Zag And Do More

It's Lent. Season of sacrifice and abstinence and fasting. 40 days of giving up something: soda for some, rice for others. Smokers give up smoking, carnivores give up meat. Our family standard is "No beef, pork or chicken every Friday of Lent," and since I grew up with the practice, I feel its not much of a sacrifice anymore.

But I can't think of giving anything else up. I'd give up writing on this li'l blog o' mine for Lent but I fear for the sanity of the people around me. Can't give up running 'cause I haven't really been doing much of it these days. I don't love doing anything else enough to give it up as my act of sacrifice. Actually, I don't do much of anything else to love something in the first place.

And that may be the key to my Lenten lock: I have to do MORE of something.

I've never been little miss regular habit. Besides my monthly p., nothing else in my life is done regularly: not running, not writing, not cleaning my designated aquarium... not that I need to be doing something constantly to love it; it's just this trail of thought has led me to the conclusion that I might be not doing enough with my life in the first place. Maybe, what I need to give up idle time because its the only thing I can think of that I have too much of now.

So, for season of Lent, I resolve to zag and do more. Yesterday, instead of the normal lazy Sunday, I opted to groom Belle further after her weekly wash, then I cleaned my 80-gallon aquarium. For those of you who haven't met Belle before, I'd be happy to note that she's a big, bushy black Lab with too much hair for her own good. So combing her out was a heck of an exercise under the heat of the almost midday sun. Then my aquarium... *sigh* ... I've been putting off the cleaning task of that for the looooongest time, algae and grime has built up so much in it that hauling it all out yesterday took a good 3 hours. Now, it looks brand-spankin' new!

True that the day's chores tired me out, but I also had a deep feeling of accomplishment and self-sufficiency. It felt good to get off my fat ass and do something, rather than laze away another afternoon.

So, that's what you can expect of me this Lenten season. What's your "sacrifice"? :)