Nice Syndrome

There is one large problem with being Nice: when you’re single at the same time. If you’re a nice person and single, you can’t talk to people with them trying to think of someone they can set you up with because, well, you’re nice.

I mean, who has never used that phrase when trying to set you up. That is the go-to description when a set-up is trying to happen.

And then there is the fact you can never talk to the opposite sex, because if you’re nice to them, then you must be flirting with them.

Why can’t you just be nice?

Because I’m a nice girl and out going, I’ve given up being friends with guys, because since I hit the swan stage* of life almost ever guy I was “just friends” with has eventually wanted more.

And then when you start telling people this they start encouraging you to the contrary of your instincts. You see I know myself well enough to know when a guy is strong enough to keep up with me, and so far there have been very few I thought would be able to and even they have never made a move. And because of this I don’t settle. I know what I want and I’ve never been the girl for trial and error, which seems to be the philosophy of our culture, so I hate when people try to talk me into guys that are definitively not for me.

So what’s the solution? The only one I can come up with is to dress ugly and hit people with a big stick with nails jutting out of it.

But then that hardly the nice thing to do, is it?

*I was totally an ugly duckling growing up. I didn’t hit my grown up stretch until college. And even then I still didn’t feel like a grown up till a couple years ago, and even that’s negotiable.

Time

Time flies when you're having fun, which is true, but even more so I think time flies when you have a car. I recently had a birthday (thus the reason I missed a day last week) and I am now a quarter of a century old. That makes me look back on life and feel like I haven't accomplished much. I have a long list of to-do's before I die, and haven't gotten very far on many of them. But that's when I realized I spent the first 25 years of my life learning. You don't get the chance to accomplish as much as you would like, because you're to busy learning how to do what you love, and even what it is that you love.

That's why I propose the the following break up of live stages: Learning, Loving, Living, Leaving. Like I said the first 25 years you're learning everything from walking to advanced mathematics. Then there's the next 25 years where you should understand yourself fairly well and are able to do the the things you love. Writing and traveling are my two biggest right now and I'm trying to follow through on those. The 25 years after that are Living. You've finally gone through enough of life that you understand the power of the moment, and you try to get the most life out of every moment that you have. Then there's the last 25, where you prepare to leave. Things don't matter quite as much and you start giving them to those that need them. You try to connect with your family as much as you can, and being right seems less important. Now these are finite rules, and to me it makes me work harder to achieve a since of balance between the four. I don't want wait till I'm 50 to start living in the moment, and since you never know when you're moment is, I always want to be prepared to leave gracefully from this world. So I try to pull all of these moments together into a consistent, which isn't always successful, but does bring about a more fulfilling life.

But maybe I missed a moment, What are you life stages?

When you least expect it....

Something very interesting has happened to me as of late. I have finally just accepted that I’m going to be single for a while longer, since there are no boys in this area to pick from. And I’m happy with this, truly. However, on Easter my best friend called me (we’ll call her Married Victoria since in real life her and Victoria have the same name, we’ll keep it going in the blog too) telling me that she thinks she’s found a guy for me. Now Lynn lives several states away from me and has made this statement before, but apparently this one she’s semi- connected to since he was in her youth group growing up (as opposed to her creeper days of taking the long distance photos of boys she works with for me). Well it’s been a couple weeks of his-mother-told-her-mother-to-tell­-me-to kind of stuff till she finally broke down and messaged him, telling him who she was and who I was and hoping she didn’t sound like a creeper. I was laughing while she told me about it and the fact that Vegas Victoria (yep, another Victoria. Really they enter my life in spades) messaged her on Facebook giving her blessing and encouragement to the whole situation. I think I might start getting a little paranoid, But in a fun kind of way.

But, if this had happened to me last year, I would have been all over getting this guy to notice me, like a ribbon on a maypole. Last year I was slightly depressed, friendless, and hating my job to the point of, I wonder if I’m really doing God’s will for my life. However I’m happy with life now and where I’m at and don’t need this to give me sanity. Maybe that’s why this is happening now? Who knows, but I have learned a couple things from this situation.

1. “When you least expect it” really means “in unexpected ways.” If you’ve ever been single for any length of time you’ve heard the phrase it will happen when you least expect it. This was always a troubling thought to me because I always seemed to expect it. I’m a writer which means I have an over active imagination. So whenever I met anyone new, but especially boys, I play out 500 different possibilities for how this new person will play out in my life, anywhere from the very bad to the very best. So because of this default in my brain, I wasn’t sure how “least expect it” could happen.

Now I know that it’s unexpected ways. Since I had resigned myself to the fact that boys I wouldn’t want to kill after one day of dating, let alone marriage, don’t exist in my town, and internet dating really isn’t for me, I figured I have to wait till I got another job in another town to find someone, but if this kind of random can happen once, it could happen again, which is encouraging.

