It's so close, I can almost taste it...

Here it is, May 2, 2006, and my one-year quittiversary is a mere 14 days away. I can hardly believe it.

Time is a strange concept, isn't it? Sometimes I feel like it's been years since I smoked, sometimes I wake up wondering if I smoked the night before. (I didn't, of course.)

It dawned on me last night that the entire time I lived in my last apartment, I did not smoke. Of course, I only lived there from September to February, but still, that's a first, since I've been of the age to live in apartments. While I was living in that last, pretty little apartment at the Falls, I knew I wasn't smoking, of course, but the totality of living there and never smoking just didn't occur to me.

My brothers are now well over a month into their quits, and really, they are exactly the same guys, except that they don't step out on the porch every 45 minutes or so. It's definitely more obvious when someone takes up smoking than quits--people tend not to notice when someone isn't doing something.

Which makes it all the more challenging to quit smoking...

I'm impressed with the way their quits are going. They both seem very level-headed and determined to quit.

I am so happy to find myself staring down the "finish line" of my first year being smoke-free. Of course, it's an illusory finish line, there are many months and years ahead of me, and I want all of them to be smoke-free.

That's no reason not to celebrate, though. My bros and I talked about having some kind of celebration on May 16th. We haven't worked out the full details yet, but I'll be damn sure to post that day...

See you then!