The Start Of Something New

There's been some big changes as of late. Starting with the blog and spiralling pretty uncontrollably into my day to day offline life. Two major changes happened by choice - the kind where you wake up one day and something just clicks that you can't live the way you have been any more and you have to put a stop to it right then and there. Monday I both quit smoking and decided to nourish my body simultaneously.

Today is the fifth day where I haven't touched a cigarette. The fifth day off cigarettes in over a decade. I've tried to quit before and I've never made it past day two and a half before something tipped me over the edge. I've tried the inhalators, patches, lozenges and everything else you can buy over the counter but this time something's different. My mindset has changed because I'm working toward something bigger than just quitting the toxins. I'm sticking with the addiction by using an e-cigarette with cappuccino flavoured nicotine liquid but I will not pick up and smoke a cigarette. The bigger picture is still quite a long way away but I needed to give myself time to fail if I had to, time to adjust and time to settle because everything all at once? Well, with me, that's a disaster.

I'm also nourishing my body but it's not in a bid to get fit, lose weight or become healthy. Honestly, I'm just really very bored by the bland and beige foods that adorn my plate every afternoon and evening (I skip breakfast most days - something I'm working on, still). I pin so many colourful recipes that look delicious and come adorned with handfuls of those good-for-you natural foods but I still tend to get lazy with dinner and add a few vegetables to a plate before calling it finished. Sure, it's not terrible food but it isn't tasty nor photogenic and I really want to start making more meals and preparing things that taste really really good without a shed load of salt and pepper. This blog and the fact I have to photograph things really makes me want to up the ante on my food choices. I'm not saying it's always going to be super good for me but I am saying I will experiment more.

There's a lot going on in my personal life with my family and work right now that I don't want to bog down the blog with but suffice to say it doesn't look like these things will have a happy ending. The four of us all hold hands, support each other and take a breath when things that concern our family but not our immediate in-our-house family start to get stormy but we always muddle through. This time it seems like muddling through may not be enough and there'll be harsh decisions that boyfriend and I will make as a team that concern our extended family and the problems that have arisen. I'm focusing a lot of my energy into work as I have deadlines for the first issue as editor of The Pillow Fort magazine starting today plus all the other things I do, this blog, another project I'm working on and so on and so forth. There are upsides and downsides to being somebody who puts a lot into the things they do and right now that facet of my personality is a huge plus.

I'm very pleased to announce the fact that I am focused, slightly more motivated and keeping a positive disposition through it all. I think it's a massive thing when you're doing something so self-indulgent like quitting smoking because it really ends up being you inside your own head and it's all you can think about, talk about and do. I'm pulling myself from that, immersing myself just a little bit more in life and hopefully soon we'll have something new to discuss here.