I am a weak, weak person. At around 7 PM this evening, I succumbed to the call of the cancer stick. It was bed weather. Traffic along the South Luzon Expressway was moving slowly. I was listening to Concrete Blonde‘s version of Ghost Riders in the Sky. I couldn’t help it. One week after I vowed to fight the good fight against Nicotine, I lost the battle. BUT NOT THE WAR!

I’m thinking maybe I did it wrong. I went cold turkey after 5 years of being a chain smoker. I never stopped smoking for more than a couple of days during the last 5 years, and now I suddenly expelled nicotine from my life. It was hard. Harder than saying “no” to free beer. Harder than not looking at a hot woman’s cleavage. Harder than closing a browser tab that contains your Plurk window. Going cold turkey wasn’t fun. It was torture. Happy torture. What?

I couldn’t ignore all the moments I felt the urge to light a stick and smoke my lungs out. I felt anti-social passing up on invitations to smoke from my co-workers. Every time I reached for a stick and found nothing there, I whispered expletives to myself. “Fuck you, self! The fuck’s your problem?!” But every time I resisted those seductive moments, I celebrated with a stupid smile. Happy torture. Weird, but there you go.

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To whom it may concern (and I’m guessing there’s a lot of you),

I would like to apologize for my lack of prompt replies to your text messages. You probably think I’m a snob, which is a pretty girly thing to say, but I’m not. Well, I probably am, but not intentionally. You probably think that I don’t consider your messages important enough to warrant my precious time and attention. The lateness of my replies, if I ever do send replies, can be attributed to only one thing, and one thing alone: I HATE MOBILE PHONES.

OK, that’s too strong. Let me rephrase that: I’m not fond of always checking my mobile phone especially when I’m at home. Some of you may find this strange, maybe even retarded, but what are you gonna do? I hate checking my phone for new messages. I even hate hearing it ring or beep, that’s why I always keep it in “Meeting” mode. It’s actually more discreet than “Silent” mode in its default settings. Anyway, yeah. Don’t expect an immediate answer if you’re going to call me. Don’t think I’m blowing you off. I’m not. And don’t think I’m only doing it to you. I do it to everybody.

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