I’ve been thinking about quitting the durries and let me tell you, even thinking about the concept sends an anxious knot into the pit of my stomach. It is something I conveniently place at the back of my mind when ever I think about  giving them the flick. This addiction is a mighty powerful one and one that seems to need constant reminding that it is exactly that…an addiction. The only regret in life I have, is ever picking the damn things up in the first place. Trying to conquer the fear of putting them down is the hardest part. I am able to quite easily avoid the fear by postponing the quit day indefinitely, just by not thinking about quitting, but surely it is time that I lay this demon to rest….before it is too late. I have one packet left sitting there waiting for me to smoke…do I make the plan to quit once that packet is finished or do I wait till the doctor tells me I have throat cancer. The answer is simple I quit.

However, do I mean it when I say it? Will I have the strength to carry out the plan. Have I even made a plan? What exactly do I fear about quitting, the pain of withdrawal? I don’t know. It’s the fear of fear. The fear of feeling anxious. The fear of feeling deprived, stressed, angry and lonely. My companion will be gone. But surely these fears are irrational and how can I even feel fear now when I’m still smoking. It’s outrageous that such a pesky stimulant can provoke such negative emotions. Will withdrawal even be all that painful, after all, half my life I spend in a state of anxiety as it is. It’s just thinking about how hard and difficult things will be that gives fear its life. What if I think about how good I’ll feel once I don’t have stinking cigarette smoke choking my arteries with lead, tar, carbon monoxide and a thousand other vile chemicals.

I get nothing out of smoking except a sore throat and a case of worry that those little nodes at the back of my throat are something I don’t really want to deal with. And yet  I still smoke. Happily I want the nicotine to sooth my worry away but it always wants more and never fulfils its part of the bargain, to give me the flight of light headedness it once did. Apart from the slight reprieve it offers before reminding me that is needs another feed I get nothing but headaches, legs that feel like lead, guilt and fear. Like a wretched little infant crying incessantly to be placed back into the warmth of its mother’s womb, to be cradled and fed and not face the cold and harsh reality of birth, this addiction beast just doesn’t want to leave the nest I provide. I have to kick it out!

So procrastination and waiting for it to leave isn’t going to work, that much is for sure. Motivation is unlikely to come until it’s too late so what is left? The Plan. The Big Plan. To walk through the door that says Non-Smoker and what can be easier than walking through a door? I’ve cracked open that packet now. Will I lay this beast to rest once it is finished. That leaves tomorrow and fuck I’m scared to walk through that door. But what’s more scarier the door or the morgue?

Word count is one so it says under my Publish Status in WordPress, however I hadn’t typed a word. It caused the catalyst to type these words, words about nothing except a word count and that in itself is merely a pseudo word count because the words themselves are gibberish. Not worth the pixels they are written on. 50. 58. Up they go. Like seconds on a clock. Tick. Tick. Tick. 61. 69. Delay. Enough!

Onto something serious but what? I’m over the credit crunch and the financial crisis. We all know the outcome and it’s depressing. Depression is something I know a little about but it is hardly worth extrapolating into a 2000 word diatribe over. The world will soon embrace the dark eyes of greed, sucking the world dry of its fiscal prowess and we’ll all be hovering around the soup kitchen awaiting our daily bread but even that is not assured.

Although I said I was over the credit crunch my mind keeps returning to it. It’s kind of hard not to be enveloped in its implications when the media keeps the sensation alive. I’m probably alone in my obsession with control, I just can’t relinquish my love of certainty and it’s difficult to make a clear decision with my limited funds without certainty. My fear tells me to withdraw my savings and put it under my mattress because whose to say that all banks aren’t going to collapse with all these fraudulent loans in circulation. I have shares in my superannuation fund but that is money I’m unlikely ever to see anyway. Then when I think about it, if all the banks go under then what does it matter anyway? Money won’t mean a thing and even though I’ve half heartedly commented in previous posts that it is meaningless, I never thought we were all to become acquainted with the worthlessness of the piece of paper it is written on. Once the banks all go bust and all our savings dissipate into the ether then what conclusions are we to draw by this manufactured entity. It’s created from nothing and to whence it shall return.

I’m probably being influenced by Zeitgeist: Addendum that I watched last night but it suits my gloomy outlook on times to come. Whose to say that the movie isn’t a true depiction of the financial system and just because I’m not an expert in economic matters doesn’t mean I can’t be indoctrinated with the best of em. Although the true believers of the system will undoubtedly scoff at such alternative views it sort of clarifies why we are in such a mess. All this time I thought that there was this vault of money in actual existence, but as it turns out there is no vault filled with money, that in truth the money that exists in the system is just a paper trail of loans after loans of credits that in reality don’t exist. It is all created out of thin air at the whim of the reserve. I couldn’t understand why these major banks were going bust but after watching Zeitgeist 2 and being informed of that the monetary system is debt, has clarified the whole dilemma for me.

At least now I’m more initimate with why I’m a slave.