Day Seven::Love is Easy

The summer before my freshman year in high school I fell hopelessly in love with a boy named Chris. Chris and I met several years before that at a football game and we were best friends, which consisted of a good deal of time talking on the phone. I didn't realize I had anything more than friendly feelings towards Chris until he started dating a girl named Margaret. I was heart broken to have lost my best friend, and so I did what any respectable high school girl would do - I confessed my true feelings and he broke up with Margaret to be with me.

My relationship with Chris had all the drama you would expect of a high school love affair. We were absolutely crazy about each other which, in and of itself, produced a good deal of drama. We were jealous of other people and left very little room in each other's lives for anyone else. However, our parents wisely kept us apart as much as they could get away with to keep this adolescent love from burning a scar on us both forever. After not quite a year, our relationship had an explosive ending, that required we never speak again.

Chris went on to other serious relationships, I decided never to date seriously again in high school. However, as I look back now - memories of Chris make me smile and he will always have the title - "my first love" in the book of my life.

Loving Chris was easy. He was a handsome, smart boy - he was a football player, an honor student, and he did all those things that a boyfriend should do. He gave me the biggest teddy bear I have ever seen (still to this day) for Christmas and sent me beautifully boxed roses for Valentine's day. He made mixed tapes with old romantic songs and snapped up any opportunity to be with me. I think if you asked Chris, he would tell you that loving me back then was easy too.

There's no doubt that the feelings we shared were very real, but as adults we aren't together. The interesting thing is, that not one person reading this is surprised by that last statement, but as adults we fall in love with people and decide that because there is love there, that it's enough for a life long commitment and the sad truth is, sometimes it's not.

When young people fall in love, we never doubt that they aren't meant to be together. We never doubt that as life progresses that time and experience will pull them apart. As adults we decide we are infinitely wiser than those "love struck kids," maybe we feel like we are far more selective in giving our hearts away, but the truth is sometimes we aren't. Sometimes the person we give our hearts to, isn't who they present themselves to be, but because we are "adults" we tack the world "real" in front of love and we preserve on, following up love with words like "compromise" and "sacrifice."

Love is the easy part, as well it should be and perhaps if we remember how quickly it comes (and how quickly it fades) we wouldn't be so quick to grab ahold of it and declare it to be "real" before we see how we grow and traverse the rough roads together.

Day Six: Breaking Up is Hard to do

I once jokingly told a friend, if they wrote a song about it, you know it must be true. It was a joke, however breaking up is no joke, it's in a song, and now just to rub salt in the wound of pithy I'm going to quote one of the great minds of our time:

Breaking up is a natural evolution when you try to figure out what you want in life. If you're with an individual who isn't moving in the same direction and at the same rate that you are, it ain't going to work. ~Usher

Okay, maybe he's not a great mind of our time per say, but when I read this quote, I had all new respect for Usher. The fact is breaking up is a natural evolution, but it is also horrible, gut wrenching pain and not just for the person who is getting broken up with but for everyone in the scenario.

While I may not be the world's foremost love expert, but I'm all over this breaking up thing.

In my early days of dating, I didn't like breaking up. If I was unhappy I basically acted completely obnoxious until the guy I was dating broke up with me. However, as I got older (and hopefully more mature) and real feelings got involved, breaking up got to be a little more complicated.

It's complicated because if you like someone enough to date them, chances are you don't really want to hurt them. However, sometimes it's better to hurt someone up front than to let things get out of hand.

I was dating this really great guy - handsome, funny, gainfully employed, and on a schedule that was completely opposite to mine. I was waking up at 5:00am to go to work and he was coming home from his server job at 2:00am. We spent time off together, but after just a few short months it became increasingly clear that while in some ways we were a great couple, in too many ways, it just wasn't a good fit.

Calling Mr.Great Guy and saying that to him out loud was HORRIBLE, and even worse, he had a few of his own issues about being 30 and 'just a server" (his words not mine). He felt like I was putting him down, he yelled, and I sat there and took it until he hung up.

Even though our relationship had only lasted a few short months, I felt raw and beaten after we got off the phone. I'll admit that I even shed a few tears, after all breaking up is hard to do.

However, recently our paths crossed again. We sat at a bar and had a drink together, we have both moved on to people that are a better fit for us and we were both genuinely happy for the other one. After all, isn't that what really caring for someone is about?

Day Five::90% Attitude

"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company ... a church ... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude ... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you ... we are in charge of our Attitudes." -Charles Swindoll

In my background of "illustrious" careers, I have the title of Bartender on my resume. (It's the job that my Mom still refers to with a note of disdain as she merely says "that job.") However, you learn alot about people when you work at a bar. It's a great place to study human behavior.

