At 8:25 or so this morning, it was 3 weeks since I have had a cigarette! 😀 I am so excited about this. I have to remember I can’t have one puff ever again of a cigarette, or I will be right back where I started. And I don’t want to go through these last three weeks all over again. Not when I have come so far! Life has been uneventful otherwise. I have done my part time job and looked for other work and tried to get some editing contracts, unsuccessfully thus far. It’s really too bad! I really need money. I tried to call in to the local radio station to win some money, but no such luck, the on air line was just busy. So oh well. I can try again. It would be nice to suddenly end up with 300 or 600 or 1000 dollars. Just to get some debt paid up. Like my rent. UGH! I feel bad for not having my rent this month. I did buy groceries though, but not a lot. I hate being poor. Nicotine Replacement Therapy is pretty pricey, about as much as the smoking habit costs, so I had to stop my nicorette lozenges today. I quit the patch last week, with no real problems. But I still had those lozenges to fall back on. And now I don’t! I have tic tacs, but they aren’t really as strong of a mint flavour as the lozenges were. I am looking for Altoids, but they don’t seem to be sold everywhere like they used to be. Do you remember when Altoids were everywhere? Who knew I would look back fondly on those days? I’m always so damned wishy washy about pot. Well, I am not buying it right now. I am out. I have no intention of buying more anytime soon, but I can’t make promises about the future. All I can say is right now I am going to take a break and then re evaluate. What I really need to do is take a six week break, the exact length of time it takes for the THC to get out of your system. Or, to stop showing up in drug tests anyway. I need to get my life together. Why is art labour so cheap? I wish I could get paid a decent amount of money for being creative. I don’t even know why I am an artist. When I worry about getting food for my dog, I really question why I am a first nations lesbian video artist. It doesn’t rake in the dough! If I hadn’t failed a whole semester of university when I was going crazy in 2001, I could have gotten into at least one of the Masters programs I applied for, but I failed so I didn’t get in. It fucked my GPA and I don’t know how to ever fix it, even though I was descending into madness and it was just a doomed semester. I dropped out right after, if that gives you any indication as to my state of mind, and promptly moved to Montreal the following summer. Where all hell broke loose! But then I went back to school and finished my BFA and did all those credits again. But still, a whole semester of Fs! :O And I had never ever gotten a single F in my whole academic career before! I think a C is the worst I get usually. Mostly it’s Bs. I am tired of feeling slowed down because of my pot use. I just think I really REALLY need to see what life is like without it. For a while anyway. I haven’t even been getting very high lately, so it’s kind of useless for me to smoke it. It just makes me feel relaxed, and I have been reading this quit smoking book called Think Quit and it has all these exercises in it for relaxation. And they work. So I am starting to realize that I have some options. I think it’s really been just so I can relax that I smoke weed. I know there is a high feeling, but it’s not always strong. Mostly it’s just the relaxation I like. I don’t want to go to treatment though. BLAH! I would feel silly talking about my weed use. In front of people getting off dilaudid or morphine or hard liquor or whatever. So I am going to keep going to my dual diagnosis group. Concurrent disorders, they call it. There are various names for addicted mentally ill folks. But anyway, I like this group because I feel like I fit in better, even though most of the people who come are men. I bought a Lotto Max ticket today for the 20 Million, I hope I win because then I can say to those people who call lotteries Stupidity Tax “I won 20 Million! Now who’s stupid!” 😀 My neck hurts. I have been at the computer all evening looking at jobs. I applied for one. I think I wrote a better cover letter than my other ones. Maybe I will finally get an interview. I used to get interviews a lot easier. I wonder what has changed. I won’t smell like a cigarette when I go to the interview, when I finally get one. That will be a point in my favour. I’m going to miss smoking stuff if I give up weed too. I still have some tea shisha, but I dunno, I am not super into it and I am also worried it is too close to tobacco for me to smoke, even though it is tea leaves instead of tobacco. So I wonder what I should do with my mouth instead of smoking. I should go outside and sing a song for five minutes and then come back in. That might be socially awkward, but if I held my hat out I might make some pocket change. Unless I am singing at home. In which case my Mom will make fun of me. I keep being in these dire situations with no money. I think I need to get a job that I commit to for longer than a year. Enough waiting on grants that never come! Also that reminds me, I still have to find out when APTN is accepting development proposals! Keep on trucking!