It's a New Dawn. It's a New Day.

Ringing in the New Year comes with the seasonally typical expectations of gratitude, hope and a newfound if not temporary initiative for change. 

What I didn't expect, however, was to come down with the flu, a sickness that I swear to this day has a firm grip upon my immune system. 

Inhalers, steroids, antibiotics, the works. I was laid out on the couch like a slug for well over a week. I felt like I was tied to the train tracks, run over repeatedly and then subjected to an invisible elephant stomping on my chest... all day long. Plain and simple: It was awful.

After a week of workless wheezing, chest pain and body aches, I made a decision. If being temporarily unable to breathe was this unbearable, it was time to quit smoking for good.

"If I can go a week without even thinking of cigarettes, I can do this," I thought. It's now 37 days since I last had a smoke. And I wish I could say that I'm feeling good.

But the truth is that I'm irritable, depressed, overly emotional and self-medicating with entirely too much junk food. I guess this was to be expected. I know I made the right choice to quit cigarettes. But I didn't  know it would be quite this hard. It's not the cravings. It's more than that. It's a psychological shift and a physical inability to stay motivated to do much else but sleep and keep myself from buying a pack of Salem Lights. 

Maybe it's a combination of the cold and dreary winter months, of daily stressors weighing on my shoulders and seeing pounds that I worked so hard to lose come creeping back on the scale due to lack of self-control to replace what is clearly a cigarette induced oral fixation. 

BUT THIS IS ME COMING BACK. Slowly but surely, I am prying myself from the refrigerator, from the couch. I am working toward something new. It will take time for me to find happiness with life, love and most of all myself. But I know it's going to happen. 

And I want all of my thrift-family and friends to be there when it does. Thank you all for reading, sharing, commenting and staying with me through what has and may continue to be a tough go of things. 

I am still thrifting. Don't you worry about that. But I'm more than a thrifter, as I'm sure you are too. Me? I'm a writer, always have been. Always will be. And if I neglect to share what's going on in my life in this blog, that I'm not being a very honest one. I hope you all understand my need to purge these emotions in hopes of making Let's Go Thrifting everything it can be.

Stay thrifty, my friends.