On New Year’s Eve, while sitting in our parked car with both boys waiting for Chris to return from the store, I noticed a woman two spaces over. She was leaning against the grille of an SUV smoking a cigarette, and on her feet were a gleaming white pair of those ridiculously shaped Easy Tone sneakers, the ones with 3-inch soles that are supposed to help tone and shape your backside and legs just by walking around in them.

What an ironic contradiction you are, I thought as I watched her take a long drag. You think magic sneakers are going to get you in shape? You know how those shoes will do the most for your health? By stamping out that cigarette.

I immediately considered posting something snarky on Facebook or Twitter about her. But as I worked on the wording in my mind for the perfect biting comment, I realized something that stopped me cold:  I am just like that woman (and I suspect most of you are, too). I have goals and dreams for myself, good ones that would actually probably be attainable if I didn’t also have a two-pack-a-day bad habit that keeps me from reaching them.

My cigarette is self-doubt.

I don’t think I’ll ever measure up to everyone’s expectations, so I stop myself from really trying.  A friend passes along his contact at Parenting magazine and says I should pitch something to her. For a day or two I stare at that contact info and the encouraging email that came with it like it’s a brilliant step — a gift, even — toward a long-held goal. Like it’s a shiny new pair of sneakers guaranteeing the perfect tush. All I have to do is lace them up and walk around.

But then the self-doubt creeps in. I realize in all likelihood that my pitch would be rejected, which wouldn’t be so terrible if nobody knew about it, but my friend will surely ask how it went and he’ll know I failed. Besides it’s silly to even try, I reason, that magazine doesn’t run the kind of stuff I would pitch anyway. Plus I’m too busy with other assignments, real stories that come attached to real paychecks, however small. Suddenly the sneakers I was so excited about start to feel more like a burden. They’re not really going to work, my muddled mind says. Your body needs a lot more help than what any stupid pair of sneakers can do.

So the friend’s email gets slowly buried by others. Instead of polishing a column pitch and intro letter I spend my idle time chatting with friends and mindlessly scrolling over my Facebook feed, feeling the smoke fill my lungs. It burns with counterproductivity but it feels familiar, calming. I take long drags as the minutes become hours of another unproductive night spent on my laptop, and the self-loathing about my bad habit kicks in, which just makes it worse.

My cigarette is self-doubt. And I am a willing slave to how it weakens me.

I was still watching the woman puff away some of her last minutes of the year when Kostyn piped up from the back seat. “Why is she sad?” he asked. Without glancing back at him, I knew he was talking about her. Her wrinkled skin pulled the corners of her eyes and mouth downward, and her gray jacket hung shapelessly over her small frame.

“I don’t know if she’s sad, honey,” I said. “She kind of looks sad, though, huh.”

“Yeah,” he said. The woman flicked her cigarette to the ground and stomped on it with those giant soles. I watched how her breath continued to puff like a cloud in the wintry weather as she walked to the car door and climbed inside. She didn’t want to smoke inside her car. She wants to look and feel better. She wants to be healthy. But quitting is difficult. Taking control is hard.

She is sad, I thought.

At some point in our lives keeping the bad habit becomes even harder than quitting it. When you have used up all your self-pity, self-loathing, excuses and reasons, you are left with a choice:  Make peace with your self-imposed prison and let it slowly suffocate you, or resolve to break free and breathe only fresh air.

Let this stand not as a trite resolution but a simple statement of intent: This is the year I’m going to kick the habit.

Who’s with me?