So after years of knowing it needs to be done, and a million excuses, for the first time in my life I actually wanted to quit smoking. I’ve been avoiding posting much about it, as I didn’t really know how the first few days would go. I do have to say there were a few tough moments but in reality so far it’s been 1000X easier than ever before…

So I’m wondering a bit, why has it been easier? Hands down, wanting to quit is probably the number one reason… Nobody smokes anymore, and all the sneaking outside was getting a little old. Being constantly worried about “stinking of smoke” wasn’t too fun either. Constantly looking for excuses to get outside or have to ‘drive’ somewhere alone… exhausting.

Money plays a big role as well. The screenshot above is from a little app called “sinceIQuit” that keeps me posted on how long its been. But an even nicer feature is seeing how much stupid money I was spending… I was going to throw my daily cigarette spending into a jar, but this is much easier…

Of course it goes without saying there’s a huge push to quit when your daughter is on your case about it. Hopefully I’m quitting soon enough that she won’t ever even think of starting. I never really smoked in front of her, but she eventually caught on to the “random trips to the garage”, and there’s only so many times you can try to explain an addiction to a child… (ie – they don’t get it…).

So for what it’s worth, we’ll see how this goes..I expect there will be tough times ahead (I mean I am quitting something I’ve done for almost 2/3rds of my life…). I imagine outside of a nice milestone there won’t be much more from me on the subject. One of my biggest pet peeves was always people who quit and make it some sort of mission to bug and harass smokers… That’s not my thing….