Why I Don't Feel Guilty about the Small Pleasures in Life

Welcome to the third day of the 2018 Love Blog Challenge! Today’s prompt is Guilty Pleasures. Check out the announcement post for all the prompts and rules this month. You can still join the link-up for Friday’s topic, Valentine’s Day.

Once again, my sweet husband Dan is helping me out this month by writing a few blog posts. I decided to have him choose topics in advance instead of waiting until I’m overwhelmed halfway through the month. He’ll be back at least once more this month (and more than that if I still get overwhelmed by blogging five days per week). I guess you could say it’s my guilty pleasure to ask my husband to blog for me…

When I volunteered to write a blog post for Brita’s Love Blog month again this year, I started out with a list of topics and thought… Which one of these can I turn into a blog post about cars again?

The topics this year are a bit harder to segue into my own selfish interests, but I’ll do what I can.

My guilty pleasure?

Being topless in public…

Okay, now that I’ve gotten my shameless Miata promotion out of the way (seriously Mazda, what does it take to get some free product to plug?), I think it’s time to be serious and discuss the topic at hand.

Guilty pleasures is a rough topic for me.

Not because I don’t have pleasures, but because I rarely feel guilty about them. In order for me to feel guilty, I’d have to believe my activity is wrong, and for the most part, I don’t derive pleasure from things I consider to be wrong.

Most of the less serious things people might think of as guilty pleasures–candy, ice cream, binge-watching Netflix, driving fast, spending the whole day reading, or just occasional indulgences–I don’t consider them wrong.

Other things that people might consider guilty pleasures that actually are wrong, I don’t find pleasurable: pampering, sleeping in, watching the Disney Channel… You get the idea.

(Brita’s note: All of those are my not-so-guilty pleasures).

I’m not going to sit here and claim that I am some sort of paragon that commits no wrong. I do for sure. But that just makes me guilty, not pleased.

I mean, who really is pleased when they are guilty? I think for the most part, guilty pleasures are things society tells us we should feel guilty about that everybody does.

All of the things I mentioned above are completely normal and good as long as they are in moderation (except candy; candy is always good).

Society does have a nasty way of trying to control individual behaviors through repeatedly making us all feel guilty. I don’t buy it.

Some things, though, might seem like guilty pleasures, but they only seem pleasurable when you’re not feeling guilty. I am certainly guilty of that… Take this blog post, for example.

Brita asked me to do this weeks in advance, and I sit here, the night it is due, typing furiously to get it done. Procrastination is something I am definitely guilty of–and yeah, it feels good while the procrastination is still happening. But at some point, the deadline looms and the pleasure quickly disappears, replaced by guilt.

Do I feel guilty now?

No, but that’s mostly because I’ve been guilty enough in my life that I anticipate the procrastination… Plus the deadline I am rushing to meet has contingency that Brita insists upon, AND I added a day in addition to that. I am still guilty of being a procrastinator, but the sentence is minimal when you plan ahead for not planning ahead.

Yes, that makes perfect sense.

And I guess that’s my key to enjoying your guilty pleasures. Plan for them. You can plan to be guilty, or you can plan to have pleasure. I’d greatly recommend the latter.

As for me?

I plan on finishing this post tonight and making my wife happy with one fewer blog post she has to write this month. Maybe I’ll even get her to smile while reading it (maybe you as well).

Nothing could bring me more pleasure. And I have no guilt about that.

Meet Your 2018 Love Blog Challenge Hosts!

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Brita Long is the pink and sparkly personality behind the Christian feminist lifestyle blog, Belle Brita. While her first love will always be Paris, she lives happily with her husband Daniel Fleck in the Atlanta area.

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Laura is a big dreamer, full time marketing manager, blogger, and part-time artist. She aspires to inspire people in their everyday lives and to help them live towards their dreams, and to make the most out of every day by sharing her own experiences and stories. Her blog, Do Five Things A Day, offers an eclectic mix of excitement, passion, and a story to tell of self-discovery, development, and love. She focuses on topics about taking care of yourself and about learning to find beauty and light in every moment and adventure life has to bring us. Laura’s goals this year are to launch her Life Coaching program and to finish her novel.

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Ivanna is a registered nurse who loves expressing her creative side. She enjoys thrifting, learning about sustainable living, and anything purple. She writes on Provocative Joy about living unconventionally, and she loves to inspire people to realize their potential to be world-changers.