beachylife's Journal

 I can not believe it's Oct already. I quit smoking in the middle of August, and those first few hours and days seemed to drag. I wasn't sure I could make it through the day, much less through a week or a month or two. Now, here I sit with rarely a thought of a cigarette, when I see someone  smoking, I notice how foolish it looks, and I notice the strong stale odor.

 I consider myself an ex-smoker now, I am also aware of the trap that just one cigarette holds for me. It's not a problem, because I no longer crave a cigarette, but someday that little voice may say "hey, it's ok. you can have just one". I know that is a lie, I can never have just one, and as long as I don't there will never be a problem.

 Quitting smoking has helped me remember that I can do anything, if I put my mind to it. I feel like I have more energy. My sleep has returned to normal, well probably better than it was when I was a smoker. I sleep a little less than I used to, but feel great when I wake up. 

 The last few weeks I've been concentrating on organizing my life. By that I mean I started with the junk in my closets. I downsized earlier this year from a 3 bedroom house with a garage to a small two bedroom without a garage. I had sold or given away a lot of furniture before the move, but still had a lot of junk from my garage taking up space in my closets. I sold and gave away all of it last week on Craigslist, well everything except my tools which will reside in huge rubbermaid containers until I have a garage again. Now, I can utilize my second bedroom for guests, which I will probably have over the winter.

 I also took on the enormous task of transferring all of my cd's to my computer. I have about 110 cd's, which for the most part sit in the closet in a crate. Now, I have every album I ever purchased available at the click of a mouse, I can also access them through my stereo in the living room., thanks to Uverse!. This weekend I started another enormous task, I'm going through all of my old photos (pre-digital camera) and scanning them. Well, scanning the ones that have any importance or relevance. I have been spending about an hour-two a day scanning and then editing them, cropping removing red-eye, etc.... It's very time consuming, but it makes for a nice hobby and takes me back to some good memories. I figure, I should be done by Thanksgiving, I'm going to make up different albums on cd's, some of friends, some of family and give them out at Christmas.

 Gosh, reading this makes me sound pretty productive, I won't mention that I started working out and plan to be in great shape by Christmas! My point is; when I quit smoking it seemed like an enormous giant to battle. Looking back, it really wasn't, not when you start off with a goal of making it a few hours, and next your goal is a whole day, then a week, a month and so on.

Other tasks which seem to big to tackle are no longer giants when you break them down to smaller tasks, and it feels good when you acomplish them.