Tag: advice

block ‘em, block ‘em all!!!!

The holidays scare away all the boys who only want to come over after 10:36 p.m. They don’t return until after the yucky cuffing and cuddling season is over, until the fireworks are in the air and it’s a new year so the coast is clear!!! The Women Are Over Their Need To Have A Fulfilling Relationship. We Are Safe Until October.

They’ll be the first to wish you happy new year and the first to swipe up on your selfies and reply on Snapchat. They’ll even send you a DM of your own Instagram picture and tell you how delicious you look (because you do!) but they won’t comment publicly. Of course not.

One will tell you how much he missed you and how busy he was, and you’ll think Really? Busy in the middle of this pandemic, even? Wow gosh gee whiz. How surprising! Except for the part where it isn’t surprising because it never is. This would be the third chance you’ve given him to suddenly fall in love with you and not just use you like a blowup doll. Do you think the third time’s a charm?

One will say he just used this time to really focus on work, and you’ll ask Oh well have you become very successful then? Have you lived up to your big talk about how much money you can make? And he will say this new year looks very promising, very lucrative, and can you send a picture?

One will say he shut everybody out, it’s not just you. He barely talked to his friends, even. He’s so sorry about that. So so sorry, it wasn’t cool. So can he come over? He can’t stop thinking about your body.

What about a personal favorite of mine, he has really grown so much this past year. He’s so thankful for everything, and hopes you are too. He hopes you want to hear about how much he has bettered himself. He knows his path, but he forgot your address, can you send it so he can come in 30 minutes to just hang out and catch up? In bed?

Getting a cute little Snapchat when you’re drinking a glass of wine alone watching a movie that says “ha ha ha ha ha get drunker and send cleavage pics“ should make you throw up in your mouth and hit block. Do it, I dare you. I double dog dare you.

Then hold up your wine tumbler that keeps the rosé cold and cheers to how great your cleavage will look in the face of the actual man who loves you, when that happens. SPOILER ALERT: it will happen, and it will happen so good. Cheers to the dirty dirty dirty sex you’ll have with a man you didn’t give it up to until you were exclusive. And fucking cheers to saying goodbye to these losers and waiting for a little thing called true love, baby!

warming my hands on bridges I’ve burnt, and why that’s okay according to Aristotle

I lost a couple friends this past year and I didn’t give a shit.

And I thought,
Am I sad enough about this?

I thought,
Did I really care about those friendships or did I waste my time on people who I shouldn’t have for too long?

I thought,
Am I being heartless?

I thought,
Will people think I’m a bad friend for being honest about not caring that much?

Then I remembered one of my favorite philosophy classes from college about relationships, and how different philosophers have defined them.

Aristotle said there are three types of friendships: one based on utility, one based on pleasure, and one on mutual appreciation of each other’s values.

A friendship based on utility is basically a relationship that lasts as long as you’re both getting something out of it. Like a transaction. Sort of like a coworker who you’re only work friends with for as long as you’re at that job. Once you leave, you don’t see them again and they don’t see you again but you mutually benefitted from being positive to each other while you were at work. Aristotle said this is popular with older people.

A friendship based on pleasure is more emotional and supposed to usually be the shortest relationship. You stay friends for as long as you both enjoy the same thing, and you break up as soon as one person doesn’t.

Aristotle said the pleasure friendship is more common between younger people because as we grow we tend to change our interests and values, so we grow out of pleasure friendships quicker than the other types.

The third type of friendship is based on virtues, and it has the strongest connections and lasts the longest. The best friendships should be based on appreciation of character — not on a transactional (utility or pleasure) value — and shape our lives for the better.

I think this really explains why I wasn’t sad about the friends that I lost this year.

One was a girl who I went out drinking with and talked about guys we were dating. We would meet up and both hop on dating apps and squeal about who we had matched with, who we’d met, and who we were dating for a while, but once I stopped caring about those things we ended up really not having anything else in common. We didn’t even like the same music or shows. Our friendship was a pleasure transaction, and as soon as I stopped using dating apps we stopped being friends.

I ended up not missing her at all as soon as we stopped being friends because she didn’t really add anything else to my life. Our values weren’t the same at all: we couldn’t relate about our jobs, our education level was different, and we had different political views. The death of our friendship was short-lived and unmourned. I actually felt better knowing I didn’t have to talk to her again, because I didn’t want to talk about the same things we used to.

Aristotle said that when you have a friendship based on appreciating each other’s values, the other two types of friendship naturally combine into it, too. Thing of your diehard BFFs that you’ll drive to the airport, invite over to watch 90 Day Fiancé, and help out during a hard time. They’re beneficial and pleasurable, and you also respect and care for them.

I’m extremely thankful for all of my top tier friends and I’m cool with warming my hands on the bridges I’ve burned with my limited time only buddies.

thinking about escaping

Last night at 2am I was looking through month-long Airbnb stays in Seattle, Nashville, Chicago, and New York. They’re all places a younger me thought I might end up. Young me thought I’d just be able to move across the country to somewhere I’ve never even been.

I was thinking about looking for a job in another state and just leaving and starting over. The only thing that has ever held me back is me missing my friends. When I was 19 my whole family moved away without me so I know I don’t need to live near them to be okay, but I definitely prefer living near them.

