To Whom It May Concern: It's another Friday of Mountain Dew and Complete Boredom at Work

The urge to smoke stronger than ever. And I'm whining. Rather loudly. It's unsightly.

Damnit. I guess i'm more addicted to cigarettes than i thought i was.
The patch is not working - of course it isn't, since every time i put it on, i have to take it off twenty minutes later, if i want to stay alive. It makes me dizzy. Not fuzzy, euphoric, pot high kind of dizzy - but "I'm about to pass out" kind of dizzy, with splitting headaches, 80/40 blood pressure, nausea and vomiting. Sorry for graphic details. It was bad. Really bad. Didn't help that first time i tried it on, it was late in the afternoon and I had not had dinner yet. I thought that maybe the full patch was too strong for me - but nope, half has the exact same effect. The other day i had to turn around and walk back home so that i don’t faint in the street, in the middle of all that traffic. How pathetic would it be to die from an attempt to quit smoking? Or nicotine overdose. But that's exactly what this whole quitting business is doing to me. I've been irritable, bitchy, headachy and plain depressed for the last several days. Why am i doing this again? Oh yeah, so that i can run happily ever after for forty five minutes a day, three days a week. That's right. When's my next marathon again?

I need to devise a new plan for quitting. The patch's not working.

i guess i was looking for an easy way out, hoping that it would make me not want to smoke. Of course it isn't going to work. What did i expect? Did i innocently and naively believe that tobacco companies would actually allow an easy and effective way of quitting to be roaming freely out there in the open market?

Well, maybe there is no easy way out and it's going to take more time and commitment than i'm willing to dedicate to at this point. But perhaps, if i keep working on it, one less smoked cigarette at a time, i will, eventually, wean myself off of this habit. Just like it was with the recovery from eating disorder - it took time. A long time. And headaches. and stomachaches, and weight gain, and dizziness. And relapses. Many many relapses - but it worked in the long run, didn't it?

Need to write a blog on overcoming eating disorder, because the way i make it sound here appears way too easy-breezy. I also need to start writing that damn paper on effectiveness of foreign aid, or the lack of it thereof. Got a World Bank report of nothing but two hundred pages of bullshitting on the effectiveness of development assistance, without providing any statistical or other evidence. The whole point of the report summing up to yeah, aid works, it's efficient but there is no way to prove it. Of course. Sure the World Bank is being effective fighting poverty. The amount of funds it spends on organizing seminars, and conferences and trainings and shipping one confused consultant from one corner of the world to another. Business class travel. VIP reception and nothing less. As J. Maarten Troost said in "The Sex Lives of Cannibals", the World Bank is very concerned about alleviating poverty, one consultant at a time. Or something along those lines. The only reason for the whole organization to exist is to keep airliners and five star hotels in business. And that, we have to agree, is a significant contribution to global economy. Transfer of funds from one wealthy pocket into another. Plus you appear concerned and nobel and oh-so-altruistic in the process. Nice. Funds are disbursed as shown on paper. Where they go is a matter of little importance. We have the numbers. They're satisfactory. We've got something to brag about at the next UN or whatever other summit that may cost an annual budget of an entire Pacific island to organise . And write another two hundred page BS report.

So here i am, aspiring to be one of those consultants who will fall under big guy's mercy of big paychecks and tax exemption - that's what thirty thousand worth of hoity-toity education from an elitist school is there for, right? At least that's what their career service web-page claims to do. It better does. But wait, i have to start school first. And finish it, for that matter. But before i do that, i need to write this paper that's due the end of the month. And quit smoking. Oh yeah, that's what this whole blog started as. Went off on a tangent.

So smoking. So far, i haven't gone too far. In the last five days i've smoked a total of twelve cigarettes. That's not quitting. But at least a lot better than what it was a week ago. So patch is no longer an option. Cold turkey is not something i can do with my non-existent will power. What's left? Therapy? Right. Acupuncture? No way. Nicotine free cigarettes? I might consider that at some point. For now, it's Marlboro Ultra Lights (they taste like shit, by the way), proscribed at a limited doze of no more than four a day. That's the only plan i could stick with for now. That's all. Done bitching.

Poshla kurit&.