One Year Anniversary Blog Contest – Win a Super Deluxe "Out of the Box" Sampler Plus More!

**Contest is Now Closed. Thanks to Everyone Who Entered!**

Well folks, June 12th is one year since I started my blog AND one year since I quit smoking!  I cannot believe that the time has flown by so fast.  Not only am I proud that I’ve been smoke free for a year but I also take pride in the fact that I was able to maintain my blog for a whole year when so many other blogs seem to fall away after a few months. I’ve moved my blog from Blogspot to WordPress, redesigned my blog to be fabulous but slightly less blingy, and even purchased my own domain name.  I’ve also been able to establish a small following as well as make new online friends with many talented bloggers out there in our bloggy internet world and registered to attend the SITStication Conference in Las Vegas in October.  It’s been a very enjoyable and rewarding experience for me. I hope that those of you who visit my blog enjoy reading it as much as I do writing it.

I want to say thank you to all my readers (and potential new ones, too), by having a One Year Anniversary Blog Contest.  I wanted to give away something special, but I just can’t afford$250 gift cards and expensive appliances.  Then I remembered the awesome sample boxes I order monthly for my daughter from Out of the Box Sampler…

Creating the Not Smoking Habit

It’s been a week since I have decided to quit smoking, and to be quite honest, it hasn’t been that hard. I still do struggle a little bit when I get into my car, have a cup of coffee, finish a meal, have a martini, or sit home watching TV. Actually, that seems like a lot of struggling. Since I still struggle, I’ve decided that I have to identify when I get the craving and what is actually causing the crave. For the most part, I believe it’s simply a habit that has been reinforced with a nicotine addiction.

The best way to provide positive reinforcement is to do those things that trigger the smoking craving and then just don’t smoke. And you need to do them over and over again. Your mind will get use to not smoking, instead of wanting to smoke, when you do those things. I think I’ll start with having a martini. Hey, I gotta start somewhere.

Facing the Summer with no Facial Hair

The bearded Preston & his daughter Christmas 2007

This morning I got up and shaved off my beard. Now some of you may be saying, “Hey! Wait a minute! You’re beardless in that picture to the right.” That makes me guilty of what almost everyone does on the net: Posting an old picture of themselves. That picture is a good 3 ½ years old. I chose it not because it best represented how I look today but because of the expression I had on my face. I had the wild, bug-eyed look of a man who has just realized that his fingers were becoming a permanent part of his keyboard. It seemed to suit the blog. But back to the real story — the reason behind my clean shaven face.

First Time for Everything

Well here I am sitting at this PC with a million ideas flowing through my head and none of them are reaching down to my fingers. It’s kind of funny that I would decide to start a blog and quit smoking at the same time. Perhaps I am looking to replace one habit with another. Or maybe I am looking to fill up the time I spent smoking with the time I’ll spend blogging. I think it’s probably just timing. I’ve been thinking about blogging for a while and the quit-smoking thing was a spur of the moment action. That is, if you can call having to decide between buying a carton of cigarettes or putting gas in the car a “spur of the moment” thing.

It’s been three days and I am not smoking because I can’t afford to smoke. It’s that simple. And that makes it easy. I’ve been not doing things my whole life simply because I couldn’t afford to do them. I’ve never been on a cruise, purchased caviar at the supermarket, or driven home in a shiney, brand-new corvette. That’s why I think it’s easier for me to quit smoking for financial rather than health reasons.

That’s right folks. I didn’t stop smoking because I disliked it or to improve my health. I didn’t do it to make my car and home smell better. No, it was simply a financial decision. When it takes 50 bucks to fill my car with gas every week, how can I justify spending 35 dollars on a carton of smokes? And that’s only if I drive to Delaware, which by my calculations cost me about $9.50 in gas. I knew how bad smoking was for me yet that never stopped me. But hit me in the wallet and boy do you get my attention!

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