Lent sucks

I'm not a religious person. I am spiritual though, and full of intrigue about God and the purpose of life.

Why the hell am I following the tradition of Lent right now? (Ha Ha, I used Hell and Lent in the same sentence, do I get bonus points for that?)

 Oh yeah, that's right, because of Tessa.

Do you know Tessa yet? You should, she's a very cool person, don't let the ugly sunglasses fool you! Anyway, Tessa is a religious person, and decided that she was going to follow the tradition of Lent this year and give up reading. Are you aghast, you should be, I almost fell out of my seat when she said it. How can you give up reading? You might as well give up breathing and blinking and sleeping. I can't even imagine how hard that would be. But as Tessa explained to me, that's kinda the whole point. If you pick something that's easy to give up then there's no struggle, no sacrifice.

Well throughout many discussion about why people give things up, and how and where the idea came from, Ryan and I decided to join in. I'm not doing it for exactly the same reasons as Tessa, but I still think sacrifice is good to endure every once in awhile. Especially in this cushy world we live in nowadays. Ryan decided to give up soda (if you know my husband even a little you can close your mouth, you don't want to swallow a bug) Bill also decided to give up soda... well actually we didn't really give him a choice. If the rest of us were going to be sacrificing, then Bill needed to also, and soda is by far his biggest vice.

Don't worry he's almost over the shakes, though every once and awhile I walk into his office and he's caressing a coke can.

Strangely enough I didn't get to pick what I would give up either. The others picked for me, and then changed their choice a couple of times. They couldn't decide what would hurt me more. It went from candy, to desserts, to the current choice: Video Games

Let me lay it out for you. I'm not a crazy gamer. I don't wear a headset and live in World of Warcraft (Though I have played it thanks to Dr. Sieger!) But I do like games.  The Sims, Civ, and most recently on my iphone, the complete addiction called Triple Town. If you've never heard of Triple Town, look away immediately. Focus on something else, and whatever you do, don't look it up on the app store. I warned you!

So no games for me for 40 days. You have no idea how many times a day I pick up my iPhone and scroll through the apps with longing. But on the plus side, I've been reading a lot more. And I've started writing the sequel to AMPED, it's going to be called APEX, and I'm very excited about that.

 I think Lent will be good for me, as long as the soda withdrawal zombies don't kill me first.

Anyone else giving up something for Lent?