You’ve officially entered the boo-less life!

Y’all know y’all remember this show!! Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

And if you don’t then I just told my age *SMH*

Anywho…

And I guess on ones quest for love, you can start to feel like you’re searching for a needle in a haystack. And the game of life you’re playing is Where in the world is the love of my life?

Relationships [or the lack thereof] are on everyone’s mind hence… this site. Any thing related to boo’s is covered here. Join me as I explore relationships and singleness and separate: fact from fiction; fantasy from reality; perks from the downfalls; benefits from the losses; ups and the downs of it all.

Feels almost like I’m a detective trying to get to the bottom of this pivital question: is it better to be booless (aka single) or not?

Won’t you join me:

Stay a while…check out the about page… and feel free to read past entries that are just waiting for your enjoyment.

There is plenty of space for your comments, thoughts, questions and shout-outs!! You are welcome!

I’m back!!!  It seems that while walking through this boo-less life, I stumbled and fell down a hole similar to that of Alice in Wonderland.  Of course I found out much like Alice, that even “Wonderland” or “Boo-Land” is not all I thought, envisioned or let alone imagined it would be.  The  escape I sought from my boo-less situation by being in a relationship, only left me wanting to escape that to return back to where I began.  And much like Dorothy, I’ve come to realize that indeed, there is no place like home.  Home, meaning not only this blog, but me.  Doing what I love to do, being independent, and being fabulous.  Fierce yet single.

I don’t quite know how it happens though, whether you get hit over the head by love and wind up in this far away land following a yellow brick road or if the intoxicating fumes of a boo’s love potion put you to sleep so that you wind up in a place that you eventually come to realize that you don’t belong in, let alone fit in.  You soon find yourself chasing after a man who always seems to be late for a very important date that never involves you.  You exhaust yourself trying to fit into a world that was not designed for your existence or presence and it finally hits you that the grass is never greener on the other side; you’ve only imagined it to be.

Stay tuned.  More to come about my encounters while in “Wonderland”.  Just hope this story ends as happily ever after as it does in the movies.

I know I’ve been MIA. I’ll suffice my hiatus to say I’ve been “collecting more data” and content for this blog. Namely playing the field and conducting “research” so to speak. With lots to report back to all my fans who have missed me (or that I’ve imagined would), I figured I’d start with a phenomena that I am certain isn’t new, but one that is new to me. And that is men who instead of seeking to be gainfully employed, instead seek to be with women who can supply their financial needs (amongst other things). I’m familiar with women being known as gold diggers, of which I, fortunately for the men I’ve been with; unfortunately for myself; have never been able to get with that program. But the notion of men whose profession it is to seek out women (instead of jobs) who will support them financially during this recession is something new to me. I remember hearing once that there are some homeless people who have become professionals at the art of begging (if indeed it can be termed an art). Instinctively knowing who and who not to ask for money and such. Do men have a sixth sense for this type of thing as well? Through careful observation, intuitively spotting women who wouldn’t mind supporting them? Or is it the woman’s fault for agreeing to be in a relationship with a man who is jobless under the guise of sticking by her man during a hard time that is to blame? Do some women put out ads unconsciously that read:

Woman seeking relationship. Any man will do. I am so starved for affection and attention that any man will do, even if you are broke.

Thoughts anyone?

Since I’ve turned 25, this point couldn’t have been made any more clear to me: people are unsculptable. Yes I just made up a word. Haven’t found a word in the dictionary to drive the point home as clear as I would have liked. So when all else fails, make up your own word. And along with my own word comes my own definitions:

Unsculptable: not able to be changed, altered (not even a little bit), bent or shaped or fashioned by you

I’ve learned that no attempt at changing someone, is ever going to work.  No amount of hoping you model behavior that you would like the person you are in a relationship with to imitate will work either.  No amount of schooling will do it.  You will never have to tell a man in love what to do.  But it’s when you attempt to tell a man who isn’t in love how to imitate the actions of one who is, frustration is not even an adequate description of how it feels.

