Stupid Media Freaks

Wow, some stupid thing just popped up on Yahoo about Superheroes being bad role models for children...for one thing, children aren't stupid, they know they can't swing around like spider-man, and for two maybe the fact that "vigilante who dons a mask at night to fight crime while using illegal weapons, with no endorsement from local law enforcement authorities" is a good message to the future generations, that we are a free country, and the government isn't and shouldn't be in charge of everything, and to do what is necessary to keep it that way. I'm not saying they should go against law enforcement, but maybe take the message from the recent movie kickass, and at least put a stop to the small injustices that haunt all of us in our day to day lives. If we have to don a little anonimity (or we just have a taste for the theatrical) to accomplish these things, then so be it, lets bring a little excitment into this world.

Advice Column

I like giving people advice, and my friends usually come to me when they want some good advice, so hopefully I give sound advice. It seems that way. I would like to take an approach to answering people's questions and problems with relationship and life in a new light. I want to help people from a Biblical standpoint, and help them to make the right decisions the way Jesus would want them to because I think that that is the way people can attain their goals in the best way possible. In this way they can attain the best outcomes with the most happiness acheived from the direction that they take based on good solid advice. It's hard for us modern day people to derive the answers we seek from ancient Biblical texts sometimes. The answers we seek on how to feel about things, how to act, and what to do in certain situations are all their and most of the time we know exactly what we should do deep inside, we just need somebody to reiterate it or shove us in the right direction. However, since these answers can be hard to find sometimes, and our exact life situations are not in the Bible, that's what I am here for, to find you your answers, and give the advice that you need to hear. So... write to me! I'm ready and waiting, and I just want to help.

Love vs. Ego

It occurred to me while reading an interesting little book by a local author, that he was right about a few things that I hadn't thought of before. Wow, there's an anomaly huh? Somebody thought of something I didn't? Just kidding. Anyways, I was reading the first chapter of his book, which was about love and energy and what we are all made up of, which is energy, and he brought ego into it. It's amazing how much we want to love and be loved in our lives, all of us strive after it at one time or another, and different types of love as well, but nothing gets in the way of love better than ego.
When you're fighting with your teenage daughter, and you know that you can't let her win, and that you have to be right, that's your ego. Maybe you're daughter has made some valid points in the argument, and maybe even bested you a few times, but you've got to keep going because of your ego. I realise that you are the parent, and what you say needs to be obeyed for your child's own good, but ego can still carry a fight farther than it needs to go.
This doesn't seem as obvious in relationships with your children as it is so much more obvious in our relationships with our significant other's. That is why i chose to use the example of the teenage daughter first. However, as far as romantic relationships go, it's just as difficult to deal with if not more so, because you can't pull the parent card, and just end up being "right" whether you really are or not, because you're dealing with a peer. Yes ladies, men are our peers, however inferior to us we think they act sometimes. :-)
Anyways, joking aside, I think that so many divorces could be prevented, and so much happier marriages could be attained if we could just put aside our egoes. Egoes cause us to be jealous, even when there may not be a reason for jealousy, but we think, "well, if he's off flirting at the bar with the guys, then I'm going out with the girls and we're going to get really wild." Most likely he's playing video games or poker or tinkering with something in the shop with his friends then out dancing and partying with a bunch of big boobed sluts. We just let our imaginations run wild with us sometimes, and can't help ourselves. We can't take the blow to our ego that he wanted to hang out with his friends for a few hours instead of going shopping for new bathroom towels with us, or whatever we're doing, it doesn't have to be something boring like that. We shouldn't take things so personally, I know it's hard as women, but they don't mean it personally, so they probably don't even realise we're taking it that way. Or they make us really mad, so we stab in with some comment that we know will be a hurtful blow to their ego, just to get even. We are always attacking each other, or trying not to let them "pull the wool over our eyes" because we'll feel stupid, or let them get their way, because what you want to do is "more important."
There are couples that are always fighting, and always trying to be "right" or convince the other person to see things their way. You often hear conversations that go "well, I think this, well I think that, well this is what I think we should do." The formula for these relationships started out with me + I = ego(squared)= lack of communication, which is the equation for disaster or divorce. If we just tried something more like:
1 cup patience
1 cup of understanding
2 cups of love
1 Tablespoon of you
and a tiny pinch of me for flavoring
then you'd be able to build a fantastic triple layered cake with love on the bottom holding up the cake, communication in the middle, holding things together, and selflessness on top because selflessness is close to godliness. Most people like cake better than math, so which are you gonna pick? The cake? Or the equation? You're ego? Or a happy, loving relationship?

