Carry on my Wayward Son...

Hello again.

It's been a while since I last blogged.

Life gets in the way of things (I actually have a large degree of empathy for George R.R. Martin when he claims he will write The Song of Ice and Fire at his own damned pace, though taking time to buy a Bowling Alley doesn't help him write any faster). At first, I didn't want to blog because I was gauging the reaction to people reading The Space Between the Stars, which was...well minimal, though the few comments I did receive were good and humbling.

But then other things took me away from the blog.

Excuses, mostly.

You know the kind.

Some valid.

Most, however, were mere laziness.

So, in the spirit of this week, I have decided to eliminate (or diminish) laziness as my Lent promise.

If you aren't a Christian, Lent may seem a bit of a strange quirk of devout (and semi devout) pilgrims giving up chocolate or alcohol for 40 days and not eating meat on Fridays.

My take of it, however, is slightly askew of it (and perhaps not entirely in keeping with the factual meaning of Lent).

But that's between me and the Invisible Giant in the Sky to chat about.

Jesus, as the bible tells, went into the desert to pray and commune with God for 40 days and 40 nights, fasting and declining the advances made to him by the devil.

Not much different than the prolonged meditations and abstinence from the temptations of the material world practiced by some Buddhist disciples on their path to perfection, for example.

The basis of it, is to deny yourself of something which is a need in order to appreciate whether or not it is in fact a need in the first place.

Explained like that it is quite introspective.

At least to me anyways.

So, back to that Lent promise of mine.

I am giving up, or attempting to give up Laziness.

How do I define/quantify laziness?

There's the rub.

Well, the one way I will define my laziness for the Lent period is by my ability to do tasks. To that effect, I have picked up a little notebook, on the cover of which I have written 'LENT TASKS.' Every day is written on it for the duration of Lent (I will include Easter Sunday on this diary), and I must write all the tasks I intend to do for the day on the page corresponding, as well as tick the task once it has been completed.

I know what the first complaint will be: 'Well, Mario. Anyone can make a list where they do the bare minimum number of tasks and claim they've accomplished everything.'

And you would be 100% correct in that assumption.

But I am not simply 'anyone.' I know what my own failings are, and organisation is actually top among them. I am erratic at best in my organisation. I am most comfortable shooting from the hip.

So in effect, HAVING to write everything down for 40 days is in itself a challenge.

It takes me away from my comfort zone.

It denies me something I like, though perhaps do not need (though at times it may feel like I need those extra 30 minutes fiddling about flicking endlessly through TV channels or watching the same dog chase it's tail on YouTube).

My other half has already told me not to be too hard on myself should I fail to live up to the task.

No one feels too hard about themselves when they fail to give up chocolate for Lent.

Or alcohol.

Or eats that bacon double cheeseburger on a Lent Friday.

Some people even manage to successfully avoid the chocolaty temptation for 40 days...

...though quite a few do so by picking up a 'support vice.'

:-/

So, this will be my burden for the next 40 days.

To be as organised as I can, and avoid falling into the trap of 'I can do it later'

I'll keep you posted, since I have made it one of the tasks to blog more regularly (once a week). I may even add 'Write a page of fantasy fiction' as a daily task.

Or I may leave it for later... ;-P