There’s a part of me that real­izes I’ve changed since com­ing to a res­o­lu­tion with my infer­til­ity; since mov­ing to Chicago. It’s been a grad­ual change; mostly based on the increas­ing con­fi­dence and strength I’ve gar­nered over the past year.

And this past month, with all the writ­ing I’ve been doing … I real­ize that my posts have def­i­nitely taken a dif­fer­ent tone.  Specif­i­cally, I’ve noticed that I’ve taken a break from the sad, depress­ing — and even angry — parts of my life.

I have always loved mak­ing obser­va­tions about myself and of the world. My mom always told me that I was both very per­cep­tive and inquis­i­tive, so I guess it comes nat­u­rally to me. The only prob­lem I’ve encoun­tered (espe­cially more recently) is that I often for­get what an impact some of these obser­va­tions have on me. And if I don’t write them down … well, then my “light­bulb moment” gets lost in the dim recess of my mind.

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Speak­ing of obser­va­tions … yes­ter­day was the “observed” Catholic Holy Day of Ash Wednes­day. Ask me if I went to mass … and I’m sure you’d already know the answer. But we’ve already had many a con­ver­sa­tion about my actual “prac­tice” of my Catholic faith.

Regard­less, there are cer­tain things … tra­di­tions, really … that I like to fol­low. (Coin­ci­den­tally, a blog­gie friend recently talked about how tra­di­tions in reli­gion is some­thing she enjoys … read about it here.) One of them is the prac­tice of “giv­ing up” some­thing dur­ing Lent.

I debated for a few days as to what I would give up this year. In the past, I’ve typ­i­cally given up things that I really, really enjoy … know­ing that I’d really only be prac­tic­ing the art of self-​​restraint.  One year it was chocolate-​​covered pret­zels, and another year was caramel apple suck­ers. Come Easter after both years, I was so good at exer­cis­ing self-​​restraint that I no longer had those “crav­ings” to con­sume them as I had done before Ash Wednesday.

This year I thought about giv­ing up Coca-​​Cola (I’m addicted) or even any form of choco­late (detri­men­tal to *anyone’s* san­ity). And as I told my co-​​worker this, she told me what she decided to do dif­fer­ent for Lent this year.

Since she was already pretty adept at giv­ing up things for Lent, my co-​​worker chose to “pay it for­ward” this Lenten sea­son. Mean­ing that she would decide to do one ran­dom act of kind­ness every day for the 40 days before Easter.

The more she talked about her plans, the more she had me sold on doing the same thing. Even though I under­stand the con­cept of “giv­ing up” some­thing for Lent as being able to exer­cise absti­nence and to “purify the soul” before the day of Res­ur­rec­tion … the “rebel” Catholic in me thinks that this con­cept in this cen­tury is self-​​defeating, rather than self-​​appreciating.

If this sounds mud­dled, let me explain it with this train of thought: If I decide to give up choco­late for Lent this year and I’m not suc­cess­ful, I know I’d feel guilty. Even worse is that the mere thought of hav­ing choco­late before Easter would already elicit those feel­ings of guilt … even if I didn’t have any .

Yeah, self-​​defeating.

But … let’s say that instead of “giv­ing up” some­thing, I decide to “give” some­thing to some­one else … like an extra sand­wich from my catered lunch meet­ing today to the home­less per­son out­side of the Star­bucks by work … well, it would make me feel as if I’ve helped some­one else and it would make me feel good about myself. And in the end, it would boost my confidence.

Kinda like how once I started to allow myself to feel “happy” again (after 12+ years of infer­til­ity), I’ve man­aged to gar­ner some momen­tum in gain­ing con­fi­dence and strength. And more impor­tantly, con­tent­ment in my over­all life. (See how it all ties together?)

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My goal this Feb­ru­ary was to write an entry a day; and see­ing that I have only 11 days to go, I’m pretty sure I will meet this goal and gather more of that strength and confidence.

LOOVE this “work flow” chart!

SO … in order to con­tinue that for­ward momen­tum, I’ve decided to bor­row my co-worker’s Lenten promise. Start­ing today (and end­ing on Easter Mon­day … since I’m already a day behind), I am going to vow to per­form one ran­dom act of kind­ness a day and doc­u­ment that daily deed on my blog.

But not only that … I’m also going write about one thing that I’m thank­ful for every day. Because the exer­cise here is to remem­ber that oth­ers may not have the same lux­u­ries (whether mate­r­ial or other lux­u­ries) in life that I do.

And I hope this gets me closer towards feel­ing more ful­filled in this life.