On the 23rd Day of Lent, My True Love Took From Me...

Eleven days have gone by. I'm sure you were in despair, unsure of what to do with your life, unwilling to accept that my blog had died. Good news -- it lives again!

You might have thought I gave up blogging for Lent. Not the case. This year is only the second year (and not consecutively) I've given up something for the Lenten season. When I grew up at the Gayton Kirk, a Presbyterian church, sacrificing things for Lent wasn't part of the protocol. Yes, Catholics did it, but they also gave up meat on Fridays if they were strict. My mom, from a good ol' Irish Catholic family, has specific rules about the food she serves, but nothing to do with Lent: Sauerkraut on New Year's Day. Corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick. Lasagna is a winter meal. No repeats: no chicken Wednesday night if we had it Tuesday night.

I am An Only Child, and rather than feeling guilty about it, I'm just going to say it: it's awesome. I never had concrete chores (my parents used to joke how unhelpful I was). I could drink all of the carbonated sodas and consume all the chocolate I wanted, without regulation. On New Year's, my mom would fix me green beans instead of sauerkraut because I didn't like it. So yes, privileged, loved, blah blah blah. With few rules, though, I also seldom did bad things. In third grade, I threw a friend's brother into a ditch and screamed at him when he threw a snowball in my face. I also broke said friend's swing and didn't tell my parents because I thought I'd get in trouble. Lies of omission--peccadilloes at the most.

So, with minimal rules, there's little to rebel against. You teach yourself habits (yes, I shifted to second person; deal with it). And you find that, when you get to college and can go crazy, you don't really. You find that "real world" issues seem daunting and it's best to get ready for them now. You worry that you're spending away all your money, even though you're not strapped, on stupid trifles. Sadly not on truffles, the chocolate kind.

For my first Lent (we're back to me now), I gave up vending machines. It's unorthodox, but so is bodily deprivation for Protestants. There's a joke about show and tell, where the Jewish girl shares her Star of David, the Catholic boy shares his rosary, and the Presbyterian unfurls a casserole. I would wither away my nights unproductively junior year of college, and I'd get a soda almost every night, with the occasional Reese's Pieces added on. Goodbye dollars, fare-thee-well nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic. (I don't really have one of those to begin with.)

It was a successful experiment. I still drank soda, but for free from the dining hall. Without treats, lazing about at night also felt unearned. Though returning to my Cherry Coke obsession after Easter, I broke the addiction of one (okay, two...) per night, like clockwork.

This year, I get home from class or orchestra three nights a week and do nothing worthwhile. Eating ice cream and watching Frasier are awesome, but I regret it over the weekend when there's all this work, or when I'm trying to finish up things at Da Capo because I neglected them the previous night. It's hard, basically, to think of your apartment, your home, as your work station too. So I gave up sitcoms for Lent. I am not watching Arrested Development over dinner and then playing three more. Lifetime doesn't run from 10 to 1 a.m., when I'm too tired to continue (or, most times, start) work.

Has it paid off? I felt swamped this week and canceled Writing Center hours for the first time. I stayed up until 1:30 a.m. finishing a chapter Tuesday night, but for naught: I didn't e-mail it to myself and thus couldn't print the completed opus. Last night Niles Crane was on my TV when I got home, carrying around a sack as a baby stand-in. How I'd love to, but no, I said. The true reward of mindless television is when you're done with it all. It's a relief, a reward, not a distraction. And remember, I'm an only child. I need every reward I can get.