GUS (Gave Up Smoking) is a community support diary for Kossacks in the midst of quitting smoking. Any supportive comments, suggestions or positive distractions are appreciated. If you are quitting or even just thinking of quitting, please join us! We kindly ask that politics be left outside.
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A message to ALL quitters (and would-be quitters): You don't have to avoid GUS if you have a failed quit. We won't give you a bad time or nag you. We consider the failed quits as "practice" for the real quit.
I'm someone who basically makes her living by paying attention to little details. Most of my working life entails writing and editing material destined for pretty close scrutiny, with little room for error. I spend my days shepherding proposals through the contract and grant submission process, tweaking text for accuracy and clarity, and in general attempting to dot everyone's "i"s and cross their "t"s. I also do a fair amount of scheduling, planning, deadline tracking, red tape cutting, project triage, and Q.C. (that's quality control, for the acronym-challenged among us). But despite this detail-oriented existence, I've noticed that there's a definite limit to my powers of observation.
Now, I rarely miss the big stuff, especially those things that announce themselves at full volume or bash us over the head with their impending presence: major life milestones, big deadlines, holidays, and pressing or long-term family obligations. Most of us---even if we're kind of off in our own world, distracted by something, perhaps a little overwhelmed---can keep up with those, or at least be aware of them, even if we decide to take a pass on dealing with them.
And I'm usually on top of most of the dozens of smaller but no less critical things that keep our home and work lives humming (bills, chores, routine home maintenance, walking the dog, feeding the cats, running errands). I don't always get to everything, but I usually at least try to give it my best shot.
But I've come to realize---more so lately, in this age of omnipresent social media use, multitasking, increasingly sophisticated time management tools, and technology that seems to advance overnight---that I am basically doomed to miss stuff, at least some of the time. There's simply too much to keep track of.
It's also a function of getting older. As we age, most of us learn to discard the trivial so we have enough brain space for the stuff we actually need to remember.*
We learn to skim information, grasp the basics, notice the stuff we absolutely must notice, and the rest of it?
Kind of a crapshoot, to be honest.
Sometimes we're on top of everything, and sometimes, we switch over to auto-pilot or cruise control and hope for the best.
When we undertake major behavioral change, though, we don't get to switch on the auto-pilot. Old, mindless routines don't work when you're doing something that forces you to be mindful and aware of your reactions to things in the moment. You have to focus in order to figure out new ways of doing things. And let me tell you, when you're physically miserable and emotionally all over the place, focusing is hard.
New quitters may experience a distorted sense of time, suddenly hyper-aware of all that nicotine-free time spiraling out in front of them. They have to consciously decide---over and over and over again---to not do that thing their brain is screaming at them to do. And all sorts of things that were previously lost in the haze of unimportant routine detail are suddenly right there, front and center, impossible to ignore. It's disconcerting, even disorienting. It's irritating. It throws us off.
But gradually, the New Normal fades into routine once again. Time rights itself; cravings recede, new routines become just plain old routines, and we can switch on the auto-pilot again.
And we start feeling better---slowly, so slowly at first that we don't even notice it---until one day we realize we can take a deep breath without a tickle in our throat or a hitch in our chest. We realize we can walk without wheezing, taste our food in a way we'd forgotten, plan out the details of our day without having to accommodate smoke breaks.
Most of the time, we don't even notice that things are different---better---until someone points it out to us, or we surprise ourselves by doing something we haven't been able to do in a while, or we realize we've totally forgotten to remember that thing we used to have to do, and don't anymore.
*This is not a 100% flaw-free system. There's a good chance your brain will decide to discard an important tax deadline or details of a relative's birthday in favor of recalling the precise details of an episode of Gilligan's Island or the lyrics to a song by Weird Al Yankovic. Brains can be unhelpful jerks sometimes.
Who's Your Little Buddy?
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