Curing Writer's Block: Part One

I bought a little book on writer's block recently - something I experience far too frequently for my taste. One of the exercises in the book was to pick a bad habit and write about why I do it. The goal is to write honestly and clearly about something we do that we know we shouldn't do, but that we do anyway.

My bad habit was easy to choose, and one that several times in the last two years I've said I was going to get rid of, but still have managed to hang onto for reason I'm not entirely clear on.

Smoking.

I started smoking when I was 16. Of the four girls I hung out with, 3 of them smoked. Only one held out, and I wish that'd been me, but it wasn't. At the time, I wasn't really much of a 'bad girl' (as far as anyone knew anyway), and it was my little rebellion.

When I was very little, in the late 60's, all of the anti-smoking stuff really started to come out on TV. I remember my mom coaching my sister and I on how to tell my Dad we wanted him to quit smoking.

And he did.

Boy, was he unhappy with me when he caught me some 13 years later. He still is, but it's my Mom that's really bad about it.

I did quit once. For three weeks. For my first husband's birthday. I got the patch (it was prescription then and damn expensive). Apparently though, I was a complete and utter bitch for three weeks (who, me? /blink) and one evening, he'd had enough and went to the corner store and brought back a pack of Marlboros and threw them at me.

I did not quit then for the right reasons and I know that now. Had I done it for me instead of someone else, I probably would have gotten through that bitchy stage easier.

As for why I still do it, I still don't know. Is it a security blanket of some sort? My last vestige of 'The Jill I Used To Be'? I've gone long periods of time without smoking before - so while I realize there is a nicotine addiction present, I don't think that'll be the worst of it for me. I think it's the habit part. The part where my brain says "you can have a cigarette now" as if it's a treat or something.

I have cut down - WAY down from what I smoked even 2 years ago. I have good days and bad days. But it's still there, ever present, calling to me first thing in the morning, right after I eat and idly lurking while I sit at the computer downstairs.

I make excuses (and at the end of it, that's what they are - excuses - tho I present them as valid reasons) why today is not the right reason to toss them out.

The patch will help with the cravings. But it's the habit I need to make shut up first.

I'll keep working on that.

Anyone with motivation ideas should email them to me. But don't use the pictures and health motivations. Those never work. *chuckle They have been tried many times before.