Time…..In

Took a little time out there for a minute. Amid the increasing demands on my life, i.e. school, work, and attempting to identify what my dreams are and to pursue one if not all them, kind of neglected the blog in the process.

*Sniff*
*Sniff*

I’m temporarily freezing my time out just to jot down a couple of things I’ve been thinking about since I’ve been away.

For starters I came to the conclusion that how one answers this question will reveal a great deal about what matters the most to you in your life. The question is: If you found out you would be allowed to do/accomplish ___________ but then the very next day you would die, what would you fill your blank in with? What would have to occur in your life for you to feel the ultimate sense of satisfaction that you could die the next day and feel accomplished or at peace?

An even deeper thought that stems from this is why then do we waste so much time, exhausting ourselves chasing after things (or people) that aren’t important enough to fill in our blanks. I realized that my answer to the above question very well could be:

1. To receive national acclaim for a literary contribution I’ve made or to make the New York Times Best sellers list
2. Launch my own successful magazine
3. Release one song that plays on the radio for years to come
4. Take an amazing photo that would be published in magazines worldwide
5. Design an article of clothing that becomes an instantaneous hit

Tings that didn’t make that list:

• Getting a boo
• Meeting the man of my dreams
• Getting married
• Having kids

Now don’t get me wrong, no disrespect to all who would choose to fill their blank in with that. Everyone is at different stages in their life and if that’s your blank than that’s cool. And I presume that that would be on my to do list at some point in time but for right now, I just didn’t make my Top Five. There’s a couple more important things I’d like to accomplish before that. What’s the first thing on your life’s agenda… maybe it’s time to take a time out from those things that didn’t make your Top Five. Perhaps if we didn’t spend too much time on the non-essentials, when we look back over what we’ve done with our time we won’t regret not using it more wisely. Now…identify what’s on your Top Five list and…time in!!!

Not Good, ‘Til the Last Drop

So my sister and I are eating a Subway sandwich yesterday [compliments of the 5 dollar foot long days...I'm loving it].  And it was pretty alright…until the late bite. Something about that last morsel I put in my mouth…all of a sudden made it the most tasty sandwich I’ve ever had.   In fact, that last drop was better than the entire sandwich for some reason.  I didn’t stop half way through eating the sandwich to say that it was good, as my sister did, because up until that point it really wasn’t good enough for me to make a public announcement about.  But once it was gone, the goodness of it lingered on my taste buds and I had to say, man that sure was a good sandwich.  So naturally my sister and I got into a discussion about why the last drop of something is usually the best part.  Granted there are things that are in fact, good til the last drop, which is a slogan for something but don’t know what, but there are those things that are so good that you thoroughly enjoy it from beginning to end.  Other things, not so much- quite the contrary you only declare it’s goodness after the last drop of it is gone.  And that’s when she said something profound:  It’s just like with relationships!

Was my sister right?  Is it possible to be in a relationship that you never considered to be good while in it, until the last moments you spent with the person?  And if those last moments were the best time you’ve ever had with the person the entire time you were together, would that be enough to qualify the entire relationship as being good?  Is this an example of you missing your water because the well ran dry? But more importantly, is the goodness of those final moments with the significant enough to linger in your mind and make one say, man that sure was a good relationship? 

I don’t mean to be redundant but I have to ask, is it that the last drop really is good, or do we consider it to be good because it’s the last drop?  Guess it’s kind of like the age old, which came first the chicken or the egg question.  If it weren’t the last drop, of a person or food, would it still be good? Men should come with warnings… Would you date someone you knew wouldn’t be any good,  ’til the last drop?

Living La Vida… Boo-Less

I will attempt to provide a brief synopsis of the past couple of years of my “love” life, a chronicle of events that lead to me living la vida boo-less. I will probably not do a good job as I am condensing years of feelings, experiences and thoughts into an half hour summary, but here goes nothing….About four years ago I was convinced that I no longer wanted to be single. I was 20 and ready for love! With India Aire’s song, “Ready For Love” as my inspiration at the time, it was in heavy rotation on my CD player and it’s lyrics would almost indefinitely leave me in tears every time:

I am ready for love

Why are you hiding from me?

