Last week, I almost created a category for the blog entitled ‘Excuses’ because, hell, I’ve been coming up with a lot of them lately for putting off suffering time in the water: jacked up shoulder, too damn cold, too much work/too little work, wondering how to fix things that can’t be fixed…a dog that has serious anxiety about not finding a place for his favorite bone.  All shite excuses, yes, but man how they can take on false importance.  Bugbears, all of them.

It’s time to search out some suffer-time and realize there is no perfect place to hide — it’s your own goddamned bone so go out and enjoy it.  People like you better when you enjoy it.

Oh, and go read Alain De Botton’s book Status Anxiety.  He makes a compelling historical argument about how our notions of success or failure are bound up in an overly simplified binary: you either are or you aren’t.  He notes that success and failure (words that have no inherent value) coexist…you can be one hell of squirrel chaser and totally suck at hiding bones.  Give it a few days…if you don’t fine the perfect place, you’ll find one that works.