How Bad Can I Be?

I drive a lot. It takes me twenty minutes to get to school every day (forty minute round trip) and once a week I drive to the city, which takes me fifty minutes. Since I’m not big on listening to the radio and I don’t have a CD player in my car, I end up thinking. A lot.
After the work day is over, I feel exhausted and drained so I watch some video on the internet to “renew” my strength before I start on my paperwork. But so often, a quick fifteen minutes of TV turns into an hour, two hours, even three hours.
Every time I “mess up,” I leave school hating myself. But the funny thing is that as I drive home, all I’m doing is trying to figure out exactly how badly I messed up. Yes, it was a little bit wrong, but at least I only watched TV for an hour. Or, Yeah, I needed a break, I was brain fried and without TV I wouldn’t have been able to do any work at all—fiddlesticks!! It seems that every time I feel guilty I waste all my time trying to figure out exactly how much scolding I deserve. But all I’m really doing is trying to justify my actions, make them seem ok when they aren’t. It doesn’t matter if I watched TV for a half hour or three hours. It’s still wrong. The whole attitude is wrong. Jon Bytheway named it, “How bad can I be?” Or, “How good am I ‘sposed to be?” Both attitudes are miles away from the correct attitude—“I will do what is right.” What am I doing trying to figure out ‘Oh, I was a little bit bad’ or ‘I only did it for a short time, it’s okay. I’m still a good person.’ It’s all an avoidance technique because I’m still not doing what I know is right.
Why am I wasting time and energy justifying actions that I know are wrong? I just need to decide to do the right thing and spend my time and energy doing things that will build me up instead of tear me down. I hate guilt. Doing the right thing is so much easier and feels so much better.