a single craving. Do they disappear when there is no convenience store around, no way to assuage them? I was puzzled and surprised. But I was in Vancouver long enough to have one (despite a true lack of "gotta!"), and it was allowed per plan. I hoofed through the terminal.
Well, would you look at that. Abandoned. On an empty row of octo-siamese-twin airport chairs... virtually an entire pack, perhaps two missing. They are Cambodian cigarettes. Their name is Lucky Dragon. My Chinese sign is the dragon, and I cradle them tenderly. This is not a purchase. It is simply an astonishing windfall: 18 pristine cigarettes, with a "pick these up, kid! they're yours!" label right on them. It is warm, sunny (completely unseasonable surely? even for Vancouver?), and I smoke blissfully, drowsily, on a bench just outside the terminal. Several centuries pass.
We arrive in Singapore, and check into our transit hotel right in the terminal (there are delights in Changi: five hour layovers, a double-storied tropical butterfly pavilion, breakfast in 32 lingua francas at the food court the next day. And grace upon arrival: the best shower ever, in the history of the planet! there are no words). I navigate a little hungrily to the smoking room (Asia, lol, 'nuff said) 20 scant metres from our hotel. But I have forgotten my Lucky Dragon pack! Zoinks.
I approach an airport worker with a sharp plexi badge, and hesitantly ask if he could spare a cigarette. "It's my last one," he murmurs. In Canadianese, that is as flat a refusal as you'll find, and I instantly translate it as such, despite my exhaustion. "But wait here! I'll be right back!" and he is gone, as completely as if he had dematerialized. The room tips a bit. There's his visage swimming through the door glass, opening the door, and theatrical tendrils of mare's-tail smoke escape momentarily from my hazy fishbowl all around him like seaweed: I'm tired, but this is pleasant. Slo-mo. Looking as benign, beaming and pleased as someone who had just received an unexpected birthday gift from me, he proffers an entire unopened pack of Marlboroughs. "From my office! I have many!" Oh, Minerva, you are truly through the looking glass now, my friend.
And you know the rest. Did I mention my sister and brother in law smoke? Oh, very casually. But the remnants of my two packs, coupled with their kind offcasts, and suddenly it is game ovah, people. It's your holidays. You've been smoking for days here! It's soo pleasant. On a patio. In the sun. With a glass or twelve of outrageously good red wine (Mark is quite the oenophile. Is that the word? Dude knows his stuff). And great company. What on earth were you thinking, quit on your vacation? Vacations are about ease and indulgence. No reason you can't cold turkey on the return flights (that bit was a solid enough achievement, coming over).
I find I can't actually remember if I notified anyone Oz-end of this quit. I doubt I had, in advance. Probably wanted to spring it on them all full-blown, like Athena from Zeus. Ohh, hubris. Ohh, loophole le deux.
You will find and exploit ALL the loopholes, like an animal unerringly crossing desert to oasis, easily, with certainty, without ever the slightest flicker of concern that thirst would even appear, much less not be quenched.
I disembark in my home city, gratefully greet my boyfriend. In due time, I bum a cigarette at curbside, guilty and furtive and remorseful, for about a nanosecond that is eternity. But these feelings swallow themselves up, or I might be editorializing. It's hard to remember that part, actually.
It was odd. It was all, odd. I have kept the Lucky Dragon! packaging to this day. It didn't really feel like a defeat. More like an urging or a benediction. Not yet, little one! The day is soon. In the meantime, enjoy. (And I have enjoyed cigarettes. Thoroughly. I've luxuriated in them. They were never something I did by halves, or felt ambivalent about. They weren't coffin nails. My habit was not filthy. I am unusual in this respect, I find. A very happy smoker.)
This time, as many strange cogs have meshed and doors flown closed, as the last time opened. This time, I'm done. There has been remarkably little struggle. I had set my mind to anticipate "a lucky day in hell", a short hell that was lucky and purposeful, one I was going to endure steadfastly.
[Picking daisies. What fresh meadow is this!?!]
The one thing I picked up from last year, was my utter lack of cravings on both plane journeys. It was pointless behaviour, and my mind seemed to understand that, and just dropped them. That had never happened before.
There have been many other quits. Six others? Ten? I don't know. I have smoked a long time. Twenty years. Pack a day. Alot of false starts, alot of quits I wasn't quite behind. Maybe what they say is true, though: the cumulative knowledge is yours, quiet, growing, mysterious, invisible, invincible. One day, the tipping point arrives.
A new jedi mind trick: no more hesitant piercings of an imagined nicotine monster I held fondness for, hesitated to cut with my broadsword as our gazes caught. This time, I had decided I was a phoenix-dyad. A radical discontinuity. Old phoenix, burning. The fire. Endurance. Burn hot, flames, be quick. And a fresh fledgeling, newborn, in wonder, strange feathers, irridescent, every colour, metallic, wings tentatively outstretched, tempering like a butterfly's for a time. I expected a period of overlap and a battle, raucous cries, both eager to live, flames, confusion, pain. A pitched battle.
It was very easy. There was no overlap. There was no demarcation, really. It was just easy. It's still easy. Lucky Dragon, serpent-feathered, Quetzalcoatl.
