changes, and nicotine slavery

When you finally get to that point where you can start to FEEL the change, the in-process reinvention of your Self becomes evident, and you realize that, in at least some respects, metaphysical or not, you are becoming truly free. You start to understand that even the chains of your own past can be lifted off and you can become someone else - who is still you but yet new, emergent, and refined.

Think about all the cells and microorganisms of your body. After a period of several years, each and every little bit of you has eventually been replaced. You are a constantly renewing fountain of change. You are not even the you that you were when you were a child. You are someone else, a replicant, and yet, you are you, just... the new you. (What makes us who we are anyway?)

Incidentally, the reason why our memories from so long ago are so cloudy and errant is that we are merely xeroxed copies of ourselves. All the atoms in your brain have been replaced or reconfigured a few times by now. It makes sense that some files are illegible or missing altogether.

As long as you are becoming anew, think about ways you can help not the process but the results.

For smokers: this thing can be beat. I am 99% of the way there myself, and i have tried and failed just like you no doubt have. Although we may never be non-smokers, it is absolutely possible - and a whole lot easier than you might think - to become an ex-smoker.

Don't listen to anybody but your body.

Even your mind concocts labyrinthine machinations silently against you. Fear is just another formulaic and substance-deprived bestseller. Write your own middle and end, even if someone else already wrote your beginning.

Okay that last bit was a little tongue-in-cheek, but think about it even still.

guitarism

I have always liked to tell people that when it comes to playing the guitar,

"I come from the 'Neil Young' school of guitar playin': 'if it squeals, smack it harder!'"

however, i feel i have not grown much in the last few years as a player. Part of this is due to the excruciatingly painful tumor i had in my finger for over ten years (well DUH!), but i have to admit that this is also due to severe laziness.

Anyone who knows any Ohioans will know that we are a notoriously apathetic bunch.

Rustic bohemian aesthetic aside, I have always not-so-secretly wanted to be able to play like Prince, who is IN FACT the greatest guitar player alive. (Greatest dead guitarist? Hendrix, hands down.) I also wouldn't mind being able to play slide like George Harrison.

This in mind, i am now teaching myself how to play the guitar.

Unfortunately, i have all the grace of a hippo, no dexterity, and was born tragically missing all but a faint vestige of left/right coordination.

However, the effect of woodshedding, when you run across a really good exercise or technique that levels up your chops, is much like Neo suddenly knowing kung fu after having jacked in - only it does take some work, after all. But, like quitting smoking, i am finding that playing faster with accuracy is a little bit easier than i had expected.