{"id":1580,"date":"2022-05-31T08:39:48","date_gmt":"2022-05-31T07:39:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/?p=1580"},"modified":"2022-05-31T08:41:13","modified_gmt":"2022-05-31T07:41:13","slug":"my-smoking-brain-wants-to-water-the-plants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/?p=1580&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"My smoking brain wants to water the plants"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Julia Harwardt<\/em><\/p>\n

Translated by Colin Rae<\/em><\/p>\n

On World No Tobacco Day 2022<\/a>, it will be exactly 514 days since I gave up smoking. I\u2019m really happy about this, especially after countless failed attempts to quit. I was a smoker for many years, stopping every once in a while only to start again \u2013 and with varying, but usually high, degrees of shame and guilt. So I know all too well how hard it can be to kick this (I apologise for using the somewhat judgmental word) \u201cvice\u201d, and I\u2019m the last person to wag my finger reproachfully and point out the harm smoking causes to smokers, those around them, and the environment. Every smoker already knows, trust me.<\/p>\n

Alongside all the health and financial benefits of giving up smoking, I feel there\u2019s one aspect that usually gets a bit neglected by all the help and information sources, both online and off. I\u2019m talking about the notion that smoking can boost your creativity and help you relax. I know from my own experience, and from conversations with others who smoke or have smoked, that this can have a major impact on whether someone does or doesn\u2019t stop.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Working as a translator can be stressful. In addition to having to understand what are often incredibly complex topics, we then have to render them correctly, concisely, engagingly, and readably in the target language. Then give us the customary tight deadline and watch as our blood pressure rises. Personally, when it comes to focused, mentally taxing work, I\u2019m at best a middle\u2011distance runner. If I want to produce writing worth reading, I have to air out my \u201csmoking brain\u201d at regular intervals.<\/p>\n

I used to consider taking a cigarette break a good way of killing two birds with one stone \u2013 relaxing while also boosting my creativity \u2013 and for a long time I talked myself into believing that this was working amazingly well. It really wasn\u2019t. At the end of the day, smoking cost me more time than it gave me inspiration. But I admitted this to myself only after I\u2019d stopped smoking. Until then, I had simply been more interested in perpetuating my self-image as a creative, contemplative, and reflective soul, roguishly not conforming to this health-crazed society. No doubt a holdover from my youth, when I had this glorified idea of myself as some kind of rebel whose only way to feel complete was with a cigarette (hand-rolled of course) in her hand. Smoking is also surprisingly time\u2011consuming, especially in winter. Each time you want to go out onto the balcony, you must first get yourself kitted out in shoes, scarf, coat, and hat, plus roll your cigarette. This is also something that became clear to me only after I stopped.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the meantime, I\u2019ve found lots of other ways to relax and come up with creative solutions for my translations. After a lengthy break, sport and other forms of exercise are now once again a fixed part of my week. As hard as it might be to believe, I actually found that moving my body is an excellent counterpoint to sitting at my PC day after day. Since I worked from home even before the pandemic, I have the luxury of being able to give my brain a rest by performing somewhat mundane tasks. Personally, I find doing the dishes or watering the plants helpful, and the same goes for taking out the rubbish or hanging up a load of washing. These activities require entirely different motor skills and thought processes, so much so that my brain effectively restarts. And sometimes \u2013 and without my being aware \u2013 it comes up with a new take on a translation problem that I\u2019d been tearing my hair out over. I\u2019ll often then abandon whatever I\u2019m doing and rush over to my desk to scribble down this brainwave or type the answer to an awkwardly worded phrase that has shot into my head, seemingly out of nowhere.<\/p>\n

So it turns out that the classic IT maxim of \u201cturning it off and on again\u201d works just as well for grey matter as it does for your PC. It\u2019s better for your lungs and wallet, too!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To mark World No Tobacco Day 2022, our colleague and former smoker Julia Harwardt reflects on the myth that smoking is an aid to relaxation and creativity, and why this idea remained an obstacle to her giving up for so long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[9,654,652,653,655],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1580"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1586,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580\/revisions\/1586"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}