It's different. It's just different this time. No longer a student laboriously parsing verbs in a non-native tongue, struggling for vocabulary, catching one word in ten on the tapes, always starting in English and mentally flipping dictionary pages to find the alien equivalent. The effort!
(I explained a smoking quit to someone once as being forced to hop instead of walk. "What's so hard about hopping? We all hop! You'll hop too! Just keep hopping! In a few months, you won't even think of walking! Won't even cross your mind!!!" Oh my god, shut UP! Putting the hell in helpful, are we?)
I awake to find I've been dreaming in French. Everything is French! There's just thought. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was! Thinking, musing, a-mused. Just a torrent of elegant sounding ease. Super geniale cette quit!!! Moi j'adore!!!
(happy go lucky dragon!!!)
I think this very softly, quietly, in another language, where my astonishment and pleasure and words will go unheard, misunderstood, embryonic, by those who have previously enforced an English rule, fierce English ears listening for someone to count barnyard chickens before they hatched, in English - oh, metaphors mixing, metaforce - chickens, drag-ons, drag-on-cigarettes, dragging on, no, dragon, no, phoenix! no english.
Seulement francaise ce soir! C'est... fantastique!!! shhh. shhh. shhh. The phoenix is drowsy, the fire is pleasant and warm. This is my nest! It is peaceful. I am mad, but that, too, is OK.
All is well. And all manner of things are well. And all will be well, well-wishers. A demain matin.
This could be your lucky day in hell! Never know who it might be, at your doorbell... - The Eels
Um, deliverance? Is that you?
Aw, doood!! Good ta SEE ya, man! The heck was the holdup, dawg? Ahhh, riiight... the bumpy gravel back roads... ooh, man, I forgot to tell you! My bad! Yeah, it's only paved for the first bit. Ran out of good intentions, was the story we got. Highway to hell is just one of those urban legends, I guess. Hey, let's get outta here! You eaten yet?
Deliverance wears many faces/ and grace is
An acquaintence of mine... - David Sylvian
Well, apart from being in a strange state, halfway between giddy and confused, this is going darn well, doggies!!! (For the record, Dear Reader, it is Day 2 of an historic Cigarette Hasta La Vista Fiesta, for those of you joining us late, here).
Specific advice and/or notable signposts for others, may be summarized in a later entry (COUNT those chickens, kiddo! :) Nae worries). But let me just tell you about the previous attempted quit, a year ago. The premise was decent: cold turkey. Nicotine has a very short half life. Get the worst done, on the flights from Toronto to Australia! By the time my father and I get to Australia (and it was quite a tortuous network of flights...), I'll be bog tired (cannot smoke while asleep), and from then on, Easy Peasy Street. None of the triggers of home will be around. No comfy chair. Phone won't ring for me, and its chirp will be different. I'll have three vigilant and interested babysitters in the form of my father, sister and brother-in-law, to keep me on the rails. And we'll be having a blast! How mopey can I get, in 27 degree bliss Downundah with 'roos around the Roo? (Roo is an old nickname of Ian's for Minerva -ed.) (Minerva is a pseudonym. Iz anonymous blog. Sort of. -ed.)
It was a good plan. It went awry almost immediately. I left myself a loophole. No more purchased cigarettes. Surely I could bum one or two. Since bumming cigarettes is actually extremely difficult for the average non-street person, I could count on this behaviour to fade, just help me over the hump.
Careful, young Skywalker. The Force will be with you. Things got very weird, very fast. Long Vancouver layover. I pop out-terminal, to enjoy a luxuriant bummed ciggie. The two flights to this point have gone spectacularly! Not a single craving. Do they disappear when there is no convenience store around, no way to assuage them? I was puzzled and surprised. But I was in Vancouver long enough to have one (despite a true lack of "gotta!"), and it was allowed per plan. I hoofed through the terminal.
Well, would you look at that. Abandoned. On an empty row of octo-siamese-twin airport chairs... virtually an entire pack, perhaps two missing. They are Cambodian cigarettes. Their name is Lucky Dragon. My Chinese sign is the dragon, and I cradle them tenderly. This is not a purchase. It is simply an astonishing windfall: 18 pristine cigarettes, with a "pick these up, kid! they're yours!" label right on them. It is warm, sunny (completely unseasonable surely? even for Vancouver?), and I smoke blissfully, drowsily, on a bench just outside the terminal. Several centuries pass.
We arrive in Singapore, and check into our transit hotel right in the terminal (there are delights in Changi: five hour layovers, a double-storied tropical butterfly pavilion, breakfast in 32 lingua francas at the food court the next day. And grace upon arrival: the best shower ever, in the history of the planet! there are no words). I navigate a little hungrily to the smoking room (Asia, lol, 'nuff said) 20 scant metres from our hotel. But I have forgotten my Lucky Dragon pack! Zoinks.
