I am a fairly heavy smoker. For the first time since turning 15 I successfully quit smoking at the age of 30. My 56 year old father died of a stroke when I was 29 and he never smoked or drank. So, I quit. It was glorious. I felt amazing. My smoking is the thing I cling to when I am under stress. It stems from my past where I promised myself I could always have cigarettes and coffee despite giving up other addictions that were far more detrimental to, not only my health, but my productivity. I need to see smoking as the opposite of productive. I need to see that it will slow me down, take not only years off of my life but could cause me to lose my fingers or toes. I need to be reminded not of my blackened lungs (as I run and bike and breathe “normally” enough) but of missing digits which would curtail my abilities to do the things I have devoted my life to. I began smoking again halfway through last semester. I missed smoking but I loathe it, I love it, I abhor it, I ritualize it.
So I decided to bring to my attention once every 1.5 hours an image reminding me of the very tangible reality of loss of freedoms that occur from smoking.
Every one and a half hours (precisely one hour twenty-four minutes) this image appears in my web browser:
This is the simple processing sketch I used to tell my computer to remind me of how horribly I am treating my own future.
void setup() {
size (200, 200);
}
void draw() {
if (millis()%5000000 > 0 && millis()%5000000 < 30) {
link(“http://thepersuadersjmu.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/finger.jpg”);
println (“opening Web”);
}
println(millis());
}