Vice

I’ve always been a big believer in vices. I know, that sounds bad. But it’s true. I’ve honestly always believed that everyone’s gotta have a vice or two. Keeps us sane. Gives us permission to indulge in guilty pleasures without taking it to excess.

You name it and I’ve claimed it at some time. Everything from drugs and sex to sweets and movies. I love to smoke, drink martinis, stay up too late and dance until dawn. I’d see five movies a day if I could or spend the day in bed.

Here’s the thing though, I guess they’re called vices for a reason. To give you something to hide behind, to beg you to take them to excess. And I almost always did. Take them to excess.

It’s kind of a twofold pleasure I guess. There’s the pleasure that comes from the actual indulgence and then there is the absolute joy that comes in knowing that I’m doing something that I maybe shouldn’t. Probably shouldn’t. Definitely shouldn’t. But I do it anyway, because I like to indulge, I like to obscure reality a bit and I love to do what I’m not supposed to.

It’s not even just that I like to break the rules, although I do. It’s more that I like to do things my way. Even when it doesn’t work, which happens more than I’d like to admit. I’m really not a big fan of being told what to do. Shocking I know.

And I find myself wholly unrepentant. Except for the morning after. I usually wake up the next morning filled with a crushing wave of guilt. And questions. What did I say? Did I do anything stupid? Was this latest burst of rebellion really all that necessary? Or just a self indulgent act of adolescence?

It’s a fine line to walk. Balancing between the potential for self-destruction and the quest for liberation from convention. It’s the human condition to some extent I suppose. Attempting to find your place in the world, based on your own personal rules while still keeping in mind responsibilities and obligations. The philosophical argument of a lifetime.

Or maybe that’s all bullshit. Vices. Are. Bad. ?