Skip to main content

Giving up on giving up

So, there I was burbling on about how I planned to give up smoking with a little help from Champix and possibly some willpower. But it's over, I'm back on the ciggies, off the Champix and feeling alarmingly not guilty about my spectacular fall off the wagon. Nontheless, I managed to smoke much less than usual for at least three weeks so that's something to be thankful for, right?

OK, maybe I'm just trying to see the upside where there isn't any. Maybe I'm a terrible failure worthy of your derision. Maybe I really will go green and explode if I don't stop lighting up (as is the common belief amongst 6 years olds these days, or so claims Firstborn).

Whatever. I am now committed to giving up on giving up. For today, anyway.

But one quandary remains - how on earth am I going to 'fess up about my failure to the charming Dr T? After all, kind authority figure + my bad behaviour = deep-rooted shame (akin to being dragged in front of the headmistress, aged 10, for punching annoying Clyde Sheldon on the nose). Oh cringe.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Apologies for being incommunicado this week and hope none of you out there are too distraught not to be receiving the usual almost-daily MotV missives. The reason for the silence is that I'm up to my neck, metaphorically-speaking, in research papers for my first grad course assessment. This experience has made me realise how rigorously un-academic I am in my thinking. It has also illuminated how reliant I am on red wine in order to get through endless evenings typing furiously on my laptop, not to mention the fueling of increasingly colorful curses that I feel obliged to aim at the University's online library system which consistently refuses to spit out any of the journals I'm desperate for (I refuse to believe this is 100% due to my technical incompetence...) Oh well, if this is the price one has to pay in order to realize a long-cherished dream then it's not all that bad... No one ever said a mid-life career change would be easy. Wish me luck!

Environment

Being an expat, a favorite topic of conversation is 'where I/you want to go next?' or 'When do you plan to go home?' It's a good question. I'm not sure I want to stay in Dubai for ever, but I'm also not sure about how long I want to be here for or where else I would like to live. For almost the first time ever, I have no fixed plans apart from keeping my eyes and mind open to interesting opportunities. And as to going 'home', I have no idea where that is. Constantly moving around as a child left me with the feeling that 'home' is wherever I am right now, so in effect 'home' could be anywhere. The longest I've ever lived in one fixed place was 18 years in London, on and off, but that doesn't feel like 'home' either - I love going back to see family and friends, and it's a great place to shop, but that's about it. I have a great love for California, which is where my extended family is from (and where most of the