Good luck! If it's ok, I can DM you to see how it's going? Quitting smoking/nicotine felt like the hardest thing I ever did, but I'm so glad that I did it. I'm still kind of surprised at myself for having succeeded after so so so many failed attempts.
I never became a smoker but I too love that smell.
That smell kinda helps me relax too, depending on the type, I guess. I use (vanilla) incense because it has a similar effect for me. Though it doesn't smell quite the same.
I don’t know if it’s nostalgic for me or what. Funny thing is, I hate, hate, hate, the smell of incense (or anything else burning for that matter). My daughter started burning them recently and I couldn’t stand it.
A lot of smells that most people enjoy make me sick or give me a headache. The smell of matches burning and cigarettes though, I’ve always loved that. Maybe it makes me feel like a little kid or something. Who knows?
Good luck! I quit cold turkey after 20 years of smoking, and I started just like you at around 10 or so. The year after I quit was a bit weird, it was hard the first month or so, and got substantially better every day. What helped me not to start again, is that feeling that it might be weird now, but if I start again, that would mean all those terrible first days were for nothing, and I hate suffering with no purpose.
After a year I randomly realised that not only I don't want to smoke anymore, the thought alone is a bit revolting, and that's when I knew that I'm finally done with the whole shit. Gained a bit of weight though, nicotine is a wonderful appetite suppressor, but never regretted it.
More money, you'll live longer and so have more time to spend with kiddo, and hopefully they'll never have to post on one of these threads complaining about the smell at dad's house!
...my high school phased out the student smoking area starting my freshman year in 1986: the older classes still had access, but not mine, and by 1990 it was fully decommissioned into a landscaped atrium...
...when i worked as an apartment groundskeeper in the early nineties, my first two hours of every day were spent cleaning cigarette butts throughout the complex...
...i know people smoked off-campus but i'm pretty sure it was verbotten anywhere on-campus for students my age and younger: i was resolutely accosted by faculty for wielding a convincing fake cigarette in the parking lot after-hours...