Wow, lent started early this year. I was a bit surprised when I looked it up today only to realize that it started two days ago. Good news, is Easter is coming earlier too!

Part of Lent can involve giving something up luxuries as a form of penitence. This year I'm chooising to give up reading and watching the news. Of course being two days late, I've already blown the possibility of a perfect record, but rule keeping is really the focus here. So I've uninstalled google reader from my phone to remove one temptation and now just have to avoid it and a million other possibilities of reading, watching and listening to the news. Of course if people tell me the news, I'll consider that part of daily life, but I plan to not take my own time to seek it out.

I'm hoping that the void that is left by all the time that used to be spent in the news, can be devoted to things that have been squeezed out, or never squeezed into my life due to easy hits of information being so readily available these days. This isn't the first time I've tried to squeeze the news out of my life, So and it likely won't be the last, but it is my attempt to beat back the cultural expectation that I feel to be up on the news, and let long form study, reflection, physical work, project work and spiritual growth happen in the space that's left behind.