I approach an airport worker with a sharp plexi badge, and hesitantly ask if he could spare a cigarette. "It's my last one," he murmurs. In Canadianese, that is as flat a refusal as you'll find, and I instantly translate it as such, despite my exhaustion. "But wait here! I'll be right back!" and he is gone, as completely as if he had dematerialized. The room tips a bit. There's his visage swimming through the door glass, opening the door, and theatrical tendrils of mare's-tail smoke escape momentarily from my hazy fishbowl all around him like seaweed: I'm tired, but this is pleasant. Slo-mo. Looking as benign, beaming and pleased as someone who had just received an unexpected birthday gift from me, he proffers an entire unopened pack of Marlboroughs. "From my office! I have many!" Oh, Minerva, you are truly through the looking glass now, my friend.
And you know the rest. Did I mention my sister and brother in law smoke? Oh, very casually. But the remnants of my two packs, coupled with their kind offcasts, and suddenly it is game ovah, people. It's your holidays. You've been smoking for days here! It's soo pleasant. On a patio. In the sun. With a glass or twelve of outrageously good red wine (Mark is quite the oenophile. Is that the word? Dude knows his stuff). And great company. What on earth were you thinking, quit on your vacation? Vacations are about ease and indulgence. No reason you can't cold turkey on the return flights (that bit was a solid enough achievement, coming over).
I find I can't actually remember if I notified anyone Oz-end of this quit. I doubt I had, in advance. Probably wanted to spring it on them all full-blown, like Athena from Zeus. Ohh, hubris. Ohh, loophole le deux.
You will find and exploit ALL the loopholes, like an animal unerringly crossing desert to oasis, easily, with certainty, without ever the slightest flicker of concern that thirst would even appear, much less not be quenched.
I disembark in my home city, gratefully greet my boyfriend. In due time, I bum a cigarette at curbside, guilty and furtive and remorseful, for about a nanosecond that is eternity. But these feelings swallow themselves up, or I might be editorializing. It's hard to remember that part, actually.
It was odd. It was all, odd. I have kept the Lucky Dragon! packaging to this day. It didn't really feel like a defeat. More like an urging or a benediction. Not yet, little one! The day is soon. In the meantime, enjoy. (And I have enjoyed cigarettes. Thoroughly. I've luxuriated in them. They were never something I did by halves, or felt ambivalent about. They weren't coffin nails. My habit was not filthy. I am unusual in this respect, I find. A very happy smoker.)
This time, as many strange cogs have meshed and doors flown closed, as the last time opened. This time, I'm done. There has been remarkably little struggle. I had set my mind to anticipate "a lucky day in hell", a short hell that was lucky and purposeful, one I was going to endure steadfastly.
[Picking daisies. What fresh meadow is this!?!]
The one thing I picked up from last year, was my utter lack of cravings on both plane journeys. It was pointless behaviour, and my mind seemed to understand that, and just dropped them. That had never happened before.
There have been many other quits. Six others? Ten? I don't know. I have smoked a long time. Twenty years. Pack a day. Alot of false starts, alot of quits I wasn't quite behind. Maybe what they say is true, though: the cumulative knowledge is yours, quiet, growing, mysterious, invisible, invincible. One day, the tipping point arrives.
A new jedi mind trick: no more hesitant piercings of an imagined nicotine monster I held fondness for, hesitated to cut with my broadsword as our gazes caught. This time, I had decided I was a phoenix-dyad. A radical discontinuity. Old phoenix, burning. The fire. Endurance. Burn hot, flames, be quick. And a fresh fledgeling, newborn, in wonder, strange feathers, irridescent, every colour, metallic, wings tentatively outstretched, tempering like a butterfly's for a time. I expected a period of overlap and a battle, raucous cries, both eager to live, flames, confusion, pain. A pitched battle.
It was very easy. There was no overlap. There was no demarcation, really. It was just easy. It's still easy. Lucky Dragon, serpent-feathered, Quetzalcoatl.
It's different. It's just different this time. No longer a student laboriously parsing verbs in a non-native tongue, struggling for vocabulary, catching one word in ten on the tapes, always starting in English and mentally flipping dictionary pages to find the alien equivalent. The effort!
(I explained a smoking quit to someone once as being forced to hop instead of walk. "What's so hard about hopping? We all hop! You'll hop too! Just keep hopping! In a few months, you won't even think of walking! Won't even cross your mind!!!" Oh my god, shut UP! Putting the hell in helpful, are we?)
I awake to find I've been dreaming in French. Everything is French! There's just thought. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was! Thinking, musing, a-mused. Just a torrent of elegant sounding ease. Super geniale cette quit!!! Moi j'adore!!!
(happy go lucky dragon!!!)
I think this very softly, quietly, in another language, where my astonishment and pleasure and words will go unheard, misunderstood, embryonic, by those who have previously enforced an English rule, fierce English ears listening for someone to count barnyard chickens before they hatched, in English - oh, metaphors mixing, metaforce - chickens, drag-ons, drag-on-cigarettes, dragging on, no, dragon, no, phoenix! no english.
Seulement francaise ce soir! C'est... fantastique!!! shhh. shhh. shhh. The phoenix is drowsy, the fire is pleasant and warm. This is my nest! It is peaceful. I am mad, but that, too, is OK.
All is well. And all manner of things are well. And all will be well, well-wishers. A demain matin.
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