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Tiger Woods is a rotten role model. And not because he’s an adulterous bastard. (He is. But if you’ve been getting relationship guidance from celebrities’ lives, I can’t help you. ) I mean because he had created a professional persona around his lifelong dedication – but now he seems to be saying he has a sex addiction.

There is not much that will annoy me faster than people who medicalize their ethical failings, or otherwise push their own performance off on something ostensibly outside their control.

And worse, it’s not just a few individuals who do this – it’s become a societal phenomenon.

Kids who do poorly in school get to take their tests with twice the time in a private room. For all I know, they probably get spa music piped in and grapes fed to them. Then, after school, they go play a sport where they all get a trophy even if they lose every game.

My goodness, of course they grow up to think poor performance isn’t their fault and to expect always to be able to find blame. How would they know any different?

Now yes, of course, there are real medical conditions. But this isn’t what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is that sometimes you lose and sometimes you fail. And these are not doomsday scenarios to protect against at all costs. It’s learning. It’s life.

Competition and discipline are not the bad things that our society is making them into. Excusing your performance is not a default response.

Moreover, it’s a terrible shame that kids aren’t getting the full pride of a job well done. If they’re always praised no matter what, it loses its meaning. Kids are not stupid. They know when they’re being given a line, and they know when something’s genuine.

So yes, it really bothers me that this rush to hide and excuse failure is not only the way of the world, but that it’s now being fed by Tiger Woods, who should know more than most people what dedication and hard work actually are.

Based on a conversation with Alanna, whose Twitter I would look up, except that, obviously, I can’t.

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I won’t be using Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn from February 17 through April 3. I’m giving up social networking for Lent.

Amy took on this challenge on in the fall and it’s stuck in my mind. It’ll be hard for me, and will pose both personal and professional challenges.

I expect that people who don’t much use these networks will roll their eyes and think that if I’m that obsessed with some silly website, it’s about time I took a break, but it’s not particularly impressive and it’s an exaggeration to call it a fast. Conversely, I expect that people who use these networks as natural parts of their lives will be both aghast that I’m taking myself back to such a Luddite state, and convinced that it’ll hurt much more than it helps. Basically, I think most people will think I’m crazy, one way or another.

But like most things that are good for you, I think it’ll have a variety of benefits.

First and most obviously, I’m doing it for religious purposes. The point of a Lenten fast is to deny yourself a normal part of your life, partly to offer up that discomfort, but also because discipline is freeing. When you don’t “have” to have something, you’re open to that much more of life, of love, and of God.

(The side benefit, from a religious point of view, is that I’m not very comfortable talking about my faith, and it’s something I want to be better at. So, a fast that’s public-facing forces me to do that, at least a little.)

Second, it’ll be interesting to see how this alters my professional and personal interactions. I know it will, but I want to see how and how much, and how I can work around it.

And third, I believe that it’s the last time I can do something like this. With the introduction in the last few days of Google Buzz, social networking is now firmly intertwined with email – and therefore, with the crux of online life. Buzz updates are right in my Gmail box. (And the lack of that was what was wrong with both Friendfeed and Google Wave, but that’s another post.) By 2012, “social networking” won’t even be used anymore – because it’ll have succeeded. These networks (maybe these exact ones, maybe not) won’t stand alone at all. They will be networked – fully – into your email, your phone, your whole life. So, while I can still separate them out, I want to try it.

In the meantime, I’m reachable by all other means, in person (!) as well as by phone, text and email, and I’ll be blogging. So tell me what you think!

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