Accountability

Once again, I am learning another lesson in taking accountability. The past months I have been seeing a therapist weekly for some help in processing what is going on in my life…chronic pain, back surgery, my husband’s decline with Alzheimer’s, my son’s death, and of course, new pain with the broken foot. We were discussing quitting smoking this morning and he was making some suggestions about what might work for me (he knows me pretty good by now). I’ve been wanting (needing) to quit and have made numerous attempts, none successful. Now at 67 it is seriously affecting my health, plus in order to move my husband into memory care, I need to get him to reduce smoking all the time as he won’t be able to smoke there. I’ve been doing a lot of ruminating about it, thinking I really need to make a serious effort, all the while, sitting in our heated garage smoking.

My therapist suggested making a plan in order to get started. Then he suggested something radical…what if I were to choose someone to be accountable to while trying to quit. Well, talk about stopping me in my tracks. I’ve talked about it with several people and thought about it a lot, but accountable? That means I really have to do something about it, if I get accountable. I’ve successfully used this method before with drugs and alcohol and suspect it would work again, if I did so. Of course, that means I have to get serious about it. Well, the first person that came to mind is Alice. I can’t bullshit a bullshitter. She will call me on it every time. So, here goes. Today I made a commitment to start cutting down (from a pack and 1/4) and put the patch on May 1 and actually quit. So, today I wrote down that I would only smoke 18 cigarettes today and work on cutting down by May 1 to quit. Not only that, in addition to getting accountable with Alice, I am posting this to get accountable all around.

One more step to get ready for our 50-state motorcycle ride in 2 years. I’ll let you know how it goes.