The Dawning Light, or, Habits I Never Knew I Had

Just a quickie post--my neck won't take a lot of babbling, which is nice for you--less of me to read.

Smoke counts:

Friday: 12
Saturday: 10

I'm allowing myself 10 tomorrow, then down to 8 on Monday, cut on Wednesday to 7 thru next Monday and see how that goes. I have a convention to work at this coming weekend, and usually having to go outside for every cigarette (I live with a smoker so we only smoke outside when sensitive family members come to visit) cuts down on my consumption but sometimes it increases it if a lot of my smoky friends are around--we wind up camping outside, shooting the breeze in the breeze, so to speak. I'll probably take along any clove cigarettes I have left and give them to a friend. Much as I love the taste there's no sense in them going to waste--I only smoked them when I was in the mood for something special so it's not working out very well to make them part of the daily routine. I think they're higher in nicotine than my regular smoke but the flavoring doesn't go down well for me as a regular thing--when I crave tobacco I want my Newports.

Speaking of which, if I had back a tenth of the smellsticks I've bummed out at conventions alone I wouldn't be purchasing another cigarette for the rest of this year, let alone until my quit date. As short on cash as I am from setting up with eCigs, that'd be really nice.

I'm also finding out pain spikes make it harder to control smellstick use--I'm guessing it's a comfort thing since I've been in chronic pain for most of the last 18 years and I've smoked far longer than that. To be honest, one of my better motivations to quit is that sometimes I'm on medications that make me sleepy and after having been in 2 house fires as a kid I'm scared to death that I'm going to fall asleep with a smoke and burn this place down. The trouble is, my smoke cravings peak at night so that's actually the toughest time not to smoke and those are the hardest cravings to vape away. I guess that's another reason there's a quit date, to get used to the change.

I do see progress though. I'm reaching for my Vea before my cigarette case after meals these days. I expected to have a rougher time eliminating the after-food "dessert" but with the flavors that nicotine liquid can be had in I can truly have dessert just by screwing on a sweet-flavored cart. I have a VG (vegetable glycerin) based cherry named Rainier that's awesome after meals and I'm using the Chocolate Truffle that doesn't vape well by itself mixed with it for a yummy Chocolate Covered Cherry. I don't have the proportions right yet but when I do it'll go in the DIY Nic Recipe tagged posts.

Have a good night and check out the post below this one for a big dose of adult funny--Shelf Life stars some of the best-known names in voice acting doing a live-action webseries and hilarious is an understatement when describing this one. So have a fun time and give it a look!