40 Days with No Facebook . . . My 40 Days of Lent
Today is a big day. It's Ash Wednesday which signifies the beginning of observing the 40 days of Lent. It is also the Husband's birthday. But I'm here to talk about Lent and not the Husband's birthday. If you know and see The Husband out and about, please wish him a happy day!I love this season. I love it because with Lent comes the celebration of Easter, which is probably my very favorite holiday. I also love the idea of observing something for the 40 days of Lent, whether it is through sacrifice or adding something daily. I love making an intentional decision and honoring that intention. Most of my Lent intentions have been rooted in attempting to improve myself in some way or another. I've shared some of them on this site One year I challenged everyone to begin with 10 push ups and add one each day so that by the close of Lent we were doing 50 push ups. I had several folks join me on that one! In the past few years I have been adding things rather than taking things away for the 40 days. Last year I made it my intention to find something joyful in each day during the season. I was very mindful of finding a little bit of joy, even on the days that seemed pretty dark and gloomy. It was one of my favorite Lent intentions. This year I'm going back to sacrificing or giving something up.
I played around with it for a bit but felt like this was something that I truly needed to let go for a while as it was beginning to take up too much of my time and thoughts. Beginning today I am giving up Facebook during Lent. This is a personal thing and just for me. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Facebook. I love it that I can keep up with friends now that I never could have 10 years ago. I love being able to see old classmates from my hometown and see photos of their children and know what is going on in their lives. I love how I have been able to reconnect with college friends through Facebook. Heck, I love how I can keep up with the friends I love 5 miles from, but because of busy and different schedules do not get to see! It truly is a great resource for learning about graduations, marriages, births and all the happy occasions of my friends' lives, and, sadly, is a way to know of unhappy life events that also may be happening.All that being said, during the last month, I have felt myself drawn to my phone far more often than I should. I found myself popping over to FB two, three and sometimes several times a day. Anytime there was some down time I felt compelled to "connect". Whoa! What was going on? What was happening to my time as I was being sucked into scrolling down and through posts, photos and articles? I was losing my downtime. I was losing that time sitting in carpool line when I would either read a book or simply sit and think. I was losing that space in my head that allowed me to be creative, to process events and to problem solve. I needed that space and time back. I was becoming far too involved on the outside and forgetting to keep some time for the inside.While I will miss keeping up with my friends, events and a lot of good articles that are shared on FB, I look forward to stepping back, allowing myself to fill my head and time with my own thoughts and having myself "mind my own business", for lack of a better term.
As I am missing my FB friends, I'm thinking my FB friends won't even notice! And as far as this site (I use that term because I really hate the word Blog! that' why it was originally called a Non-Blog Blog!) it will still post on FB, so I hope you keep reading, and if you comment, please put the comment below as I won't be checking FB to see your comments!Do you celebrate Lent? Do you add or take away? What are you doing to celebrate? And can you please tell me something else I can call this thing besides a Blog? And isn't this a good idea?
Enjoy Your Day! Stay Safe and Warm!