Cigarettes

This evening I reached for a cigarette.

There weren't any, of course, I stopped smoking a few years back, but this evening I reached for one.  It wasn't necessarily that I had a bad evening, although a SERIOUSLY bad run on Overwatch was the order of the day.  I mean, the hero selection on mystery heroes was not in my favor, but I was playing for poop. No, it wasn't that, per se.

It wasn't necessarily that I read the news and I worry.  My friends are at greater risk every day.  Immigrants are in danger (remember, when they say "every crime" they mean every.  It's a misdemeanor to cross the border illegally), refugees are in danger, our country has been declared a "flawed democracy", our president is a laughing stock around the world, he's posturing like mad, wants to build more nuclear weapons (because the Russians have 700 more than we do, you know.  Why not be able to blow all life away a few more times!), relations on our own borders are rocky, they want to enforce federal drug laws on a nation that wants pot... No, it's not necessarily all that.  But what?

Well,  maybe this? About twelve years ago, I had a full time job at Real Networks.  I got it without an interview and I was slightly out of my depth.  I learned a lot, I tried a lot, but in the end I was let go with a tidy severance. The reviews while there consist of the only professional annual reviews I have ever had.  I will have my third soon, but it's not necessarily that, either, it was something else.

It was instinct.  I was relaxed, I had just quit out of Overwatch and I just... absently reached for what looked like a pack of cigarettes out of the corner of my eye.  No thought, just 30 years of habit rearing its head. It's been a while since that's happened.  I mean, I wasn't craving a cigarette and I didn't miss them when I realized what I was doing, but it was there.  That habit. It got me to thinking.

We are creatures of habit.  We know this, yet we allow ourselves to fall into patterns of self harm.  We let them consume us over time, justifying them as just.. something to help me feel better.  Some of the habits are small things.  The ones that don't *really* matter until they really, really do.  You know, like cigarettes or alcohol or pot. Then there are the really self harmful ones.  The ones that we cant help, even though they damage our chances at success.  The self sabotaging behaviors that lead us towards the failure we internally believe we deserve.  The hard to face things.  *Vincent Price voice* The monsters in the darkness.

OK, so that's a little melodramatic, but you get the point.  I need to be vigilant.  I am having great success, but I know me.  I see some of the old habits creeping in as the stress of keeping all this together starts to grow. I see the avoidance of responsibilities or commitments, and the internal struggle to just keep going.  I need to take that look into myself and find the way out.  They are nothing more than habits, and I have already broken one habit from my youth.  If I can beat cigarettes and have nothing more than an absent reaching for them as a reminder?  I'll take my odds that I can beat these, too.

I need to.