How to...Deal with Fake Girls

There is a creature, so beautiful, so graceful, so elegant, soft curves, sweet smile, so enticing, and yet so deadly, so sneaky, so manipulative, and so vindictive that the poor half of the species unfortunate enough to be born a male, does not stand a chance. However, fortunately for the male portion of the species, (which God in His infinite wisdom provided this safeguard for their protection) a female only brings out her wiles to the fullest when dealing with other females of the human species. She is stronger, sharper, more deadly and more vindictive when dealing with another woman, especially when she feels threatened. Even if she has absolutely no reason to feel threatened in the first place. Here's the thing that is so endearing, and such an envious quality in men, they get along with each other, and try as we might, women were just not meant to get along with each other and ever fully trust each other. Every woman knows that as soon as you let your guard down with another woman, she will see it as a weakness, and you lose. You may just lose your self respect, or you may lose your boyfriend, it all depends on how vindictive you "friend" is feeling, and what she is capable of getting away with, as some limitations are set upon by the male gender, albeit few in the area of relationships.
Men can never begin to fathom the complexity of the female-female relationship, the only thing they will think about if you even bring it up to them is girl on girl action with naked pillow fights and giggles with making out and happy little female-female love making. If you make it sound like women fight with each other all the time, then they picture naked mud wrestling and you taking your anger out on them sexually later. I'm not saying all men are shallow, and none of them even try to understand, I'm just painting a picture of something that will most likely go through their mind, even if it is just a fleeting thought on their way to trying to understand. Because of the relative simplicity of the male-male relationship however, they just will never get it.
There is nothing more obvious to a woman than another woman who is being fake with her. We all hate that "oh hi, how are you" with the undertone of "oh damn, why the hell did I have to run into you of all people." So...why do we do it? Women are all about preserving relationships; even with women that they don't like, because those women may be friends with other women that they do like, and what do we women like to do? Talk. If you're rude to a woman that you don't like, you can be damn sure that that woman is going to tell everybody you know and make you look like the bitch, regardless of who started, and what grounds you had for being bitchy. It's such a tiresome thing, and I'm sure plenty of us out there wish that it was just something that we didn't have to deal with, but as long as we keep doing it to others, they're gonna keep doing it to us. It is nice when you meet that one girl, or a few girls in your life that you really just connect with and feel are completely genuine. It does happen, I'm not saying we are all bitches, it's just few and far between, which is really unfortunate. That's how men have power over us, if we were to stick together and do the "hoes before bros" thing like they always talk about, then the world wouldn't stand a chance, and our governments and our entire world would most likely be run by women. Consequently since women are all about preserving relationships, we probably would have much less wars. Also, even though women are the dirtiest fighters of all, we have more sympathy for life, so it's likely that although we might have more fights, those deserving of death would probably be dealt with and rooted out with little to no civilian casualties.
Ok, now that I'm done with my little hypothetical female world domination scheme, how should we deal with the fakeness that is thrown at us from other women daily, and how do we stop ourselves from throwing it right back at them? That is the million dollar question. Can one woman make a difference? I can try...

Rumors and Gossip

Living in a small town is tough. Everybody seems to know everything about everybody. It's an age group thing though, everybody that's around their 50's knows everybody else thats in that age bracket, and what's going on in their lives. Everybody in high school knows each other, which that's to be expected, and then there's the one's in their 30's and their 20's...some of us get cross pollinated but we still know everything there is to know about our own age group. It's really an unfortunate situation if you are in a relationship to live in a small town. You may think it is a good thing because there are less people for your partner to cheat on you with, however, this is not true since like 90% of people who cheat, do so with somebody they are fairly well acquainted with, and if you are acquainted with your whole town, then technically you have more people to cheat with. A small bracket of people manage to escape the town's scrutiny, but this usually happens right after they get married and have small children in the home, and as soon as they have school aged children, bam! their back in the system and everybody knows what's going on with their life, and how bright or stupid their child is, and how good of a parent they are, etc. etc. etc.
Back the dating phase of small towns... one of the worst things to do, is listen to all the rumors and gossip and become a part of it. It may not directly affect your relationship, and you may not like the person it is about, so you happily pass on the little tidbits that you were privy to. How unfortunate for you, you just seemed your kharmaic fate. I'm really not a big believer in Kharma, but I am a believer in doing unto other as you would have them do unto you. I also believe that you will have to suffer the consequences of your actions too. If you are an untrustworthy rumor-spreader, just be prepared for the day your relationship takes a turn for the not so happy and you become the victim of the insidious rumor mill.
unfortunately gossip is juicy, and whether we spread it or not, we all want to hear it... If you can, though, just take a step back from the gossip for a moment, and think about the person that it is about. Put yourself in the shoes of the young girl who just found out she was pregnant, or the woman who's husband is cheating on her, or the mom who's child is the bully or the dummy in school. I don't mean think about how blessed you are not to have these things happen to you, because that can just be another form of gloating and superiority. I mean, step outside yourself, and try to imagine what it is like in their shoes, if that was your life, if those were your problems, and if the whole town was talking about them. The easiest way to do this is to take your own deepest darkest secret and picture what it would be like for everybody to know it. After that little exercise, do you still feel like passing on that juicy tidbit? I doubt it.

