stay out of the candy bowls and off the gossip websites

At one point in the past week, I was sitting up in bed, iPhone in hand, and catching up on gossip on various sides while consuming an entire chocolate bar. By staying up way late, I also managed to break another rule.
I also realized that, especially with the recent drama, 43T definitely has a tendency of falling into the gossip category, and that makes me rather sad. I like to come here for inspiration, fun, to vent, to think… when a drama unfolds, it’s hard to mind my own business, but I have to tell myself that I don’t need to know about every detail, it will come to pass and everyone will hopefully be fine.

Also, thinking a lot about parasocial interaction.

But – but, but! – altogether, I’m doing fine. There’s only one gossip site I visit, undoubtedly the smartest such site on the web, I have read more BOOKS, I try my best to evade the candy bowls in the office and even though there are two delicious Swiss chocolate bars left, I’m not tempted. (Not much.)

So there’s not much to feel very guilty about, but I do realize that I have, so far, ignored the original intent of this goal: to completely remove myself from these temptations – and only one week to go before Easter.

Turns out that I’m better at dealing with the candy bars (admittedly not in the office much) than when it comes to stepping away from my lukewarm comfort zones. Lukewarm, because they don’t really do anything for me – they don’t fuel my passion, don’t really comfort me at all, just enable me to postpone the moment when I have to deal with whatever negative emotions may have built up. And yes – I get a good giggle out of juicy gossip. And it’s not like I waste hours and hours on this… but it sure adds up.

(Oh yeah, there’s another goal for that… or a couple.)

What I liked about last week is that – at least on most days – I regained some feeling of control. The smallest changes make such a difference.