2. God can pull a guy out of thin air. This kind of goes with the first point, but I think it’s even more true. Right now, I don’t know if I’m ever even going to talk to this guy let alone a relationship developing. But I feel like in a way God is encouraging me. Telling me that I really don’t have to worry about this part of my life and dreams anymore because when the time is right God can bring a guy out of thin air for me, and that makes me for the moment- very passive about the whole thing, knowing that if it’s meant to be, it will happen. Otherwise, God seems very good and pulling Men out of thin air for me.

3. God always wants to be your savior. I’m pretty sure if any guy had shown interest in me a year or so ago, I would have thrown myself head first into the relationship, whether or not it was a good idea. But that would have caused me to see the boy as my savior from a horrible moment in life, instead of God, who wound up answering my prayers and sending me to a great place where I’m truly happy. So now, looking back on that moment, I see why I was single: because any relationship at that point of life would not have been healthy. Looking back, I can see many reasons why I’m still single, but that’s another post entirely. The point is, God always wants to be the reason for the good things in your life- because he is.

Well that’s what I’ve learned so far. Who knows if any more lessons will come of this situation, but it’s going to be interesting for a little while at least. But what lessons have you learned from the blind date scene- or even the hopelessly single scene?

Uncertainty

So one thing that is great about living on your own is complete control of you decor. I love to decorate. And what’s more I love to decorate on a budget. I like the thrill of making something out of junk. Right now I have an old screen that used to be in a window to hang my earrings on. I made my desk out of a door, a buffet, and wooden boxes I put together. I just love the challenge of making one man’s junk into another man’s treasure. The only sad thing about this is I think I’m running out of room for my creations, which means one of two things: Replace old things, or move.

This is the difficult thing. Since I went to college I haven’t had a year where I wasn’t packing up and moving. Whether it was from college back home or cross country I’ve been moving, moving, moving. And I wanted to have a couple years where I stayed put and didn’t move but now I’m wondering if it’s possible for me to stay put. Maybe I have ADD with my living arrangements. Some people might say that makes since with the organization of my life- aka I’m not exactly the cleanest person. I just see better uses of my time than constantly tiding up, and as long as I’m able to find things it doesn’t really bother me.

I’m not really sure where all this is going. I guess I just wanted to share part of my life. Something that’s an uncertainty, because we all have them, especially when we’re single. Because if you’re like me, you know that you want to get married, but you don’t want to sit around waiting and twiddling your thumbs by the phone. So you start to develop this duel plan for life: a plan for being single, and you hypothetical life for if you married. So no matter how much you plan, there’s always uncertainty in your life, of course I’m sure the uncertainty continues as you go on in more ways than I’ve anticipated. But then, I’m used to rolling with the punches.

What have you learned to roll with?

Reminder Movie

Don’t you hate it when a guy won’t leave you alone? Now, I’m not talking about the actuality of the sentence, that’s a whole other post in it’s self. But what I’m talking about on this occasion is when you want/need to stop thinking about a guy and can’t.

This has happened to me recently and I knew it needed to stop, I just wasn’t sure how to make my mind realize this. There were two reasons why this guy would never work out. Number one is I’m pretty sure he never gives me two thoughts of his life let alone day, and number two is I know he’s not the right guy for me. But still my mind wouldn’t leave it alone.

The hardest part is that there was a moment where it seemed like something would happen, and then didn’t, most likely because he didn’t have the guts to do anything about it. So this one moment sent my mind into a downward spiral of not giving up hope. Something that threatened to drive me crazy and maybe it even did a little. But still, I knew I had to fight this girl disease.

I always mocked the girls that siphoned away their day mooning over boys that wouldn’t give them the time of day, and now I had become one, a closet case, but a girly girl none the less, and that in itself was enough to drive me crazy.

But finally after a long struggle of back and forth healing and renewal of this madness, I came to a very strong ending of it. I realized that I want someone better. This moment of brilliance was given to me by what I now call "My Reminder Movie." It's the movie I will now pull out to remind myself of what I want/need in a guy. And what is my reminder movie you ask? The Proposal is what finally cured the disease and along with it the understanding that I want one of "those guys." The guy that I couldn’t get out of my mind, definitely not that strong of a personality which is something I need.

And now, when and if the disease ever strikes again, I’ll pull out the Proposal and remind myself of the type of guy I actually want/need, and hopefully the moment will pass quicker than the last until the right guy comes along.

Maybe I need a trip to Alaska…..

What’s you reminder movie?

Full Throttle

So let me start by saying that I absolutely love my life right now. I'm doing many of the things that I love and have many friends that I love both near and far, not to mention a great family and church.

But sometimes I still wonder "Is this is?"

Sometimes I just want to quit this life and become a gypsy. Travel the world, sampling all it wares and cultures. Write and paint and dance and whatever else comes my way. I wonder what my life would be like if I had become a paleontologist (a dinosaur guru for those of you who read that word and feel it tickling the back of your brain) That was what I wanted to be until the third grade when my Dad broke it to me that there wasn't a high calling for paleontologists, so I went to my back up of teacher, which eventually evolved to children's minister: teaching without government restrictions, which is a great fit for me, since to many rules tend to make me subversively rebellious.