Bottle it up

Passive Aggressive behavior can be a real problem for some people. I'm one of those people. Starting out in life as a very bossy, almost overbearing kindergartener, I was also a bit of a bully, I continued along that way for a while. I don't remember the exact day when this behavior stopped, but it was somewhere in high school when my obedient little sister decided not to listen to me anymore. I could no longer get anybody else to do what I wanted, and there were a lot of things going on in high school that I couldn't stand up for myself for because they were coming from the teachers and the principal. I almost got expelled for insubordination for trying to stand up for myself to the principal, so I think that's about the time I became passive aggressive. It continued on into my adult life, and unfortunately, at one point, had manifested itself deeply in my relationship with my boyfriend.
I think it is safe to say that I could never be called a push over, but it may appear that way to some people. I do stand up for myself when people push me too far, but I always like to be the good guy, I always like to be patient, and show only my best side. This is dangerous though. If you never stand up for anything people will think you have no ideas of your own, you have no self-respect, or in a relationship setting it can even take on the charateristics of looking like you're "whipped." However, these aggressive feelings will only continue to store up, you may think you can just let them go, and it is true, you should not sweat the small stuff, a lot of things if you let them go, you will realize that they are not a big deal and things could have gotten a lot worse if you had brought them up. If you are constantly bring up every tiny little thing that bothers you, maybe there is too much that bothers you, and you will just turn into a negative nag that way.
How do you decide what to bring up and what to leave alone? How do you know when and how to bring something up? If something really really bothers you, and it is infringing on your rights as a human, or on your happiness, or your time, and is directly affecting you in some way, it needs to be addressed. For example, if you're significant other always says he/she will call, or that he/she is going to do something and doesn't do it, this is directly affecting you. This is also a sign of his/her lack of respect for you and your time. They may not, and probably don't mean it to be that way, and they may not even realize that they are doing it. Sometimes men will do that because they think it makes you feel better, and it takes them off the hook for a while, when what it is really doing is eradicating your trust in anything they say, and making themselves seem very unreliable. Guys don't like to tell you they can't do something though, because they're afraid you'll get mad, so they think it is better to say they will and then just apologize later. How do you handle this situation and when is the best time to bring it up? First of all, this has probably been going on for a while, and now you are finally at a point where you can't take it anymore. Don't explode and don't bring up every past incident that they have done this. Wait until it happens again, this gives you an opportunity to address the problem. Be calm, and talk to them in person if you can, I know we have all this technology with texting, emails, and phones, and it's easy to sound calm when you aren't talking face to face with them, but it does not convey how you feel, and it will not have as strong of an affect. So just be calm, and say something like, "When you don't do what you say you are going to do, it makes me feel like you don't respect me and my time, if you are too busy to get to something or you don't have time to hang out today, just tell me. I won't be mad, because then I will have a better idea of what to expect from my day." This states the action he/she is doing to upset you, asserting how it affects you, and giving them a solution to the problem that is easy and will be more beneficial to both of you.
Some problems go much deeper than this though, and sometimes you have so much bottled up that you reach a point where you really just want to explode, the best way to deal with this is to let it out slowly. Start with the smaller things, and let them out as they come at you, and work up to the bigger and more complicated issues. Do this over a period of time, and continue to try to deal with other things that come at you in the mean time by dealing with them immediately and not adding them to the pile. Soon, the issues will be out, which will make them easier to deal with. You and you're partner can't deal with something if he or she doesn't even know that there is a problem. You may have to reach a compromise on some times, and your partner may have issues that they need to get out too, and this will help them to open up as well, and ultimately you will be a stronger couple with much better communication skills. Don't act like everything is fine when it's not!
A very important thing to do when you are trying to deal with all of these issues though, is not to lose sight of the positive! Don't just zero in on all the things you want to change in your partner or your relationship, you can't change a person, so if there is a lot you want to change, maybe you are not with the right person. For every issue that you find, try to find something that you really like about your partner. This doesn't have anything to do with making excuses for or justifying their behavior. Maybe you're significant other is always late for dinner but always does the dishes afterward, this is something positive about the situation, they may be doing that to make up for the fact that they are always late, but there is still something positive in the situation, and it shows that your partner does respect you and is trying to show that he/she cares.
So get out there, pour your problems out of the bottle slowly, and keep a positive image in your head of you and your partner communicating constructively.

