I don’t know if you know this but I’m quitting smoking. Or rather, I’m trying to quit smoking. Or rather, I’ve begun quitting smoking.

Of course I just lit a cigarette. It dangles cavalierly out of the corner of my mouth, my head tilted up a little so the toxic arabesques don’t burn my eyes. I haven’t quit smoking. I’m not trying to quit because I expect success. I’ve begun quitting. Two weeks ago yesterday – this is my fifteenth day – I decided to smoke 5 cigarettes a day. That’s not great. But it’s not quite a quarter of what I usually smoke. And everyday since I have smoked exactly five cigarettes. Yes, of course, zero would be better. Yes, I have heard of champions of will power who just stop all of a sudden. But I have been disciplined about five a day and I am proud of my discipline. And I am on the verge – a long drag here, I don’t want to waste the small amount of poison I have afforded myself – of moving from five to three. Three a day.

I also don’t know if you know this but I started SnappedShots on May 1 this year. And every day I have posted an image and some words strung together. And I haven’t missed a day since I started not even when I was really sick for something like two weeks. Every day, something to look at and something to say.

But I’m thinking about taking a month off. I don’t know. I’ve been getting more database work. And if I work more, I can get more gear. But that’s not it, not really. I like — here, I stamp out the dead cigarette — the discipline of writing every day. I love SnappedShots. But I’m altogether burned out. But I don’t know what to do.

I don’t want to stop. I don’t really want to take a break. Part of my original cataclysm was perseverance and discipline. I’m not even very sour that my cataclysm has been mostly thwarted. I’m not much richer and I’m not much more famous. I have some fans, I have some witnesses; and make no mistake, I’m thrilled with that. And I am very appreciative of all of the commenters and the feedback.

But SnappedShots has become a compulsion too. If I don’t have anything ready by 10 pm, as sometimes happens, I panic. And I become like a crazy person. I think a month of healing would do me a world of good. But the idea of walking away, even for a few weeks, is now unimaginable.

I want to turn SnappedShots over to a fellow exile. It doesn’t have to be a photograph; it doesn’t have to be a journal. It could be one or the other or something completely different; it could be scans of art. But the kind of person I want to take over SnappedShots even for a short while, will not be easy to find. A war veteran in a home. A pensioner who has just discovered watercolors. A person with limited social contact but also a deep desire to share ideas, thoughts, insights, complaints. Not that my ideas, thoughts, insights, complaints, have any particular merit. Not that I’m such a tricky act to follow. Well, if there are any other fellow exiles out there looking for a forum, let me know.

Of course the problem also becomes: if I find the person I am thinking of, if I find the sort of person I have in mind, then I couldn’t just say, “here, you have it for a month.” If I could get that intrepid Arctic explorer with a high speed modem, or if I could get that lonely space station crewman, or the war veteran, or even the pensioner, then I couldn’t stop them, I couldn’t ask them to give me back my ride. Yeah, thanks for keeping the seat warm, friend.

But of course it’s not very likely that the person I’m thinking of reads daily blogs. And while I love the idea of a community of exiles, it isn’t very likely to happen. Meanwhile, until I can sort out what I want to do, I’ll keep at it.

It might just be the nicotine withdrawal. It might be the wet dull November gray. But I’m feeling as motivated as, well, as, as someone who isn’t very motivated. See.

SS