And I suppose part of the problem lies in making someone your own personal project.  Thinking that there is a chance that you could fashion them after your own liking.  Change their definition of who they are when they are in a relationship with you.  But just like I made up my own word and my own definition, people do that with themselves and their relationships.  People are their own person and with being your own person comes your own definitions of what it means to be you.  People form their own relationships and they come up with their own definitions of what it means to be in a relationship with you.

You’ll know when you’ve found the right person for you when you both understand, appreciate and are satisfied with all the made up definitions of that person.  And you don’t feel the need to alter that person’s definition of either themselves or who they are when they are with you in a relationship.

Just when I was certain I had regained my footing from the last time “love” knocked me down, I find myself yet again heeding the advice of Kanye and Keri’s collabo- just get back up when it knocks you down. And when I say knocked down I don’t mean it in a good sense. More life the rug has been pulled from under you–knocked down. I wasn’t looking for love, yet some how it knocked on my heart’s door and as reluctant as I was to let it in, I fell victim to it’s persistent knocking never even once considering that I could in turn myself wind up knocked down. I wish I could say with certainty that there are only a specific number of times in one’s life that could leave one knocked down by love. Like after three times it’s harder for love to creep up on you and over take you, at least not to the same degree it did previously. But of that I can’t be certain.

I wonder what really is knocking us down though? Is it love or is it the reality check/shock that our expectations have yet again gone unfulfilled and that maybe just maybe they are more unrealistic then we’ve ever considered? That the dreams we’ve once held and the perfect relationship dynamics we paint in our minds are crumbling, and the pain of that alone is what knocks us down.  Can love and the success of our relationships really be boiled down to what happens when our hopes collide with our realities.  Is  defeating the imaginary, fairy tale the great battle we must all wage war against in life?   Perhaps if we’re successful in knocking that down the less likely we are to be knocked down when love doesn’t go our way.

On the job front, a fellow co-worker received an email filled with what was titled:  A Hot Ghetto Mess.  So you have a plethora of disturbing photos of mostly black people doing/wearing the most outlandish things. Completely pointless and ridiculous, making fools out of not only themselves but every black person some people in other countries will ever know due to the world wide web.  The email was none the less circulated and my co-worker made a note worthy comment about it:  sometimes people are so desperate for attention that any attention even if it’s negative will do.  And of course, it got me to thinking about that statement in regards to relationships/men.  Couple that with various similar current life ”circumstances” of both myself and those close to me and the notion of settling raised by a fellow blog buddy… a new post was birthed. 

Are we settling for who I’d like to call Mr. Right There, because we are attention starved from a Mr. Right who only exists in our imagination.  A Mr. Right who we’ve only ever really seen in our dreams and can’t be certain he’ll ever appear.  But I do think the same notion of being so desperate for attention from a boo that you are willing to settle for who’s available right now even if we know they aren’t “the one”.  So what you wind up with is a whole lot of fill-ins.  Men who you allow to occupy the blank spaces of time in your life just because they are Right There, not even coming close to being the Mr. Rights we’ve been waiting to sweep us off our feet.  But not only are they available when we’d like them to be, they can’t really do any thing for us that we can’t do for ourselves.  We’re using them as place holders until the real one steps on the scene. 

Well then the question of why we allow this to take place must indefinitely arise.  And it’s because we’re so desperate for someone to occupy that space in our lives that anyone will do.  All the expectations we’ve held of Mr. Right are temporally abated and some times all that counts is that Mr. Right There, is right there just when we need him.  How minimum our requirements become when we’re “desperate”.  Would you prefer a Mr. Right who is seemingly delaying his arrival in your life indefinitely, or a Mr. Right There who is nothing we would have accepted under other circumstances?

Ah yes, the infamous ”C” word.  It’s the thing we long for when we haven’t yet acquired it.  The thing we  come to loathe once we feel we’ve settled too much into it.  The thing we miss when we feel we’ve lost it.  It’s the glue that holds relationships together, the stamp of approval that seals the deal yet simultaneously the culprit of complacency and at the root of that nagging ”being taking for granted” feeling . 

