Friday, April 15, 2011

Going Popless

'Tis the season of Lent, in case you didn't know, and this year I gave up pop. It wasn't that I drink a lot of pop, I just noticed that I was enjoying an impulse buy bottle of Coke more often at lunch, or if I went out with friends, they'd often have alcoholic beverages, while I would suck down a couple more Cokes or Pepsis. It just felt like while I wasn't out of control yet, it could've easily gone that way.

And so I decided to nip the problem in the bud and give up pop for lent. And things were going pretty well until today.

Today I had many data meetings at work where we sat in a room looking at enormous spreadsheets of data making decisions and highlighting qualifying markers, etc, and then typing this information into another spreadsheet. It was tedious and not terribly interesting, and everyone else in all of my meetings had a bottle of pop.

OH MAN did I want a bottle of pop. Everyone else was sitting there, chugging their sugary, effervescent goodness while I sat there with nothing but a highlighter and a pen. I couldn't even doodle or write snide comments or reminders to myself on the spreadsheets, because other people had to look at them.

I guess mostly I wanted the bottle of pop as a fidget - something to play with or something to do during the meetings, but truth be told, the extra caffeine and sugar was pretty enticing as well. I managed to stave off temptation, but that was partially because I was scheduled for back-to-back meetings in the same room, so I couldn't even have gone to get one if I wanted to.

But let's pretend it was sheer will. Or even better, pretend I wasn't even tempted.

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