STATE YOUR MIND--OR ASK FOR ADVICE: Post You Comments Click (below) To Enter Forum
You are invited to send me your criticism, or you can contribute your own material for publication. Make this your site also--use the Forum Box above. I sure appreciate your interest and would love your participation..
RATE THIS JOURNAL? COLUMN? BLOG...WHAT EVER YOU WANT TO CALL IT...below... Top Colored button means "great!" Bottom colored button means "Feh!"
This may turn out to be the most boring posting I made on this news log or anywhere else.
However, I am open to the possibility that if you were to poll others who have been aware I exist, they might say "Boring--that's nothing new for Bernard!" Don't get me wrong I would love for you to hang around, but if you want to scoot--I'll understand.
Anyway, two of my cyber pals Jeff Starr & Christ Ware, practically begged me to tell them how I gave up smoking. I have been a little slow in answering them, because I think the way I gave it up is not really a method--except for one little part which deserves the title "method" and that little part might help.
Once, I gave up smoking for five years before I fell off the wagon. I don't remember how I gave up smoking, or why--it was long ago...but that was when I developed that little method (I just mentioned) designed to reward or reinforce my giving up the evil weed and staying off it-- In case you are wondering, I haven't given up the good weed (entirely)--you guess what that is... A hint: it is not Oregeno. Anyway, somehow I gave up smoking--I just remembered how-- it was when I had a terrible cold--and I just couldn't smoke. I was so sick, congested, and I had some painful-hacking-and- unrelenting cough, that couldn't find the brakes. Finally, I couldn't do it to myself anymore: so no more puffing for the duration of my cold. When the cold was over, I stayed off that nasty weed. Since I was Psychology student I gave myself a reinforcer. I saved the amount of money I spent on ciggies each week, in a bank labled cigarette bank. At the end of each week or every second week, I took the money out of the ciggie bank, skidooed over to a great book store, and bought myself a book. Inside the book I would write "Cigarette Book" and the date on which I bought it. In a couple years my bookcase was full of Cigerette books. This worked well because I was a book junkie as well--so what I lost in one hand, I gained back in the other.
The method worked. It helped keep me on the wagon for five years. So what happened makes me look a little like a Shlumpf (which is Yiddish for: sucker, patsy, fall guy). You see I painted most of my life, and finally around 19 years of age I decided I wanted to be a painter. Shortly after, I met my first wife. She said she would not marry me if I was going to be a painter. So we compromised. I studied to become a clinical psychologist for eight or nine years. I think it was a compromise! Nine years of studying something that I really liked--and seemed to be a natural at-- didn't throw me off the wagon, nosireebob! What brought "Bernie the Dragon back" was my wife falling in love with, and running off with some kid studying for his bachelor's degree in painting, who was approximately the same age as I was when my lady said she didn't want to marry an artist--an get this he was born on my birthday, and I use to send them out dancing together, and I called him my kid brother....and OH Well!...I started smoking the day after I caught them caressing in the back seat of his car...it was a very messy car...and that disgusted me.
That was what got Bernie the Dragon off the wagon....The next try was very fundamental in helping me get off cigs for good (cross and star of David my fingers, and I'm saying a mantra)....but more about that tomorrow...I have now quit smoking for two weeks....only kidding, it has been ten years since I stopped killing myself. Nevertheless, when I last unzipped my chest I observed my lungs are just beginning to show pink again through the last layers of tar.
STATE YOUR MIND--OR ASK FOR ADVICE: Post You Comments Click (below) To Enter Forum
You are invited to send me your criticism, or you can contribute your own material for publication. Make this your site also--use the Forum Box above. I sure appreciate your interest and would love your participation..
RATE THIS JOURNAL? COLUMN? BLOG...WHAT EVER YOU WANT TO CALL IT...below... Top Colored button means "great!" Bottom colored button means "Feh!"
"Your Weekday Abstract Art Piece"