Yup you guessed it…COMFORTABLY. It’s an expensive commodity–too little is not enough yet too much of it can be a negative thing as well.  Is this something we should strive for in our relationships?  If we were to list words we would like to describe our relationships with a “boo” would comfortable make the top ten list?  It’s a compliment for the one you’re with to say they feel “comfortable” around you.  Or is it?  When that comfortability translates into sharing the most intimate parts of your thought life with a person or feeling comfortable enough to have a bad hair day, then I’m all for it.  But when it translates into bad hair days for the rest of the time you two are together, is that when comfy cozy becomes foe rather than a friend?  And when feeling comfortable means you speak your mind 100% of the time without curtailing any thing you say, completely disregarding the other person’s views and perceptions of you…than the problems Houston had are nothing compared to the problems you and your boo will see.

Comfortability can all too often turn into a crutch as well.  The tingly feeling that was once coveted and sought after can suddenly become the only reason you remain in a relationship with someone.  When every thing else points to reasons why you should leave the person, “I’m comfortable with him/her”is certainly not an honorable reason to remain, yet for so many it is.  Is there a such thing as being too comfortable in a relationship?  When comfy-ness breeds complacency, it’s definitely time to rethink how cozy we’ve become. Are we making our living spaces too comfy for others who may not even belong there?

Consciousness. 

• A point of awakening
• Being made aware of something that was previously unknown to you 
• A light bulb going off, illuminating what was once drowned out in darkness

This was the theme of my English class this semester.  What it means to be a conscious individual.  And although I learned a lot about the topic, the greatest lesson was learned not from a text book but from my own personal experience immediately following this class.  What I learned from the class was that once you’ve been made aware of something, you can’t just become unaware of it.  It requires an action or a response.   What I didn’t know was that there are different dynamics, stages even, that exist when we begin to deal with the issue of consciousness.  Namely:

• For starters there’s your life  as you’ve grown accustomed to it before you’re conscious of something
• Something is brought to your attention that you were previously unaware of, in fact you were operating in life as if the opposite were true
• The changes one undergoes as a result of that conscious
• The life that is invariably different as a result of that revelation

The immediate mental picture I get when I hear this word is one of a person who has been in a deep sleep and is suddenly awoken. And I’d love to believe that consciousness is most beneficial and optimal way to journey through life.   It’s the exact opposite of the less than enlightened “ignorane is bliss” philosophy.  And while I believe it to be a privledge; consciousness is certainly not for the faint in heart.  Consciousness will always lead to change… if it is faced with courage that is.

But I post this because apparently my theoritic, text book undertakings this semester so lovingly decide to manifest themselves in my life and so this is as autobiographical as it gets.  I found out a guy friend of mine who I’ve never looked at as any thing more sees me as much more than just a friend.  Having been made conscious of it, I am now conscious of feelings I never knew existed myself.  But my question or concern rather is : when consciousness hits our relationships, does it necessarily turn into catastrophy?  How does consciousness effect our relationships?  Does raising levels of consciousness in our relationships  automatically translate into:

1. Things will change
2. Things will never go back to being the same

For the sake of relationships is it best to adhere to:  what you don’t know won’t hurt you?

P.S.  I tried to not make this about me but the rules of the game have changed and I don’t like it!  Consciousness is supposed to be so wonderful so why is it feeling so catastrophic in this instance?

I love animal planet. I’m sure I’ve made several other references to it before. But I think what amazes me the most is the enormous amount of subtle similarities that exist between their “planet” and ours. They have nuanced behaviors, habits, quirks, that I find not only fascinating but that I understand are not much different, theoretically speaking, from our own actions. Animals mark their territory, develop chains of command and hierarchies, much the say way we do, and they also exhibit certain behaviors when it comes to relationships! This is where it gets good.

