Magic Man

I’m back and this time I come with charcoal!

Wanted to try my hand at charcoal drawing, and it’s quite different from graphite. You can tell I used the same techniques I’ve been using with graphite pencils. Had to settle for a rough draft as working with shades is a bit of a challenge. But! Practice makes perfect. And I am far behind on my practice.

On a different note, here’s the real magic 🙂

Yup! I’ve been smoke-free for a month now. I have to say I’m quite proud of myself! Look at the money I’ve been able to save! Oh, and the life I’ve regained too, that’s always good 🙂

That’s from a little app called Quit Tracker off the Google Play store. It’s one of many quitting aid apps in there, but I like this one in particular for its simple clean presentation. It’s got nice features too like motivational quotes and reminders to, well, remind you why you even started to quit, lest you feel the urge to go astray. It’s even got a tile-matching mini game as distraction for when you feel the urge.

Pretty nifty if you ask me!

Didn’t really need any of that to get me through a month of cold-turkey, but it’s nice to know that I have a reminder of how far I’ve gone. And it’s useful when people ask me how I’m doing with my quitting, I just fire up the app on my phone and show them. Takes some discipline to keep the tracker true to its purpose too and I don’t see myself resetting that timer any time soon, if at all now.

But why cold-turkey, you ask? Why the hell not, I say! Tried a patch on Day 1 and it helped for the whole day, I’ll give it that. But personally, I didn’t want to just get rid of the carbon monoxide (and all other carcinogens that came with it) I was inhaling. I wanted to kick the addiction that came with the nicotine. If I’d kept up the patches, I would still be dependent on the nicotine that it fed to my body. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that so I just decided to go gobble-gobble. It wasn’t easy, oh no. There were times I would stare at the pack of Marlboros I kept around as reminder. The first week or so was quite the challenge, but I got through it. Now I don’t even think about the habit and what I could do when I’m idle or bored.

So how does it feel to last this long? Well, I feel like a winner, to be honest 🙂 And I can really feel it.