There seem to be so many moments like this in life: What if I had actually gone backpacking in Europe, will I ever get to do that, What if I had stayed in Vegas after my internship, what if I had decided to try for a missionary position in Germany (does it make me a bad Christian that it terrified me to try?)

All the questions to unknown paths in life, and yet I have no regrets. If anything these push me harder to live life full throttle. And maybe by going full speed ahead, I'll get the chance to live some of these moments.

All I know is that I'm taking it one step at a time and enjoying every moment.

And the green grass grows all around all around…..

As I glance out my window, I notice something that looks like the Trolls that were beg in the 90’s popping its head out next to my mail box. Who ever decided those things were cool? I actually had a few, I even still have a pair of troll earrings which I claim to keep around for the sake of my job (remember, I work with kids) but secretly I really do like them, except for the fact that when I was younger I decided to give one of them a hair cut.

Ok, So it’s not really a troll in my front yard. What it is really is decorative grass that is growing back from it’s winter hibernation. I don’t really care for the stuff, but I rent so I don’t really have a huge say in the landscaping of my place. Sometimes I think about moving out and getting house to call my very own, but then I remember that I hate mowing so I stay put.

It’s moments like this that make me wish I was married. Of course there are fleeting moments when I remind myself that those are the wrong reasons for marriage.

But what single person doesn’t have those thought from time to time how much greener the grass must be on the other side. I mean when you’re married, you have someone that shares the house work with you, someone to go places with, someone that helps the financial situation, etc. etc. etc. But then I have quite a few married friends that say the see me with the greener side of life. I’m free to do what I want, to get up and go, I don’t have to juggle 6 different schedules, or to clean up after any one than myself.

When you get down to it, every has those moments of: “Life would be better if….” Married, single, with kids, without kids, living in the USA, or abroad, in school, out of school and the list goes on and on.

I acknowledge this. And I think that acknowledgement is what helps me see that I really love my life right now. I have my moments or days or weeks of the desire of marriage coming to the foregrounds of my life again, but I still know that I’m happy and wouldn’t want to change a thing. I find joy from this moment in life, and in the next moment, and so on and so forth.

I guess what I’m saying is I like my grass. What about you?

P.S. I had no clue where the troll story was going, that’s how it is with a lot of my writing, I’m going along with the journey same as you are. Enjoy.

Compound creatures

If you’ve never noticed, the world is made up of compound creatures. There’s the Pineapple, my personal favorite, and it counterpart the platypus. There is also the eggplant, the pear tomato, and sunflowers, just to name a few.

Now none of these are literal compounded creatures, but only the semblance of two or more “others.” And the greatest thing about these is how much life relates to them. I mean pineapples themselves are a picking of truth in relationships. Quirky on the outside, sweet on the inside, and none of them quite the same, even though they have the same basic parts. Then there’s things like the eggplant, where only some live up to the name (fact: There are actually eggplants that look like eggs, thus the reason they got their name. It wasn’t until this name had been established that purple oblong ones came along. If you don’t believe me- Wikipedia-it) and the rest are only posers (I’m sure you have someone in mind as you read this) And then there are those of us that are sunflowers in life, truly beautiful, and reminding us of greater things in the world. And really, that’s where it’s at. We are all compound creatures. Beings made of part truth and part illusion. We were meant to be completely truth. Much more than a sunflower claims, or any of the other compound creatures, but we have lost ourselves along the way. Well, not really along the way, but more like at the beginning. I know what your thinking- “she’s going to do the corny Christian thing of spelling sun- son and all that.” But no, not really. I’m just being reminded of the fact that we all are human, just as we were meant to be, just as the sunflower is really a flower.

But we all want to be more than that, just like if sun flowers could talk I’m sure they would say something along the lines of “man, if I really were a sun, think of all the good I could do. I could make sure everyone has food, and that everyone warm, and that everyone has light. Think how great the world would be.” And we’ve all had sunflower moments. Yes we’re human, but we were made in the image of God. So we all have moments of “man, if I was God, think of all the good I could do. I would make sure that everyone had food, and that everyone was warm, and give world peace. Wow, think of how great a world that would be.” But we forget about the consequences of retracting free will. For to force that upon the world would be to change what we are entirely. Making us less than sunflowers, or pineapples or eggplants. It would make us grass, or potatoes, or dogs: Whole one dimensional and lacking in our other half- our divine half.

So personally, I’ll take the compound life with all it’s problems for now, because I know it fleeting, then I won’t be a poser of an eggplant, I’ll be more. I’ll be a Starfruit, wholly both of my halves, in complete harmony, how God intended me to be. But for now, I’ll be the best pineapple I can be until my day of fulfillment comes.

P.S. Sorry Victoria for stealing your sunflowers, I really meant it to be about pineapples, but those tricky sunflowers snuck in there…)