Day 1

"Life is what happens to you when you make plans"

I don't remember who said that, probably someone I'd be very embarrassed about quoting if I knew who they were.

[Found out later it was John Lennon, and he said something slightly different. Not so embarrassed now.]

They were also right. My meticulous plans for the New Year break to be in the middle of nowhere, miles from any shop, and only in the company of non-smokers, was well and truly scuppered by the arrival of 5 unexpected smokers to the party. I lasted all of 4 hours on New Year’s Eve, and smoked about 20 cigarettes in total over the first four days of 2004.

So.

I’ve debated in my mind what to do. Either I reset my quit to be midday yesterday, when I had my last cigarette, or deem these 20 to be slips, and that I’m still on course.

Both options don’t really cut it for me. I don’t want to write off the work I did in the first 9 days of my quit AND I want to be honest and real with myself about what happened. I have chosen to cut off four days from my quit, and say that I started on 26 Dec rather than 22 Dec. That puts me at Day 9, exactly where I was on New Year’s Eve.

OK. Then I realised that there will ALWAYS be a nagging doubt at the back of my mind that I’m not REALLY quit all the days that I said I am. So I’m going for the back to zero option, the brutal truth.

Here come the feelings...

I feel really sad that I lost that quit.
And I know that I can pull this one off.
I’m scared that I’ll just always be a failure - and that’s definitely my inner junkie speaking.
Looks like I’m going to be working on forgiveness for a while.