Cleanse with Me!

New plan: Let's make it a giant week of Wednesday Writing Assignments. I'll share with you the questions that arise for me as I do the cleanse. You are welcome to answer here, in your own journal or blog, or not at all. I will probably answer the questions once I've finished the whole cleanse.

Jumping right in, here are the questions dancing in my mind during this precleanse transitional phase.

Food Peer Pressure
There's a lot of food peer pressure in our culture. People with food allergies or vegetarian diets deal with it almost daily, as do noticeably overweight people. For me, it mostly manifests in the endless string of "coworker lunches": It's his birthday! She's getting married! They just earned their masters degrees! Let's take her to lunch! I'm not usually into spending my lunches cooped up indoors eating overpriced, dead-feeling food, but I feel a lot of social pressure to do so. Family gatherings are another source of FPP. I don't want to appear rude or ungrateful, but I know I won't feel well after a heavy, fatty, starchy (delicious) meal. (I usually eat it.) What kind of food peer pressure do you experience and how do you deal with it? How do you say "no" and what happens?

Mental Clutter
I feel like I have lots of mental clutter. It's too easy to pour information into the ole brain constantly, from TV, books, radio, television, and our friend the Internet. We're so wired and information is so accessible that I feel guilty when I tune out the news for a few days. I'm hoping that this simplification period will reduce the chatter. How's your mental clutter? Does the media feed it?

note Question 1 relates nicely to what Emma's been writing about lately, and Question 2 to what Ann's been writing about lately, but I am on that link-unfriendly computer now. I'll try to link 'em up later.