Day 10: Tuesday, January 20

Had a meeting in Baltimore today, nothing sexy, just a reconnect with the client after the long holiday break. I'm at a loss for anything interesting to say, I fear, but that may be all for the better. My lift this morning was a little unfocused, but it was my first "workday" workout for four days, so I think the early hour was more of a shock than usual. Enough of this gibberish, see ya' tomorrow.

Day 9: Monday, January 19

It's Martin Luther King's birthday, and an unexpected day off, so I took advantage of it by lingering in bed and reading in the morning and treating myself to a loose schedule. It was another afternoon workout, which in a perfect world, would be my preferred method of training. So "ready" when you hit the gym after being up for a few hours. I've always had a dream about a life where I could get up and write fiction till around 1:00, go out and lift, then draw/paint/sculpt till bedtime. It's more than a dream really, more like a blueprint for a future life I fully intend on finding. But, until then, gotta' not smoke and get lean (physically and mentally) and then just drop the hammer and create the new life.

Speaking of Dr. King, I fear the impacts he and the SCLC, NAACP and all the unsung street level activists and citizens who moved the country off the dime are being forgotten, or more accurately the world they inhabited is becoming ephemera. This struck me recently when a young man made some comments about the current foreign policy environment and historical treatment of third world governments and he truly seemed unaware of the "reality" of the cold war, of looking at a newspaper headline and thinking "hmm, wonder if this will quickly lead the end of life on earth?" That was just a normal, everyday thought back in the day and I think anyone born from 1972 on simply has no grasp of it as the geopolitical reality for many decades. Oh, whatever, the ignorance of youth is far from a revelation.

Day 8: Sunday, January 18

Could I be any more decadent? I basically organized my day around watching my sexy new "Alien" special edition DVD, and I'm not sorry for it! Got all my chores done, cleaned this sloppy mammajamma of an apartment up, got the groceries and started a series of life drawings from photos (can't find a model, which has been the case for many a moon, I need a girlfriend who likes to hang out and pose for me again...). And, once I had paid the Catholic guilt indulgences, I was free to plop myself down and absorb the film and documentary shorts. Awesome. Ridley Scott rocked back then, was less lazy and had more to prove. You see it in every frame of this film, nothing looks dated, the scares still scare, the performances don't seem mannered, it's a perfect slice of genre blending film-making God I love DVD's, but I do get a little annoyed when the films hang up from time to time, but a small price to pay. No smokin' today, and I had a kick-ass workout, so I'm taking care of the instrument...just need to produce better "music".

Day 7: Saturday, January 17

Man, be careful what you wish for...remember when I said my nic-patch dreams weren't interesting? It really kicked into gear last night with a vaguely futuristic prison as reality t.v. show, and I was visiting my brother-in-law (which is interesting because none of the real ones give me the feeling they'll wind up in the pen). It looked like Alcatraz if it were designed by the WWF, think of a prison designed like the square circle, but what's going on in the central square "foyer" are trials where every layers motion is met with roars. But I'm not paying attention to the spectacle, I'm trying to find my way to my errant relation, and like the blood sport of old, new prisoners are wheeled in, bound in wheelchairs to feed the games. One of whom was a very aged, very grizzled Burt Reynolds for some reason. Anyway I make my way around the perimeter of the square only to almost hit a very small, a dwarf really, black woman who looked vaguely like she had down syndrome. She's very polite, but very freaked out by my size but she keeps walking. When I turn I see a dog, who is basically the canine version of the woman I just saw, mutated and very crazy looking. Suicidal, I continuously place my hand at the dogs growling mouth until it will acknowledge me as a friend, at which point I'm rewarded with slobbering licks from a nasty looking mouth. Behind what appears to be a picnic table, is the "husband" of the woman, who smiles at me and hits a double biceps pose to show off his horribly mutated, but most excellently ripped body. Turns out he and his "woman" and the dog, were all crystal meth addicts and they're the lowest in the pecking order in prison and are incarcerated deep beneath the surface, and that they'd all begun to mutate. Then I wake up.

Day 6: Friday, January 16

Dodged a bullet today, I came very close to a 7-11 sortie for some smokes. Jeez, how I hate that sensation, the sensation of my body just going autonomous. I shook it off, but I wish it was more heroic, but in truth it was just the notion that I'd have to come back here and report my weasel behavior here in this electronic confessional. Say what you will about a Catholic upbringing, but those white collared, black skirted witch doctors know how to leverage shame. And, since I'm pretty sure nobody is reading this, that's not a bad thing because it was a sense of betraying myself that stopped me. And that can't be bad. Well, that's about it, gonna' draw something to keep my hands busy. Toodles.

Day 5: Thursday, January 15

Good God I'm tired, it's friggin 9:15 but the way I'm draggin' ass you'd think it was the witching hour. I won't even attempt to be entertaining, just wanted to note that this is day five, which is four days better than I've done in a long time. I need to beat this sleepy thing to squeeze more out of the evenings, but 5:20 comes early. Which reminds me, I'm having great lifts this week, so if you know anyone who won't go to the gym, you can tell 'em a fat ol' guy is getting some of the best pumps of his life. How I love the pump, I can't being uncomfortable with the physical self, I work with many people who I assure you for all their affect of the cosmopolitan are ghosts to this physical world. What the hell does that sentence mean??? I gotta' get some sleep!

