Mardi Gras seemed irrelevant this year, maybe because life already feels a lot like Lent. We're all giving up all sorts of pleasures now, in the name of prudence or necessity.

When I was a kid, everybody I knew gave up candy for Lent. Everybody.

I don't remember this as a religious experience, nor did it inspire one. It felt more like the "diet" it actually was, although there were some first flirtations with temptation and guilt, of course.

My parents gave up alcohol and dessert for Lent, which made the Sunday family gatherings pretty dull, since they wouldn't serve them to my blue-haired aunts, either.

But the inventory of what folks are giving up for Lent has expanded, now that the Internet is a daily pleasure..

"Abstaining from Facebook for the 40 days of Lent was the rage among college students last year," Stephanie Simon wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week.

Lindsey Turrentine at CNet offers some tips for going cold turkey: How to give up Facebook for Lent and keep your friends. She's not religious, she just needs a break, so she's setting her status as, "Lindsey is considering giving up Facebook for the Lent she doesn't celebrate." (Nobody religious would ever consider Lent a celebration. That's Easter.)

Wags Chris Borrelli, Steve Johnson and Kevin Pang at the Chicago Tribune features blog HeadCandy have poked fun at that one: 10 Tips for Giving Up Facebook During Lent offers suggestions for how to redirect your newfound time and networking habits in the real world, including,

Poke people. Actually poke them. Then walk away without saying why you poked them.

There is a real Facebook group called Giving up Facebook for Lent; 149 people have joined a group they're not going to participate in, but countless others may not feel a need to register their disappearance.

LENT: the social media fast is giving up all social media, but it only has 13 members.

This year, Twitter is the new chocolate. If you click the next link and wait about 10 seconds, you can peer at the Tweets of everyone who typed, "giving up Twitter for Lent." Sorting like this is the sort of thing computers are really good at.

I think it might be a good time to start a diet and go for long walks, ride the wave of all that disciplined self-denying self-improvement. Pushing away from the keyboard might not be such a sacrifice after all. I might see Spring this year.