Fags (The English Type), beer and mountains.

I was going to avoid the desire to smoke and have a beer this evening, yet after a long, tedious, hay-fever filled slog of a day, I thought, Bugger It, and you now find me at the keyboard, cold tinny to hand. It's ridiculous, as I gave in to want once again. I did, as you may know from previous posts, give up smoking for over a year, but slipped back into it through a deliberate act, fomented out of anger. this all goes to prove that anger, and decisions made in anger, suck. Logically, my mind tells me, I don't need tabs and booze, that they are objects of desire, just as much as, say, the need to soup up a really crap car with alloys and ultra violet lights under the wheel base is to a certain type of knuckledragger. when I gave up last time, it was only the first 24 hours that were tricky, and after that, there was the odd five-minute craving episode, of which I reminded myself, and buggered off to do something else until it faded, and, most importantly, without replacing it with another habit. I suspect that if I'd used those patches or the gum, I'd be up to a fifty packet a day job by now. The trouble is that I don't quite want to give up again enough - I just need to nudge myself a bit harder.
This is where the Three Peaks training comes in. Knowing that I have another month before it happens will, I hope, be an achievable target. Also, considering how I felt about pushing myself onwards on the second day of the training session, but still going on to do it anyway, gives me a kind of template for achieving it. Or something like that. I felt, on day two, after a cold and sleepless night, that I couldn't do it, and began formulating excuses in my head that I could plausibly say to the others in the group: I've got blisters, my ligaments are agony, I've got the squits, blah blah blah. It wouldn't have fooled anyone, except myself for a bit. Then I realised what I was doing, and how that negative, I-can't-do-this voice has been so often a dominant sound in my own head, and I told it to Fuck Off, then went and climbed the bloody mountain. At the end, despite being soaked and cold, I felt excellent.
I'm not sure of the whole point of this, but one thing is clear to me - I don't need to stick to the same familiar things, of fags and booze and slumping in the sofa. It's a matter of seeing what is solely desire, what is need, and what the difference is between them. any effort, whatever it is, is often worth it.

Having said that, my beer's just run out.