One of the more interesting lessons I learned was about attitude. It is the nature of bar business that on occasion you have a patron that has what we liked to call "the miseries." I suppose some people might call it the "blues" or "depression," but I always liked the miseries better. If you have someone that comes in all the time with the miseries then they get their own nickname "Misery Jim," for example.

I learned alot about attitude watching Misery Jim belly up to the bar night after night. The first thing I learned is that when you have a bad attitude over a prolonged period of time the only people who want to be around you are other people of like mind. Poor Jim, no one wanted to serve him because the minute you ask how he's doing he would give you a lengthy diatribe on all his ailments.

The people that took the stools around Misery Jim all liked to talk about how badly their life sucked, and about all the people who were out to get them. However in time, even other people with the miseries stop want to be around you, and then your misery becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, because you are alone and miserable.

The funny thing is, by alot of people's standards Jim life wasn't that miserable. He had a pretty good job, where he worked hard but made more than enough money to pay all his bills. He had a roof over his head, food on his table, and enough money in the bank to satisfy all of his needs.

So what caused Jim's miseries?

Jim was so busy keeping an inventory of all the things he wanted that he didn't have. All the breaks he felt were owed to him and went to someone else. If he had spent as much time keep track of his blessings as he did keep track of other people's Jim might not have been so miserable.

Day Four: Been There, Done That

Every year my Dad and I used to go fishing down is south Louisiana at Cajun Fishing Adventures, and every year on the way back we had some oddly intense discussions about a wide variety of topics. However one year things got particularly intense, when my Dad proclaimed that I kept dating the same loser over and over again.

I took exception to this for two reasons, while I've dated a loser or two, most of the men I have dated have been college educated and gainfully employed. I don't think someone who graduated from the Naval Academy could really be consider a loser by society's standards. So I was a bit defensive about the "loser" issue.

However, the bigger and more offensive issue was that my Dad said I was basically dating the same person over and over again. Which was not remotely true.

In watching the dating patterns of the people around me I've noticed there are two very popular trends. The first is to date the same "person" over and over again. Oh, the superficial characteristics may be different but the personalities are very similar to the previous relationships. We chose partners over and over again that share the same flaws as the partners before - they are controlling, unfaithful, or perhaps untrustworthy.

The other popular trend is what I like to call defensive dating, and it is far less common. People who practice defensive dating claim their previous relationship to be such a spectacular failure that they find someone who is the exact opposite of their previous relationship.

The problem with both of these methods is that there is no consideration made to what the person actually NEEDS out of a relationship. Let's face it, if one relationship with a controlling partner didn't work out, chances are another controlling person isn't going to work out any better. The defensive dater on the other hand is coming from a position of complete over kill, perhaps the relationship didn't work out because of a small issue but they blindly jump into a different frying pan determined that it will be different and therefore better.

I prefer to think of dating as a journey, I may not have always been traveling on the right road but the end destination is a healthy relationship and I have to believe each relationship gets me closer to that goal.

Day Three::The Rules of the Play Ground Still Apply

When I was in school, grade school through high school, maintaining friendships was pretty easy.Eevery year you were exposed to some new and interesting people and through the shared misery of math class, mean spirited nuns, or whatever - friendships were foraged. The best friendships were cemented by shared "off time," notes passed in between class, and lots of phone time.

Things got a little more difficult in college, you don't see the same people for every class, let alone for a whole year. However through sorority life, the binds of friendship were foraged. This time they were strengthened by some tried and true methods - notes left on doors, the occasional phone calls, but more often than note by crazy adventures (and some misadventures).

We live in a time where we have all the advantages as far as staying connected with our friends. Where my Mom kept in touch with girlfriends via expensive long distance calls and snail mail, we have free long distance thanks to our cell phones, instantaneous email, and a variety of other tools to assure that we stay connected but still we manage to drift apart.

I am ashamed to admit that as an adult I seem to have forgotten the important lessons of friendship I learned in my youth. Friends are harder to make and those true kindred spirits, those best friends are even harder to come by. In the last year of my life I really looked back at all the technological advantages I have, the wonderful people that I've met, and I wondered where it all went wrong for me?

I believe that we all learn at a pretty early age, that romantic relationships require work; however, we expect other relationships to come effortlessly.

I think for me the best real life example I have is the relationship I have with my sister. At six years younger than me, we didn't seem to have anything in common growing up. We have such very different interests that as we got older we seemed to move further and further apart, rather than closer together.