Now although I’m no expert on animal behavior, I do know that there are animals that do all types of things when they’ve set their sights on a particular mate. They dance, they show off their beautiful colors, make sounds and grunts, all to attract their much desired mate. And it just made me think of the enormous lengths we all go to to potentially catch the eye of our beloved. Pull out our best threads, get all nicely groomed, nicely scented and dab colors places we may have never before; and we set out to do our mating dance, to bait our fishing hooks, to show off our beauty all to attract the object of our desire.

What seems like the ultimate fail proof plan in the animal kingdom, is wrought with glitches when performed in ours. While you have your eyes set on a particular person for whom you intentionally perform your “mating dance” for, there may be other unintended parties, who have their eye on you. And often time these displays of affection, or displays in an attempt to gain others affection, are not isolated or hidden from others’ view, you get numerous “mates” observing the same actions and all responding in ways you had neither anticipated or desired. What do you do when your “mating dance” has gone awry? When instead of attracting the one you intended, an unsuspecting on looker picked up your scent and is now in hot pursuit of you? What tangled webs we weave. LOL.

P.S. And just in case any one was wondering…inspiration for this post= my current state of affairs where relationships and men are concerned.

So I have a rough draft due for one of my English classes.  And knowing it’s a rough draft kind of alleviated a lot of the pressure.  Knowing that it doesn’t have to be perfect; that I don’t necessarily have to dot every i and cross every t, granted me a sense of liberty.  But being me, I thought a little deeper into the matter and wondered how this whole “rough draft” mentality relates to the world of dating, love and relationships.  It made me wonder if all of our past relationships were our rough drafts at love.  What comes to your mind when you hear that?  You know rough drafts:

• the trial run
• the make believe before the real deal
• the practice shot
• your attempt to get it right
• the one full of mistakes
• the one you didn’t really put your all into because you knew you’d have another shot
• the one you just threw together
• trial and error
• where you figure out what works and what doesn’t

This list, although very true of rough drafts, bears a striking resemblance to a lot of our past approaches to love…don’t you think?  Could it be that we are learning how to be a better person for someone else while we are in a relationship with other people?  Are we working out our kinks; finding out what works and what doesn’t so the next time around we’ll get it “right”?  I mean, after all, the purpose of rough drafts is to get all your thoughts down on paper and just organize them and make whatever necessary corrections so that the final draft is perfect, or close to it.  All the makings of a perfect final draft are already contained in the rough draft, but it just needs some refining and tweaking.  So when we finally do construct our final drafts of love, are they only the result of trial and error rough drafts we have had with love before?

 

Aight so check it. As you all can plainly see I have been a lot more frequent with my postings. More frequent posting has not meant more frequent visits or visitors but more material none the less. Reason for this being I was on vacation from my job. Yippee!! I returned today though *sigh* Any way I have so much more new material and I fear that if I don’t get it out of this head of mine it may be lost forever! Yikes!! So here goes nothing…Oh and by the way if you’re liking what you’re reading please feel free to express that. Sometimes a little validation goes a loooong way!

So the thought for the day is: Can you unknowingly be an accomplice in someone’s infidelity? Now I don’t mean you’re seeing a guy who never told you he had a boo and then you find out he’s been playing both of y’all at the same time. That’d be all too obvious and blatant. No, I’m talking about a more subtle type of cheating—perhaps emotional. So the scenario changes up a bit and becomes:

• Boy has boo
• Boy has you
• Boy and you are friends
• Boy and you are enjoying each other’s company
• It’s all innocent [to you]
• But if boy is investing so much time and energy in communicating with you…
• [Communication is unrelated to boys boo by the way]

 

Than what is really going on here?

Are we ladies inadvertently placing our selves in the midst of a potential Jerry Springer love triangle unbeknown-st to us? We’re just innocent by standers in this after all right? Or are we accomplices in helping this boy cheat on his boo emotionally under the guise of “just being friends”? And then what if all this time causes him to begin to question his relationship with his boo? At that point, are we really friend or foe?  You’ve been mistress-ed, new reality TV show headed your way.