Project Purge

This is lent inspired, today is Ash Wednesday, day 0 of the Lenten season. I am going to try to purge my life of a few things, and if I'm brave enough, I'll keep you updated on how that's going.

Total focus on what's important. Kids have this figured out.

Here's a list of things I'm not going to have/do for the next 7 weeks:

Facebook *gulp*. The most scariest one of them. I had my mom reset my password, so I really should be able to do this, because she's one determined person.
Online calendar - I'm going back to pencil and paper. That will also encourage me to deal with incoming emails at a reasonable time, i.e. when I'm sitting down at home, as opposed to doing everything on the fly, all the time. Another side effect might be - hopefully - that it will force the husband and me to actually verbally coordinate our plans instead of a silent (and oh so efficient) automatic process.
Amazon - this may not be a 100% exodus but I am going to use it only as a totally last resort. I should make a better effort to shop locally for non-food things.
Milk in my tea or coffee - I have come to a sneaking suspicion that I don't tolerate dairy as well as I may have thought I did, and decided to give it a start with giving up all non-fermented milk products. My skin doctor approves...
Alcohol - well, that's kind of standard and 7 weeks is much less than 9 months, so I know I can do it. I'm out of scotch anyway. I do this more as a yearly maintenance thing, and I think it will actually benefit my running (as I'm old enough to notice a single drink the next day when I exercise....sigh).

You see, three of the above are online-related. This results from a culminating of events that have happened to me, on a privacy/technology level, as well as reading two totally different books about the matter, which I hope to discuss in more detail later this spring. Or whenever I'm finished reading them all the way. But if you want to know now, the titles are 'The Big Disconnect' and 'Dragnet Nation'. Notice how I'm not linking you to amazon? Hehee.

Amusing (but also thought-provoking story): I explained to my 3 and 5 year old girls that lent is the season to focus on what is really important to us. Their answer? "Oh, so that's screen time". Funny, right? Yet .... maybe not so funny. While kids that age seem to remember most vividly what happened in the last 15 minutes, and those 15 minutes likely involved me doling out some ruling such as 'you have had enough screen time for the day' (seriously, how often do I say that????), it still made me think. Maybe they think that that's what's most important to me? That's the kind of thing the 'Big Disconnect' is all about.

Footnote: 
Should you be religiously (Christian) inspired or at least religion-tolerant and want a lent schedule to reduce your footprint, here are two really neat programs. I have done this program in the past 2 years, it sends you a daily email with ideas. This similar program has a very neat printable, if you're not one for daily electronic mail, check that out!