And then there’s the stupid part of my brain that’s more psychological, that doesn’t want to close any doors or finalize any maybes. By this I mean I’m afraid to leave because what if I was meant to be with one of the guys I dated, and if I leave to another state he’ll never get the chance to love me and I miss out on a relationship. I know that’s awful and that’s the worst part.

As if one of my dating app matches is Prince Charming. (But there’s never a 0% chance that he’s not…)

I can make new friends, get a new job, visit my family a few times a year. Maybe dating is easier in a place where there are actually seasons. Maybe my guy is waiting for me in a coffee shop in Portland or a bar in New York.

It’s actually laughable that I could ever imagine that my soulmate lives in Orange County.

I think I might explore the idea of taking a weekend here and there to visit a new city until I find the one that feels like home.

I have a thing for tall guys with glasses, maybe I should try Seattle? I love an English or Irish accent… should I think bigger?

I just watched The Holiday and I cried the entire time because I want to be Reese Witherspoon and have Jude Law sweep me away in a little cottage outside of London. I want so badly to just run away from everything I know and find something new and unexpected.

I really want to swap lives with someone for a couple weeks. I don’t know if I want to permanently vanish from life as I know it, but I definitely want to make a disappearance.

I remember staying a week in Ireland when I was 19 and I thought how amazing it would be to just move there. To have a little house near the neighborhood pub and meet up with my friends after work.

I’ve tried romanticizing my life but there’s not much to romanticize. I think I just need to do something soon to add some flair to it. I want just one good movie moment, especially before I get too old and it’s too late. Your 20s are supposed to be filled with adventure and I just haven’t done anything remarkable yet.

Have you ever done anything drastic like moved across the country or to another country? And what were the pros and cons?

on being spiteful

The thing about being spiteful is you really only end up hurting yourself. Put down the can of Spite.

I think one of the main reasons why I have achieved what I have achieved is not something to be proud of. I am a person who works better when I am trying to prove something. I am a person that works harder because I don’t ever want to be a victim of anything.

I am a spiteful person.

When somebody does something to you and you get hurt, I think you get to choose whether you use that moment to propel you forward or to set you back.

I, like most people, have been burned a lot. By friends, by boyfriends, by coworkers, and family. But I don’t know whether how I handle it is entirely healthy. I tend to internalize things and out of spite I decide that I need to work hard to prove that I didn’t deserve that treatment.

I have a family member that lives to bring people down. They don’t put any effort into their own wellbeing or personal growth but they love to bash everyone else and judge everyone else for their actions. They lie, cheat, steal, and use other people and never care at all about how it effects the people that love them.

You could get recognized for something cool at work or at school, and they’d say it only happened because you’re a suckup or you got lucky. They know how to push your buttons just right because it’s the only thing they’re good at, the only skill they’ve applied themselves to. And I could write a whole other essay about how shitty saying someone is only successful because they “got lucky” is.

My response to that kind of behavior has been to prove that I can and will be better than that. I worked twice as hard, literally at two jobs, while they did drugs and insulted the family members we lived with. I got accepted to every college I applied for while they got denied, and I felt good.

I know you aren’t supposed to compare yourself to other people, and that’s my biggest flaw. For all of my virtues, for every time that I don’t lie, cheat, or steal, I make myself feel empowered by comparing myself to the people I know that do.

I dated someone that struggled to get a career doing what he loved, and my response after he dumped me was to get my dream job. Instead of working through the pain of a breakup, I worked for an entire year to make sure that I was nowhere in the same league of success as him. I wish I would have taken the time to grieve, to be sad and angry, because those emotions came later. They all flooded back like fresh wounds after I got what I wanted, and I kept cyberstalking him to make sure that he was still a loser and that what I did was worth it.

I thought that if he ever saw me again or looked at my social media profiles, he would see how much better I was doing and it would hurt and annoy him. I want my family member to look at my life and see that their life doesn’t shine as brightly because they are a pitch black pit of negativity. For all the pain they cause my family and me, I want to send it back harder with my success.

I hate flakiness and when my friends don’t follow through with their plans, so I set weird timelines for not looking at their snapchat stories, not replying to their texts, and not making plans with them. I asked you to go with me to an event two weeks ahead of time and you cancelled the day of? See you in six months, and don’t expect a text back from me until after I went to that cool new place you’ve been wanting to go to.

If I wasn’t so spiteful maybe I could stop and slow down and enjoy the life I have built. Maybe I would have more friends and be less successful, and maybe that would be okay. Maybe I’d be happier?

I’ve been trying to work on finding other reasons to push myself. I have been trying to stop comparing myself to other people and make time to stop and appreciate what I already have.

Being a spiteful person is mentally taxing. Because I don’t say spiteful things, or lash out at people to hurt them, in fact I really don’t think anyone would call me a spiteful person at all. But I do it all internally, and at the end of the day the only person who gets harmed is me. It’s very passive aggressive.

This is hard to write, and harder to come to terms with. I hope someone else out there feels like this and has a strategy to battle it. How do you deal with comparing yourself to others, and how do you motivate yourself in a healthy way?