Enough WIth The White Horse Already!

I never believed in The One. Whomever you choose to marry....well, you make each other The One.

Wise words and a huge relief for this City Girl that had been inundated with messages of Finding The One and Searching For Your Soulmate since she was a little girl.

I recently sat down to lunch with a friend and poured my heart out about love and relationships, marriage and other scary grown-up topics, and verbally processed through major life decisions that had been swirling around my thoughts. And the wisdom bomb she dropped was a huge relief.

Choose wisely whom you intend to be Your One and Only, but know that whomever you choose may not look exactly like The Knight in Shining Armor.

Some men are just men, not constant heroes who respond to my every whimper and sigh. And that's more than OK.

It was good to hear that the one we all look for – as well as all the other things in life one hopes will happen – may not look exactly like Prince Charming on His White Horse, but could instead look like real life.

And real life may actually turn out to be better than the fairy tale.

Dinner For Two

A man is making me dinner tomorrow night. Making. Dinner. For me. And I should mention, this is the same guy that texted/called me every day he was gone last week. Every. Single. Day. Without missing a beat. I'm frickin' swooning over here!

Did I win the lottery? Am I dreaming? Did I accidentally tip someone $100 and rack up all kinds of lucky karma points?! 

He calls. He pays. He makes dinner. Needless to say, he makes my day.

Ships in the Nighttime

"Ships that pass in the night": Often said of people who meet for a brief but intense moment and then part, never to see each other again.

We were two ships passing each other in the nighttime. The odds of us meeting in the first place...well, it was more than coincidence. It was fate. It wasn't meaningless or for nothing. There was a reason. There was purpose. But the thing about two ships passing each other in the night is that nothing is really clear. Everywhere but the spot you're standing in is hazy. It's clouded and difficult to see. While it's amazing to meet someone in the dark of night, it's not ideal. The timing would be better in the daytime. 

Our ships crossed paths in the night a number of times and every time the timing could have been better, except we hadn't met yet or one of us was flying out when the other was flying in or one of us was living out a part of our lives in other countries or states. Whatever the reason, the timing was never quite on. A little bird told me today that our two ships had passed each other, once again, just narrowly missing one another by a day. The funny thing is it wasn't funny, because this is how it's always been: meeting up at the worst possible times or missing each other by mere hours. 

It's amazing to me how many times your ship can pass another for days or months or years without colliding or ever making contact. Makes me wonder how many other ships are out there that I have yet to pass? Will I sail past the last one again? And will it ever be in the daytime?

Lessons in Learning How to Rest, Part Six.

Lesson Six: He said. She said. Cut the chatter.

When I was a little girl I liked to pretend that I was the CEO of a company on the verge of a hostile take-over. I would hold multiple conference calls all day, shouting orders to lower level employees about how "this" was a rush and "that" had to get done by the end of the work day. My favorite part of the fantasy was the conference calls with multiple people where we all dispensed our wisdom on the subject at hand. I had watched my dad hold a number of professional phone calls as a kid, memorizing his every gesture. So, I knew exactly what to say to my imaginary conversational counterparts. Ah yes, conference calls were the best!

Now, however, my life has become one giant conference call. All day long my phone lights up while simultaneously making noise notifying me of the hundreds of people waiting to have a conversation in about fifty different ways. And I have no one to blame but myself for the constant barrage of communication. I wanted it. I was convinced that I needed it. My daily dose of advice, input, the constant clicking of tongues.

I realized this week that my childhood fantasy of talking all day long had become a nightmare. There was no light at the end of the tunnel that constantly reverberated with the hum of a million voices. No peaceful land in sight away from the white noise of conversing. And while my dad taught me the art of making a well delivered phone call, he also gave me good advice last year: "Stop listening to what everyone else has to say and just do whatever it is that YOU wanna do. Cut out the constant chatter, kid." 

So, I finally decided to take his advice this week. One year later, but I'm taking it nonetheless! I've ruthlessly stopped returning phone calls. I answer only the necessary emails in short and concise sentences that don't signal a reply. I've banished my phone to silent mode and have started leaving it in other rooms of the house, out of earshot. I've turned off. I've shut down. I've cut it all out. And I've come to a conclusion: I've known what to do all along, but stubbornly insisted on hearing everyone else out first. I don't need to have endless phone calls day and night in order to make the right decisions for me. But I do need to take a serious break from all the chatter.

Honesty is the best policy.

Tomorrow I will be spilling my guts. I'm going to be honest. Extremely, openly, gut wrenchingly honest. My hands will probably sweat. In fact, all of me will probably sweat. Most of my sentences are likely to come out jumbled and half won't make sense. I'll throw in a few uh's and um's just to fill those minuscule quiet spaces that comes between words in a sentence. And if I'm lucky, I'll be able to make my point clear. I'll be able to say what I really feel instead of words that are safe and guarded.

I just got truthful with myself this past month. And I don't know which will be more difficult: when I admitted to myself my true feelings or tomorrow when I own up to my desires.

When I finally came to terms with the fact that my heart wanted The Possibility to become a Sure Thing my whole body was shaking. I had worked so hard to close my heart off again. I had become a master of building emotional walls and playing the role of the aloof bystander of love. Nothing I said was serious. Nothing I did made anyone feel too special or wanted. I was a champion at keeping love at arm's length with both arm's tied behind my back. It was the perfect illusion.

That is until my feelings took over my heart and later my mind. I had no control over how much I cared. Most days I've probably cared too much, been too concerned or worried. It wasn't until this week that I realized that all of those things (the feelings, the hoping, the pining) are so sweet. Torturous, but sweet. And while I don't know the outcome of tomorrow's conversation, I know that my heart is in a better place. It's open again.

Directing traffic

I recently launched my biz blog and ever since then this poor little blog has been ignored, pushed aside and basically forgotten. I feel bad. I like consistency. I crave consistency! But my poor brain can only keep up with one blog at a time which is why this blog will soon be redirected to the new one. And although I know that the bulk of my readers know me and have already attached themselves to the other blog, I have a feeling there are a few more lurkers than I'm aware of. Soooo, in case you're a reader I haven't met yet, feel free to hop on over to the biz blog!

Don't worry. It's not all serious, all the time. It's like a mullet. It's only business half the time. *wink*