So you wanna de-bog yourself (2024)

Summary

Strangers sometimes ask me for advice, which is both flattering and alarming, because I only know about the things I write here, and sometimes not even those. For instance, someone recently asked me if I had any advice about how to teach people to fly planes, which makes me wonder: who’s running the pilot education system?? Now, whenever I get on a plane, I scrutinize the captain to see if they have that “A blogger taught me how to fly” kind of look.I often don't know how to respond to such questions, on account of my general incompetence. But I've realized that most of these folks have something in common: they're stuck. They’re looking for advice less in the sense of “any good restaurants around here?” and more in the sense of “everything kinda sucks right now and I’d like to change that but I don’t know how?”Being stuck is the psychological equivalent of standing knee-deep in a fetid bog, bog in every direction, bog as far as the eye can see. You go wading in search of dry land and only find more bog. Nothing works, no options seem good, it’s all bleh and meh and ho hum and no thanks and more bog. This is the kind of dire situation that drives people to do crazy things like ask a blogger for advice.Fortunately, I’ve spent much of my life in that very bog. Some say I was born in it, a beautiful bouncing baby bog boy. And I've learned that no matter how you ended up there—your marriage has stalled, you're falling behind in your classes, your trainee pilots keep flying into the side of a mountain—the forces that keep you in the bog are always the same. There are, in fact, only three, although they each come in a variety of foul flavors.It's a new year, the annual Great De-bogging, when we all attempt to heave ourselves out of the muck and into a better life. So here, to aid you, is my compendium of bog phenomena, the myriad ways I get myself stuck, because unsticking myself always seems to be a matter of finding a name for the thing happening to me. May this catalog...