lent 2026

february 18th - april 4th
Lentphone revisited (only 2 apps: phone and settings)

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Entry 1

feb 17

a little under fourteen hours until lent… oh man …. oh no. Guys I am not ready. I’m not, I went with this half thrown together to only have the iPhone app, and you know what, I’m rolling it back.

I realized it this morning when I woke up, and as I drove through the fog and I watched the lights bounce off of each particle and I felt myself think in roundabout circles I’m just gonna do my normal ass lent phone. There's a level of excessive inconvenience to those I love (and those I work with) that just feels beyond necessary, and a level of pervasive loneliness that I do not have the strength for. I never really wanted to do the no iMessage on phone thing intentionally, it just felt like the next step. Lent has felt like a steady progression from the years before it, not only did it get increasingly more difficult, but I felt like I grew to have more interesting goals each year. I would have bought a flip phone, a great medium, but I do not have $50 to throw around on novelties right now. It feels like I am failing myself and those around me by just re-upping lent phone for a second time, with no major changes. Through a holiday built around my own desire for self improvement, it feels like I am halting progress.

I work at this computer five days a week, about forty hours a week of wage-ordered computer time. Almost none of it is intrinsic to the value of my job, but much of it either feels necessary (reading, writing, coding) or entertaining (hockey and lacrosse streams). This is marred by the less necessary (snake game, youtube browsing) and the straight up evil (reddit). I want to give something else up, but as I have seen from those around me the benefit of the ascetic pursuit is usually improved when one takes it upon oneself to focus directly on the singular task. Of course I should give up reddit, I probably will just by proxy of wanting to improve my own digital experience, but I think the lentphone has to be the only primary pursuit.

I read Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport a few months back. I found it to be pretty interesting from a social perspective, but I thought the handbook guide on how to overcome the pervasive sort of screen addiction by detoxing for one month (or, in this case, 40 days and 40 nights) and then taking notice of what shit on the phone mattered to you and what didn’t. Obviously he advocates for keeping the important stuff (banking apps, weather for some reason?) but I’ll just do the bare minimum.

So what is the TL;DR? I hardly know. I’m more excited for lent. I’m gonna try to blog the process more in depth (even though I often forget to blog). Maybe weekly on Saturdays? my sabbath (except I’d be working so I guess not).