~~I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing your world. You are doing things you have never done before, and more importantly you are doing something. So that is my wish for you, and for all of us. And my wish for myself. Make new mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes no one has ever made before. Do not freeze, do not stop, do not worry that it is not good enough, or it is not perfect whatever it is. Art or love or work or family or life. Whatever it is you are scared of doing, do it. Make your mistakes. Next year and forever and ever.~~ Neil Gaiman
We so often apologize for being human. For being less than. For falling. For slipping. For...living. For those 'ops' moments that are part of simply being here.
I laugh instead. My mistakes make me who I am. I'm the girls who trips over her pants leg...who says the wrong thing while trying to say the right thing...who spits out coffee when laughing. I'm the girl who cries over a happy ending...who veers off the road to miss a squirrel...who means well even when it seems to go wrong.
But I'm trying. And I'm learning. Growing. Experiencing. Adventuring 
And when I finally took my quit seriously, I quit. I learned from my mistakes and didn't want to do the serial cycle anymore. I stopped apologizing for my lost quits and started understanding them. I didn't totally let go of smoking when I quit. There was always that thought of "I hope this will take...." and "Maybe this time it will happen..." I kept that door open for relapse by allowing failure thinking.
My quit happened when I stopped all that. No more "I hope I can do this". Instead it was "Smoking is off the table no matter what". No more "I'm afraid I'll fail again". Instead it was "I cannot fail because I will not smoke".
It's ok to make mistakes. Shows we're trying. But when it comes to your quit, learn from those mistakes. Maybe it's how you talk to yourself. Maybe it's keeping that door open. Maybe it's simply learning, step by step. Regardless, it's ok to make mistakes.
It's also ok to move on...past the mistakes. It's ok to laugh at them. It's ok to learn from them. It's ok to even embrace some of them as part of who you are Then let 'em go. Release them. Fight the urge to apologize...to beat yourself up...to be stuck in them. Just blow past them and resume living.
Because that's what life is made up of....moments of making mistakes and moments of learning from them. There is so much life out there!! Adventure awaits
