Love Don't Cost a thing...thanks JLO

There is a lot that you learn in your twenties. You learn that time goes by very fast. You learn that being an adult doesn't mean getting to do whatever you want. But one thing no one ever prepares you for is the absolute fact that the very things that you want the most do not come in a package or can be purchased on your credit card.

 Sure, we've heard the cliches  about love being priceless, but to be in your twenties where you desire love and to give love and it hasn't happened yet is hard to take. No prince charming in your life, no special someone to take your breath away, just you.

It is different than the love you desired in your teens, it is far superior to those types of feelings-it's more raw and real than the eagerness to have someone around. It is the realization of wanting to give and receive love. The craving of wanting to grow old with someone,The desire for a best friend to go through the adventures of life with. All the trappings of a deep committed relationship are seemingly just beyond your reach.

 The consciousness that love is in fact the very most coveted desire in the world can put a twenty something in a hard place. Without selling out and settling just to have someone means to be alone by choice. Even though this is the noble and right thing to do,  it can be hard to deal with all the emotions that come with that. The endless questions that reside deep inside your heart. The dark thoughts, the sad, melodramatic thoughts that are self loathing. They exist, my favorite dark thought is" Am I going to end up alone?"
It can haunt you almost daily. Some other visions are similar to ending up being the old cat lady, etc,etc.

We've been told to date, don't date, play games, don't play games, write a list, pray, eat, love, blah ,blah, blah. So what are we suppose to do? Are we suppose to sit around and wait for the person to waltz into our lives? Are we suppose to pray and write our lists of the "perfect" man to sweep us off our feet? Are we suppose to go through life just crying our eyes out when we feel alone?

I don't know what the answers are. I fear these questions do not have answers. I pray that whatever the answers are, our twenty something hearts may have cushion from the reality that singledom can be hard and lonely on us single twenty somethings.

Oops I Did it again

                                                              

I know I know…just because it’s summer doesn’t mean that I get to be a lazy slacker and stop blogging…Thanks for the push back in..you know who you areJ

So I was talking the other night with one of my closest friends. We were swapping stories about our ex-boyfriends and how after a certain amount of time you realize that you either A. went complexly insane and lost all self respect while in the relationship or B. experienced the “walking boy coma”  that happens to the best of us. After this discussion i decided to own up to my mistakes. I'm going to go with both options. I believe that you need A to get to B.

I feel you deserve a little bit more of back story. The vivid drama's that we were sharing  could be categorized as less than healthy. Yet , even as we could see clearer now  out of the melodramatic situations  both of us could not understand how and why the perspective situations occurred. While trying to find  the pieces of a failed relationship to explain logically what happened we both decided  by some sort of mystical power that we became less and less ourselves while putting up with  men who simply didn’t respect nor deserve us. I’m going to believe that we have all been there.

But the biggest question I have for all of you is…How did we get there? How is it that women who are smart, vivacious, ambitious, loving and amazing get stuck in this sort of situation? And spare me all the crap about love being blind. It’s more than just that. Something happens and you either decide to go completely insane and lose all self respect or you experience the walking boy coma. I wish I could answer that question.  Sometimes I find myself thinking that if I could pinpoint the exact moment that I "decided" to change who I am to accommodate someone else I will never make the same mistakes again.

Like I said, I believe that you need A to get to B. You have to lose your self respect to get to the point were the walking boy coma takes hold of you and you become a robot. After it’s over you have memories that don’t add up, scenarios and fights that you soon realize were never resolved even though they were a BIG deal like marriage, or children. Or when you start to get your memory back and you are disgusted with how you allowed yourself to become that person. Not solely just because it’s not a healthy relationship, but because you compromised yourself.

For me it was no longer being the easy going goofball. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still totally type A…(just less neurotic) But instead I became a short tempered annoying bitch. And sure, not every relationship is perfect..But when is that moment when we lose who we are? And if we ever figure it out for ourselves, how do we ensure that we NEVER do it again? Plenty of women succumb to the walking boy comma everyday. If you’re lucky you’ll wake up one day and end it . Some may never wake up.

 Being a woman is an amazing thing and we can’t let ourselves be silenced, embarrassed or stop being who we are because the person we are in a relationship with feels insecure, emasculated, or whatever it maybe. I may not ever find the answer as to when or how I allowed myself to change and go along with the relationship. But I now remember exactly who I am and will always remember the taste that I have for  life. And it is pretty tasty!

