Lent 2023 Plans

 

Picture from Ash Wednesday 2020. 

Blessed Ash Wednesday, everyone! I wish I was donning ashes on my forehead like almost all of my other Catholic friends but, alas, another day stuck at home. It’s my third ash-less Ash Wednesday which stinks but God knows shy we were unable to attend even the local parish. 

Even though I’ve yet to attend Mass in person (soon to be 16 months) and get myself to confession (going on two and a half months now), I’m still living my life as liturgically as possible so we (Mom and I) are observing Lent in this household. I have no idea what she gave up, but I can share what I’ve given up.

I’ve chosen to give up a couple of things to may seem small but they are all significant in one way or another. I purposely chose one very hard thing and the other more moderately hard things because, well, I’m a “go big or go home” person and that’s a recipe for failure most of the time. That’s why the Benedictine life is perfect for me (moderation is key) and why I also run everything like this through my spiritual director. I wanted to do two big spiritual reading books and he had to veto the more intense one. I thank God for my SD every day because, goodness, I really do need someone to bring me down from my overachieving tendencies that leave me burnt out.

The big hard thing I’m giving up is music. Yes, you read that right. Yes, friends have already express their shock and wished me luck. Haha! For those of you who are new around here: music is my love language. It’s through music that I’ve often gotten answers to prayers and conundrums I’m dealing with. It’s through music that I’ve found I best express myself when my own words fail. It’s my safety blanket; my constant friend. But, I feel like God is asking me to give it up this Lent and embrace the silence. 

Even beyond the physical and mental advantages of having more silence, I really need it to be able to hear His voice. I’ve been slowly weaning myself from the constant soundtrack of white noise sounds, podcast episodes, audiobooks, etc. Silence is hard for me… which is why I decided to not listen to anything with lyrics. I will give Gregorian chants and music in Mass a free-pass because those are essential but I won’t actively seek it out. If I do need music — and sometimes I do need it for the sake of my sanity with the, ahem, special neighbors we have — it will be classical in nature… but even that will be reserved for dire situations. 

I’m also giving up audiobooks — and cancelling Audible for the foreseeable future — as well as fiction that is not Catholic in nature. There is a big reason why I’ve chosen this that is going to stay between God, my SD, and myself but let’s say that words have gotten me into trouble lately and I need to immerse myself in Scripture, words of the saints, and anything else that is edifying to my soul. This is also a big part of why novel four hasn’t seen the light of day yet… I want to be careful with not only what I’m consuming (in terms of media, literature included) but also what I’m putting out into the world. Words matter and never has that been more abundantly clear to me than it has in the last couple of weeks. And, yes, there will be a part two to this in the future,

 I’m also adding one thing to my list: daily Mass. I started it two weeks before Lent last year and I kept it up for several months until I started feeling more sick and decided that rest would be better because I was no longer paying attention in Mass. I felt terrible spacing out and/or getting so distracted that I would miss all of the Mass readings and/or the Mass in general. It felt disrespectful so I stopped. But I did notice the major difference between watching/listening to daily Mass and only tuning in on Sundays and, wow, yeah, I need daily Mass.

There is one other big thing I’m going to be doing during the Lent season but since it overlaps with Project 2005, I’ll keep it to myself for now. Yes, I will share it when I can reveal with the project was and what I did. I’m keeping notes of what I’m doing and when. 

Besides that, I’m going to try to keep the spirit of the season as well as I can. I think being Benedictine and trying to become a better Oblate will be very helpful during this season. Reading the Holy Rule of St. Benedict (which we’re to do every day) helps remind me of this. To keep my naturally talkative/joking style of speaking to a minimum and really see whether I’m telling a humorous story to benefit myself or to benefit someone else; hint: it’s usually for myself. Again, I want to be careful with my words — more so than I have been before — and following the Holy Rule will help remind me.

Anyway, just wanted to share my Lenten plans to keep myself accountable. I have some spiritual reading planned — one book on my own and one I’ll be discussing with my spiritual director — and I have one conference (possibly two) that I’ll be attending (virtually) during the Lenten season that I hope to share with y’all afterwards. 

Anyone else doing something that isn’t common (e.g. giving up social media) that they know won’t be easy for them? Please feel free to share.

That’s it for now. I’m going to go watch today’s daily Mass from bed (as usual) and try to keep the silence as well as I can for the rest of the day.

I hope you all have a good start to the Lenten season!

As always, thanks for reading and God bless! 😊

P.S. For those who are following me on Instagram (@roseatefelicity) and are wondering if I’ll share about the “Blind Girl Achievements”, the answer is yes! Just give me a couple of days when I’m less busy so I can really sit down and write about the experience.

