red shirt blue pants

Lent is upon us! I almost forgot this year. I heard a random person who I have never before met talking about it while I was at my internship, and I thought to myself “oh no!” with the intensity that the average person who spends far less time with children would think some other… not quite lent appropriate… words.

With lent, as with just about everything else, I have a hard time deciding… not for lack of ideas or for lack of passion, but for fear of what I chose not being good enough. (Not that I am a perfectionist or anything…not at all) I want to do something spectacular. I want this lent to be the most life changing, intense, spiritual lent EVER. So when thinking, what should I give up? I easily dismissed “facebook,” “espn.com” and “tv” because they would be to easy and because they were too narrow. I would rather not do lent than give up something and have it be less than meaningful. So that is what I was resigned to do…nothing.

…until… I HAD A REVELATION. I will give up my laptop. You know, that thing that is always on my legs or under my arm… No, it’s not a funny looking metallic tumor, it is in fact a separate entity, although you would never be able to tell these past four years.

There is a computer at my work and my internship, so I will be able to check my email periodically… and perhaps even keep up with this blog. But no laptop.

My computer crashed at the beginning of my Christmas break this past year and I was without it for over a month. I read so much! and I made jewelry! and I painted! and I interacted with people! <I want that again.

This is my last few months of living at home, and I want to live it, not have it fly by me without me knowing because I was too absorbed with my computer. I want to go to bed at night without watching an episode of bones as I fall asleep. I want to not have to carry this stupid thing into the weight room each morning, only to waste away two whole hours of reading about whether or not UCONN will make the Tourney.

For those of you who are sticklers for religious traditions (which I do love), I know that this post was entirely devoid of spiritual meaning and lacked depth… I know that it talked only of giving something up and not about what Lent means. That is a post that I will have to spend more time on though. So perhaps, if the computer at work is in working condition tomorrow, I will be more profound then. Peace.