I'm a quitter.  That's right.  I'm the punk kid at the park who gets pissed off when he can't kick the ball and yells, "I quit!", grabs his ball and and stomps home.  Hell, once as a kid I can remember the exact scenario, getting home and realizing, "Man, this isn't my ball!"

I've started and stopped so many home improvement projects that I've lost count.  My general theory is to get the project to a functioning level then move on.  I've got some sort of tool in just about every room in my house left over from some project or repair task I started or puttered with then just got frustrated, bored or lost interest altogether and never put away the tools.  It drives my wife nuts.

It's not just home improvement, either.  Pick a task, any task.  I have probably, at some point, in my life started and stopped it.  Swim team?  Freshman year.  Quit.  Football?  Sophmore year.  Quit.  (In my defense, those guys were mean.  I weighed all of 113 pounds.  In pads.  And I was not that fast.  It was for my own good, really.  Someone was going to get hurt.)   Track?  Well, I stuck that out through my senior year but changed from distance to hurdles because I was afraid of the varsity distance coach. 

Books?  I can't remember the last book I finished.  Oh yeah.  The Kite Runner.  Fabulous read.  I couldn't put it down.  But that was over two years ago and I distinctly remember stopping or neglecting altogether at least three other projects to finish it.  Those projects are still incomplete. 

I have this recurring dream about quitting a class at college but I never actually officially dropped the course.  So the final exam is coming up for this class and I can't even remember where the room is.  I can't even remember what building the class is in or, for that matter, whether it was an English class or a Microbiology class.  It really freaks me out because I need the grade to graduate and graduation is in one week.  I know!  It's madness!

I had a counselor tell me once that I suffered from the adult version of ADHD.  He followed that up with other words and stuff but I kind of lost interest in what he was saying as I was busy trying to decide if he actually picked the teal green/blue paint color for his walls or just inherited them when he moved into this office.

So, as you can see, there seems to be a pattern here.  I have what would seem to be a lifelong inability to complete a task.  It's always kind of bothered me.  Kind of.  Until today.  For today marks one full year; 525,600 minutes; since I smoked my last Marlboro Light.  That's big.  Really, really big.  Not so much so that the guys over at Phillip Morris are sending me cards saying, "Where ya been?" or, "We miss you."  But none the less I'm pretty proud of the milestone.  Yep, I'm a quitter.  I think to celebrate the occasion I'll pour myself a nice tall Grey Goose martini.  Oh s#*@!, I quit that last October.  Maybe I'll just inhale deeply and exhale without coughing.