Guilty as Charged…

It’s been too long again since a post.

Why?

I can give you whatever reason. Other priorities. Unexpected projects. Distraction. Laziness. Rampant heroin use. They all amount to the same thing — excuses.

Though I never declared to myself I would pump out X amount of new writings per week or month, I still feel like I’ve been negligent. And that definitely says something about me.

What exactly?

Perhaps that I’ve been habitually programmed all my life to feel unwarranted guilt about work ethic. You might be familiar with what I’m talking about. It happens when we compare ourselves to the productivity of others, or to our past enthusiastic selves. We’ve implanted in our minds the notion that unless we’re spending 100 percent of our waking time striving, engaging, labouring, chipping away, or running around to further some goal or project, we’re somehow failing at life.

That belief is part of the system we’ve been built into. The mental programming we’ve been inundated with goes down somethin’ like this:

“See this guy, with a million bucks in his pocket? He never let up for one second. His drive and focus made him what he is. If you can’t equal his accomplishments, you’re probably a lazy asshole, who doesn’t want it as badly as he did.”

Yeah, maybe there’s a smidgen of truth there. But no one ever talks about what these “winners” did to find ultimate balance between their mental states of work, rest, and play — which was probably the critical factor to their success.

Maybe work was their play, and that’s totally cool. In fact, that’s probably the easiest motivating factor when it comes to achievement — loving what you’re doing.

But they also got to where they wanted to go because they knew how to maximize their downtime. There’s no point reaching a plateau if you’re burnt out and miserable, knowing you sacrificed all the things you held dear along the way.

That reminds me of a Jim Rohn quote that might be fitting:

When you work, work. When you play, play. Don’t mix the two.

The quote is not so much suggesting your work can’t be fun, it’s meant to impart that when you need a pause, break, or vacation, forget work entirely. Leave your cellphone and briefcase at home, and enjoy your family and the beach to the fullest.

A key reason why so many of us are off-balance these days is because we’ve forgotten how to properly do a thing which should be entirely natural and effortless to humans — sleep. Our minds are kept so full of endless stress, grief, and worry, that even when we do lay our bodies down for a few hours, the mental and physical reparations that need to be made fall woefully short of completion. The cycle repeats, and before you know it, everyone’s wandering around sick, miserable, whiny, and full of guilt for not accomplishing their latest dream.

Instead of seeking solutions to remedy our unnatural modalities of living, we’ll use the excuse that modern society doesn’t allow for certain luxuries — like an 8-hour stretch of uninterrupted rest. Not if we want to get ahead!! We’ll claim it’s impossible to avoid take-out food while we’re on the road, and declare the ingestion of microwaved, processed shit to be “better than nothing,” when struggling through the final hours of completing the “do-or-die” Johnson contract.

The nagging, hidden guilt of our lifestyles isn’t entirely rooted in the insecurities foisted on us by Hollywood and the media — it’s also the subtle by-product of a realization most of us choose to ignore:

We treat ourselves like shit.

We ingest crap, we breathe toxins, we bathe in chemicals, and, despite acknowledging those choices aren’t the best way to keep our bodies and minds in tip-top shape, we accept the actions as necessary evils if we want to survive and advance in a rat-race game we secretly despise.

It’s fucked up to realize we’ll pamper material possessions ahead of our own bodies…

I only give my car premium fuel. It’s pricey, but I save myself a lot of money buying bulk pasta sauce and chicken wieners at fucking Costco…

Yeah, I’m behind on my cabinet project, but if I run my drill any longer, I’ll risk burning it out, and frying the battery. It needs a rest before I continue… I paid good money for the thing! Me? I’m fine. I’ll catch a nap later, got some sawin’ to do…

My cat only eats organic food. Sure, it costs 3 times as much, but it’s worth it. Hey honey, you want pizza for dinner? Dominos has a 2-for-1 shitpie special tonight…

Interesting choices.

When prioritizing maximum wealth versus maximum health, the human body takes a sad second place. High blood pressure is a minor sacrifice to achieve salesman of the year. Hormone laden beef is far cheaper and convenient than buying meat from a conscientious farmer. The risk of a stress-related heart attack pales in comparison to the risk of being perceived as a failure by your asshole parents. And sleep is unnecessary, of course — that’s why coffee was invented.

Shame on us.

I’ve done so many bad things to my body over the years, I can only reach one conclusion:

I fucking hate myself.

I must. Why else would I treat my personal Ferrari like a rented Mexican beater? Why else would I continue to consume substances that repeatedly cause my body to cry out in anguish? Why else would I work 16-hour days for a CEO that couldn’t care less whether I lived or died?

I have a secondary answer to those questions.

I’m a fucking moron.

On some level, maybe I still believe all the bullshit spouted to me by the twisted scumbags of the mediaworld, informing me I’ll never be rich enough, strong enough, smart enough, or good-looking enough — unless I adhere to their never-ending asinine suggestions.

Well fuck them.

It’s on us to continually question our psychological programming. That’s the only way we’ll ever outgrow our subliminal emotional responses to the stupidity we’ve been trained under since crawlin’ out the womb.

So now I need to ask myself this question again…

Why should I feel guilty, on any fucking level, about not engaging enough time in something I enjoy?

I shouldn’t. And I don’t. Not after today. Not after injecting a little awareness into my habitually conditioned thoughts and emotions.

I’ll write as many blog posts as I see fit. Or maybe I’ll never write another one. Or maybe one day I’ll realize that society has nothing to do with any of the guilt I feel within my bones. Maybe I’ll realize those demons are mine, and mine alone. And then maybe I’ll stop blaming the media for destroying humanity, and turning good people into scared, selfish, sociopathic drones.

Maybe.

Who am I kidding?

The media can suck my fucking balls, now and till the end of time.

If you find that sentiment a little too negative to end this post on, how about this one?

I don’t give a fuck.

I wrote it, it’s done, and I don’t feel guilty in the least.

Sweet.