Half-way: How Goes The Fast?

If you have been following my blog for a while you may recall that I made the decision to give up the distractions of Face Book and Twitter for Lent.  Last Sunday was the third Sunday of Lent, two more Lenten Sundays and we will be at Passion Week beginning with Palm Sunday. We are basically half-way to Easter and can begin to see the end of our fasts (not all fasts involve food and many people don’t give something up for Lent at all).  I thought it was a good time to touch base.

I didn’t realize before that the primary use of my Black Berry was checking FB and Twitter, but I can go days without recharging it now.  It isn’t very draining to check my email and blog stats and after that is done there isn’t any other reason to have the screen on.

So, has this change in my habit made a difference in the amount of time I have my focus on God?  Yes and no.

I have done pretty well at keeping up with Bible reading and reflections and blog postings.  I had time and focus for preparing a couple of services I led recently and for the course on church polity which I am taking. Less time with social-media distractions has led to more time spent on the crossword puzzle book I got for Christmas several years ago and more time spent hanging out with my kids watching TV.  I’m not sure they are thrilled, but I need the social contact.

I am an extrovert in many ways.  I gain my energy and strength from contact with other people, although I can be very quickly drained by negative contact.  While I am with people at work all day, when I leave I only have one or two built-in social activities in my week.  I now realize to what extent I have come to rely on social media to give me that feeling of connection with others.  I have not yet concluded whether or not this is a good thing.

More quiet time has also given me time to run things over (and over) in my head.  This is almost always a negative thing.  One might think it was good, as solutions might be found that way, but it doesn’t tend to work that way for me.  I am more likely to find solutions in discussion while in my head I just run around in circles.

Overall I would say that I’m doing ok with Lent this year.  I’m not totally focused on the spiritual realm, but then meals need to be cooked and work done.  I’m not sure if I will go back to my social media sites as much after Easter.  It has been interesting to note that with no Twitter presence other than one post to announce my blog each day, I have been gaining followers in the past couple weeks.  Maybe it is true that less is more?