January 1 was to be my cut-off date for being done with meat. Two weeks into it, I find my resolve is weakening…

I know *why* I want to do it…the impact on the environment, the inhumane treatment of the animals, the fact that there is all kinds of weird stuff lurking within the meat…I could go on.

The problem, it seems, is that as much as I believe in those reasons for saying good-bye to meat, my heart (or perhaps more accurately, my stomach) is not in it. Meat. Tastes. Good. And I am not yet creative enough to think beyond pasta and cheese, which leaves me feeling hungry and a bit bored with my food choices.

So here I stand, stuck in the bargaining phase of my grief over the loss of this relationship, and I think to myself, “Chicken. Maybe I’ll just eat chicken.”

And I like this idea. In fact, my mouth waters just thinking about it. Never mind my brain’s insistence on recalling an article I read that said that giving up chicken would have a greater benefit to the environment than giving up beef would…never mind the images in my mind of the cruel way that they are treated, or the fact that their feed contains ground-up Other-Dead-Chickens…somehow, it still feels like a fair compromise to me.

Sure, I could eat only free-range, organically grown (and priced) chicken, but given the reality of my lifestyle, that would be almost as difficult as eating no meat at all.

So I am being drawn more and more towards compromise…and maybe I just need to accept that this is where I’m at right now. Baby steps, right? And in the meantime, I will keep an open mind and be willing to be made willing, as the saying goes…forcing myself to do it before I am ready does not seem to me like a recipe for success in this regard.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I hear some delicious wings calling my name…