Day 92: The dark days are over

At 9pm tonight I was looking out the window and it was still daylight.

Up until 2008 we always lived in flats. Big nice comfortable flats but flats. Places where it's hard to park your car and people argue about whos turn it is to do what. In the winter of 08 we moved to a house. Don't get too excited we didn't win the lottery or anything but with the worlds banks in crisis we did punch a bit above our weight and moved to a semi-detached house with garden space and parking space etc. Last year was all about making said house a home and was a bit like hard work. This year we get to see the fruits of some of that work. Our garden that, as recently as Easter, was covered in snow is now a spring wonderland. Tulips, daffodils and loads of other yellows and reds and blues. Add a bit of sunshine and it's hard not to be happy.

Yep, I'm hell of a glad I stopped smoking when I did. It somehow seemed easier to cope with feeling like shit when the weather and the daylight and everything else were also like shit.

It's the first of May. That means that there have now been two complete months this year where I didn't smoke. Two and half if you count that I started stopping in February. Do I miss it? Well certainly not the way I missed it when I stopped. The way Poet and Kath miss it now. I wouldn't wish that on anyone and guys it will get easier. Nope I miss smoking a bit. Like Zoe said on her blog I sometimes go several hours and then notice that I haven't even had a pang. I think I miss smoking because I really wanted to smoke. Yep, I liked the smelly stuff. So, if no-one was looking and no-one would ever know, would I go back to it? No. I find it hard to believe myself but here's the thing:

I like not coughing
I like that I can get out of the house faster in the morning
I like that I don't need five minutes before I do anything
I like not being short of breath
I like being able to drink a whole pint at the bar (two or three if I want)
I like that no-one can imagine how I managed to quit. They think it's some sort of magic

The office I've been working in is in the middle of bloody no-where. As a result without cigs as an excuse there's very little reason to leave the building. At first that depressed me a bit but now I just go out and walk to end of the car park and back. It's something that all smokers understand. You need to get out every so often.

Now that I think I can pretty safely count myself as a non smoking success I'm beginning to wonder how to develop this blog into something else. I've quite enjoyed blogging.

I plugged in a piece of software called google analytics on 03/04 because I thought it would be interesting. Well I absolutely wasn't wrong. I have always had a counter at the bottom of the page but it only measures each unique IP address that visits and nothing else. Analytics does so much more. Analytics tells me that 456 visitors hit on 1662 pages in a month. Someone from Japan read 19 pages in one visit whilst there is at least one regular visitor from Australia, two from the states and several from Canada. That's in addition to those who have actually set themselves up to follow the site.

With that sort of reach on the world I'd like to carry on blogging. Any ideas for a new blog welcome....

T