Adding Up

I really like the quitmeter thingie that is on the top of my blog here. I've always believed that if you don't have some way of tracking a goal, you may as well call it wishful thinking. The meter is an ongoing reminder of progress...real progress...especially for those times when it doesn't seem that I'm making any difference at all.

I look up at that quitmeter this morning, my sixth since my latest attempt to quit smoking. I'm facing the trial of going through the weekend. I'm facing increasingly intrusive thoughts of rationalizing smoking again. I get worried. Then I study on the meter. Nearly $50 saved. Well, that's good, but it's not like I'm impoverished and those nicotine patches and cinnamon toothpicks cost money too.

200 plus cigarettes not smoked.

Whoa. That's a carton. I went through a carton in five days? Two hundred cigarettes. Two hundred butts. Somewhere around a thousand times I inhaled smoke into my lungs. When did I become such a heavy smoker? Why did I let it go on for so long?