Someone once said to me, “Sometimes you just have to embrace the suck.” I remember the moment my ears first heard those words…he was hovering over me while I sat on the edge of my bed. He was trying to convince me why we should stay together, in his own odd way. And even though the “suck” he put me through was nothing worth embracing, I digress.
Today, I was on my walk and the conditions sucked. It had recently sleeted in my town, making the ground extra slippery. Not only that, but the sleet just added to the four inches of snow already on the ground. I swear, if I didn’t care about my dog’s well-being, I wouldn’t have been out there. I was slipping and sliding everywhere. Even walking up the slightest incline in snow feels absolutely dreadful…not to mention it was fucking freezing. Either way, about a quarter mile into my walk, my brain said, “You just have to embrace the suck.”
Now, my ex may not have been right about much, but if there’s one thing he got right, it’s that line. Sometimes you just have to keep trudging forward no matter what conditions or circumstances you’re under—just embrace what feels awful in the moment. It’s like finding the bright side when there isn’t one.
I kept telling myself, “At least I’ll hit 10k steps today…Daisy will get the exercise she needs…this will end at some point so it’s not forever…and I know I won’t regret doing this.”
I’ve started using that line in a lot of areas in my life. Honestly, a lot of things suck—exercising, studying, anything I don’t actually want to do—but you do them anyway. I guess embracing it gives you back some sense of control in situations you don’t enjoy. I don’t really know, man. I’m just saying that telling myself to “embrace the suck” has changed my life in a good way. It makes things easier. I do the things I know will suck, regardless of how I feel about them.
I just go, “Yep, this is going to suck,” and then I do it anyway—and most of the time I don’t regret it. So my advice to you today is simple: embrace the suck. You never know where it might lead you, or who you’ll become because of it.