40 days and 40 nights.
As I was taught in my CCD classes growing up, the thinking behind the Lenten penance, or Lenten sacrifice, is to give up something for the 40 days of Lent that you know provides little to no added value to your life, something that typically is more of a hindrance or stumbling block than any help. And it might be something that you might not be able to give up for 365 days of the year, but you could give up for 40 days of the year.
In past years I've given up things like buying specialty drinks at Starbucks or posting on social media.
This year I gave up browsing the internet on my phone, something that takes up way too much of my free time and can sometimes blind me to what else might be going on in the world around me. But I also gave up something else.
I gave up my hate-following of Donald Trump's twitter account.
Every morning I would inevitably find myself checking the Madman's feed, seeing what inevitable craziness spewed forth from the man's little fingers. Naturally, it would infuriate me to see the supposed leader of the free world going off like an angst-filled teenager as to whatever or whoever dared cross his brittle ego.
And yet, I still found it fascinating. And sometimes absurdly humorous, like the time he inexplicably tweeted out "Easy D" without any further context.
But that all came to a temporary halt on March 1st. And while I was tempted to cheat, I never did. Which means I missed such classics as the Madman accusing his predecessor of illegally wiretapping him without any basis to support a claim. And then him continuing to double down on that. And triple down. And quadruple down.
And I missed all the hissy fits and the pre-election mindset where he continued to obsess over things that we'd expect a sitting President to long have moved on from.
But now that Lent is finished and Easter is upon us, the veil has been lifted.
And he's the same sad, immature juvenile narcissist that he's always been. There are some things that will always remain constant in the world, I suppose.
