As we were getting ready to leave the IFA Top Chef-viewing confab, Amanda asked me: how long has it been since I had a cigarette? It was an unexpected question, since I haven’t smoked in so long, and, as I told her, officially quit on Jan. 1, 2007. I’ve had a few cigarettes after that, but maybe two or three, and none this year.

Knowing that I had quit unsuccessfully before, she asked further: why did this time stick? I gave a near-tautological answer: it stuck because I had decided it would stick. What she didn’t ask additionally — and why would she have, really — was whether I had decided before that it would stick; and if so, what makes this decision any more definitive than the last. And there’s no good answer. I didn’t have some sort of epiphany that smoking was bad. I simply stopped smoking when I decided I’d stop smoking — with the occasional misguided relapse to finally get it out of my system.

It’s not as if I don’t occasionally think about smoking, or don’t reminisce about how much I used to enjoy smoking when I see and smell a burning cigarette. I’m just done. It’s funny how sometimes you have power over something even after you’ve spent a long time telling yourself your self-control was gone.