What can you DOGE?

This is not a political commentary or endorsement of anyone or any agency. Now with that out of the way, back to our regularly scheduled programming …

An acronym that we have all become familiar with in recent months is DOGE. Regardless of how you feel about the decisions made by this agency and perhaps those at the helm, I have noticed how this acronym for the Department of Government Efficiency has somehow become a verb. Instead of Oprah handing out cars saying, “You get a car, and you get a car!” it has become, “You’ve been DOGED!” It seemed to happen overnight. You wake up each morning and hear the latest thing that has been trimmed or cut and hear it referred to as being “DOGED.”

On paper, DOGE is supposed to be a department that identifies frivolous spending within our government. There is an emphasis on transparency and highlighting where fat needs to be trimmed within our government at the expense of taxpayers. If it’s not deemed necessary to the powers that be, it’s cut. Again, not a political column, and there are widely varying opinions on what has been cut, and whether that is a wonderful or terrible thing depends on which side of the fence you sit.

All of the politics aside, the idea of DOGE has made me think about my own life. What if we remove the politics of the term and simply look at it from a standpoint of assessing what waste and excess you have in your own life that needs to be cut? It’s rather eye-opening.

What needs to be “DOGED” from your own life?

Are you still holding on to anger and resentment from years ago? Are you filled with regret from something of your past? Are you hard on yourself about a mistake you made? What baggage are we carrying that is excessive and needs to be cut? Are there people in your life who are not healthy for you? Is there a vice that you have that needs to go to make you a better, happier, and healthier person?

What about your phone? How much of our lives are we wasting sitting on our phones? Are we not connecting with other people because our nose is in our phone?

Are we at a job we hate? Are we in a bad relationship? Are we taking care of ourselves? Are we beating ourselves up over our physical appearance? Are we keeping the promises we make to ourselves?

Whatever it may be, and regardless of the divisiveness of the topic, it’s not a bad idea for all of us to assess our own lives and see what fat needs to be trimmed.

What can be “DOGED” from your life to make you happier? What expenses to our happiness can we cut back on to save for our future health, happiness, and relationships?

Megan Rathz is a wife, mother, and teacher. She says everything she has ever learned in life came from her Master Gardener mother.