You know, I have accepted that oftentimes I can be very cynical about things, the world in general, and most importantly people…and it isn’t a good thing even if it feels like I’m protecting myself from negativity (when in reality I am becoming it). Somehow the kids got me to watch Annie again Let me stop lying, I have the kids watching Annie again (the Jamie Foxx version, because…ya know?).
Truthfully, storyline is a typical idealistic fantasy (it’s the entertainment business, I get it) but the message of tomorrow providing new opportunities we didn’t have today is honestly a good mindset to have. Whether you are religious/spiritual or not, keeping positive in the face of negativity and adversity really is the best way to have the right mindset when those opportunities eventually present themselves.
I’m not saying anyone should be blind to the realities of life, there are a LOT of really shitty people out there, all I’m saying is not to BE one of those shitty people just to “protect” yourself.
Anyway, watch it (again) for yourself and see if you get anything different.
Just had a conversation with the boy, he was explaining to me that his baby sister’s LED holiday necklace bullshit trinket wasn’t working (they have matching ones…because…).
I asked him if he wanted to give his to her, since his worked, his answer was a quick nope! So, I turned my dad brain on and asked him which was more important to him, that he was happy or that his sister was happy (I’ll explain my theory on this in a later episode of THE Most Awesomest Dad Ever!) and, as expected, he knew that this was part of his job to protect his sister so he said hers was.
The boy then took his to her and, without telling her that he switched them, gave it to her. He didn’t sulk, he just accepted that was what needed to be done.
But here is where the story gets good (to me, mainly because they both used to live in my balls), she came to my office a few minutes later to ask me if I knew what her favorite holiday was. Because I’m not clairvoyant and she is a 6yr old, of course I didn’t know. Her response was that it is the 4th of July because her brother’s birthday is the next day (I couldn’t make this up if I tried, well maybe if I tried hard, but I digress). The little crumb snatchers made my day that easily.
Wait…there’s more…Thing 2 somehow fixed the problem on Thing 1’s goofy ass necklace so now both of them work, and they’re off to school happy not knowing what amazing things they expressed on this random Tuesday morning.
I used a white dude as the pic & this is my caption
First of all, I’m hilarious for this title…let’s get that part out of the way 😂😂😂. I’m just trying to get back on here and write semi-serious shit, then this is what I come across first.
Secondly, this is uncomfortably true and I have zero excuse for it. My genetics are good, my strength is good, my awareness is good, my effort is 💩. Strangely enough, I had a conversation with my therapist about this very issue today (not the 🍆 part, that would’ve been weird…maybe…probably) and how I’m aware of what to do to address the underlying issues. She has mentioned several times about reading The Body Keeps The Score and asked me if I’d read it yet, but I haven’t (told her, she knows about the blog too…HI!) because I left it in my Amazon cart for some reason…still exploring the reasons why this is a thing.
Gonna leave this article here for my fellow Teletubbies fighting themselves and getting ratioed in the fatboy/disappearing eggplant war:
ps…I’m back (kinda) and thinking about doing quicker posts like this more often. Let me know if you like them and add any thoughts in the comments. If you all only knew the amount of draft posts that I’ve started and left, you’d probably be praying for me (some of them are dark).
pps…this ⬇️ 😂
Le Strugglé
Oh…ppps (I know, I know…) the links are just links, no affiliate shit yet because, well, I’m too lazy and too busy right now to care🤷🏿♂️…just in case anyone was wondering.
One more (because I’m a dick)…pppps…shit, forgot what I wanted to write. Something about my abuse of the ellipsis and other poorly formatted punctuation…basically IDGAF because this is a form of diary-ish thing (and I’m nerdy enough to buy a domain for it.)
ppppps…some of yall caught what just happened, most of you won’t…and that’s hilarious to me for some reason lol
Good relationships are the foundation of a happy and fulfilling life. Whether it’s a romantic partner, a family member, a friend, or a coworker, the quality of our relationships can profoundly affect our well-being, success, and overall happiness. But what does it take to build and maintain strong relationships? Here are some tips for thriving in love and friendship:
Communication is Key
Effective communication is essential for any relationship to thrive. This means not only speaking honestly and respectfully, but also listening actively and empathetically. Take the time to really understand the other person’s perspective and feelings, and express your own thoughts and emotions clearly and constructively. Avoid interrupting or criticizing, and try to find common ground and compromise when possible. Look for ways to build trust and mutual respect through open and honest dialogue.
