Tonight as I walked past a gas station and inhaled deeply (I've always loved the smell of gas stations), this sorrowful thought popped into my head:

Well, I've really made a mess of things.

The funny part is, I don't know what I was referring to exactly, if anything. This was confusing. I thought about it some more and for the life of me I couldn't put my finger on whatever prompted the notion. Then I relaxed after realizing that a thought like that can apply to almost anything really. No need to get needlessly specific with it. That's just the way life goes! There are other examples of self-reproach that work in a similarly flexible way. A few I've experienced:

I let it go and let it go and now it's a goddamn catastrophe.

How many times am I going to react to that kind of thing like a big baby? I'm not a man, I'm a baby, a big baby. GOO GOO.

I should have known. I am a fool for not seeing it coming.

Think of them as individually-wrapped mints in a bowl of bracing remorse. Remorsels! They're like emotional palate cleansers. Personally, I just don't feel like me if I haven't berated myself for one thing or another at least once a day. Such vague regrets are naturally heatseeking, just let 'em go and they'll find something to attach themselves to. Voila!