Over the next three months or so, The Girl and I are taking a major step toward preparing for our wedding, as well as the rest of our long, long lives together, and we’re starting today…or, rather, stopping.

Our household went from two smokers to none this morning, which is something we’ve planned for a while, even if we haven’t made too much noise about it. We wanted to do it before we got married, and we came to the conclusion that we both had to quit, and it needed to be at the same time, in order for us to give ourselves the best chance to succeed. There’s no reason for us to continue smoking, and no reason for us not to quit, and so I hope over the next few weeks to periodically update everyone with our extraordinary, completely simple, not-at-all-strenuous success, starting today.

Today’s ‘Being a Quitter’ Report

Today hasn’t been that bad, honestly. I’ve eaten a lot of candy, and chewed a few straws down to nothing, but I can count the cravings on both hands, and have successfully managed to avoid any situations which may be too tempting to overcome. I figured that being in the office and working would take my mind off of things, but with today being a federal holiday, we didn’t do a lot more than office administrative work, leaving my mind to wander. I pulled through though, with what I feel had been a sufficient number of tests for the day, and came home early, to find that both The Girl and I had done well, and were much better moods than either of us had initially expected for today.

One thing I have noticed though, is the effects of the habits that we’ve created while smoking. In certain situations where I always smoked formerly, I didn’t necessarily have a craving for a cigarette (thanks in large part, I’m sure, to the nicotine patch on my arm) but I still performed the other actions around the habit. On the way in to work, I rolled down the window three or four times for no good reason, and during the day, walking to and from lunch, and waiting for the parking attendant to pull my car around, I performed the same actions that I always do, walking the same paths, standing in the same spots, only now sans cigarette.

This is something I noticed, and found the most interesting, the last time that I quit smoking, for a year. It’s interesting to see the effects of not only one’s addiction to nicotine, but also the habits and actions that we create around our smoking that make it doubly hard to quit. That’s why I prefer the nicotine patch as a method to quit, because you stay on the first level of nicotine patch for six weeks, in order to break those habits (which are often stronger than the urges brought on by the nicotine addiction itself) before eventually ramping down the nicotine dosage to a level that is manageable.

I also noticed that I was making a concerted effort to be as nice to everyone today as I possibly could, because after the last time that I quit I had more than a few people tell me how boorish I had been. With that said, if you see me over the next few months, and I’m pissy and short with you, please give me some leeway.

Finally, The Girl and I are both back at home and getting back into a normal work routine, so normal posting should resume. However, over the last couple of years I have tended to write a recap of Christmas vacation, as well as a yearly recap, and resolutions for myself, and the site, over the next year, but I think that the time may have passed for those, and it might be time to just go on and move forward, instead of just writing about it. We’ll have to wait and see.