Since I've become heavily involved in cigars, I've noticed my appreciation and attention to other things has grown appreciably.
Bear with me, and I'll try to explain what I mean. I want to know if you guys have seen a similar effect.

Since I've become seriously involved in cigars, analyzing them, paying excruciating attention to the details and nuances, it's spilled over to a lot of other parts of my life. I pay far more attention to food, for instance. Lisa and I eat out a lot. We like lots of odd stuff and try all kinds of different things all the time. I find myself "picking apart" my food, figuring out what is in the dishes, paying attention to all the hidden flavors, and discussing them with Lisa.
I put all those small "reviews" in my brain, and use them later to pick out things we might like from menus. That helps us to try more interesting things, based on our personal profile we've built. I do it very much, if not exactly, the way I choose cigars.

Another place I do it is in selecting wines. I don't drink at all, but Lisa really enjoys wine. I do about 90% of the wine buying, and I read everything. By asking Lisa questions and talking to all the girls in her family, I've been able to figure out where her "profile" is, and I can drag home odd stuff that her and the girls would not likely try, although I'm very safe in knowing they'll enjoy it.

The reason I'm mentioning this is that I hadn't ever even thought about this spill-over effect until a few days ago. On a certain level, I didn't know I was doing it, or that I had learned this new level of appreciation for simple things via my cigar fascination. It's very much enhanced my pleasure and appreciation for SO many things I'd have rushed past.
By allowing cigars to teach me how to slow down, relax, and smell the roses, a whole new layer of life and the world has been opened up to me. It's a new level of "understanding things" that I didn't know existed. I sure wasn't looking for it, it just arrived via this hobby as a bonus gift.

I was wondering if you guys have noticed this same "phenomenon", for lack of a better word. Maybe you already possessed this level of discernment and carried it into the cigar hobby, or maybe this hobby helped refine your discernment in other facets of your life?
I ask because I've found great joy in all of this, and hoped maybe you all can turn my nose in the right direction that I might open my eyes to even more of life's joy without having to accidentally bump my head on it like I normally do. :-)
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Very, very true........I kinda thought about that, but never had the complete thought put together, but you glued it together very nicely my brother!

:-)
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no
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Yes I have noticed this in many areas. I think it was McSmokey, Sawyer and I that had a similar conversation a few months back.

I have always been fairly detail oriented with my hobbies but my obsession/appreciation of cigars has definitely led me down paths of desiring to find better or higher quality products or methods in many areas. A few examples: Craft beer, bourbon (liquor in general), shaving, and coffee. I had always somewhat desired better alcohol but coffee and shaving are two things I gave little thought to before reading threads at CS and here. While new obsessions have grown I have no regrets in the way I feel these things have enriched experiences and made relatively unimportant aspects of life truly enjoyable.
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You sure are verbose!

:-)
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I'd agree that there is a corollary, but I am not sure that the blame should fall on cigars, as if they widen my (our) appreciation of other things. There are many who some cigars who never fall into that category - those who take the time to sort through nuances of flavors in things, or the subtleties of certain pieces of music, etc...

How about this. It is an attitude to life in general. What I mean is, those who have learned to appreciate all of life in general, are those who also slow down to enjoy all the nuances that life offers, whether in cigars, food, beverages, music, relationships, a sunset, a snowflake, etc...

When you appreciate life, and all it has to offer, you slow down to look at all the little things. Sometimes it takes a life-altering event to make us slow down (heart attack, near fatal car accident), but sometimes wisdom and appreciation come without such things.

Of course, there are some who learn it in one aspect of life and then apply it to other aspects (learned it with wine, passed it to cigars or vice versa). Sometimes they get it an apply it to all of life, sometimes people don't, and apply it to only a few different areas, like maybe cigars and booze.

Life really happens when we slow down to appreciate all things and realize that life is in the some of the minute details. Pauline and I sat for a portion of yesterday enjoying reading the essays that her 5th & 6th grade English students wrote, all in response to the same assignment. Some were funny, some were sad, some made us wonder how they made it to 5th or 6th grade.

I like to think that life is in the small details, look for them and enjoy them.

Might you agree with that Scott? Could that be a possible explanation.

Peace of the Lord be with you.
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Being a snob is not always a bad thing.

Beer snob...Check.
Cigar snob...Check.
Food snob...Check.
**** snob...Check! <---Really? that got filtered?
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That's a biggie right there. The spinoff of that is what it adds to conversation, and sharing the experiences with Lisa and the rest of the family. That goes for friends, too.
Granted, no one I know really wants to talk about shaving, but if I can do something as simple as picking out an odd appetizer at dinner that I know everyone will like, something we haven't had before, the wider appreciation is going to make others happy. Then I'm happy. :-)
There seems to be lots of things that come from it.
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I can agree absolutely, Todd.
For me, getting hurt a couple years ago slowed down my body a lot. Then the cigars slowed down my mind. Still there were a lot of spaghetti ends in my brain that weren't really tied together until I went back and read Ecclesiates. It basically said to me "Listen kid, life sucks. You better pay extra close attention to God's Grace, cause whatever you got, it ain't sh!t." Since then life has gotten exponentially better, even though I was perfectly happy with the way things already were.
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Yep, starting down the craft beer path now ... my wallet does not like my new interest either.
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Definitely with beer, Scott....maybe some other things that I haven't thought about before now as well. Really, Scott! If we let you start saying **** on the board, pretty soon people are going to be saying **** and **** and *****, and you know that will lead to people saying ********* and the like. It's like a gateway word to other bad words.


:-) :-) :-)

(I have no idea what word you tried to type, there are several 4 letter words filtered.....I think Pvff should be one of them.)
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Evening bump to see what you guys think.
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:-) thanks I needed that after recieving my empty box today.
In answer to the original question yes cheese and pipes.
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I would have to say YES...

Particularly with Scotch... Bourbons... Rums... and wines.
See a pattern here? :-)
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Never really paid attention until I read your post Scott. But one thing is for certain...I will be keeping a watchful eye on your "anal retentive a$$" from here on out. :-) :-) It's a science with Scott...Shilalaism at its finest!! :-)
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I am noticing it in my scotch and beers too.
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Another vote for booze. Also, the smoking of a good cigar helps me to get into a zone in which I enjoy my music with a more relaxed ear. I hear stuff in albums I've listened to a million times that I never heard before.

MCS
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That's cool right there. I never gave it a thought. Thanks, Cap. :-)
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+2. :-)
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35 years ago I smoked some chit and listened to some music and heard stuff I haven't heard since. :-)
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