Welp, three weeks here in about an hour. With any luck last week's depression hole /was/ the ickiness. We shall see. 

Less active here partly because I seem to have gotten some of my ability to work back. Two days of a normal amount of work isn't yet a pattern but here's hoping. (Then I can start working on the amount of work I should be doing to pay off that resort vacation I'd bought...)

I guess that's the theme here: cautious optimism. 

And hold the perky...also why I haven't been super active. Just not much cheerleader over here the last couple days. Maybe it'll come back; maybe it won't. It's a discovery, what I've got to work with now, which bits are the real me...

 Two years ago I turned to my 16yo niece and said, "Don't do it. It's a trap." Since then the trap'd been getting more and more unbearable. 

We're getting free!

 "Say I really quit"...dealt with the same, smoking herbal cigs the first few days post nicotine. 

I went the other way around, with herbal cigs, until I let Allen Carr convince me otherwise and I declared myself quit-quit. Now I'm not so sure I wasn't right (for me) with my original plan to stay on the herbals for another little while after I got over the nicotine. Or that's the junkie thinking talking. Mistake or no, the deed is done and I won't renege, but I still wonder if this is just another instance of going someone else's way instead of my own. 

That, or this bout of resignation is being brought to you by the 3-week ickiness.

We shall see.

Meredith (GettinFree) said:

That, or this bout of resignation is being brought to you by the 3-week ickiness.

Excellent analysis.  Yeah, I'm feeling the blues over here.  Overwhelmed by work.  Hating EVERYTHING.  Apparently my brain decided to stop working today.  WTF.

Dumb and angry is just about my least favorite set of mental states ever. Yuuuck.  

Let's just get through today and see if we can't go to bed a little early tonight, get this poo of a day over with so we can be bright and shiny and smart and productive tomorrow.

Right????? Ok let’s do this

TED talk "Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong"

https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong

Thank goodness for this forum.

Very insightful.  Very interesting that connecting with others is at an all time low and addictions at a all time high ???? Lots to think about.  Glad we are all connecting here.

Disrupting the brain patterns is like unraveling lace, all the intricate threads woven throughout every aspect of every minute of our lives. I think this is what distinguishes getting off nicotine from getting off heroin or cocaine or even alcohol. There's no special event where we'd smoke, it's just at the beginning OR end of EVERY activity, throughout our whole day, in my case for 23 long years.

I asked someone I know who got off heroin about the experience, and it sounded kind of the converse of nicotine...really intense, painful physical stuff for like 14, 18 days, and then not much, even when he was hanging out with Those Friends, whereas at least /my/ experience of getting off nicotine is more like 3 days of physical intense weirdness but no actual pain, then a loooong period of the brain adjusting to the new patterns of doing something after you do something.

Meredith (GettinFree) said:

, then a loooong period of the brain adjusting to the new patterns of doing something after you do something.

You summed it up in a nutshell, Meredith.  How are you doing ?

Hey, Brenda, thanks for asking...still no nicotine, so there's that and that's what truly matters...unless maybe you ask my clients...had three okay days and then right back into only getting half days in. =-/

Mom hipped me to Wordscapes, which I do not recommend if you want to accomplish anything with your one wild and precious life, including going to bed within two hours of when you'd like to. Then I went to uninstall it this morning and discovered that a related program doesn't let you uninstall it, so now I have to research how to get it gone, and DO NOT INSTALL WORDSCAPES.

Today is my monthly Day Off, which in the last few months has mostly meant the day I'm most painfully aware of how filthy my house is, despite Rule 3 of a Day Off being that I'm not allowed to feel bad about anything I did or didn't do. But I got A Thing done, maybe I'll get two, and maybe just maybe I do go skating today. I haven't been on the ice in like 18 months, which is a really long time for me, so that would be a big deal.

But no nicotine and no smoking, even having had a couple hot toddies the other night, so there's that.

How are you doing?