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By Todd Marcum
I usually don’t observe Lent.  It’s not really a part of my theology and heaven knows it doesn’t work well with my profession, which is a study in overindulgence.

As you might know, Lent is the period of the liturgical year leading up to Easter, forty days, more or less. For the sake of this discourse, it’s putting aside something to allow more time for self-reflection. Maybe it’s giving up something you like…like chocolate…and reminding yourself of more important things even as you miss the things you have put have “given up for Lent.”

Well, that’s a way-oversimplification, but it’s close enough for the purpose of this blog.

This year for Lent, I gave up three of my favorite Internet sites…my personal Facebook page, HerdFans (a Marshall University sports bulletin board) and eBay. It just seemed like something I’d like to try. Like kudzu, social media had crept into my life a post at a time to the point it was threatening to overgrow parts of it.

During Lent, I was not Internet-deprived…I still kept up the Access Facebook page.  And, heck, I may as well take vacation if I wasn’t going to use e-mail and research things on the net. Still, I didn’t order anything (and my kcup supply is dwindling). I cut my personal use after work hours to pretty much nothing.

Well, it was interesting.  It wasn’t as hard as I had thought and I found myself doing some things I hadn’t done in a while.  I read a couple of books…The Machine…about the 1975 Cincinnati Reds.  I worked on my cornhole boards, a tribute to Chad Pennington and Randy Moss.  I played a little more APBA (a baseball dice sim game) and worked on learning a little about WordPress with my friend Jonas Goldstein.

Putting aside social media for an adjustment time is an exercise I think I’d recommend to anyone. Though no great personal epiphany was discovered during my self-imposed Facebook exile, a lot of days I found myself with an hour I didn’t seem to have before.

I know I’ll be back on Facebook pretty soon… I have JV baseball to report on to a lot of folks who are at least passively interested in Trenton’s season.  These are the same acquaintances who will be happy to know that Amanda has a new piano, that Bo can now shake hands and that I had oatmeal for breakfast.  Spring football at Marshall is now in full spring and I can’t wait to get reports on the next Chad Pennington or Randy Moss.  And there’s a lot of useless crap on eBay that isn’t going to bid on itself.

Still I wouldn’t be surprised if I spent a little less time on my virtual life and a little more on my real one.  But I have been hearing that Troy Evans looks like the second coming of Randy Moss and I really have to check it out….

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