I’d quickly give all my freedom

To be held in your captivity

Indeed this song was written with me in mind, if not every song lyric, every strum of the guitar seemed to convey accurately, like nothing else could, the melody of my heart. I was young and while every one around me seemed to be enjoying a “boo-ed up” life, I was determined to leave many a lonely night behind me. Of course, I payed less attention to other of this same song’s lyrics such as the part that said:

Lately I’ve been thinking that

You’re (love that is) not ready for me

Maybe you think I need to learn maturity

They say watch what you ask for

‘Cause you may receive…

It’s only in retrospect that I can say that indeed I didn’t know the first thing about love and even the love I so desperately sought and professed to be ready for was rooted in selfishness. Love would have been right to hide from me a little while longer because I was not ready for it. Didn’t know how to recognize it, how to sacrifice for it, how it should be displayed and acceptably reciprocated. Desperation for a relationship, any relationship left me jumping at the first guy who made me laugh until it hurt, complimented me and whose company I enjoyed without even considering for a moment if we were compatible in any way. My mission was accomplished though, I was not boo-less any more. I had what I asked for…. a boo. By the time I realized the things that I had been blind to but were existent all along:

1. We had nothing in common and hence weren’t compatible
2. We weren’t on the same level intellectually
3. Our everyday normal conversations were non-existent because they were replaced with arguments over words taken out of context
4. I finally had a boo yet was still miserable

I was two years into the relationship, time had flew by more quickly than I intended it to and I was left wishing I had know sooner that:

1. I should have been just a tad more discriminatory with a man I decided to call boo
2. Jealousy will never mean true love
3. Just because a guy is great doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a great guy for you

I had a run in with a love from my teenage years when things really started to get almost unbearably rocky with my going-on-three-years-boo. He reminded me that there did exist a man who could be everything I wanted in a boo… or so it seemed.  He appeared to be everything my current boo was not and then some. He was my ticket to the love I had been ready for. I called it splits-ville with said boo and despite my desire to be single, I jumped at what I thought would be my chance at true love finally. Of course while I was operating under the notion that if you let a man go and he comes back to you he’s yours, he was operating by others, namely if you’ve never slept with a woman while you two were together, it’s a good idea to at least attempt to. Needless to say, it didn’t last very long….that was not the love I had sang about, cried about longed for or imagined.

Now I’m living la vida boo-less and I couldn’t be happier for the time to myself to grow, to mature and be extra careful with what I ask for in 2009!

Boo-Less Refugee

As I mentioned before, this boo-less life is wrought with numerous ups and countless downs.  And it’s not without it’s cyclical changes in attitude towards it.  As the pendulum swings in this boo-less life, it can carry you from one extreme to the next and every where else in between; as you can go from whole-heartedly embraced, relished boo-less-ness, to scrambling to find the quickest emergency exit possible (aka desperation).  Boo-less-ness can seem like a bed of roses, while other times the sting of a roses thorns make it seem like the most dreaded experience ever.  In those less than pleasurable times in boo-less-ness, one may seek to flee such a “dreadful state”, escape it, or even become a boo-less refugee.  What usually onsets this grassroots movement against boo-less-ness more often than not has a great deal to do with the perceived happiness of those who are ‘booed up’.  Everything in relationships seems that much more peachy and creamy when you are looking at them from the outside–much the same way clothes in the display window look so much more luxurious than they do once on your body.  Knowing that relationships in reality aren’t necessarily all that they are chalked up to be, is not the least bit successful in tapering the desire to be un-boo-less at times.  So you begin planning your escape route, and it’s very indiscriminate, every and anyone is a viable rung in your ladder of escape out of the boo-less life.  When you are at the end of your boo-less rope, any one will suffice.  Hunger makes everything taste so much better and unfortunately a similar mechanism is in play once you are “boo-starved”…..any boo will do.

Un-boo-less-ness.....Here I come!!!!

