I love to visit here, I love to read here and I love to write here. It is a wonderful place. This site keeps me anchored in the positive side of things, and, I believe, keeps the nicodemon out of my life. Well, not the site itself, but all the wonderful, encouraging, supportive, empathetic, (sometimes bickering) Exers here. Thank you all for what you do every day here for me and for all who are fighting for and those who are enjoying the freedom that quitting gives to us. The longer I am quit, I am finding that there is more to this freedom than I first thought. The only way I could learn of additional dimensions of freedom is to stay quit. This is not a game and it will never be over. No final buzzer, no ninth inning. But I do believe that there is a “ Winner Take All” You see, it has always been easier for me to be positive when things are going my way. I’m sure we all have a touch of this in us. LOL. I’ve just gone through some circumstance that, in my previous self, I would have complained, smoked over, drank over, cussed over and then smoked some more. I am going to share this now if you would like to continue reading, as there is a point I want to make here that is relevant to this whole situation.
My profession and career have suffered greatly as a result of the economic downturn, and for the last year, I’ve been working for a small bank that has had its woes since the first of the year. I started looking for something else several months ago, and I’m tellin ya. Things ain’t like they used to be. I’ve been turned down for my recent production by banks that would have been salivating to have me 2 years ago. It is insane. I even considered hopping out of the field that Iam in to try something else, but now you only apply on line for a lot of these positions, and they don’t ever ever call you back( if you are lucky enough to get a phone number or a name of someone to call.) Like I say, this has been going on for a while. Well, in previous times, this would have called for some serious smoking, drinkin, cussin and maybe blamin somebody for the circustances. I’ll just say that it has been frustrating.
About a week and a half ago, I was listening to a conference call from the brass from the bank, and they were telling us that receivership was imminent , and to be ready in the following days for the ax to fall. Just as the call was winding up, I got a call on my cell phone from a large national bank to tell me that they had an offer letter for me and wanted to see me right away. WHEW!!! That was close. As it turns out, I start tomorrow with the new company, and I am so ready to go back. I hope to be busy, but I am afraid that I will not have as much time here as I like, but don’t worry, I sure as hell ain’t leaving. I just gotta figure out a new schedule.
During this time, I notice that I am losing water pressure at my house. I have a plumber come over and tell me I need a real plumber that can do leak detection, as it seems there is a leak under the slab. Well, they come over and tell me I have TWO LEAKS under the slab. GEEZ!! I get on the horn with the insurance company and tell them that we ain’t drilling the slab to fix this. We are going to re-plumb this whole house, help or no help from them. So now (a little over 4 grand later), I have hot and cold running water in my house again, but the sheet rock guy is on vacation, so I have about 20 holes in the sheetrock that need to be fixed, and re-painted. I’m telling you, you can’t make this stuff up.
HERES THE THING!!!!!!!
Not once during any of this was lighting up considered as a solution. In fact, my pulse never once shot up during these episodes. That would have been really different nine or ten months ago. What I am saying is that there is a lot of learning involved in quitting smoking, I had to learn how I was going to live if I was not going to smoke. I did not know it then but I know it now. To smoke is to die. Everytime I would be in a tough situation before, I would just kill myself a little bit… Oh! The insanity of this addiction!!! I never realized that I could learn so much just by saying no to the cigs, and what Iam learning is how to live… today… everyday. In fact, the main reason I did not post when I was going through thehardest part of the job thing, is that I told myself I would post here when it got resolved. I just knew that things would work out, and they did.
So, for those of you that have a longer quit, you perhaps already learned or maybe you already knew this and did not tell me . That’s OK because it is such a wonderful thing to learn on my own. Learning things that cannot be taught in a scholastic forum .. Patience 101?? Or Advanced Faith 303?? Introduction to Confidence?? For those of you that have not been around here long, and you are struggling and someone posts on your blog that it will get better.. You have no idea how much better it can get. You will have life lesson after life lesson if you just don’t pick up a cigarette. Even for me today, if I were to smoke. It would be schools out on the life lessons for me. I think I’ll just leave those smokes at the store for now, and see what I can learn tomorrow. Good night Yall………… or as they say at Yoga…… Namaste!! (bow)
