Because writing about quitting is easier than doing it.

I'm going to quit smoking.

Eventually.

It's been years since the first time I thought that maybe I should quit, but that thought likely occurred during a cigarette and was likely followed not too long after by another. I don't smoke much; For the longest time, 4 or 5 years, I kept myself to five a day. This has only recently changed. I'm now up to 6 or 7, and for a moment before I light up those I probably could skip I ask myself if this is really necessary, and the answer is always no, but regrettably this is usually moments after I've already taken the first drag.

I'd like to think I never would have started if I thought I wouldn't be able to stop (easily, and whenever I wanted), but I started smoking in a time of my life where the future was really only a vague, distant concept, and it didn't really make much difference what happened then as long as I was having fun now. I smoked my first cigarette in a club called Legends in downtown Denver (the fact that you could smoke inside kinda dates me) with my best friend Dani and a hot Russian guy I'd taken French class with in high school, Sergei. I'd started college a few months earlier and had quickly developed a fondness for pot, and when I lit it up in between my thumb and forefinger Dani laughed and said "It's not a joint, Kat". The only reason I really can think about for choosing to smoke that first cigarette was my newly-found, freedom-loving Fuck It attitude (which, oddly enough, got me into kind of a lot of trouble).

The hardest thing about quitting is going to be that I don't really want to quit. I know that I should quit. But I'm just now beginning to reach a point in my life where what I should do seems important. What I want to do usually still wins. Would I like to quit smoking in 2010? Yeah, sorta. But I like smoking. I like smoking while crusing around in my car, after a big delicious meal, or after satisfying sex (um, or unsatisfying sex, I guess). I love the feeling of stepping outside after a long hard shift at work and lighting up. I love having a cocktail and a cigarette on the patio on the summer. I LIKE IT ALL.

But I guess I owe it to myself and my mom and my lungs to try. At some point.

"But then I do think New Year's resolutions can't technically be expected to begin on New Year's Day, don't you? Since because it's an extension of New Year's Eve, smokers are already on a smoking roll and cannot be expected to stop abruptly on the stroke of midnight with so much nicotine in the system." - Helen Fielding