In the evening...

There are whole periods of time when I forget about cigarettes and I don't think about them at all. When I'm so preoccupied that the fact that I used to smoke does not even register on my memory. It's very pleasant when it doesn't and kind of bothersome when I do remember it, although I think that I can easily forget cigarettes again if I can keep them off my mind for such a long time. I push the thought of them back into oblivion and concentrate on something else. Every time I do that successfully and manage to distract myself, I figure that I have the winning hand and that I will get better at not smoking with every day that passes, although right now I'm happy with every hour of the day that I pass without smoking.

I divide my day up in sections and each section knows its difficult time that I have to get through and somehow I find a way to cope with it. I find that keeping my mind occupied is a very good way to deal with the desire to smoke, because one of the reasons I want to smoke is because I get bored and sit and stare at the walls. That's a definite thing not to do and I must always make sure that I'm actively engaged in something with my head. I must either be reading or blogging or emailing, if I'm not doing that, I lie in bed and listen to the radio and take a nap.

Another thing to do is chores, although I don't have that many, because the apartment seems to stay so clean and there's hardly anything to do. I'm a much neater person now that I don't spend so much of my time smoking and making a mess with my ashes and tobacco. I'm constantly picking up fuzzy bits and things from the carpet and putting them in the unused ashtray that's very clean. The desk and table surfaces aren't getting dirty. I don't waste half of my life inhaling smoke.

No, keeping my mind occupied is the best thing to do. It also helps if I drink coffee and you would think that the opposite would be true, but I find that it calms my mind and distracts me from wanting to have a cigarette. If I just sip coffee I do fine and feel no need to smoke.

I've been to bed, although it's not late at night yet, but I found it impossible to sleep. I was lying there with a crowded mind, thinking of a hundred things all at once and not being distracted by the radio enough. That's because it's Saturday night and sports are on and I'm not interested in sports persé. I don't care about the football matches and about handball and gymnastics on talk radio without the pictures. I can think of more exciting things to listen to. Surely there are more interesting discussions to be held than these sports reports.

There's a big difference in radio interviewers too. Some of them are very good and well informed and the discussions are very rewarding and informative. Some of them don't know what the heck they are talking about and don't take advantage of the knowledge of the person that sits across from them. It's very frustrating, because I'm talking back to the radio and saying, ask them this or that, please, that's what I want to know. A good interviewer does, a bad interviewer makes a mess of it. Sometimes the potentially interesting guest turns out to be very boring and shallow and is a lost cause, but the program needs to be filled with him anyway. Those are hard times.

Anyway, I was lying there thinking about a hundred different things and none of them were really important as they were all silly 'what if situations' that I imagined myself getting into and what I would do to get out of them. It was a case of doomsday thinking with one scenario being worse than the other and totally unnecessary to waste my time on.That's why I got up. It was useless to lie there and do it any longer. I had to stop that train of thought. It's a kind of obsessive way of thinking that gets a hold of you and you get deeper into it before you know it and start to think it is really pertinent to your life that you solve these problems that don't exist. I'm glad I'm now realizing that these are exercises in futility before they lead me down the road to madness too much. It's like seeing a murderer behind every tree and imagining what your tactic will be to deal with him when he decides to strike. Sometimes I have an overdose of imagination.

Tomorrow will be the true day of rest, if today already wasn't. Today was a rehearsal for tomorrow, let's put it that way. It will be the most quiet day of the week, although church bells will ring all day long, jubilantly. That's part of the Sunday pleasure, as long as you ignore the implications behind the ringing of the bells. It's all so tainted now, but probably has been for a long time. Still Sundays are sacred days and are the most peaceful days of the week and I do appreciate that. It's alright for the world to fall silent and for there not to be a rush on the stores and downtown, except to stroll through the nearly empty streets from one café to the other. It's a shame I don't have a partner anymore to do that with, husbands are good to have around to do those kinds of things with. Husbands do have their merits on occasion. If they are the least bit interesting and loyal.

I'm looking at the night ahead. It's nearly midnight now and I'll have to go to bed shortly. There's no other way about it, I must go to sleep. I'm full of life and not really ready to go to bed, but neither do I have a reason to stay up. I think I've read all the blogs there are to read and I've commented on them. There's no other recourse but to call it a night and hope that once I go to bed, I stay in bed and don't get it in my head to get up again in the middle of the night. I can always read my book now that I've put a light bulb into the lamp in the corner of the living room behind my other armchair and I can see what I'm doing. It does make a difference and makes the room so much brighter. That was a fairly simple solution.

Well, I'll try to see if there is any kind of other mischief I can get into before I crawl under the duvet. Doubtlessly there is something I can find to do for the next twenty minutes or so. I'm only postponing the inevitable.

Have a good night.

Ciao,
Nora