Remember That You Are Dust, And To Dust You Shall Return

The Lenten season is about to be upon us, as is exhibited by the hundreds of thousands of folks getting in New Orleans (query our resident utilitarian-hedonist on the value of NOLA's Mardis Gras celebration?). Once again, I find myself thinking that the thing to give up over the next forty days and forty nights is the Internet.

Being Episcopalian rather than Catholic, I'm not that into observing Lent, so no sudden vegetarianism or anything rash. Also, between Neil traveling and  Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm's in March, I'm not sure it's practical for me to give up everything. Instead, this is what I'll be shooting for.

• No use of the tablet, and the smartphone becomes something to make phone calls with but nothing else.
• No social media of any form, at all.
• No personal email at work.
• No idle web browsing at all.
• Skip everything in my Google Reader except Wonkblog, TPM, Atrios, Moneybox, and Engadget (which I sort of need to follow for work purposes). I'll miss an interesting story here or there that I could blog about, but the world won't come to an end.

Having done this before, I expect the resulting lifestyle changes to be mostly positive. Blogging will continue at its current modest pace.