How to help Haiti

There are tons of companies rushing to the aid of Haiti after this devastating earthquake. Many people want to help out and donate, but they aren't sure which organization to donate to. I did a little research, and I came across some that I believe are great organizations for immediate, long-term, and infrastructure help. By infrastructure help, I mean that these are organizations that will help Haiti to rebuild itself from within by educating and helping the people to bring strength and hope to their own country from within. The current situation in Haiti was terrible before this natural disaster threw everything into complete chaos and horror. As one of the poorest countries in the world, Haiti's government is shaky at best, and the income of the country relied heavily on donations from stronger countries before the earthquake. With the help of these organizations and their effors in Haiti, maybe Haiti will be able to reach a point where it will be able to have better hospitals, schools, emergency response, economic health, and especially at the very least be able to clothe and feed it's people better on it's own. These are companies that are well organized and established and will be able to use the donations to best benefit the people of Haiti as well. The best organizations I found to accomplish all of this are Red Cross, www.redcross.org, ADRA, www.adra.org, UNICEF, www.unicef.org, Yele Haiti, www.yele.org, Oxfam, www.oxfam.org, and The American Jewish World Service, http://secure.ajws.org. Its understandable that many want to help, but make sure that you are helping the right way, and that your money is going where it needs to go, instead of into the hands of the corrupt politicians and faulty systems currently in affect in Haiti at the moment.

How to move back out of your mom's house

In this economy housing is definitely more of an issue than it used to be. My mom always proudly states that she moved out when she was 17 and never went back. Good for her. That just isn't practical anymore however. I would have loved if that had worked out for me. I moved out when I was 18, but i was back again when school got out for the summer. Then I finally moved out on my own when I was 21. Things went great, and then the economy crashed, and I did everything I could not to move back home. Here I am at the ripe old age of 25 living at home again...So how do we end this cycle of moving out and moving back in to our parents homes again? Well, there are a few different options, 1. quit school and work full time so you can afford to live on your own. You might even be able to do this one with pets. I say this, because moving out on your own is not nearly as hard as moving out with your 40 pound half chow that likes to bite people that get too close. 2. work part time and continue to go to school, and live with a bunch of roommates in a little house. 3. work 2 jobs, and go to school online, and watch as your roommates get tired of taking care of your dog when you're gone, your house falls apart, and your mom gets sick of you bringing your laundry back over like you never moved out in the first place. How do we find a balance? How do we find a way to make all of these things work without the negative side affects, the dirty house, the half-assed homework, and the angry roommates, and lost friends? Well, the truth is, something different works for ever person. So, are you a type A person who has to have everything just so, is meticulous, and gets straight A's? You're in luck! You'll probably be able to make any one of these ideas work for you. Maybe you're more like me though, with 2 jobs, online school, ADHD, and a chow that bites. Don't worry, one of these solutions will work for you too, the trick for people like us, is to have the best attitude we can about everything. People at work will forgive you for having to leave early or for forgetting a little side work if you are sincere, bring joy to the work place, and do show that you are trying, even if you can't do everything. People might rent a house to you because you are charismatic and won them over, over some grump with an amazing rental history, so as long as you don't forget to do your school work, 'cause lets face it, teachers can't be shmoozed that often, you should be just fine.

Writing

I always wanted to have a place where people could read what I wrote. Now that I have my very own blog, I have just that. The idea to do this came to me while watching the movie about Julia Child, Julie and Julia. Now that I have a place to write though, I have found that I don't quite know where to start. It is easy to write when nobody is reading your stuff, and it is also easy to write when you are responding to something that somebody else has written. Off the top of your head though, it's hard to know where to begin. Which is why I have chosen to just start writing and see what comes out. I am new to this whole thing, so I am not quite sure what to expect, and if anybody will even read it, so hopefully when I can get my thoughts together enough to delve into some of the topics that brought me to this place, maybe I will be able to generate some readers. Until then...this is Innocent Dreamer signing out.

January 14, 2010