*walking boy comma= the symptom of a relationship with a boy that has gone bad. Other symptoms may include but not limited too  full denial, loss of humor, Bitchiness, walking around like a zombie doing whatever the boy wants.If and when you find a way out and wake up you have zero logical understanding of what just happened.

Girl Math...and products that makes no sense..

18 graduate High school. add four years and get a degree...by 24 have amazing career and start climbing to the top. Then get married have babies and then live.....

If your wondering where the rest of my sentence is...so am I . At 18 I really had it all figured out. I was going to marry my high school sweetheart. We were going to have babies and then live happily ever after. Blah blah blah. If I had a dime for every time I felt that pang of regret or sadness that reminded me that I was doing nothing according to my plan--well lets just say I'd be on the cover of Forbes magazine.
But I can say,  I know I'm not alone in the world of women who give themselves all of these timelines and deadlines that seem to be as mystical and confusing as calculus. Why is it that we inundate ourselves with such silly timelines?

To some, a timeline or deadline is way to keep yourself on track. Then why do we seem to fall asleep at the wheel?..Some may say we were depressed, others may say we gave up on life. Or many say ( including my father) you got lost in a boy and wasted your life. Whether or not these things are true or false. The important thing is that we feel we "lost" something. This loss can urge us to move forward and achieve things we never thought  that  we could. Ambition is born and we become modern women who know what we want. We want it ALL. We want a thriving career, personal life, children, adventure etc. The only problem in our way is ourselves.

While I understand that as women we may feel a sense of loss over our "Plans" which have gloriously fallen  apart. We can't forget that while plans fell apart, life happened, memories were made, experiences were introduced to us that changed us forever.

 Whatever your destination is, whatever your new formula for your life is,  don't forget that the finish line isn't the only place your going. Your also going to all the places along the way...and that is what life is. We would have nothing if we didn't appreciate the scenes on the sidelines while were running forward.

MTV what have you done to me???

As I sit here writing this I'm laughing at myself thinking of all the things I thought were cool as a impressionable teenager. Just the fact that I'm calling my past self "impressionable" is hilarious, because in my teenage years I argues vigorously against this fact. And that's just that, its a fact that teenagers are impressionable. So why you may ask is this coming up in " Your twenties: the fine print"..? Well it is simple, at some point in your twenties you realize that suddenly you are no longer thinking like a teenager. perhaps that actual act has gone long before the realization.. Maybe your early twenties or maybe your late twenties. It comes with an odd sense of  nostalgia. We all will claim that we were never that "bad" " impressionable"...etc etc...compared to the teenagers of today. I some respects this is true.

The reason why I'm bring this topic up, is I can't believe the new series that is premiering on MTV called SKINS. This show looks like trash and more like a how to guide to become a drug laden promiscuous lying high school-er. MTV claims that the show has some sort of moral to the show because the characters "recognize" what they are doing is wrong. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for self exploration and finding yourself. However, that's what your twenties are for. Not your teenage years where your life can be severely messed up. And regardless of how good of parents one may have bad stuff still can happen. The truth is whatever the child wants to do they will do. So why then is this show serving as a how to guide on becoming a lying, sexually active ( in the most horrible way), drug using person?

And since when does MTV care about the youth of America?...They are simply looking for the easiest way to get viewers. If they were truly trying to do a good deed, they would not have all the trailers glamorizing the behavior... As Arcade Fire sings " MTV what have you done to me"....Am I alone on this one?

The money will roll right in.....or so I hope

Money. This one word evokes more emotion out of me than a Stephanie Meyer or Nicholas Sparks novel.  People can say that their twenties were fabulous. But, I bet they are forgetting how very poor they were. Everyone wants money, and mostly in large quantities. Of course you already know what you would do with your lottery winnings even if you don’t play. Money is up there with oxygen.—you have to have it. Problem is you realize this in your twenties when you’re already expected to have everything figured out.  How are we supposed to make enough money to pay for college, and pay for rent and the rest of life’s bare minimums? Quite frankly when it comes to money in your twenties, life sucks…

All the College years of contemplating selling your eggs for a tuition payment or eating your fair share of ramen noodles and 89 cent burritos from Del Taco have to eventually pay off  right? The assumed poverty for a better life one day mantra ends with a high paying job. I’m tired of being poor in my twenties. I want money now. I don’t want to be young, fabulous and broke as Suze Orman would say our generation is.  I want to be able to live normally and actually be able to afford the fee for a doctor’s visit without having to give up eating lunch for a week.

