Sometimes we over do it. (photo: dinoboy/flickr)

We’ve even gone past what is my final day of the mid-winter holidays, Twelfth Day/Fiesta de los Tres Rejes/Epiphany. Now do we start the regrets, just to balance off any excessive cheer we felt? There’s a lot behind the old saying that we’re going to pay for this later.

At the moment, I’m hearing from my friends in the north that they’re having the guilty pleasures of global warming. Springlike weather means bike riding in Milwaukee, getting out of doors in the ‘dead’ of winter in Halifax, and here it’s about leaving the windows open. My local forecasters are expressing glee, while warning that we will probably pay for it in the summer. I think we already paid for it last summer, which broke all records.

There are things I luckily am spared, but hear that there’s a quality of craving that makes some of us go overboard while we know we’re going to pay for it later. That extra drink, of which I am occasionally a partaker, that Stuff we can’t afford but really, really want. The gambler tries just one more time, already mulling over what the pawnshop might offer for a treasure that really belongs on a shelf safe in the home.

What I overdo is sometimes really good food, sometimes the extra drink, or two, and even keeping at a bit of hard work when my old bones and muscles are saying “Stop.” Yep, even carrying that load up the back stairs when I knew it was stupid, and falling on my noggin. Guilty it was, pleasure it was not. Now I’m determinedly making myself pick up only the easy amount to carry when I’m carrying things in or out, and reminding myself how easy it would have been to hurt myself really badly when there was no one around to help.

Getting too close to the edge. (photo: jonathanpercy/flickr)

Do you have some good way of pulling back from the edge?

Sometimes the guilty pleasure is saying things you didn’t mean, to hurt some one, and that’s something else that we’re lucky if we don’t have a constitution that enjoys bullying. Most of us here are a different sort, which is quite likely why it’s good to visit here at FDL.

That there are another kind, I think we’ve all experienced. They seem to be those commenters we read here and on other blogs, that try to get under the skins of the one who posted, and/or the commenters they pretend to join in with. Trolls may or may not feel guilty later, but they do seem to have that need that pushes someone to attract hostilities.

Guilty pleasure is a good thing to some extent, and that exquisite meal, the hours spent soaking up sun and scenery when I should have been having the porch repairs starting, well, maybe life is about more than doing what we ought to all the time.

Do you have a favorite way to spend your time that sometimes gets in the way of sensible, necessary things? You all know mine is travel to incredible places. I guess I try to make up for too much fun sometimes by overdoing the stuff I ought to. What are your ways of redeeming yourself when you have so much fun it makes you feel guilty?