I just quit smoking. I think. For good this time. Yeah.

I've done this many times before. Once, in fact, for an entire year. I woke up from a long night of drinking and smoking like a fiend and felt so terrible that it caused me to chuck my half-full pack of Marlboro Lights onto a city sidewalk in disgust.

My most recent relapse came for no real reason at all. I vaguely remember being at a strip club and having a cigarette placed behind my ear, but that's neither here nor there. The point is that recently I've been smoking sort of regularly (more regularly on the weekends) and it hasn't really bothered me all that much. I've been relatively lazy in terms of physical fitness and haven't really challenged my lungs with much more than sitting at a desk for eight hours a day or berating people on a microphone (jobs #1 and #2, respectively). That all changed yesterday, however, when I played my first game for the new club soccer team I've joined. We were short three players (8 total) and they were a full squad +3 (14 total). We played three back, three midfielders, and one forward. Regardless of our positions we were all more or less all over the goddamn field for the full 70 minutes of play time. Sometime before the beginning of the first-half I walked over to the sidelines and dry-heaved. My lungs felt like they were bleeding from the inside. From the ages 6-18 I played soccer pretty much 6/7 days a week regardless of the season and never remember feeling like this.

So that is why I just quit smoking. I think. For good this time. Yeah.

Oh yeah, we won 3-2. Last two goals came off of my assists. If I were you I'd prepare for a game by game rundown for the entirity of the season. So either avoid Monday posts or embrace them, depending on your feelings toward this one. --