Finding the Space Between My Fingers: Quitting Smoking with an Exacto Blade and Acetate

When I was 22, I was already a pack-a-day smoker for a long time, at least since I was 16 years old. I smoked my first cigarette at 12. 10 years later, I was already at a place where I had a strong desire to quit for good.

My first attempts eventually succeeded by a four-ish month stretch that ended around New Year's of 2007, when I decided that I wanted to celebrate my success with a single smoke, since I missed it so much.

My friend Lindsay knew what would happen, and she foretold to me that if I had that one cigarette, I would be right back to smoking on a regular basis. A part of me knew she was right, but I did it anyway, because I wanted to. And that is the problem with habits like smoking and other things, you are going to do whatever you want to do. The catalyst for conditionally permanent change begins with the self.

That single cigarette was glorious.

It was just the right amount of cigarette. I didn’t need more, or so I thought at the time. That flimsy confidence invited more occasional cigarettes, always bummed from others, because I “didn’t smoke anymore.” And slowly, the gaps between occasions began to shrink more and more, until eventually, within a week or three, I was back at 7-Eleven buying a pack, because who was I kidding? And it was then that I knew one thing: When I was ready again to quit, it would have to be completely, with no exceptions. No bummed cigarettes, no hookahs, no cigars, no backwoods.

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No exceptions. Complete abstinence.

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A very short time later, I did quit for good, at least up to this point, 18 years later. And that is when I knew a second thing: I needed a hobby of some kind. Something that I could hyperfocus on and pour my attention and energy into as I cut through the emotional and psychological dependency on cigarettes, which is far more difficult, I feel, than the nicotine addiction itself.

It was in the rituals, and I felt the ache of empty space between my forefinger and middle finger. I realized that I needed to occupy my time in other ways.

So I started printing my own t-shirts. I guess I took inspiration from Glenn Danzig and co. silk screening shirts for Plan 9. I wanted shirts with images that were hard to come by, and I loved the challenge of seeing whether I could legibly print them or not. At first, it was sharpies and spray-painted stencils.

Eventually, I started to experiment with transparent acetate sheets. I stated with Misfits and Samhain shirts. I would print an image from the computer, or in the case of Rock N Rule, XEROX from a DVD cover/slipcase. Each acetate layer was designated a color, and I went to work cutting out anything that corresponded. So anything that was black or simplified to black would go on the black layer, etc. Then each layer was put over a white Hanes undershirt from Target, and with simple acrylic colors from Blick in downtown Chicago, I would roll on a color that would soak into the shirt and dry, baking that color in. I don’t think I ever tried more than 4 colors at a time.

It was the crudest form of fake “silk-screening.”

For months and months, with every cigarette-less day, I would spend my free time hunched over a transparent acetate sheets, cutting out little shapes of plastic with an exacto blade. I always had a movie on in the background or music blasting. These were the days when modern social media was still in its infancy, not available on phones, but required a desktop or laptop computer for active browsing, participation, and connection.

I think it was better that way; it was the perfect amount, nothing was oversaturated. We weren’t surgically attached to our phones yet, which for some of us runs our whole lives, for better and worse.

These one-of-a-kind shirts were their own sort of expressions of art as much as they were an expression of fashion, and individually, in their obscure pop culture reference to things that defined me at that time, things that I liked.

I knew I had these shirts stored somewhere, out of sight, out of mind, and it’s great to stumble upon them again, like old friends, who helped me through a trying time in quitting smoking. These days, sadly, the phone has taken a large chunk of my hyperactive energy away from me, but perhaps it was always better invested in activities like these. It’s so much harder to unplug these days. I do it all the time, but thinking about all this reminds me of how different phones were back then, even with texting your friends, T9 style, of course.

What to write about turning 40?

What to write about turning 40? I just about never exclaim birthdays on the internet. But 40 is a big one, right? So indulge me in tired clichés stuffed in an overwritten Hallmark card:

I do a lot of reflecting and self-inventory, though some might argue that is a fancy way of proclaiming self-absorption, but I’d disagree, and that leads to a lot of journaling. It’s remarkable and rewarding to be able to go back 10 years and visit yourself at 30, processing the previous decade of life in your 20s. Walking down hallways in your mind, passing by all the rooms of thought, and other rooms of memory.

The biggest takeaway thus far is how profoundly different going from 30 to 40 is compared to going from 20 to 30. There have been so many changes. There has been a lot of loss. Some of it sad, some of it bad, some of it tragic. But loss is not always a negative thing. It’s just the universe, indifferent, reconfiguring itself, and you are standing in the middle of its highway, confused.

When I was teetering on the edge of 30, I started to think a lot about the “mountains” of life. This idea of reaching the summit of a climb only to turn around and see another mountain, with its own summit to ascend, calling out to you. That is a great thing; it means you are alive, with purpose and passion, growing and challenging yourself.

That’s the positivity of impermanence. And so, since then, my motto has been, “May there always be another mountain.”

Blankets are also impermanent. One moment, you are cozy, in bed, asleep, until another moment, when your comfort and familiarity are ripped away from you. Or maybe, you just wake up on your own and choose to get out of bed, parting with the blanket yourself.

It leaves you cold, maybe shivering until you acclimate and find your own warmth, and that comes from within as you start moving around.

This last decade has brought many ideas and notions that have me questioning my understanding of myself, all the ways in which I see the world, including some areas that felt so solid and sturdy, like a permanent concrete floor, with a nice rug “to tie the room together.”

But then the rug gets pulled from under, causing me to fall flat on my back, head on concrete, and I get to look at the sky, and I have to find meaning or gratitude, especially in the present, like this morning:

I found a sweet parking spot outside of work in NYC, and I was gifted with the most gorgeous sunrise, pushing through the Avenue’s horizon from the East River. When I turned to the West Side Street view, I was greeted by the sweet, intoxicating smell of NY Bagels from the corner deli, with my favorite sign out front, “Tossed Salads.” Today is a good day.

Part of the self-reflection process is looking ahead to the future: Do I have goals? What do I hope to accomplish? Do I have an idea of where I want or hope to be? How do I want to start off this new decade?

I’m not sure, but out of respect for the rule of threes, insert a cloth-related metaphor here.