Prioritize Quality Time
Spending time together is another important component of healthy relationships. This means creating opportunities to share experiences, have fun, and connect emotionally. Make time regularly for date nights, family dinners, or catch-up calls with friends. Put down your phone or other distractions and be fully present with the other person. Show interest in their hobbies, passions, and goals, and share yours as well. Cultivate a sense of intimacy and closeness through quality time.
Celebrate Each Other’s Success
Another key element of strong relationships is support and encouragement. Celebrate each other’s successes and milestones, and offer a shoulder to lean on when things get tough. Show genuine enthusiasm and positivity when the other person achieves something, even if it’s small. Acknowledge and appreciate each other’s strengths and accomplishments, and provide constructive feedback when needed. By building each other up, you can create a foundation of trust and mutual respect that strengthens your bond.
Practice Self-Care
Lastly, it’s important to remember that strong relationships start with a healthy sense of self. Take care of your own mental, physical, and emotional needs, and work on your own personal growth and development. By doing so, you will be better equipped to bring positivity, love, and empathy to your relationships. Be honest with yourself about your own limits, boundaries, and expectations, and communicate these clearly with others. By taking care of yourself, you can show up as a stronger, more loving partner, friend, and coworker.
Building strong relationships takes time, patience, and effort. But by focusing on effective communication, quality time, support, and self-care, you can create deep, meaningful connections that bring joy and fulfillment to your life.
(In transparency, this was written by AI. I was testing an idea and didn’t like the results)
Aiight so boom, we have finished shitting and it is time to get off of the pot. EVERYONE knows, to some degree or another, some of the history of slavery in the United States, the Diaspora/TransAtlantic Slave Trade, and Jim Crow (whether or not they comprehend or accept it is a different story). The issue that we are running into now is that those of us who are aware have reached the point where we need to make some hard decisions about what we really want to do next…as a community.
We…and by we I mean Black Americans (including ADOS, FBA, Natives, etc.) need to put up or shut up when it comes to repairing/creating/elevating our “community.”
Please take a few moments to watch this video and acknowledge his words on the YouTube page if you are willing. Knowing others who are going, or have gone, through dealing with a cancer diagnosis is a humbling experience because you realize how little control you have over some things in your live…so work hard at the things you can control!
I wonder sometimes whether damaged people are magnetically drawn to me or if I’m drawn to them…nah, just like magnets it’s probably both at the same time. Now, in saying “damaged” I mean it in the most literal of ways (someone who has suffered damage of some sort) and not as an insult. God knows they have been through enough already and I don’t intend to add to their situation in any negative way. Life has given me the ability to empathize with people’s most painful experiences in a way I can’t truly put into words, or even understand completely.
More people have told me their darkest experiences than I can even count (literally), yet I can’t forget the details no matter how hard I tried to…and still wouldn’t anyway. Maybe it’s a form of respect for their willingness to open themselves up trusting me, or it’s a self-flagellation of sorts (had to look up the term to make sure) as punishment for my own life of random since, or even both. Growing up outside of structured religion I’ve adopted many aspects of the different belief systems over time so maybe I picked this up as a way to balance my karma. No matter why this magnetism exists, it is definitely a thing. Add to this an uncomfortable ability to pick up on the slightest patterns, usually without knowing what I’m seeing at first, and we are suddenly in the perfect storm of emotions.
Like it or not, intentionally or not, this is clearly what “Life” wants from me, somehow to shoulder a little bit of the burden of those in my charge, whether professionally, personally, or even some whom I’ve been romantically involved or interested in. It’s as if I know how to cut down into that part of them surgically and do as little additional damage as possible while trying to remove an emotional tumor they’ve had growing; the least I can do is to be the best medical practitioner I’m capable of being.
Here’s the crux, I can’t emotionally afford the liability coverage needed to keep up the work Life wants from me without some sort of help. Who can help me? Fuck if I know!!! Shit, if I knew I’d beg for their (Their?) help…or would I? Maybe I’m too proud to even accept the help I am aware is needed. Could it be due to pride?…to fear?…to feeling that burden of pain is something that I deserve? Or maybe I’m just too stupid to get out of my own way 😒
No matter how anyone else sees the experience, it feels like a fucking curse to me…and it’s my curse to deal with…
First of all, I absolutely hope not (lost a friend to this in my youth). Now that I’ve thoroughly confused you, if you’re willing, I would like for you to imagine the following:
You’re a guy who has been married for a while and has become tired of the relationship. At the same time, you realize that you aren’t in the financial place that you need to be in order to live how you would like to, so you just wait it out for a few years knowing that you want to leave.
