I’ve done it for forty days. Today makes forty-one days of posts on my blog.

Forty days is the time of Lent, which I lightly celebrate on years when I feel like trying to be a little more holy and when the gauntlet is thrown down in the form of a dare. More on that in a bit.

After all, why not celebrate it? It’s meant to represent Jesus’s forty days in the wilderness, when He spent time fasting and praying, preparing for His ministry. He was tempted by Satan during the end of that period, but being the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, He passed with flying colors. 

If Lent is something that’s meant to help improve self-discipline and reflection on Jesus’s life and sacrifice, then I can always use a dose. 

This year, I gave up Facebook and TikTok after watching a news report on Ash Wednesday. All those devotees going around with the ashen crosses on their foreheads made me think: outward symbols are nice, but inward transformation is better. 

I told Sweet Husband about Facebook.

He chuckled, “I dare you.”

And then, I thought, I’m going all the way, and I deleted TikTok too. I’ve written about my Lenten fast before, in a post called “Scrollin’,” the second one I wrote since I decided that I would up my game and start writing a daily post on my blog. 

For the most part, giving up the Book of Faces and the Tok was pretty easy. The minute they disappeared from my screen, I felt a little lighter, but how should I replace the time?

This was the week after my bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction. For more on that little journey, here’s a post called “Front View.” 

And news flash, for inquiring minds: I’m not going through treatments. Mine was caught early enough that I didn’t need any, given my decision to go through with a larger surgery. When I think of my cancer experience, compared to others, while we might all be considered veterans, I’ve only served during peacetime. I don’t deserve to stand and be recognized with all those who have battled in the trenches in the long and ugly war that, for so many, is their experience with cancer. It could still be for me, but I’ve been told there is little chance for recurrence.

So there I was, at home with free time. I could have laid up and spent the days on my phone. Removing my two greatest temptations took care of that. I read a little and worked on a tough puzzle, which is still incomplete. It was supposed to be done last weekend, as I wrote about in “Puzzle.”

When I could, I worked on my real work. I enjoy helping others and moving things along for all the schools in the district where I am honored to serve. I no longer have to plunge toilets and sweep puke nuggets off the floor.

No, I was not a janitor, but there were a lot of dirty jobs I got to do after our cleaning folks left for the day, during sports events or other extracurricular activities. 

I was a high school principal. It is not a desk job. The desk part came usually after lunch, if nothing went down in the cafeteria or the gym during seventh grade P.E. that would require spending the rest of my day making phone calls to parents and being a peacemaker.

For the last four years, I’ve served at the district office as a secondary curriculum director, PowerSchool technical guru, certification officer, and state accountability certifier, among other things that need to be done in a school district. I can tell you what all the education acronyms mean. ALSDE, APLDS, CIP, ACAP, MTSS, OSI, OSL, SRIP, SIP, PST, RTI, CTE, CYA, etc.

I can also do a lot of my work from a computer at home, so when I could, I worked.

But I was back at work, in person, in schools, in the district office, within two weeks. I worked a full week before being off another week, for spring break, which is when I decided to put up or shut up and start getting serious about writing.

I’m not going to live forever. This much I know. 

I’ve always wanted to write, and time’s a wasting. Thank you, cancer. You gave me the swift kick in the butt that I needed.

And as for keeping it going for forty days, I’ve been in the wilderness. It’s been a struggle. I’ve written on my computer late at night at home and on my phone during sunny afternoons at softball games, my phone dimming in the bright sunlight as I battled the glare and the dwindling battery power. I’ve scribbled away during early mornings when I only had so much time before I had to leave for work.

Of the forty posts, seven have been poems. They are my little babies, my pleasures, my delights. Poems are the times I can truly play with words as if they are tinkertoys, building a structure of substance, if I want to. Or I can make a long and pointless tower out of sticks, one that reaches to the ceiling, connected only by the wooden rounds. 

The other thirty-three posts are sometimes religious reflections and sometimes worldly observations. Sometimes they are weak. Sometimes they are flat out bad. Sometimes I’ve had more to say than others.

But I’ve kept going. Over the last forty days, I’ve put out over 26,000 words, not counting the scribbles in my journal, some really bad poetry, and other projects I’m working on.

It would be closing in on a year’s worth by my old one-post-a-week goal.

I’m doing it this time. Really and truly. I’m not going to stop. You don’t have to read it, but I’m still going to write it.

But I must say, I might be terribly tempted, at times, to take a little break, a little folding of the hands to rest, as Proverbs says.

Facebook and TikTok are back on my phone.

I hope I pass the test.