Quite the Morning

It's amazing how an ordinary 50 mile commute can be completely altered with a simple text that says nothing but 'Hi.' Hi - two letters and the entire day transforms from a nice little Thursday to - good lord - where is this going? And sure enough it went to a place that I never would have imagined.

Without wasting anyone's time here - this was a former boyfriend - no names of course. This is Blindfolded after all. Haven't really talked to him much since things ended a few years ago - but no hard feelings what so ever. Seemingly he has been doing just fine without me. I think I saw/heard that he has dated a couple of girls in the meantime - nothing serious. God forbid. Anyway - I digress.

After the random 'Hi' - I simply respond by asking what's up and he says that he has a question to ask me later. Oh good - so you're not going to ask me now so that I don't have think about this for any longer than I have and at this point it's only been maybe 5 minutes. And sure enough - he held out for almost two hours before asking me two questions:
1- do I know anyone at work who might be interested in renting out his condo? And 2 - are we at a point where if we were both single - could we have some non-committal 'hey nanny nanny.'

Wow. Happy Thursday Erin. Sometimes I write things out and I wish I was making them up - but I'm not. This is the nonsense that happens to me. And it's always feast or famine. I'll go months with nothing but long nights of crazy dancing and little sleep to people coming out of the wood work telling me they want to hang out and 'catch up.' How on earth can a girl figure ANYTHING OUT when she keeps getting curve balls thrown at her???

Here's the answer. Always say no to the ex. Unless there is a good reason to hang out with him/her - which there rarely is - no reason to do it. And who just comes out and asks someone to do that anyway? Can we talk about that for a second?

I honestly look forward to feedback on this - whatever you can give me. I'm very interested in hearing what all of my loyal readers have to say.

Goodnight now.

There's Awkward and then There's Dating

Of course I've written about something like this before, but believe it or not I have been writing this here blog for more than a year now and it seems that some things never change. It has come time again to slowly dive back into the dating world (super) and my very first even remotely close attempt at putting myself out there has left me feeling like this is a total crap shoot.

Let me try to understand how things used to work. A guy would like a girl; maybe ask her father for permission to date her; and maybe...just maybe...they would go out on a date. Lord knows what happened after that but seemingly it's NOTHING like what is going on today.

Here is the 'today' scenario. Say you have a friend who has someone who he/she would like you do meet. Awesome - that sounds like a nice little set up. Instead of getting your number, you're more than likely going to be asked/told to find him/her on Facebook. Really? Is this so that this person can go through a series of pictures and wall posts to decide if they want to hang out with you? Talk about judgmental. And that leaves me without a date - at least in that scenario - at least 90% of the time...every time. And what kind of odds are they?

How can a person be expected to get to know a person - or even attempt to know a person - if they are just going to cowardly look through their pictures in the hope that what? They find the other person attractive enough to what??? Send them a message? Not even call or text? I'm not one to talk on the phone like the next person - but this non-verbal communication world that we are all living is is not exactly conducive to meeting someone of any interest. And do you want to know what the funniest thing about this story is right now??? Because you know it's directly related to something that has already happened in my life - this guy hasn't even messaged me? Called me, text me...nothing. Despite telling our mutual friend that he thought I was cute. I'm assuming he took one look through my pictures and decided that I was insane and deleted me right away. What's a girl to do?

Sometimes my mom tells me to 'just sit down' when I go out. The truth of the matter is - I don't even have it in me to do that. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm as addicted to dancing as you can be and if I'm out - I'm up and about - mingling and having a good time. You'll never find me sitting at a bar, attempting to look cute in the hopes that some random, brave man will come up to me and offer to buy me a drink. The more likely scenario is me going up to the bar and buying a round of drinks for the group of people I'm with. No wonder my bank account looks the way that it does. But that's just me.

Side note - as I'm writing this - a commercial for E-Harmony is on. If that's not a sign.. I don't know what is :)

Anyhow - I don't know that I have a question to leave you all with as I don't know what insights anyone can provide that will not result with me having another awkward dating situation..or not dating situation as it may work out - some time in the near future.

So here's to the lessening of the awkwardness.

Cheers.

Lack of Inspiration

After beginning a blog about an entirely different topic - I've decided to delete it and write about something else. It seems that lately I have had quite a bit of trouble coming up with topics to write about. I'm attributing this to a sudden lack of inspiration - either that or I've lost all concepts of original thought and/or haven't left myself enough free time to actually sit down at my computer as I am right now and have a nice little conversation with all of you. Either way - I am attempting to get back on track with this and hope that you will all inspire me to continue writing about everything and anything.

