Pros & Cons

What are the pros and cons of my decision for Wednesday?  Hell, there are a lot of them.  Some of them wise, some of them stupid.  Some of them probably a bit of both:

Pros of Quitting (at least during Lent)

1.  To give me a focus on accomplishing a goal.

2.  To give me a time to feel what it is like to not be a pipe smoker. 

3.  To give myself a structure that may help me to be successful at quitting.

4.  To potentially make me feel better physically, emotionally, and spiritually (eventually).

5.  To help me be more focused in general (eventually).

(By this, I mean, that in today's world, the pipe, no matter how much I love smoking it, is a distraction, and it is an interruption in most other aspects of my day.  It used to be that smoking a pipe was a PART of the rest of everyday living.  In the way today's world operates, that is not so.  Instead, to smoke my pipe, I have to be either planning diversions away from other tasks or activities I am doing, or I have to be defiant and smoke my pipe in situations where it is no longer the norm or considered typical.  Both situations take more focus, time, and energy that I am wanting to give.)

Cons of Quitting (at least during Lent)

1.  It will entail a lot of difficulties and challenges for me mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

2.  I will be more prone to feeling aggravation and anger, at least for a while.  

3.  To refrain (as from my previous experience of about 20 days about 8 months ago) tends to make me VERY focused on the effort, and while my long range idea is that it would be freeing to me and I would EVENTUALLY be able to think about it less, I know that at least initially, I would be thinking about it ALL THE DAMN TIME!

4.  After the many decades I have smoked a pipe, it is actually relatively difficult for me to think back to what it WAS like to NOT be a pipe smoker.  I have been a pipe smoker for a helluva lot longer than I had ever not been a pipe smoker.  And, even before I actually started as a kid, I knew for quite a while before hand that I WANTED to smoke a pipe and that I envisioned myself doing so even before I actually did.    So, it will be an awfully damn hard paradigm shift for me in terms of who I perceive myself to be.

5.  I will miss it, and miss it greatly.

So, I am still trying to pick my plan.... a) give up the pipe completely for Lent with the hope that it sticks as a think it may and I will then refrain forever, b)  give up the pipe as a regular commodity in my day-to-day living, and only indulge on an infrequent occasions (perhaps one or two bowls a week) to maintain the ties to the activity and yet wrangle it in so that it is more in keeping with the way life now is,  or c) to embrace pipe smoking without thinking about quitting/stopping anymore and perhaps even to be more immersed in the activity.

PipeTobacco