2004-01-13 4:30 p.m.

I set out my plan last night - as tonight is New Year's Eve for me, making tomorrow New Year's Day. You may remember that I have decided to adopt the Eastern Orthodox Calander this year as the week that contained Dec 31 2003 & Jan 1 2004 sucked beyond the telling of it thanks to the flu. But anyway.....

In church Sunday the pastor was talking about breaking bad habits and he said something really cool: Make your goal S.M.A.R.T. (easy to remember, no?) Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relavant, and Trackable. So Measureable and Trackable are the same, so what. It's an easy acronym to remember. And for me stopping smoking isn't a "New Year's Resolution", although the timing is impecable. It's a life goal. So here's the goal in detail:

background I'm 32, and will be turning 33 on Feb 18th {and I'm an Aquarius in case you're wondering :-)}. I began smoking when I was 20 and for the most part have smoked a pack a day for 12 years. Can you imagine how disgusting my lungs are? But I digress.... 20 cigs a day, 12 years. I suck at math, but overall... that's a bunch.

Goal, step one: Starting today, I shall limit myself to 10 cigarette a day, as follows:

the wake-up one @ 7:30

the drive to work one

the with coffee one @ 9am

the mid-morning one @ 10:30- 11am

the post-lunch one

the afternoon break @ 3:30-ish

the drive home one

the at-home-now-I-can-destress-one

the post-dinner one

the pre-bed one

There's my 10. So far today I've stuck to my schedule. The 3:30 wait was a hard one, I think because work got slow & it was easy to dwell on it. But I held strong. And I will stick to this 10 per day through Sunday, Jan 18th.

Goal, Step 2: Starting Jan 19th - Jan 25th: 5 ciggies per day.

That will be harder, but I'm cutting out all smoking in the car (that's 2); the 10:30am (1); combining post lunch & 3:30ish (1); and combining post dinner/pre-bed (1). Because I know this will be much harder than the 10 per day, I've given myself until Feb 2 if need be to stick to the 5 per day. I don't want to go to Step 3 (which is 3 per day) if I don't think I'm ready, because then I'll just fail.

So then there's step 3, 3 per day, which I will hopefully start Feb 2, possibly Feb 9. Step 4 will be no ciggies and I hope to make that my birthday present to myself on February 18th. Even if I have to buy the gum for the nicotine to make it through for a bit longer, it'll still be better than the tar & other gunk in the cigs.

So expect to see a ciggie count for a while, a la Bridget Jones :-) Hopefully my will-power will stay strong and tomorrow's entry can say Ciggie count for 1/13 - 10. Here's to my will-power!