Guys–Lent is hard. Lots of #fail this week.
You may remember that I gave up junk food. This is something that has, so far, been a lot harder for me than it should be (which makes me feel like I gave up the right thing). I’m taking Sundays off, as is traditional, but I’ve also found a remarkable spread of excuses available on non-Sundays as well. I’ve always had a pretty low amount of discipline when it comes to food, but it’s hard to actually confront that for a month and a half. So that’s not going particularly well, but pressing on.
I also decided to limit myself to three hours of computer/tablet time per day (though I don’t count when I’m in the office). This has been tough, but it’s been fabulous. It’s the hardest on days where I actually have free time, because I am the master at getting on the internet and then realizing that the day has somehow disappeared. But it’s been really beneficial. I still procrastinate, but I have to procrastinate in a more productive way. It also has meant that I’ve read more and taken back up the habit of writing in a moleskine (predictable, but still probably my favorite notebook brand–mostly to-do lists, but still. I’ve managed to stick to this limit pretty well. Gotten down to the wire a few times when working on schoolwork and such, but it’s been a good boundary.
I also decided that I wanted to write letters this Lent, which I didn’t mention in my first post. I made a list of (almost) 40 people to write to, and I’ve written exactly zero letters. Part of this, ridiculously enough, was that I didn’t have any full-page notebook paper. Now I do, and no excuses this week to not write at least a few.
Screwing up a fast can be a huge stumbling block by itself–it’s really easy to fall in the thought process of, well, now it’s ruined. No point in continuing forward. It’s a false dichotomy, though: perfection or failure. Part of the whole point of Lent is that we’re not perfect, and we’re preparing our hearts for the death and resurrection of Perfection. Maybe staring our own imperfection in the face is’t such a bad thing.