Sacrifices

For Lent this year, I gave up celebrity gossip. (When I tell people this, I'm met with an almost universal, "Wow, that's a good one!") It's not that I think it's the greatest evil facing our society today, or that I think I had an out-of-hand obsession. But there was some part of me that was really bugged by the fact that we all spend a great deal of time thinking and talking about people we've never met, and whose lives don't actually have any particular meaning for our own futures.

Now, I should stop and clarify what this Lenten sacrifice has involved: basically, I've made a conscious effort to avoid pursuing it (i.e., no Us Weekly, no browsing Page Six while sipping coffee at my desk, and no E! Entertainment Network -- although I did let myself watch some bits of red carpet coverage. That's fashion, not gossip, right?) and when I am unavoidably presented with it (like when I'm at the gym and CNN has decided to devote their 24-news network to non-stop Anna Nicole coverage and I can't help but see the TVs as I walk by, or when the Daily News splashes a big ole' picture of Britney flipping out on their cover) I can't engage in it. "Move on!" I must tell myself. "Nothing to see here!"

I haven't been terribly successful in avoiding it -- partly because our culture has a very hard time divorcing fake news about famous people from actual news about world events -- and partly because I am human. But I have done a pretty good job of avoiding my usual gossip blogs, which is triumph of sorts.

But the thing is, now that I've taken these time-killers out of my life, I am not sure what I am supposed to do to kill time. For a while, I started looking up random names that I could remember from elementary and high school. Which was mildly interesting: I learned that one of my best friends from third grade has invented some sort of "Post-it note organizer" for some kind of office supply invention competition, and also found that quite a few of my old playmates are now engaged or married. (This should not surprise me, I suppose, but it almost makes me want to be like, 'Well, I'm not getting married for years! I'll be too busy being fabulous!' just to be contrary. Not because I have specific plans to be fabulous that preclude marriage, or that one can't be fabulous and married simultaneously; but, you know, whatever. Anyway: they made me feel like I should fight against this force that compels people in their mid-to-late 20s to pair off and throw down an entire year's salary on a one-day party at a country club. Even if some of them did appear quite happy on their MySpace pages.)

But even with all the wedding pictures, office supply invention competitions and other random trivia about my old acquaintances that the Internets have revealed, obessing about the lives of people who are a basically strangers to me now to kill time because I'm not supposed to be obsessing about the lives famous strangers... seemed a little bit wrong. (Ok, "obsessing" might be a little strong: Googling someone hardly counts as a full-on fixation, but you get the idea.) I know some of its just human nature -- we're probably, like, programmed by evolution to seek out information about people we've never met and then make catty comments about how bad they look (I'm sure science will support me on this notion) -- but I'd like to try and rise above it. At least until Easter, which is still more than two weeks away. So, in the mean time, dear readers, this site might actually get a little extra attention from me.