Soy muy inconstante en mis vicios

I quit smoking last month. A whole month early for a New Year's resolution, although I assure you it was quite by accident that I quit at all. Because up until I quit, I really was enjoying the smoking. I had made a deal with myself that I would smoke until I finished the dissertation and then I would quit, which enabled me to very happily engage in this vice, knowing that while it was unhealthy, it was unhealthy with a higher purpose and a limited scope. I wanted to do nothing but sit around, smoke, drink coffee, and work on my dissertation (okay, not really the dissertation part, but it did enable the smoking and the coffee drinking).

Then I got sick with a very nasty allergy thing, which made smoking completely unpleasurable. And if a habit is expensive, bad for you, and unpleasurable, then there is really no point.

The other night my honey and I decided it was high time to do some drinking. And it was. It was a totally necessary boozy night together, where we let loose a bit and talked the kind of big, romantic, sentimental talk that comes out with the hard spirits.

During the course of the night, I smoked a cigarette.

This was a very good move because I had been having dreams in which I am smoking, and I always wake up from these dreams feeling partly like I somehow failed by desiring in my unconscious mind a cigarette and also feeling partly like I would like to go and smoke a cigarette. Which, as I said, I did. And I didn't like it.

And the next day I really didn't like the lingering taste of it in my over-the-hill, dry, hungover mouth, which means that I am, for the next year or so at least, over smoking.

As an aside, I was thinking about getting old, how as I age I have less of a tolerance for drinking, and I realized that I wasn't actually that hungover; what had changed wasn't my body's tolerance for drinking, but rather my tolerance for having a hangover. Because I know that in my younger years, I certainly drank a lot more, winding up in the morning more dehydrated, more headachey, more close to heaving, and still I would get up and do whatever it was that I had to do that day, usually something along the lines of going to work for 12 hours, drinking some more, and maybe studying or writing a paper in there. Whereas Wednesday, I pretty much watched Law & Order and the various other marathons (South Park, MXC) that have hit the cable airwaves.

Which also means that I am back on the healthy. I say this not because these things (not smoking and being healthy) necessarily must go together, but because in my experience of my life, they do go together, seemingly without any prodding on the part of my rational mind. Because I already started doing my yoga DVD again (say what you will, this $10 Target DVD packs a serious workout) and I just got a little part-time gig at a bike store to which I will be riding my Surly Grrl. And, thanks to my honey, we already eat well.

So what am I going to resolve for twenty o seven? The obligatory quit smoking, exercise more, eat better resolution seems to have fallen in place on its own accord, so I can't really take credit for it at all. Of course, I have many other vices, many other ways in which I need improvement. And I have the other obligatory resolutions, too - finish the diss, revise, defend, get a job (no, not a job, a career) - the usual.

Tomorrow I resolve to figure out what to resolve for Y2K+007.