After doing my own reading and talking to my close friend, I’m going to approach Lent as a pilgrimage of sorts. In that way, it goes along with my view that the last couple of years were and are a path that I’m following until I end up where I belong, wherever that is.

As a non-Catholic for my whole life up to this point, I’ve thought of Lent as that part of the year most like Yom Kippur. Time to atone your sins and with Easter renew your year, much like I do at that time of the year in the Fall or most people do in January at the New Year.

I’ve come to find that it’s much more than that. Of course, it’s whatever each individual decides to do for themselves, so please don’t take this as a directive that now suddenly I’ve attended Mass for less than a year and I’m some kind of expert. I only know my own observations and what my friends’ have told me, not to mention any specific questions I’ve had answered, either through asking or Googling.

As a child, I was under the impression that Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are fast days, and that meat isn’t eaten on Fridays during Lent. I am planning on observing these dietary restrictions with the addition that I will also eliminate bread during most of the week of Passover. This year is definitely a transition for me; I also remind myself that Jesus himself was celebrating Passover at His Last Supper.

I’m abstaining from two things for the next forty days (although I think it’s slightly longer than that). Diet Coke (and all soda really, but that’s the only one I drink) and the bakery scones I’ve been enjoying too much. I’m replacing the Diet Coke with water and green tea. I really don’t like green tea, but I’ve been reading that it counteracts some of the bad things that aspartame does to your body, so I’m going to try it out. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll drink my usual black tea and water.

This is an extraordinarily difficult thing for me to give up. Except for an occasional morning tea or lemonade in the summer or Starbucks drinks, ALL I drink is Diet Coke. I would guess that I average about 28 12 oz. cans in a week.

The only advantage I have is that they’re decaffeinated, so I won’t have the pleasure of going through a caffeine withdrawal. Been there, done that, wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

I won’t be replacing the scones with anything. Part of that is to save the money and part of that is to lose the weight I’ve gained in the last couple of months out of the blue. Both saving the money and losing a bit of weight will be advantageous for me come October.

I also want to use this time for my writing. It was suggested that I trade one hour of Tumblr for one hour of writing, but I don’t have the willpower to do that; it would just make me miserable every time I ‘cheated’, so it’s not going to be a 1:1 ratio.

However, I will commit to writing certain things for the next forty days and hopefully keep it up as we go through the rest of the year.

The first thing that I want to write about on a daily basis is my faith journey, whether that’s this past year and how it’s brought me to this place or what I’m feeling on that day during the Lenten season. There are so many days that I have a monologue in my head about the faith and spirit that I’m feeling and I never get them down, so I’m hoping that this will help me get it out. I also have my Mason Jar project continuing through the year. There are still a couple of things that I haven’t put in it yet, but that’s separate from Lent.

The second thing I want is to be more consistent in my blogging. Whether it’s non-fiction blathering or Fan Fiction and Meta, I want to be posting, if not daily, then consistently, so it’s expected, both by me and by my readers. I’ve had my blog nominated for a couple of new blog awards and my essay about writing was recommended in January. These are great things, and make me very proud of what I have done, but with new readers comes higher expectations, and my expectations for myself should be higher than the reader. I want to try and live up to that.

I think what that means are at least two writings per day: one related to my faith and one for general writing.

Most importantly, I’m not dreading what’s expected of me this Lenten season. I’m looking forward to it; the challenges, the commitments, the creativity, the walk with Christ.