I am quitting my terrible smoking habit.

Potential embarrassment and shame about failure will be a further incentive, so I’m announcing here there and everywhere.

I’ve got a quit date – next Wednesday April 15th. I took my first Chantix pill last night. and it takes about a week to kick in – and my birthday isn’t a bad day to quit. I (really, desperately) hope it helps me get through the initial stages of withdrawal.

I’ve got a list of various warning signs, and another list of helpful tips – and I’m trying to adjust my psychology between now and then. I’m not going to do any nicotine replacement, because for me that would just prolong the misery.

I’ve been thinking seriously about quitting for a while now, but I just haven’t had the will. Everything came together this time, and it feels like a good time to do it.

I want to feel better, have more energy, and get that smell off of me. I want to get my father’s flat hopeless look out of my eyes. I want to be free of this addiction.

I’m also sick of the snarky comments, and the increasing class distinction – although to be honest, that’s just one more stupid reason that I’ve kept smoking, in defiance and rebellion. Well, gotta transcend that too.

John seems a bit apprehensive, as well he should be. The last time I tried this, it didn’t go very well. I know he really wants me to quit, though, and he’ll be very happy to see me do it – once it’s done.

My posts for a bit may just chronicle this particular journey. Maybe it won’t be a big deal. Maybe I’ll be a little crazy. I’m not sure. Even if things are a bit unstable for a couple of weeks, it will be worth it to get to the other side. I’ve got a lot of support for this, and I hope that my family, friends and co-workers will cut me a little slack if I act a little bit uncharacteristically here and there. I’m a little worried about that aspect of things; it’s one of the reasons I’ve put this off. Ideally, I would be shuttled off to some cabin miles from anywhere for the first two weeks, but that’s never going to happen – and waiting for the perfect opportunity to quit has meant that I haven’t quit. There’s never going to be the perfect time.

By Ben’s birthday – one month after mine – he’ll have a totally smoke-free and recovered Mommy wishing him a happy birthday, and she won’t have a lighter handy for the nine candles on his cake.

There is one thing that I truly enjoy about smoking. The controlled breathing of smoke in and out of me always made me feel a bit like a dragon, the keeper of the flame, the mistress of the wind. I’ll miss that more than anything else.

So here I am, thinking about a great train of thought to share. I’m getting a blank. Nada.

I don’t know what to make of the economy except for an unsubstantiated intuition that this is going to be a difficult couple of years regardless of what is done to try to stabilize the situation. That doesn’t really help anyone.

I’m suddenly profoundly uninterested in what should be the media’s very comment-worthy playacting and the simply ridiculous hypocrisy of certain unnamed politicians.

I haven’t had any profound spiritual/creative insights this weekend.

I’ve been playing around on FaceBook too much lately.

I bought two toilets this morning, and I could tell you all about the 2-hour conversation at Home Depot about relative flushing efficiency and amounts of water and the average mass of …. but really, why?

I did some laundry. Yeah. So?

It seems like my thoughts lately revolve around unresolvable issues, so that’s kind of an exercise in futility all by itself. Why rehearse it here?

I did enjoy the full moon. Looked at it for a long time, here and there over the evening.

Fun stuff was all of a social nature:
Veggie Indian dinner with friends.
A co-worker’s birthday lunch.
Neighbor visit – lively conversation and a couple of beers.
Some good conversations on the phone.

My performance review at work was kind of interesting. It was my first one (ever), and I think I did pretty well. There was some unexpected recognition, and even some useful actionables for development.

I couldn’t find a red pen.

I did find a cheat for Nintendo DS.

I committed to sending six odd gifts over the next year.

I’ve not yet called my mom and gramma for the Sunday conversation.

So…. um…. yeah. Not much of a post-worthy nature.

This post isn’t even about nothing, which would be interesting in its exploration of nothingness.

No, this one is just a blank.

Maybe I should take advantage of it and see if I can get into a zone, you know – just kind of staring into the middle distance.

It’s only a variation of the memes bloggers have been playing with for more than five years now, but considering the viral theme I think it’s kinda neat that I’m third on Google.

25 Random Things about Me - Virushead

Messy Folksonomies: The Uses of Metanoise for Better Organizational Collaboration

This presentation will consider the uses of bottom-up, co-evolving folksonomies for better communication and collaboration across disciplinary lines.

For reasons of efficiency, semantic technologies often focus on terminological control. However, where several types of discourse exist within the same organization, a layer of bottom-up vocabulary provides a space for the change and difference that is always part of language. Language, like life, thrives on the border between order and chaos, and even the noisiest and most undifferentiated meta labels can serve a function.

Update 2-18: Actually, it looks like I’m not actually speaking after all. My proposal was accepted by the conference, but my support funding didn’t come through. Oh, well. Maybe next year.

