Along with a friend, beginning the first week of January 2019 I returned to the gym for regular visits for the first time since high school sport practices.
During my working interlude between those days and the start of college, I remained healthy by spending 50+ hours a week on my feet, cooking and running my section on a hot line of a busy restaurant. Standing over a boiling pasta well and ten burners enjoying the heat; twisting and bending to plate at the window; darting and weaving through waitresses to reach the walk-in cooler. A ballet of stretching and squeezing and swerving through the rhythmic chaos - that plus minimum wage is enough to keep one lean. I let my exercise fall to a secondary concern these intervening years, but I found new motivation to continue the pilgrimages. I am pleased to look back on 12 months of consistent attendance, a 100% increase of weight settings, and 30% reduction in my mile time.
This year, I have stopped smoking.
It has been 3 days since my final cigarette - not a milestone, nor a fact to be lauded. In fact I should, and deserve, to be admonished for every one I inhaled. The stuffiness, the coughing, the shortness of breath - I am looking forward to only having those symptoms with a cold. I'm excited to think how much further I'll be able to go at the gym as well. But I've smoked for about 10 years, probably lost 10 years of life, and estimate over $5,000 to do it. That is sobering.
However, I won't entirely miss tobacco. The warm trickle of nicotine seeping down the spine, settling in the arms and legs to calm an anxious twitch - it will be hard to replace. I could never judge another person for continuing to use. I have the capacity to replace smoking now with other, more process-oriented means of calming myself, primarily meditation. But some crave the ashes, that step out of a hot kitchen into a cool night - a 5 minute escape from the brutish ballet.
