Anyone around here quit smoking in the past? I'll be thirty in a couple months, and I've smoked since I was seventeen years old. I'm making attempt god knows what number over the years, and I'm riiiight at the start still; 47 hours and change.

Basically I hate myself and everything about life, including my decision to attempt doing this again. I mean not actually, but also yes actually. You know how it goes.

Anyone got any words of encouragement, a story from when they quit, or anything of that nature? Anything will help, and is much appreciated!

Hey there, my name is Thomas. I joined some time maybe a year and a half ago or more and was thoroughly enjoying the platform. There are a lot of great writers here, and many great writing prompts to get the juices flowing and provide a challenge. However, for what ever reasons, I fell out of my writing for a while, and haven't posted in many months. Recently, for the first time since Covid came around, I've had a reduction in my hours at work and I'm trying to use it wisely. Hence, among other things, my return here!

So I mostly just wanted to say hello to everyone, wish them a good day, and pose a quick question I'm sure we've all answered many times over. Certainly I can't be the first, even in recent memory, to post it to this forum. Though hopefully it hasn't been posted so recently that no one could be bothered to reply. I do enjoy hearing the various inspirations behind our beloved craft.

So what was yours!? Perhaps a special book or series you loved, that sparked a desire to evoke the same reaction you had in someone else? Maybe you discovered that you thoroughly enjoy crafting worlds, characters and the myriad situations they find themselves in? What if you simply discovered you had some level of natural skill for writing, and decided to see what you could do with it? Or maybe you're like me, who among these things and more, found that writing was one of the few ways to quiet your mind?

I know for myself, writing seems to be the best tool I have to communicate with the world. Throughout my life, people have been telling me that I am a good writer. Be it in response to resume cover letters, emails to property rental ads and school of course, to name a few examples. Yet a lot of the time when I speak in day to day conversation, I feel like half a lackwit. Don't get me wrong, I don't sound like Sloth from The Goonies or anything. However, I do feel like I have to focus more than your average bear to have clear, consise conversation, free from the uncountable distractions constantly derailing my thought process. "Shiny shiny," I've always called it.

So writing, where I can more easily focus my thoughts down to what lays directly visually ahead in the senctence, has always been a boon to my unquiet mind. Not to mention the healthiest form of stress management and coping I've ever practiced. I've sure gone down a few, more destructive routes, and spoiler alert; they didn't work.

Not that I don't still go way off the rails when I write some times, and not that it is even inherently a bad thing. That can be part of the beauty, especially in storytelling. Setting out go from point A to B, yet winding up in an entirely different alphabet, unsure of how you ended up there. Which, unless I stop myself soon, I'll start doing right here!

So let me kick it over to you, fellow writers! What inspired your entry in to the wonderful world of writing? I look forward to reading your answers, and jumping back on to this great platform. Keep reading, keep writing and most importantly keep being you!

Much love from the beautiful west coast of Canada <3

Coming around the bend of the trail, I realize the path we used to take to get there has almost dissapeared. I wonder if any kids go there these days? Gosh, it was almost as much a home for us as our actual houses back then. Picking my way through the trees and bushes, I ponder just how many hours we spent there. Hundreds, I'm sure. We went there frequently not only as innocent kids, but as teens to get up to no good. Even a couple times in recent years mostly for the nostalgia of it.

Yep, just the same as ever. The stones are mossier than they used to be, and there's more foliage in general, but boy it hasn't changed much. A time capsule from the past. Jeez, all the stories we used to come up with here, they were never ending. One day we might be mages, druids, or necromancers calling on the powers of the various magics or forces we employed in our fights against our enemies. Another time we were stone giants, here trying to free our kin from their imprisonment by the evil warlock Sighast the Enslaver. We managed to break his spell, free our bretheren, and give him a whooping like the birds and squirrels around here had never seen.

Or we'd just come and hang out. Countless hours of Pokemon cards or playing Game Boy. I still feel bad that we were young and careless, tossing our old batteries as far as we could just to hear them whipping through the leaves. At least we never accidentally hit a sparrow or something. Of course, there were the other, less intrusive activities too. Races around the circle, or plain old leapfrogging the stones. I still remember the time it started to rain, and I slipped as I went over one of them. I bashed my butt so hard on it I couldn't sit the whole rest of the day! You laughed so hard, but you actually had the grace at age 8 to pretend to fall as well, just so I'd feel better.

Then, of course, there were the immeasurable hours spent sullying this sacred place of our childhood with smoke, drink, and all manner of "mind expansion expeditions," as we used to call them. Those days we bothered the wildlife blasting everything from Cypress Hill to Pink Floyd, covering conversation topics from the meaning of existense to Kayla Howell's great boobs. Hah, real intellectuals. You know what though? I'd do a lot to be able to sit down and have another one of those stupid interactions again. Even more to be able to one day bring our own kids here, like we said we would. Instead, I'm bringing this picture of us to hang on a tree, cause that's as close as we'll ever get now. They spread your ashes in a beautiful place, but it'll never have the magic of this one. Its helping me heal already. Rest in peace.

I wonder how many millions of us once asked ourselves what it would have been like to be Beethoven. Maybe it wasn’t quite so many, although I’m sure the majority of the population at least pondered deafness at some point. I know I did, frequently, but that’s probably a result of the things I love most in this life. It sure didn’t stop me from taking it all for granted, regardless of the fact I told myself I didn’t. Because I know that if you’d told me at any point during the last couple decades to enjoy my hearing while it lasted? I’d have had some comeback about how the nanotech would have that all sorted out soon. Life is funny with its little ironies.

Granted, there had been no reason to expect anything other than overwhelming success with the phase three public rollout. All the events of the last twenty plus years led us to believe that we’d finally entered a true golden age of humanity. Previously debilitating and life-threatening diseases rendered impotent. Many events which used to most often be fatal, reduced to inconvenience. A life expectancy that, although a far cry from immortality, made us feel like gods. There was no end to what science could fix, and we reveled in it.

Until, of course, we didn’t. Am I sad? Was I among the angry? Of course. Do I think it was part of some heinous master plan? No. I have no idea how it happened, but if we’ve come this far, there will be a way to fix it. It could have been much worse. Yet even as I sit here with my instruments, experiencing them in new ways I never could have before, I think about how the world went quiet. Too quiet.