I Almost Broke Down in Tears Returning to Social Media

 

I still wear that ring. 

Well, here I am… in bed… fatigued in a way I haven’t been fatigued for a long time. But I’m happy and I’m allowing myself some time to write and not feel bad about not doing anything more today. Yes, I’m still trying to shake the whole productivity mindset that is so prevalent in our culture.

So… I returned to social media late last week… and almost had a panic attack in the process.. lol. I laugh to not cry. In all honesty, I simply felt overwhelmed. There were so many notifications on both Twitter and Instagram. I was included in long threads I didn’t participate on Twitter by people I didn’t know. One person decided to send me over 30 or so reels on Instagram in the month plus I was away… and I almost broke down and cried when I saw them. I had to take several deep breaths, try to use every tool into my mental health self-care arsenal, and delete the DMs I could to post the mini photo dump I shared. 

I took a break from social media because I was overwhelmed by the amount of content — especially reels — so seeing that I was thrown back in without chance to test the waters really got to me. I lasted a full 24 hours or so before I deleted the app and didn’t log in again until today. And the only reason I logged in today was because news broke that Gustavo Dudamel is leaving the L.A. Philharmonic for New York and I wanted to see if any local friends would be interested in going to one of his last concerts before he left.

I don’t know if it’s my Addison’s, a product of my senses being overwhelmed because they’re trying to overcompensate for the lack of eyesight, or if I’m still not over the digital burnout, but I just can’t do too much all at once. I just recently discovered that the dehumidifier we got last year for our apartment — which we run all night and on rainy days because our apartment gets very humid very quickly — makes my nerves even more frazzled. Since we’ve had a couple of warmer than normal days, we haven’t needed the dehumidifier and the difference with the noise level is incredible. I’m less anxious and less fatigued (and I sleep better when we can afford to turn it off). If a simple machine that “only” causes that feeling of overwhelm on a white noise level physically and mentally tires me out, you can imagine what the sights and sounds of social media does to my system. 

This isn’t new. In fact, it was worse. I was overly sensitive to noises when I first lost my eyesight. While I got little rest at the hospitals during my nearly month-long stay at two different ones in late 2020, getting home was worse. We live in a large apartment building with many children and lots of parties so I didn’t get much sleep. When my eyesight was worse — before recovering a bit more residual eyesight — kids running in front of our second-floor apartment used to make me very nervous because I never knew if it was an earthquake or a child running… unless the child was also yelling. Sounds make me jumpy, especially if I can’t identify what they were. I get startled even more easily than I ever have. It’s not fun. And, while I’m grateful I’ve gotten reached a point where I can stand a bit more than before, overwhelmed senses are still something I’m trying to learn to manage… and that’s a big part of why I decided to cut my time on social media.

The other part stands — a lot of people just look for reasons to argue and twist words and ain’t nobody got time for that. I was so angry when I saw that the Grammy winner for Best New Artist, Samara Joy, was dragged by fans of other Best New Artist nominees. The only thing the poor girl (and I consider her a girl because she’s much younger than I am) did was win. That was it. I think she had less than 150k followers on social media, which isn’t surprising because she’s a young artist in a genre that gets almost no attention these days (jazz). I’ve seen nothing controversial from or about her… and yet people chose to be absolutely nasty towards her. Some decided to insult her using racist slurs. Others decided to use very, ahem, colorful language to call her all these names that I won’t repeat. And seeing that type of unjust and vile stuff makes me very angry.

So, couple my very sensitive (to stimulation) system with my very passionate nature and… yeah, social media and I can only be infrequent acquaintances. My body has enough to deal with with my Addison’s, my chronic inflammatory skin, and every day stressors. I don’t need to add the utter craziness that exists on social media to the mix as well. Returning to social media only emphasized what a great idea it was for me to take a break… and why I need to keep my assigned social media days. My mental — and physical — health need it.

For the tl;dr crowd: I almost had a panic attack returning to social media and I’m keeping myself away from it as much as I can for the sake of my health. You know, just in case you were wondering how my first couple of days back to social media went. 

And that’s it. A sort of quick update. I’m not feeling well today and I want to rest as much as I can sans light and sounds. I’ve had a migraine since Sunday and it’s still on its way out so I want to take it easy. I slept several hours yesterday and the only reason why I’m not asleep right now is because my neighbors are being loud. Thankfully, I definitely have things to offer this up for so the suffering won’t go to waste. Lol.

Oh! And shoutout to Mrs. G who kindly took my beeswax candles — which I ordered from Clear Creek Abbey’s gift shop — to get blessed last week when I couldn’t even sit up during my latest flare-up. She brought them over today and I’m so tempted to light one right now.

I hope you are all doing well! 

As always, thanks for reading and God bless! 😊