Spinning Wheels in Frictionless Space

There is an odd revolutionary juxtaposition in that I have been absent for almost five months and yet there is not a monumentous change that brings me back. It is simply that I now have found a focus upon which I wish to focus my attention.

Within the realm of life that is our own, we often gather with friends and relatives with whom we do not see as regularly as we would like. Such was the event of yesterday which corresponded to the third birthday of my daughter. It was at this festive occasion that I chose to not maintain as festively as I would have wanted. I unfortuantely showed anger towards my wife in that I became worried that she had spent far more than we agreed upon for some aspects of the party that I had not known about. I am always fearful of not having money to survive and at times, I my fear becomes pronounced. My beautiful and lovely wife is far less concerned with saving money and has no fear about our finances. Unfortuantely my fear made me angry and anger lead me to exchanging words with her. The words unfortunately hurt her feelings and dampened her time at the party and as you would expect,they dampened my mood as well. As the pendulum never pauses on the clock, it was nearly an hour after this exchange that I was able to comprehend how foolish I was in my fear and how we are safe financially. I have given her my most sincere apology, and I hope that she will forgive me for my transgression.

I have been thinking long a hard, and unfortunately not acting much upon my feelings about smoking. At the present time, within the span of one day I now will smoke four bowls of pipe tobacco. To my view, for 2006, this seems an extreme position to hold and I believe I should extinguish this behavior from my life. My father, as well as his father before him, and countless others in my family have been pipe smokers all their lives. My older brother (the Frumpy Professor, at http://frumpyprofessor.blogspot.com) is a pipe smoker to this day. Yet, in my fourty-one years of life, even though I find tremendous fun and pleasure when I do smoke my pipes, I also feel a sense of it being horribly wrong for me to do so. I feel the weight of society upon my shoulders as they castigate me for my habit. Even though I do not smoke publically, nor do I smoke in my home, I can feel their eye's peering down on my soul and judging me very negatively. Even though no one knows that I smoke a pipe (only my older brother, my wife, and one old friend from high school actually know), my enjoyment is dampened fully because I feel as if an outcast, a leper, an evil one. Yet, my father never felt such shame, and my older brother never feels that shame today. Yet I do, and therefore I must act.

In the past, I have engaged upon what can be an all or none approach. One time I literally took a hammer to my pipes and smashed them into bits to prevent my smoking them. Foolishly I went back to the activity within one month for I did not have the will to follow my convictions. A part of me wants to do that again with the five pipes I now own again. I should take a hammer to them again, but I do not feel my stamina is any more long lasting that it has been previously, for I am a weak soul. For the moment, I am going to cut in half my pipe smoking and will exist in a happy medium where I am smoking 50% less than I had been, and can technically be 50% of the way to where I should be, as I become a part of society again and leave this behind. I am sad yet happy to feel perhaps I am going to move to a better spot.

Konrad