At some point a conversation brings up you having decided to leave your spouse, that there’s nothing they can do to make it work, and that you aren’t going to tell them anything about why…however, you want to wait until it is a good time for you to leave them because it would be inconvenient right then. When you’re finally ready to go you take your children with you and tell the spouse that you want them to pay you for leaving them, breaking up your family, and taking their kids away from them. Not only that, but you also arbitrarily decide the amount should be half of their wages…because…
After all of this, how would you feel/expect your (ex) spouse to feel about you, others of your gender, and finally the idea of marriage (doing it again)? Would you expect them to have warm fuzzies about any of the above?
I’ve reversed genders in this scenario because it is what many men dread about marriage. They know there’s a good chance they may be on the receiving end of this situation, and most are helpless to do anything about it. Socially, men are usually shamed for leaving their spouses while women are celebrated for literally the same thing.
Again, without speaking from “feelings”, what is there to gain from marriage, and is that potential reward worth the odds?
Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit…but not completely. People confuse me and I hate that experience would be more accurate.
My mom raised me with this idealist view of people and the world. She definitely meant well and wanted me to focus on what is possible instead of what’s wrong. Unfortunately walking out on my own into the real world has been a horrifying experience for someone looking for good only.
Humans are inherently flawed creatures; I fall I to this category. Most in my general environment seem pessimistic to the point that they create their own feared realities. Looking for the bad in someone and drawing that bad out of them. Expecting to fail and failing because they didn’t prepare for success. All of them seem foolish until you realize that you’re doing the same damn thing too 😒
Maybe that frustration with people is more of an internal conflict that hasn’t been brought to the surface. Maybe if I deal with my own perceived inadequacies my outcomes will be different. Maybe if if was a fifth we would all be drunk.
How about this, maybe people just suck…and I’m people too.
What’s scary about my most recent revelations into my own thought processes is that it makes me amazed that the work I love to do has fucked me up in life.
I’ve had a bit of a superiority complex when it comes to my own emotions by expecting myself to be above feeling anything that I didn’t want to experience. The idea of a person’s perception being their own lived reality, accurate or not, is a new concept for me to accept…especially in me.
I have had expectation of being superior over my feelings and emotions to the point of controlling them completely. If I didn’t want to experience something then there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to control how I allowed myself to experience it. Mind over mind (matter) in a way of speaking:
“How better to control your outcome than to control every aspect of what you experience?”
To paraphrase something I heard recently, subduing your emotions is like putting trash into a compactor…the trash (energy) doesn’t go away just because you no longer see (feel) it. At some point it will be filled; you will have to dump it all out and deal with it. They said it much better but you get the analogy.
We may go through things in a way of preparing us for experiences yet to come. Some things we go through are a lesson on we should/n’t have done. And then others we go through are just the end result of what we do with no underlying message in view.
How is this for looking into my own issues? I believe that I may be attracted to women who are warm yet, emotionally unavailable, because of my relationships with the women in my family who are the same. Basically replicating the relationships that I grew up with because I’m trying to fix that lack of availability in them.
Controlling my thoughts = controlling my feelings and therefore my experience…right? How ever could this go wrong? 🙄
I’m finally accepting that I need to learn to feel how I feel about people and situations without trying to “fix it” the way that I do in just about always do right now. It’s been told to me that it is time to let my Spirit lead me instead of coming from a “clinical approach.” Sounds easier than it is, I don’t know my Spirit even though I understand (and accept) it being there as a part of who I am. (Sometime ago I wrote about using “I” too often and I’m doing it again here 🧐😏).
So, whatevs…those are my thoughts for the evening as expressed, in part, to friend & family via text messages that were reformed into this post. Oh, and as for the title, those names are FUCKING HORRIBLE, someone needs to rebrand them so they are more palatable to folks since they’re both needed.
What, you didn’t think I was going to make it back to the original topic from the title?
Mr. Analytical 