Day 4: Wednesday, January 14

Jesus, smoking is so fundamentally disgusting when you're not doing it (then it's cool and tasty), man, got on the elevator at the office today and got a powerful blast off the hair of an otherwise cute girl who had evidently been in the garage with butt in mouth. Wish I could say it turned my stomach or something, but at least I didn't bum a smoke and ask for her number.

This is a little off topic, but my new sleep/wake schedule is kicking my ass. I've been faithful to my morning lift, but I need to fall asleep earlier. I'm sittin' here shakin' my head trying to keep the screen in focus, of course with all the chemical changes I'm goin' through with the patch and without the cig intake I'm probably lucky I'm still walkin' around. Whatever, this is just another boring entry, I'll spare you further whining.

Day 3: Tuesday, January 13

Oooh baby, ain't nothing like being stuck in endless rush hour traffic to give you time to reflect. Reflect on how much it sucks to sit motionless in a car. Didn't have the jones for the smokey-wokey though, if I wasn't such spineless junkie, I'd just go ahead and quit cold turkey. But given how easily I slipped back into the habit after my last "successful" quit, which was full of much self congratulations on my will power, I'm thinkin' better safe than sorry. Speaking of which, the reason this gab fest is labeled "Stop Smoking Diary III" as opposed to "Stop Smoking Diary II" is an acknowledgment of what must have been three separate "attempts" to quit over the past year. The "attempts" is in quotes because of how truly laughable they were, sort of like how John Hinkley "attempted" to get Jodie Foster's to notice him. I am noticing my first three "diary" entries are crazy boring, not filled with the joy and madness of the first go-round I gotta' embrace that every day without caving in to the monkey is a victory and I love to win baby.

Okay, gotta go write my novel...which was another thing that got lost in the shuffle of this last year, and that's gonna' be another win this year.

Day 2: Monday, January 12

You know the toughest time of the day with quitting smoking? The drive home from the office. Why? No friggin' idea, maybe it's one of the few times when I have time to dwell on it. Frankly, when I get up at 5:30 and only have a few minutes to get my act together before I head to the gym, I ain't thinkin' 'bout blowing off a tobaccy spliff. But, of course, that's by design. When I was smoking, the choice between a nicotine/caffeine fueled morning lazily doing email and wondering the net often proved too potent a challenge to getting dressed and getting frozen on the way to the gym. Am I proud of this? Hell no, but I can't turn my back on the truth. And that's true for all vices really, when hidden they're easy to forget in daily conversation, but like vampirism they tend to look more hideous in the bright light of day.

A crazy byproduct of these nicotine patches is very vivid, very nutty dreams. Which I enjoy, although in the accompanying literature they act like this is a bad thing, it's like forcing yourself to dream on command. The one I had last night was peculiar mostly in that it wasn't a legitimate dream, just a jumbling of realities I'm familiar with. Specifically, the idea that there was a subway into Vegas from a suburb that looked suspiciously like the New Orleans of my youth. Sort of like my brain just couldn't cough up a fantastic scenario and just started sorting though the sock drawer of my subconscious.

Day 1: Sunday, January 11

Well, a good first day, not my most shining moment of productivity due to the advent of the NFL playoffs but I didn't smoke nothin' either. One of the many challenges I face with this, is that I need to lose weight as I stop smoking, which is something like exceeding the speed of light, but I gotta make it happen. I'm pretty sure that's one of the reasons I fell off the wagon in the first place, "that" being weight gain after I quit, and I need to reinforce that that's not a given, just a likelihood. Had a good workout this afternoon, and am looking forward to tomorrow's lift.

Well, this isn't the most exciting of entries I fear, but I did day one and that's how wars are won, one battle at a time.

Day 0: Saturday, January 10 - Preamble

Okay, so I’m gonna’ stop smokin’.

Why? Cuz' I went through this before, and fell off the wagon. Can't remember when, and that bothers me. Cuz' I don't like being a junkie. Cuz' it stinks. Cuz' it's killing me, inch by inch, moment by moment. Cuz' I don't wanna' be one of those guys who's always talking about quitting while standing in like to buy more smokes. Cuz' it wastes time, and time is too precious to trade for piles of ash and a stank mouth. And a million other reasons. Smoking is stupid, and being stupid is no way to spend a life.

Why I need days like these (preamble days), where I go through all kinds of ritual research and chest thumping declarations is beyond me, but here I am surfing the net for stop smoking tips, checking my pantry for foods that trigger smoking, reading the details at www.nicoderm.com like I’m reading the instructions on a fire extinguisher in the middle of a grease fire. I've done this before, I know what it takes, it's time to shut up and drop the hammer.

If you want to wish me luck, make fun of me, or encourage me please zap a note greggillis@greggillis.com, I'd be most appreciative.