I am reminded of an episode of Bugs Bunny I saw as a child.  Bugs Bunny and several other people he was with got really hungry on some journey they took.  They were all on boat together and after hours of not eating they began to look at each other and envisioned each other as being food–hamburgers and hot dogs.  They were hallucinating all due to starvation.  And it just made me think, how many times one can find themselves in that same position due to boo-droughts.  When you look around you, people who have always been there begin to morph right before your eyes into the most satisfying prospects at being your accomplice as you make your boo-less exit.  I wonder how that unsuspecting boo would feel, to know he was only a consideration because your boo-less-clock was ticking and as a result you envisioned him as something he wasn’t?  I always knew Bugs Bunny was good for something….that’s all folks.

Boo-Less Anthem

Dear Boo-Less One aka Survivor:

If you ever thought you couldn’t survive the boo-less life, Destiny’s Child is here to serve as a constant reminder that you can. Never mind that Beyonce is [dare I say happily] married and not the least bit boo-less. And setting aside the fact that I personally do not know what the relationship status is with the other two members, their message is encouraging and the most empowering boo-less-anthem, none the less. If your (no longer) boo ever exaggerated the importance and worth of him in your life, or if you yourself are the guilty party… this is for you. You may be minus one but you are much better off. If you don’t thinks so, do the math yourself. Oh boo-less one, you can and will survive!

What Boo Thought Would Happen to you	What Actually Happened to You
Thought you’d be weak	You’re stronger
Thought you’d be broke	You’re richer
Thought you’d be sad	You laugh harder
Thought you wouldn’t grow	You’re wiser
Thought you’d be helpless	You’re smarter
Thought you’d be stressed	You’re chillin’
Thought you couldn’t breathe	You’re inhaling
Thought you couldn’t see	You have perfect vision
Thought you wouldn’t last	You’re lasting
Thought you would die	You’re living
Thought that you would fail	You’re on top
Thought it would be over by now	You won’t stop
Thought you’d self destruct	You’re still here

The Blissful Life

I know I have been away for a while. This hiatus has me returning not only with a new leash on life but with an entirely different perspective all together. It’s dawned on me that I have been approaching this thing all wrong. The boo-less life is not the drab, worthless, depressing existence I had previously chalked it up to be. Well, at least that is the approach I assumed for most of what I have posted thus far. Granted, having just come out of a three year relationship, immediately followed by a three-month-relationship with an ex from my very distant past, I found myself suffering from a severe-or-not-so-severe case of the boo-less blues. But after three weeks of: tears, recounted memories, reflections, re-evaluations, rants, dissections, inspections and the like, I am convinced that a simple shift in focus enables one to see just how blissful life can be without a boo–or at the very least, my life is more blissful without the boos I’ve had. Now while I can count on one hand the amount of relationships I’ve had, that of course is neither here nor there, I do know enough to know that the boo-less blues is nothing more than a phase, a fleeting, passing moment in time that is temporary-however permanent it may feel. And get this, it’s completely normal. When you’re in love, you’re said to be wearing “rose-colored-glasses,” these tinted lenses of love that somehow manage to taint everything your boo does so that it all looks beautiful to you. It blinds you to all their faults, magnifies their good qualities, distorts their least flattering features, deletes most if not all imperfections, and causes you to overlook his/her short-comings and inconsistencies. Once you’re boo-less, I think you put on a different pair of glasses altogether, perhaps “blue-colored-glasses.” With these set of lens through which you view your life and your most recent past experiences, they may blind you to the real complications you had while in the relationship, magnify your own faults and newly found singleness, distort your self-image so that you view yourself as a failure, delete the possibility that your life is perhaps much better without that boo and makes you overlook the fact that you are still hot stuff. However I am convinced that there is a cycle every single person goes though, once I piece it together I will be sure to post it. But at the moment some of the stages include:

1. Newly found boo-less-ness
2. Boo-less blues
3. Blissful boo-less-ness
4. Frustrated boo-less-ness
5. Attempts at escaping boo-less-ness
6. Embraced boo-less-ness
7. The Boo-Less Spokesperson

Which one are you?