So my commitment to be smoke free is proving much stronger than my commitment to keep this blog updated 
Sorry ’bout that.
I’ve gained some weight. I’ve done a lot of things to make sure my mind never wanders in the direction of smoking. It’s kind of like a mentality migration. It’s hard to do mostly because of inertia issues. Your brain is so used to doing certain things on a certain schedule that it becomes troublesome to change. For a few days there I was even what I would call… depressed. There was a definite ‘mourning’ that went on. It was weird.
All that’s gone now. Don’t forget, though, I only smoked a half pack a day, so I was a light smoker, really. I would’ve been surprised if I had been still feeling big-time withdrawal effects after a month.
What’s great now is:
1. I sleep about a million times better. I don’t know why that is.
2. I never smell like smoke, which is good because nobody I work with smokes, and I didn’t like smelling like smoke.
3. I don’t have to go outside and freeze my butt off so I can smoke.
4. My whole body seems to function a lot more smoothly in general.
5. My brain is able to focus a little better (this after about a week of not being able to concentrate at all).
Well, good luck to anyone else out there taking the plunge. It’s hard, but it’s worth it.
So I’ve been trying to take a picture every single day for almost a month now. Most days I take more than one picture. One day I completely forgot to take a picture. This wasn’t my creation. My buddy Steve told me about it, and he found it online somewhere else (maybe here). You can see the flickr photo set of my pic-a-day project here. It’s a really interesting project, and I’ve discovered a number of things by doing it, even after this short period of time:
- My camera (Canon Powershot SD450) is the same size and shape as a pack of cigarettes, and I believe carrying it around in place of the old box has helped me deal a little better with quitting smoking, because I no longer feel like something is missing from my pocket.
- I look around more now, actively looking for interesting things, instead of waiting for them to just happen.
- You can come up with some interesting pictures when you’re pressured. A couple of cool pictures were the result of getting ready for bed and just then realizing I hadn’t taken a picture yet.
A couple of other less cool discoveries came out of this project as well. The first is that I don’t think it’s going to be about improving my photography. I mean, I guess if I do it for a whole year, I won’t be able to help but become a little better, but it’s not really about that for me. It’s going to be more of a journal.
The other discovery I’ve made is that either a) my camera just absolutely sucks at doing anything but snapshots, or b) I suck at taking anything but snapshots with my camera. I’m still honestly on the fence as to which one it is. I’m going to see if I can find an SD450 user’s forum and find some ideas.
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