1. I am fascinated by faces. The mindful, authentic, observant face-to-face encounter might be the essential ingredient in most relationships – and certainly the test of most ethics and “values.” The very definition of pathology for me is someone who can look you in the eye, see your soul, and then still hurt or kill you.
2. I’m not adjusting to getting older very well. When I look at my face in the mirror, it doesn’t look like me and I feel a bit alienated and depressed. But at the same time, I love to see the changes in the faces of people I love. This last year, it was an amazing experience to go to my high school reunion and to see the faces of people that I’ve known since I was a child. The recognition-within-difference really touched me very deeply.
3. I do miss some aspects of other times and places in my life, but overall there is more kindness and caring and love and meaning in my life now than ever before. Sometimes that kind of stuns me.
4. Sometimes the only thing that will motivate me to attack my list of things to do is the prospect of being rewarded with some time alone in which I’m not required to do anything in particular. I’m a fierce guardian of that dreamtime – no obligation, rich imagination. My thoughts travel on their own -and mix up and ferment and rearrange and become resonant and meaningful. Not only is this ultimately the source of every major insight I’ve ever had, but without it, I wouldn’t be me to myself. My secret world is the heart of who I am.
5. I love to socialize, but it totally exhausts me. This is partially because I tend to overcompensate in various ways for my introversion. Later, I usually feel that I’ve not listened enough to others. I curse this recurring and almost irresistible urge to try to be amusing and likable and clever. It takes a lot of energy, I’m not very good at it, and I know that I should just zip it a lot more often than I’m able to do.
6. I’m still looking for my ideal pair of shoes – the shoes that don’t hurt my feet, that look gorgeous but have a heel of less than an inch, that are strapped or tied over my incredibly high arch and don’t let my tiny heel slip out, but that are wide enough at the front not to smoosh my toes or put pressure at the widest part. These mythical shoes would be perfect for any occasion and any outfit. I could wear them with jeans or a cocktail dress. Let me know if you find them. I suspect they have to be black.
7. I can’t let go of my books. I have too many, but I can’t let go of them. Even the Karl Barth.
8. My spiritual beliefs and practices are at once so eclectic and yet oddly inflexible that I doubt I’ll ever be a member of a religious community. I have the strangest things on my alter.
9. I’m almost absurdly grateful when I feel like someone I like “gets” me.
10. I miss the kind of cheerful feminism represented by such songs as Helen Reddy’s “I am Woman” and the tv theme song for Wonder Woman. Although I love the angry music and the whiny music, too, I wonder what happened to that soaring sense of confidence.
11. My energy level is never very predictable. I never know how productive I’m going to be. I work in very efficient spurts, but then I’m overwhelmingly fatigued. This can be measured in hours or in days. When I feel exhausted, I tend to become a bit reclusive. I still think of the couple of weeks that I had to be on corticosteroids (for systemic poison ivy) with a lot of fondness, because it gave me just enough of that little extra adrenaline boost to let me feel like I imagine many people do most of the time.
12. I like to take a walkabout from time to time. I love to travel alone. I used to disappear into the woods for a week, but that’s neither possible nor even really desirable anymore.
13. It’s kind of predicable – and I don’t blame anyone for rolling their eyes – but our son Ben really is the most beautiful sweet smart amazing kid ever. I hope he continues on his own path – just the way he is already doing.
14. The greater percentage of what I write is still never read by anyone but me.
15. I would prefer to die in a manner and a moment of my own choosing. Skydiving would be the ideal, and although I don’t have to ride down on a missile like in Dr. Strangelove, I can understand the appeal.
16. I love the moon, and I love to sing to the moon and to the night sky, especially if the songs are actually about the moon and sky and stars. Some favorites: Sister Moon, Sting; Fingernail Moon, Annie Lennox; Sisters of the Moon, Fleetwood Mac; Goodnight Moon, Shivaree; Stars, The Weepies; Galaxy Song, Monty Python; In the Deep, Bird York; Small Blue Thing, Suzanne Vega – and for some reason, Strawberry Fields.
17. I’ve finally come to terms with the reality that I’m never going to be a Jungian analyst, a comparative mythologist, a well-known poet, a best-selling novelist, or an accomplished singer. I doubt I’ll ever play the piano like Tori Amos.
18. I love paranormal romance novels – especially those involving vampires or fae. John (the hubby) is amused by this and often teases me about my “porn collection.”
19. I don’t often wear perfume, but when I do it’s usually either a vanilla-musky Must de Cartier or a combination of lavender, mandarin, lemongrass, and bergamot. One drop of either is enough to alter my experience of the world for hours. I hope other people like it too, but that’s not really as important.
20. I have twice had the opportunity – and twice refused – to swim in the Mediterranean.
21. I deal with melancholy much better than I deal with anger. You can try to make me depressed if you must, but don’t piss me off. I’m not easily angered at all, but hell hath no fury like a Heidi-grr.
22. The thing that most infuriates me is the sense of powerlessness I feel when I want to somehow make everything all better for someone who is suffering. I can be very empathetic, but at a certain point I feel like a minor prophet waving my fist at the sky. That’s when I most need a little alone time to breathe and reorient myself.
23. When I was younger, I used to be petrified – really petrified – that the people I love would be killed. I had nightmares about my brothers (most of all my brothers) and other relatives, and my son and husband, and some of my dearest friends, and even a couple of my teachers. The worst part of the dream was always that they might have been saved if only I had done one little thing differently. After my Dad died, these nightmares went away. I don’t know why that happened, but I’m grateful.
24. I do often dream about my Dad. He’s different in my dreams than he was in reality, but it still helps – or maybe that’s why it helps.
25. I don’t know whether or not I can still pet a fuzzy honeybee until it goes to sleep in the palm of my hand. I haven’t seen one of those bees in years. I miss the lilacs too.

