Day 1 of 40

My cursor rolls over the "Gmail" button on my bookmarks toolbar. "Don't!!" my mind screams.

And so goes the first of 40 days of no IM at work.

Last night a fellow SFC was talking to me about his conversation with a priest. He was asked if he does SFC stuff while at work. "Heck yeah you do, and so do I!" I replied, rather excitedly. Then I stopped and thought, wait a minute, that's not exactly something to be proud of now is it?

What the priest said confirmed what I was afraid of. Doing service for anything CFC-related at work is not exactly the Christian thing to do. It is not fair to the employer, its employees and its clients. It's like cheating. According to the priest, it is even considered stealing. That was my cue to say "WHAT?" Because we get paid a certain amount of dollars and we are expected to do our best and give our 100% percent when at work. When we do anything less, especially if we use 50% of the time for service, then that's just getting paid double of the amount of work we are actually doing. No wonder one of the questions in a confession guide I read was "Do you give your 100% at work?"

As all of these realizations came trickling down, I thought about some of the service-related things that I should give up at work: Printing song sheets for household. Printing chords of praise & worship songs. Researching household topics on the web. Reading long GK emails that take up so much time. IMing.

Oh, Google Talk. How I love thee. Here's the thing, Google Talk/Gmail IM for me is my escape from the frustrations at work. My connection to the SFC world while I'm in the office. Whenever I am bored or want to take a break, any of my Google Talk buddies online is just a click away. Except most of the time the conversations tend to go long and next thing I know, I've already used up 3 hours of just chatting about random stuff. Bad employee, bad.

Whether I use IM for service or fun, one thing's for sure: I'm giving it up for 40 days. Now the argument would be, is that a real sacrifice? Because when you're at work, you're supposed to work. Not chat. So, I still have something else to give up for Lent just in case it doesn't count.

Will I make it? I certainly hope so. Although if you haven't noticed, I am blogging during office hours. But I will chalk this up to "lunch break" because I am eating my tuna sandwich while typing this :) I swear I will do better tomorrow! Baby steps, baby steps. Pray for me, brothers and sisters :D