the wrong side of the bed

so, my officemate and i are giving up chocolate for the month of march.* she's doing it for health reasons. i'm doing it because february was a month of too much chocolate, and i seem to be growing out of my pants. i don't have money for new pants! so, no chocolate. yes, i miss it. only about 9 hours in, and i miss chocolate.

i'm also going to try to significantly reduce my caffeine intake this month. the chocolate comes in here, too. the reason for this is that sugar and caffeine can trigger panic attacks for me. i need to be careful with these things. if i am to be serious about reducing anxiety in my life, some things have to go. so, i'm going down to one soda a day. i was going to wait until spring break to do this, but yesterday i had only one soda, and i lived through it, so maybe i will start today.

is there anything else i should give up for march?

* this has nothing to do with lent. i don't even know when lent begins and ends. i don't even know why a person is supposed to give stuff up. the things i don't know about religion could fill lots and lots of books.

I couldn't decide on anything to give up for lent. I'm not Catholic anymore, but it's still interesting to me to give something up for 40 days every year. I kept thinking of stuff--caffeine, swearing, alcohol--but then I remembered that I'm in the final stages of dissertation-writing, and making any kind of sweeping changes to my lifestyle could really mess me up.

but I hope it works for you!

-jamie

I don't have any ideas about what to give up but since you mentioned Lent I thought I would ask whether it freaks anyone else out to see people with ashes on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday. I kept seeing people with smudgy crosses on their faces today and it shocked and confused me every time. You would think that after all these years I would get used to it but it's still just as shocking as the first time I saw someone--my teacher in second grade--with that smudge.

AK - i am freaked out by ash wednesday every year, too. it is such a visible sign of religiosity or something. i dunno.

being raised by athiests occassionally has its disadvantages...

like burning in hell.

;)

I taught at a Catholic school for a little while, and they burn the palms on monday or something like that. Being a militant agnostic, I promptly alerted the principal about the burning smell permeating the classroom and the school.

She explained it to me, and after I made a joke about thinking there was a fire because I was not Catholic, she replied with another joke that ended, ..."you're going to burn in hell."

She laughed, I did not.

yikes!

if people can't laugh about the fact that some of us are going to burn in hell, then what are we doing? something's gone terribly wrong.

I actually kind of like the ash crosses. it's a reminder of how gothy Catholocism can really be.

-jamie