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. You can also click the GUS tag to view all diary posts, or access the GUS Library (the archived version for now).
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Between working out the details of various family graduations (a sister's Master's degree, a niece graduating from high school) and starting to contemplate 30 year college reunion events (30? 30???!?? yikes!), I've been thinking a lot about the passage of time and feeling a little old and past it all these last few weeks.
It's not a milestone birthday year for me (the last one of those was a couple of years ago), so it's not that. Just a general feeling of life passing me by, I guess, no matter how much I work or how much stuff I do or how many things I cram into my life. An awareness of being on the "time's running out" side of the equation, instead of the "everything's ahead of me and anything is possible" one.
::: shakes fist at young whippersnapper graduates, and then clouds :::
I suppose we all hit that point in our lives, or at least most of us do. And a lot of us use it as an excuse to just throw up our hands and say (or think) "why bother?" With the idea that it's too late to change, or get a fresh start of our own. That our ship has sailed. That it makes sense to stop trying.
We probably shouldn't do that. Scratch that, we definitely shouldn't.
See, even now, as I'm kind of wallowing in that feeling, not helped by days and days of cold, gloomy rain---which again, I normally don't mind, but I have lots of outdoor stuff to do and the weather hasn't been cooperating with those plans---I do realize that it really ISN'T too late to start fresh. Or start over again (however many "agains" it's been for you...fortunately, there's no limit on that!).
Doesn't have to be one of those huge, obvious starts (the graduation, the move, the new job or relationship or whatever), either; there's room in every day for a more modestly scaled one. Heck, there's room in every hour for one.
Those little fresh starts---knowing you can choose to live or feel differently, over and over again, for as long as it takes to make larger, more long-standing changes (your own fresh start)---are within everyone's grasp. It's one of the cornerstones of behavior modification, in fact, from the 12 step approach to CBT: you get to decide, one day at a time, or one hour at a time, or one minute at a time, that things can be different. That you can react differently. That your life can be better, feel better, be better. That better things are ahead.
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Wed PM: Vacationland
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