My Stuff

I know it has been pretty quiet on this blog for *checks posts* the last year (give or take a month) but, quite frankly, I’ve been too busy to post anything. This is despite a list of topics I had in mind to cover.

Unfortunately I’m not going to be able to devote much, if any, time to posting on here for the foreseeable future. Due to this lack of time to do anything on here, or conduct my own research into the topics I wanted to cover I began questioning whether or not to continue posting at all.

I’m kind of hoping that this will be a relatively short post, although I doubt it as the subject is one that I have some deeply held opinions. This also is not the post I had originally planned on writing, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.

Today’s murmurings and mumblings stemmed from an article on Euro Scientist. The title and the overall tone of the article is actually very positive with some strong-minded words from ASH’s Deborah Arnott regarding electronic cigarettes.

Well now it has been over a week since I last posted anything, and there’s a reason for that. I went on holiday. The first actual “going away from home for longer than a weekend” type holiday in almost twenty years. Gah, saying it like that makes me sound like some crazy hermit that only stays at home. I’m not by the way.

By now, you’re probably backing away from this post slowly and to be fair, I can’t really blame you. I’m still on that holiday buzz which will probably end with a crash when my alarm goes off in the morning to get my sorry ass back to work.

I find it really odd what can trigger a story for a blog post. Sometimes it’s a piece of unbelievably poor reporting, utter bantha poo-doo from ‘public health’ or just a random chat. A few nights ago some of us on Twitter had a yakety yak about some old e-cig devices, and it got me thinking.

I had initially planned to write one of these at the six month point, then again at the twelve month anniversary, as a kind of journal into the life of an average every day smoker, turned vaper. Unfortunately, me being me I completely forgot to do the six month post (facepalm) so this will be slightly longer.

Well so much for not writing another difficult post. This is another one of those that has been at the back of my mind, more so since the start of the month.

I started this blog back in October 2014. Initially, it was just my virtual dumping ground for me to let off some steam after reading all the bullshit being pushed about e-cigs. It has since become something much, much more than that. I changed my writing style a little for the first truly public post (Why I Vape), since then I’ve strived to balance the content of my posts so they aren’t all along the same ranty theme.

Let me start this post off with the following statement:

I do not work for, nor am I affiliated with either the Tobacco or Vaping Industries. I am a semi-normal person that works a bog standard 9-5. I have opinions and feelings.

There, now that is well and truly out of the way, on with the post.

It seems that many in public health, and by extension the “smokefree” agencies don’t believe a single word anyone says. I’ve told my story on this blog, and it has been shared by me and many other vapers in an effort to make it heard. It seems that certain folk don’t believe a single word. That hurts.

This is a post that I’ve been putting off for a while as it contains a number of personal things. They aren’t necessarily secret things, I’m just not the sort to talk about them publicly.

I was a heavy smoker. Like super heavy, easily going through two packs per day and sometimes three or four depending on the day. I had a routine, wake up then immediately spark up. Coffee and a smoke. Get to work, coffee and a smoke. Four or five smokes before work officially started at 9AM. Regular smoke breaks during the day, two or three during lunch. You get the picture. Most of my smoking was either habitual or as a way to calm down and de-stress (when working on a tech support desk, it can get really stressful).