My Beef With Mornings

There are tips and tricks to getting to sleep and staying asleep. I've used them. They work. I personally like to sleep with my head in between pillows, and have a fan blasting to create some soothing white noise (not necessarily blasting on me). I also can't go to bed on an empty stomach. That never works. Oh, and definitely pee before you go to bed.

This is going to seem like a tangent at first, but I have a point. There are a lot of things I can say I've battled in the past decade. Sickness. Broken Heart. Loss of friends. Loss of Family. Car accidents. Robbery. Firings. Layoffs. Cross-country moves. Anxiety. Depression. But I mean, who hasn't dealt with similar monsters in the span of a decade? Some of those things are easier fights to win than others, and some are quite long lasting. But if there's one behemoth who has successfully bested me over and over again since as far back as I can remember it's this one:

Waking up in the god damn morning.

I'm not a morning person. I'm just not. I'm a night owl. And every single time I go to sleep at night, I tell myself I'm going to get up early and be productive. I usually even feel pretty motivated about it. But when that alarm rings, man...the battle is already lost. It never, ever, happens. And I truly don't know how to change it.

It doesn't matter if I get ten hours, eight hours, or six hours, if I'm awake before eight o'clock, I'm not a happy person and I have significant trouble getting out of bed. Heck, I don't even like waking up before 10am. I'm writing all this because my stupid alarm didn't go off and I was 45 minutes late to work, which nullifies some of the overtime I put in yesterday. Crap in a hat.

On the other hand, it's Friday. On the other hand, it's freaking snowing again and I'm going to be working some overtime this weekend, so a huge break isn't exactly in order. But on the other, other hand, I'm feeling a lot better, which means maybe I can actually go out and enjoy myself, perhaps with Jess who I've been spending my evenings with. We haven't really gone out to do anything yet, so I'm looking forward to a roommate outing. Last night we watched "Can't Hardly Wait" while she did homework and I did screenwriting. Company is wonderful.

I'm mad at myself for this. But I dig her.

Tara wasn't feeling well due to mid-terms, so we pushed back our date-type-thing to Sunday. At least she feels bad and keeps rescheduling. That's a good sign!

Aside from feeling better physically, this whole HotOrNOt thing has really opened my eyes. Not just about how other people perceive me, but how I perceive myself. When it comes to the 1-10 scale of how attractive someone is, I gave myself somewhere between a 6.5 and a 7.5, depending on the day...an 8 if I really did myself up. Last time I gave you an update, 54 women had rated me with an average of 9.3. Now, 131 women have rated me and my average is a 9.4. If 131 women think I have an average rating of 9.4, then it's my perception of myself that's skewed.

I thought long and hard about this. What does acting like a 9.4 entail? I don't want to be some vain, arrogant asshole, but it certainly feels good to know that you look good and others think so, right? This is about confidence and self-esteem, not arrogance. I can still be my nice, fun self without beaming to everyone that I'm attractive so they should love me. But putting myself down and thinking I'm less attractive than I am and am therefore unable to attract a lot of women...well that's counter-productive! It's a self-fulfilling prophecy!

If I can learn to feel like a 9.4, secure and happy in my own skin, more girls will react, and I'll be less likely to do that clingy "don't leave me" type deal that I do all the time. So how can I learn to feel like a 9.4?

Well...I took a solid look at the picture I posted. It's professional, but not doctored. A good friend of mine in LA, a professional photographer, took the picture in his studio with a great camera and great lighting. It's basically a headshot. In the photo I'm dressed well, my hair's done nicely, I'm standing tall, chin up, small confident smile, easy eyes...I'm relaxed. I'm secure of myself.

That's the key.

I need to dress and groom myself and treat my body and mind like I'm a 9.4 at all times because I am a 9.4. When I'm not shaving and sluggin' around and wearing wrinkled clothes and not sitting up straight or holding my head high or smiling, of course people (and myself) are going to think I'm a 6 or a 7!

It's time to bring out the 9.4 and see what happens. :)

-Spontaneous K

P.S. I've been in the situation above, where you hear your brother having sex with a girl you like. NOT fun times.

My Small World

It's things like this that make me believe a little bit in Fate.

Humans are pre-programmed to make connections. It's the reason we believe in superstitions. Something very bad once happened to someone who walked under a ladder...or broke a mirror...or had a black cat cross his path. And back when magic was something to be believed in, these connections made sense.

So when coincidences like the one that happened to me this afternoon occur, it's no wonder we feel like there is something greater at work.

On this snowy Wednesday (oh my, have we had a lot of snow this season in Philadelphia), I was told not to come into work, so I decided to take advantage of the day to get some writing done. My local Starbucks was not open, so I opted for Cosi. It seemed most places weren't open because Cosi was PACKED.

Before waiting in line to order, I decided to would snag a table with an outlet by placing my laptop bag and coat there. It was the last one, although it was two tables put together, so it had four seats. Just as I placed my stuff down, a girl asked me very politely if she could sit with me, since she also needed an outlet and the place was packed.

How could I say no?

As I'm on the search for new friends, I decided to take advantage of this opportunity to chat with this girl. She, fortunately, was very open to chatting with me. And we chatted for a long while, discovering that we both had very similar interests. It just seemed to click. There weren't any romantic sparks or anything, at least not on my end, but the conversation was extremely fulfilling. And I've been trying to teach myself, especially when meeting women, that just because this person doesn't feel like they're "the one", doesn't mean that they're not, or that they don't have something amazing to offer me. They might even know "the one!"

Her name was Tara, and it turned out Tara and I had many more connections that we expected to. She goes to Temple...that's where I graduated. Okay, not too crazy, there are tons of people that go to Temple. She's Jewish. Also not so crazy. But when we started to talk about friends, family, and living situation, that's where things got strange.

I told Tara that at the end of the month I was moving into an apartment with two Temple Seniors. She asked who they were...I said I didn't even know their last names, I just know they are Jess and Josie.

That was all the info she needed. "Oh! I love Jess and Josie!"

She knew exactly who I was talking about. Even more coincidentally, when I had found their listing for the room on Craigslist, I didn't know that I had already been to their apartment. Their former roommate was a girl I was friends with in college. I didn't even have to see the place, I knew I loved it. Tara even knew their former roommate as well.

Tara also lives half a block from where I'm living right now.

How had we not met?

Even further, as I was talking about my family and what my brother does for a living, I mentioned that he recently got a job doing promotions at a club called Dusk in Atlantic City. Tara goes, "Oh wow, my Uncle owns Dusk."

If you think about it, every single moment in both our entire lives, every decision we've ever made, led us to sit down at that table at the same time. We were connected and we didn't even know it. So maybe Fate was playing a little part. As with my new friend whom I had drinks with last night, I can't be sure what role Tara has to play in my life, or what role I have to play in hers...but it was a nice little surprise. A nice step in a new direction.

You never know where a snowstorm might lead you. :)

-Spontaneous K