I hope that the curse is magically lifted from us once we reach our thirties. Statistically, we make the most money in our forties. Isn’t that depressing? So here’s to all my fellow twenty- something’s that want to make it…Hopefully Nirvana was right and we will be able to sit and grin and watch the money roll right in..Do you think we will ever get there?                                                

Thanksgiving to Savage Friday?

So this past Thanksgiving I was on a little bubbly detour and saw a couple bring a Thanksgiving meal to a homeless man. I was very moved by this as I have always wanted to serve the homeless on Thanksgiving for years but never have. I must say seeing such act of Kindness really moved me. It made the rest of Thanksgiving day a much more appreciative holiday for myself. Perhaps being in my twenties has made me more appreciative of life, I'm not sure exactly.
But whatever it is, I can honestly say that I don't think that MOST people who participate in Black Friday are ever going to be moved to such emotions that regard others well being. I say this not as a joke or to be rude , but as an honest person who is truly disgusted from all the stories I heard about the "Shopping Holiday". I had a good friend give me a sad report on her Black Friday shopping at several locations. Wal-Mart seemed to be the worst, so That's who I will give the shout out to. They had no means of crowd control, according to my friends first hand account. They simply wrapped up flats of products, that only escalated the suspense of what item would be there. She said there was shoving, hair pulling, and rushing towards the electronics.
 A second story that I heard was one on the radio about a nine year old girl. She was sent to pick out a game as her mother waited in line to get --yet again-- another electronic and she came running back with a red face crying uncontrollably. The little girl reported to her mother that she was punched in the face by a "mom" who wanted her game. Even more disgusting is the mother of the beaten little girl didn't want to get out of line to do anything about it!
I guess what I'm so disgusted with is the fact that this  type of behavior is happening literally mere hours after we have all had a dinner with our loved ones and give thanks for them in our lives. I know Americans in general are disturbingly materialistic, but what I am really wondering is where is the disconnect? How do we go from giving thanks and then punching innocent people or for some, children in the face for a game? How is this okay? I really believe that this has now become a sport now. All for the experience. I believe many people are now going out to act a certain ridiculous way, just to say they got into a scrimmage on Black Friday.
So I have vowed to take a journalistic stand. I am now calling Black Friday, " Savage Friday"...word choice is  appropriate...and think I'm going to take a video camera out and record the "savage" acts of people across Southern California. I can't wait. Do you all think it would matter if more coverage was given to Black Friday's gone wrong?

Did the Sext Kill Dating?

                                                          

                Remember the days when you would like a man and he would call you on the phone? He would ask you questions about yourself?...What you like to do?..Your favorite color? This would go on for a couple of days. When the phone would ring you would hope that it was him (pre-caller Id of course).And then he would ask you out on a date. A real date, he would take you wherever you wanted to go. And then you would have a stupid grin on your face the whole night just waiting to get to the kiss!

                Well I remember those days. And I’m waiting for them to come back quite frankly! These days it goes zero to sex in a matter of a couple text messages. You all know what I’m talking about!..whether or not you want to partake in this new texting medium, it sort of presents itself out of the blue.  Boy meets girl ..exchange numbers, cause conversations great; you feel some sort of chemistry—hence  the phone number exchange. A couple days go by with a few text messages and then BAM!!..a sext!..

                You’re left not knowing how to respond. You probably, think about how to respond. But no matter what you do respond, the conversation will always come back to the sext.  Whatever happened to courtship? What happened to the days when a man would actually call you and talk to you? Now with all the new technology and social media out there men have close to no reason to call. They can just text, leave something on your FB wall etc.. So no more real dates!...No more courtship, no more get -to -know -you -conversation…the texts in-between are suppose to be enough.

 Now men just dive right in with no shame. And instead of having the guts to take you out and get to know you before they try and make a move, they go for sexting. So the question is ladies, Is a sext taking place of dating and courtship?