And here are the old ones:

• 8 Random Facts about VirusHead – December 2007
• VirusHead Random 8 – June 2007
• 5 Weird Things about Me – July 2006
• Meme Me Me – November 2005

Until recently, I was just an ex-JW. But now I’m really trying to become a recovering JW. I realized that as soon as I was df’d, I just threw myself into a frenzy of activities and poor choices, with no real direction. I think I was trying to stay busy so I’d forget about it all. But about a month ago, it all came crashing down, and for the first time, I have time to think about the effect it’s had on me. I made a firm decision to get better and stop hurting myself, but I wasn’t sure where to begin. I started meditating on it and talking to some friends about the matter, but of course, no-one that hasn’t been in the situation seems to be able to wrap their head around the idea – much less empathize. I got more frustrated and started scouring the internet for some kindred souls…

The conclusion I came to is this: 90% of ex-JWs are either not trying to move on with their lives, or doing it in a very unhealthy way. I’m sick and tired of hopping from page to page on the web and reading rants and raves of individuals df’d 30 years ago – still b*tching about elder so-and-so like it was yesterday. I’m sick of all the postings that positively ooze bitterness and hard feelings. Even worse, I’m becoming painfully frustrated at all of the “reformed” christians that frequently seem to spawn out of ex’s. It seems like everybody is screaming to jump on the bash-the-JW’s bandwagon – but only as part of an aggressive marketing strategy for their new church. For example, my non-JW grandmother introduced me to a friend that was df’d many years ago, in the hopes that this person would be able to encourage me. But this person really does not care at all about me. All I hear about is how I should attend this person’s church and that jesus will magically take away all the pain! I’m really tired of being alienated even from the people I should have so much in common with.

I’m young, totally over religion for now, and I have my whole life ahead of me. I know I have problems and I think it would help immensely to find people who have the correct, and healthy view on being an ex jw. I have a few basic beliefs about growing up as a jw that I’m trying to stick to right now:

1. That it’s a traumatic and damaging way to grow up, and even more painful to deal with once you break free from it.
2. That being an ex-jw is like being the child of alcoholic/abusive parents – it causes problems throughout life that will need to be identified and dealt with.
3. That the damage caused by being an ex jw has absolutely nothing to do with an individual learning false doctrines, and therefore cannot be fixed simply by finding another church whose teachings you agree with. People get hurt by the practices, not the beliefs!!
4. That there’s a balance to be found between learning from your experiences and dwelling on them. And it is absolutely worth it to recover and go on to live a happy life!

Tonight I read your blog “advice for recovering JW’s“, and I really think you’ve gotten the most out of your experience. It was so refreshing to finally discover that someone can reach out to other people that are hurting, without sounding like an enraged lunatic, or having alterior motives. The writing is logical, and hints at a wisdom and patience acquired from learning a lot of tough lessons. It helped me so much to finally identify my self destructive habits I’ve been carrying with me! You also made some great suggestions for channeling negative feelings into positive endeavors. Thank you so much for taking the time to share some of the things you’ve learned in this life with others! I only wish that every ex jw had your same determination to get better.

Any time you feel like sharing more helpful advice please do so. Thanks to a very wise friend, and your blog, I now have an idea of what I need to do to stop destroying all the good things in my life. Now I just need people to be there for support. If what I said in this email makes sense, please don’t hesitate to write back and share some of your experiences with me. I feel like I’m about to begin a long journey; and it sure would be nice to get tips from someone who’s already well on their way. Thanks again-I will definitely be checking out the rest of virushead in the near future.

It took a little work to get the thing working right. Initially, the thumbnails refused to refresh and I had to mess around with some changes to the image generator.

All is well now, though, so you can enjoy a range of photos of my (extended) family, friends, trips, flora, fauna, skyscapes and whatever else happens to be there.