This afternoon I woke up late. Really late. About 1:30 pm. I was shocked I had slept that long. The room had that strange quiet feeling you get when the day has already started without you.
Even stranger was Whiskey Kitty.
She looked completely worn out, stretched across the corner like she had just finished an all-night shift at some underground cat nightclub. Her fur was a mess, her eyes were bugged out, and she was shaking a little like a hipster coming down from a rave party. I have no idea what kind of adventures she had while I was asleep, but she clearly wasn’t ready for round two.
I tried letting her downstairs, thinking maybe she needed fresh air or a change of scenery. She wandered into the dining room for a while, looked around like a tourist who picked the wrong city, and then headed right back upstairs.
Not exactly a high-energy household today.
Meanwhile, the smoking battle continued its usual chess match inside my head. I contemplated smoking a lot today. The thought crossed my mind several times, like a persistent door-to-door salesman who refuses to leave the porch.
But I never did it.
Lately I’ve been getting frustrated with the way I track quitting in this journal. Counting the days. Counting the cigarettes. Counting the puffs like some obsessive accountant of nicotine. Somewhere along the way I turned quitting into a scoreboard.
And maybe that’s part of the problem.
By writing about it every day, analyzing every urge, every craving, every tiny victory, I might have turned the whole thing into a drama. A saga. A long running television series called The Great Cigarette Showdown.
Truthfully, quitting might be simpler than that.
Today I didn’t smoke.
Most days lately, I don’t smoke.
That alone tells me something important. I have a better grip on this than when I started. Back then cigarettes were practically part of my daily routine, like brushing my teeth or feeding Whiskey.
Now they’re more like a passing thought. An annoying commercial that pops up once in a while but doesn’t convince me to buy the product.
Sometimes we forget that progress doesn’t always look dramatic. There’s no orchestra playing when you quietly make a better decision. No parade marching down the street because you skipped a cigarette.
But the benefits are happening anyway.
Every day without smoking is a small repair job inside the body. The lungs slowly clearing out the junk. The heart getting a little break. The blood moving a little easier. Science says the body starts healing almost immediately once you stop.
So even if quitting doesn’t come with a trophy or a fireworks show, the reward might be something much bigger.
Time.
Health.
Maybe even life itself.
And if that’s the prize, it’s worth a few restless thoughts and a couple of strange afternoons with a rave-exhausted kitty.
So here’s to another day of better health.
Once again, I got this. 🐾🚭
by Dan and Bonkers
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