On Smoking Outside…

Lest the title make you think that this will be a rant of one sort or another regarding the burdens of having to light up outside rather than inside, worry not. Quite the contrary…

Yes, I’ll admit that I was not in favor of the laws spreading across the country that ban smoking in restaurants and bars (and, I suppose I’m still not in favor of them on a free-market sort of principle, but let’s not go there), but, honestly, that’s not what this posting is about.

Last week, last Wednesday to be precise, my wife and I decided that we were no longer going to smoke in our home. If we wanted a cigarette, we could go outside to have one. This may not sound like that big a deal, but believe me it’s a major shift – especially for me. Gloria has never smoked as much as I do and she also has a job nine months out of the year where she has to smoke outside, so she’s pretty used to it.

I, on the other hand, work at home almost all the time. I have become very accustomed to smoking at my desk while writing, talking on the phone, reading, you name it. Not anymore.

Here’s the great thing. There have been many moments in the past near week where I’ve had the impulse to light up while working at my desk and then I remember, “Oh, right, we don’t smoke inside anymore.” Sometimes, I’ll take a moment to walk downstairs to where our porch is (my office is in the refinished attic of our house) but more often I’ll just wait. The result has been that I have cut my cigarette consumption in half. I know that this isn’t precisely the same as quitting, which is an ultimate goal, but it is a step onto the glide path towards quitting. And that’s a good thing.

By deciding to ban smoking inside of our home, the decision to light up has been made significantly more conscious. And let’s face it, part of what makes smoking a “habit” is that it can become an unconscious or a barely conscious thing to do for the addicted smoker. The phone rings, you light up. You send some files to upload and see that they will take seven minutes, you light up. You get the picture. That’s unconscious smoking.

You might say, “Well, it’s spring in Chicago now, going outside to smoke is no big deal.” Sure, to a degree, but it also got down to forty degrees last night, spring or not. And, besides, I’m hoping that by the time autumn returns (and morphs into the cold winters for which Chicago is well known) I’ll be ready to kick the habit once and for all. If not, I’ll bundle up tightly.

Namaste.