So let's see...why haven't I had anything to write about lately? If I am to be completely honest with all of you - it's because I haven't been in the mood to give myself any time to think at all. That sounds completely silly but I suppose I've taken a bit of a step back in the emotional okay-ness category and have chosen to fill my time with friends and hanging out - and I'd like to say working out but my stupid blackberry hasn't worked all week so I haven't had an alarm to wake me up in the morning - and this has disabled me from filling your inboxes with the comedic relief you have grown to love about this blog (I hope). And while I'd love to be funny right now - I'm just not in a funny mood.

Quick side note though - driving a 15 passenger van on Friday night to take myself and my friends to a wedding was quite possibly one of the funniest and best decisions I have ever made. Rolling up to a wedding and getting out of what can only be described as an airport van all decked out was priceless.

But yeah - so I'm sure everyone goes through what I am currently going through - however - it's difficult for me to have 'off' moments because I'm always the crazy, bubbly personality that people have become accustomed to. This makes it hard to ever have an off day - everyone is asking you - what's wrong, what can I do to help, why are you not smiling and making me laugh? And while I certainly love making people's days - there are days when I just want to be quiet - believe it or not - and it's becoming apparent that with my personality - it's not the easiest thing to do.

So over the past couple of weeks I have just been overthinking the obvious - probably because I didn't give myself any time at all to really recover after the bullet to the face and it has caused me to randomly experience every type of mood that I try to avoid on a daily basis - anger, sadness, grief, embarrassment, bitterness and maybe even melancholy - if I ever used that word - which I don't.

I guess the ultimate question here is - how are you truly supposed to deal with something that will never make sense to you and no one will ever have an explanation for? Including the person who did it? How can you be expected to move on when the sheer thought of moving on is almost void in your mind? It's as if dating in and of itself is so awful to think about - coupled with the fact that I'm constantly being told that I'm incredibly intimidating which is why no one approaches me when I'm out in public. Seems like a lose/lose situation right now, doesn't it?

Well believe me - I am light years away from actually being down about the whole relationship bit - BUT - and that's a huge BUT - I am having a hard time 'getting back on the horse' as some corny folks would say. Truth be told - I will get back on...just not sure when that will be.

But here's to the start of what I hope will be some inspirational blog posts....and maybe some awkward stories along the way.

Just Tell Me!

One of my fellow co-workers (if I can call him that) brought up what I hope will be an interesting blog topic for the evening and something that I hope you can all comment on. This particular topic may be difficult for a lot of people to react to - simply because we are all constantly being put into awkward situations where we will do our very best to avoid actually telling each other the truth - HOWEVER - if we have figured me out at this point we know that I am always in favor of being honest. And I'll just go ahead and say why - because if anyone knows me (I guess if they don't, this is a moot point) they know that I would never intentionally hurt someone's feelings - ever. It's just that simple. If something I say happens to be taken a certain way and a person's feelings are hurt - then I would be truly sorry. We all know that the truth hurts sometimes - but to that I say that as long as the end result is the bettering of a person - I am all for it. If it's truly a friend (or whoever) - he or she will get over it.

And now onto the topic after that rambling that just happened. Sorry about that. So today - at work - I was just in yet another meeting for the day and this was a lot more casual than other meetings - and with this 'pseudo co-worker' when I proceeded to tell him that I thought he came across as arrogant. I wasn't trying to be rude - simply expressing to him the vibe that he gives off. And to that he says - 'Has anyone ever told you how you come off to other people?' I said no. After a moment of silence in the name of awkwardness I guess - I asked him - 'Well are you going to tell me?' And he said no.

Which brings me to the point..finally. How on earth can we be expected to fix the never-ending flaws in our personalities, character...however you want to put it.. if no one is telling us what's wrong with us... or how we are coming across to people in what I can only assume is in a negative way. I'm assuming this is contributing to the reason why so many people do not like and/or get along with so many other people for years on end... and yet they continue to be 'friends.' It all makes no sense to me.

I believe - and call me crazy - that there is a way to very diplomatically tell someone about his/her personality flaws. And this would not involve any tears, therapy or removal of friendships on Facebook. I understand that this all depends on the person in question - but if people are genuinely interested in being good people (which I know is a separate topic all together) then they will take this criticism for what it is - constructive criticism - and turn it into a positive. I see no reason to do anything else with it.

Thank you and that concludes my 'I'm living in an idealistic world' speech for the evening. I hope you all have a pleasant event. Goodnight.

