Just for Today Challenge: December 1, 2009

Image by: catdancing on Flickr Licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Wow, December first already.  A side benefit of this "Just for Today Challenge" is that one day a week, I know what the date is.  But no, knowing what the date is was not my own challenge for this week.  This week, I was going to focus on moisturizing.  You might think, "Moisturizing?  Of all the things you could concentrate on for one day?  Really?  Using lotion?"  Yes, I really don't moisturize enough.  In fact, I have a condition called "contact dermatitis" or in layperson's terms "housewives' eczema."  It is caused by overexposure to...  (Drum roll, please.)  Soap and water.  (See, anything in excess can be harmful.)  My hands are dry and scaly and cracking (yes, they actually bleed) because I wash them (or dishes or counters or clothes) too often and moisturize not enough.

But I didn't actually end up moisturizing at all (surprised?) because I was too busy concentrating on something much more difficult: not watching TV.  Of all the things I do (or don't do) on my spiritual Wednesdays, I never thought that giving up TV would be one of the challenges.  I'm not anti-TV — I enjoy it — but I've gone years without owning a television and months on end without watching one, and have never really missed it.  Yet, last week, I really craved television.  I wanted to sit down and watch a crappy crime drama, something entertaining and relatively mindless, while the kids were at school.  It's a rare treat I give myself whenever I have an especially big pile of laundry to fold, and I was longing for that luxury.

Of course, I had to consider why it was I so desperately wanted to watch TV on that particular day last week, and I realized that I was tired.  I saw that I use the TV and the computer as a way of keeping myself from falling asleep while not overtaxing my brain with any of that difficult thinking stuff.  I wanted to watch TV because I didn't want to go to sleep, but I also couldn't handle do anything harder than digesting an episode of Cold Case.  So, instead of watching TV and folding laundry, I took a nap, which was just what my body needed.  But all that concentrating on not watching TV drove hand lotion right out of my tired brain.  Oh, well, maybe next week.

Did you do anything this week?  Share in the comments or post a link to a blog post in Mister Linky below.  And if you want to join in and change one aspect of your life for one day, click over to my introductory post to get more information and a badge.