It’s not Lent yet but a boy can dream.
Even though I haven’t been a practicing Catholic since I was a seventh-grader, I like to give something up for Lent every year, partly because I think that’s one of the better things about Catholicism and partly because I tend to get stuck in ruts of various kinds and it’s a good idea to shake things up.
For the last five or six years I stopped drinking, and in addition to the sacrifice or whatever I’m always amazed by how easy waking up in the morning is and also by how much weight I can lose in just forty days. By the last week or so I’m even able to hold conversations with new people without being intensely uncomfortable.
This year I thought about giving something different up, though. But what? Dairy would be a huge but possibly worthy sacrifice for me (and another one that would probably end with weight loss.) Caffeine might be harder, but that also might be worth a go. I’m tempted to quit social networking, but we’re launching our third issue during Lent and so that would be kind of impossible, I guess. But thinking about this makes me realize how I run pretty much exclusively on coffee, cheese, whiskey and Tumblr.