At some point the light really came on for me, and I realized that of course we weren't very close - we hardly talked at all, which was as much my fault as it was hers. I set a small goal of trying to call her at least once a week, and for the most part I do. I admit that we don't talk every week, but on occasion we talk several times a week. I'm starting to have the relationship I always wanted with my sister.

The important thing for me is to remember that the things we learned about friendship are still important in our grown up lives, friendship is still about "passing notes," phone calls, and the occasional adventure (or misadventure). Sure the notes we pass, the length of the calls may have changed but the satisfaction of maintaining a friendship never fades with time.

Day Two::A Heart Divided

There were too many quotes to go with this little "blurb," so frankly I decided to take an usual stance and not include any of them. I thought instead I would make vague references to them. In the Bible it talks about how you cannot serve two masters, theologians seem to like to pick which two masters, but the simplistic point that will serve me here is that you cannot be divided within yourself. There's also quotes about how we must stay together or die apart, a house divided cannot stand - surely you see where all of this is going?

It's widely accepted, and agreed, that the surest way to disaster is to allow yourself to be pulled in too many different directions, and yet as human beings we are always trying to push that envelope. However, this generally agreed upon wisdom is exceptionally true when you are dealing with relationships and the human hearts. One of the biggest mistakes most people in dating is settling with the wrong person for too long. The problem is if you are investing too much of yourself in the wrong relationship - you will never find the right relationship.

You have to realize there are a lot of wonderful, attractive people in this world who just aren't going to be "the one" for you for any number of reasons, and you have to just accept that they aren't the one and move forward. It's easy to look at all the wonderful qualities someone has, or the things you have in common, or the chemistry you share. However, if they aren't meeting your needs then ultimately you are going to have to deal with the fact that you are either going to have to make sacrifices just to be with that person (which will ultimately cause you to resent them over time) or you will have to move on.

I'll even give you an example from my own life, just over a year ago I spent some time with a fascinating man. I found him very attractive, he was well read, well traveled, and we had the most wonderful conversations. We had shared interests ranging from greasy cheeseburgers to the Opera. So what's the problem? The concession I would have to make to have him in my life is that there would ALWAYS be other women hanging around, even if they were given the label of "just friends" (In truth they would be more like vultures circling an animal in the desert waiting for it to die more than they would be "friends.") they would always be there. Frankly, my self esteem is not strong enough to deal with other people in my relationships on a long-term basis so he had to go.

Sure, there is comfort in settling. The comfort of the known versus the discomfort of the unknown, but what you have to realize is that only in confronting the unknown can you find the relationship you are looking for.

If I had settled with that guy we would still be going to the Opera together and enjoying dinner at Jerry's Drive In, but I would've missed meeting Jeremy, who I not only find to have all the good qualities the other guy had BUT I'm more than enough woman for him, all by myself and that makes me feel happy and secure.

Day One::The First Step

"The first step to getting what you want, is deciding what you want." ~Unknown

I saw that statement on a tee shirt recently, and it struck me as rather obvious. It's a concept that we talked about alot in my college courses (Public Relations and Marketing). They always taught us as nice as it would be to think that we can reach everyone with our message, there's very very few messages that have universal appeal so first things first - decide who you want to reach (or select your target audience). However, the more I really thought about the quote, the more I realized maybe it's just not as obvious as it should be.

Anyone who knows me also knows that I took the scenic route in completing my education. There are several factors in this, but the biggest is really that when I left school without my degree I didn't really have any concept of what I wanted to do with my life. I had no direction at all and therefore the degree didn't seem that important to me.

A few years of working full time and I learned quickly that the degree I had been so dismissive of was more important than I ever imagined. Even without knowing exactly what I wanted to do, I knew that I had to have a degree to do anything I really wanted to do and it gave me purpose when I went to go back and finish. That purpose helped drive me to the Dean's List my last year of college.

It's easy to see how you have to know where you want to go in your career or school to really get there, but the same thing is true of our personal lives and for some people that concept is a little more difficult to grasp. It's easy to strive for the goal to be happy, but to really be happy you have to consider what you need to be happy. A book full of friends phone numbers? Dates every night of the week? A house with a white picket fence, 2.5 kids, and a cat sleeping on cushion near the fireplace?

Any goal is ultimately attainable, but you have to take the time to set the goal and realize what you'll need to get where you want to be.

You also have to know that it's okay to go "off roading" sometimes, as long as you return to the path you've set for yourself. But that's for another time...