To Go or Not to Go

Seems like a ridiculous predicament BUT this past weekend was the first of what I'm sure will be many of these scenarios and I figured I would pose the question sooner rather than later. So imagine this completely hypothetical situation:

You were dating someone who you have known for a long long time - so you've known their friends for a really long time and all get along really well. When you break up - I assume there is somewhat of a disclaimer about staying friends with the ex's friends. However, what happens when these friends happen to be friends of yours too - even though you have never actually hung out with them without the other person? That is more than likely more of a coincidence than anything else - just to clarify that previous statement. What is a person to do in this particular situation?

All sorts of questions are going through my mind so maybe I'll just write some of them down so that I can get everyone on the same page as me:

- If you are invited to hang out with these people - do you go even though there is a strong chance the ex might be there? And if you happen to be the type of person who embraces awkward moments - this is a question that does not factor in if you would be fine with seeing the ex or not.

- If you have no one to go with you to the above-mentioned hang out - but really want to go - what do you do?

- Do you assume that the people there think that you're hanging out with them simply because you want to see how the ex is doing or even worse - with the hope of running into the ex?

- Or do you just say fuck it and go and have yourself a great time and not worry about all of the nonsense that clogs our brains when these things happen?

Well, if you know me at this point, you know which of the above I actually did when this past weekend's events presented themselves to me. And I'll tell you what - I could not have been happier with my decision.

Regardless of the fact that I seem to have handled the situation the way I wanted to - I am still curious to see what the general public thinks of this scenario. So please enlighten me.

And I hope you all had a lovely weekend.

Cheers.

For Christina and Dan...

Every now and again I - very fortunately - get to take a break from my daily thought process which often involves questioning human behavior in general - to write about my amazing friends. In this particular instance, I could not be MORE excited to be writing about how my very best friend in the whole world - Miss Christina Hoarle - just got engaged to her very long time boyfriend, Dan.

Despite knowing that this was coming for quite some time now, it in no way takes away from my sheer bliss that this day has arrived. I will do my very best to keep this short as to not embarrass Christina and hopefully say my congratulations in a succinct way.

Knowing this wonderful woman back when she was just a little girl - with the most adorable side ponytail you have ever seen - I feel so lucky to be around for what is bound to be the greatest day of her life. Regardless of her endless achievements, successful career and quite possibly one of the most amazing families ever, there is one thing that she has yet to experience and that is the spotlight. For the 20-something years (wow) that I have known her, Christina has and continues to be the most selfless and thoughtful girl I have ever met. She takes after her mother in her - what can I get for you.. eat...eat.. eat...mentality; her - I'll help you out with that.. I'd love to come with you to do this attitude - even though her insane job has her working upwards of 80 hours a week at times.

And with all of that - she has still turned out to be an absolutely amazing friend, sister, daughter and now fiance and I really cannot describe in words how happy I am for her.

Chris - I know we say this all the time but I feel lucky every day to have you as my friend and I really could not be happier for you at this time in your life.

And Dan - don't think I forgot about you - there isn't a guy out there who is more suited, more hands-on or who would ever love her more than you do...and I'm so confident when I say that. Seeing you guys together over the past 5 years has made me so happy and so hopeful that someday I'll be able to have the type of relationship that the two of you have - maybe minus all of the manual labor :)

I love you two so much and wish you nothing but all of the happiness in the world. Congratulations.

Cheating or Nothing

After a couple of requests and a conversation here and there I'm feeling inclined to write about this to see what people think. I'll try to keep it short and sweet - since the recent posts after the hiatus have been a bit on the lengthy side.

Let's pretend you're looking in at this from the outside of the situation. If you were in a relationship with someone and you could have the choice between the relationship ending because he/she cheated on you OR to just be dumped clear out of nowhere with no given reason and no way to change the situation yourself or do anything differently to change the situation - which would you choose?

I understand that neither of these outcomes are ideal - but for shit's sake - let's say you absolutely had to choose one? Which would it be? Being that I have lived through both of these - I am 100% inclined to say that I would - without a doubt in my mind - prefer to be cheated on then left out to dry with no explanation or reasoning. The latter leaves you confused, slightly crazy and just all together thinking WHAT THE *uck! on a regular basis - and who wants anything to do with that?

And sure - when someone cheats on you that leaves you insecure, wondering why on earth would he/she do something like that to you - but - you can normally chalk it up to the other person being an idiot because if you're confident enough in yourself as a person - you would know that it's that person's loss if they let you go. And you really have to believe that - or at least work on yourself as a person until you believe that.

So what do you think? I'm very interested so please share.

And have a great weekend.