I am not religious and not familiar with the Catholic lent, but I am well familiar with the Eastern Orthodox lent, which is an extremely complex, multi-stage undertaking. I will describe it in a nutshell, and maybe some ideas would sound appealing and/or meaningful to you.

Eastern Orthodox Christian Lent is not a switch on / switch off undertaking. First, it follows a huge feast that marks the end of winter and the beginning of spring. That feast comes from an ancient Pagan holiday which was subsumed by Christianity.