I quit smoking as of 8:00 a.m. Tuesday.

It’s actually been relatively easy. Every night around 8:00 p.m. I get a little hankering for a smoke, but that’s about it. If I can keep myself busy between 7:00 and 9:00, I’m good to go.

I’ve never tried to quit before. Mostly because I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to because it wasn’t really having a negative effect on me, at least one that was obvious. But over the past couple of months I’ve had a feeling creep up on me that I should definitely stop. It’s not that it’s affecting my health now, but that it will in the future that got to me, I think. I exercise 3-4 days a week. I’m not very sedentary. I eat pretty healthily. But still.

I don’t want to be one of those people that you can hear breathing from 10 feet away when all they did was walk inside somewhere and sit down. I don’t want to be one of those people who are 50 years old and sound like there’s a frog in their throat. I don’t want to be one of those people who can’t even go up a flight of stairs without stopping for breath.

That’s why I started exercising almost two years ago. And that’s why I quit smoking.

Now I’ll just chew on toothpicks like an old man. Stand with one leg kicked up against a post and flick a nickel in the air. That’s cool, right?

— UPDATE — 6/26/2017

This weekend was rough. There’s nothing more satisfying after a day of physical labor than a cigarette, especially after everyone around you has been smoking all day. It was killer. But I made it through.

I think Saturday and Sunday were the rough points. Today’s going much better. Hopefully I’m over the hump. The cravings haven’t been difficult long-term, just little bursts, little five second long pings of wanting a cigarette really, really bad. But not today.

Today was much better. It’s getting easier every day, and hopefully I’m over the worst.