Now that we’ve all thoroughly enjoyed the second-best holiday of the year, Pancake Tuesday, it’s time to give something up for Lent, or queer Lent!

After Pancake Tuesday comes Ash Wednesday, or as I call it, Pancake rollover day, then comes Lent, where people give up a vice, or take up a healthier habit for 40 days. While many are ditching sugary foods or plunging themselves into an intensive exercise regime, we’ve put together a few community-building habits you could actually take up instead.

Things you could give up:

Sitting idly by when you could take action.
Right a wrong. Being scared into docility and silence works. This Lent, why not stand up for someone, maybe even yourself? It is really scary, fair, so only do this if you feel safe! After all, you can’t fight every fight, so try to learn your limits and go easy on yourself.

Shame
If you’re feeling ashamed, there’s a strong possibility you don’t need to do that. We feel shame for all sorts of things that are perfectly natural, like farts or being queer. Give up being ashamed for queer Lent.

AI
From an artistic perspective, to paraphrase a wise tweet, why should one be bothered to read something that no one was bothered to write? It’s better to be flawed than be fake. From an environmental perspective, you already know it’s bad.

From another perspective, sci-fi has been warning us about this for decades! Even Sam Altman is worried AI might take over. Not to sound too nature-pilled, but go take a walk and listen to bird song. Write from your heart, even if your heart is bad at writing.

Isolation
The season of hibernation and isolation is coming to a close, by which I mean winter, but also late-stage capitalism. Some of you may have been cuffing, and good for you, but introduce the new partner to your wider circle now.

It’s time for community, friends, and even people you don’t get along super well with. You don’t have to click perfectly with everyone in your community. It’s not about that, it’s about respect. It is nice to have people you like, too, obviously. It’s time for skill-sharing, taking turns cooking eachother dinner, or organising a revolution together. Check in on your friends.

Shoving our feelings down.
It’s time to let our feelings out. Go to the beach and scream to the sea, stay home and yell at the moon, take a chair to the top of a hill and wail. Feel the feelings, let them pass. Don’t just feel your great big dark moody ones, feel the joy too!

Laugh until you think you’re going to die. Enjoy things. Don’t be embarrassed about being cringe. It’s cool to care. And it’s really cool to be having such a fun time that you laugh until snot comes out of your nose.

Burning ourselves out
We are all burning out all the time. There are not enough firefighters to put us out. They are busy making calendars with cute animals. God truly gives his toughest battles to his eepiest soldiers.

Endless scrolling
We all know about the dopamine cleansing we desperately need. Even avoiding looking at your phone until you’ve finished breakfast can make a difference, if you can stand it.

Competing with others
Don’t compete against the people on your team; this isn’t U13 basketball! As Johnathan Groff said on Good Hang with Amy Poehler, “all boats rise”. He was, of course, shortening the expression “a rising tide lifts all boats”, which is an aphorism often misappropriated to increase class divides, but it holds true nonetheless. The only person you should be competing with is your past self, and we should be holding each other up.

Here’s the thing about Lent, though: the LGBTQ+ community has suffered enough. Maybe it’s time to give up giving up, perhaps queer Lent could be about loaning each other things, like your favourite books, e.g. “He lent me that.”

Need to get in the Lenten spirit? This gem from the RTÉ archives shows what people were giving up for 40 days for Lent 41 years ago. Lent was meant to be a sacrifice, but became more of just people giving up what little joy they had for no reason. Sure, some of them are unhealthy habits, but there’s probably no need to deprive yourself of the simple luxury of milk in your tea. Let people live!