As I mentioned last week, I am abstaining from any sort of recreational shopping during Lent.
I'm also trying to lose weight, through both healthier diet and daily excercise. This effort is about three months old now. So far it's successful, I've lost 12 lbs and I feel a lot better.
I'm also trying to stop biting my nails. This effort is about a month old. So far it is also successful, my nails are grown out and they look great.
All three of these things take a lot of self-discipline. Self-discipline is not and has never been my strong point. When it really comes down to it, I'm basically an extremely self-indulgent person. I don't just mean as self-indulgent as would be natural for a white, middle-class American (although you'd think that would be self induglent enough!). No, I'd say I'm particularly self-indulgent. I'd say I'm self-indulgent to a very large fault. I have always been really bad at denying myself anything, and every time I do something even minorly good, I feel as if I deserve a reward.
This is where I'm running into a problem right now. I am sort of at a loss as to my reward system. I can't reward myself for not shopping with food, I can't reward myself for not biting my nails with buying something, etc. I keep telling myself that virtue is its own reward, but my self-indulgent brain just isn't getting it.
And this, of course, makes me feel really shitty about myself, which takes most of the joy out of the fact that I am actually successful, so far, in all three of my goals. And feeling shitty just makes me want to scrap the whole plan, write that I'm not Catholic anyway and if God is going to smite me, it's already gonna happen, and head to Target to buy some cheap shiny plastic shit.
Which would, I'm certain, make me feel even worse, probably setting off a cookie-eating and nail-biting binge. And then I'd be right back where my self-indulgent little ass started.
So...what to do? I'm trying to develop a plan, a reward system that has nothing to do with eating or shopping. So far I'm coming up empty handed. It seems that, like a good American, joy for me is all wrapped up in consumption.
Yuck.