My Own Medicine

I’ve been feeling really good these past couple days. And sometimes I feel like there is some societal rule that feeling good isn’t allowed. At least in America. If you’re feeling good, then something’s wrong with you, because life is hard, god damnit, and you’re supposed to be miserable.
 
Blasphemy, I say!

If there’s one thing I’m not going to feel guilty about, it’s feeling good. Right now I’m feeling good about my life. I’m feeling good about my job, I’m feeling good about my health, I’m feeling good about my looks, and I’m feeling good about my dreams and my goals. I’m enjoying life, as they say. Even better, I’m enjoying these days because I’m feeling like I’m moving on from OAOA. Thank the lord.

One of the reasons I'm feeling so great is based on an idea I broached in My Great Disconnect about challenging beliefs and logic. Posting my photo on hotornot.com for the world to see...and rate...was a scary thing for me to do. I was forced to see the truth of how the women of the world perceived me. What I discovered was that I was perceived higher than I perceived myself.  It was not only an instantly confidence booster, but it allowed me to see what I was doing wrong in person, both mentally and socially, to have people perceive me the way I perceive myself.

Seeing things from new perspectives is always great. Sometimes, though, it gives you a taste of your own medicine. When you've been doing something wrong for so long, something you thought was okay but couldn't figure out why it didn't work, it's not until it's done to you that you realize why your methods were bad. Hot or Not also helped me to figure that out.

I spent about four hours last evening talking to a girl from Albany, NY who was all about me from the minute I clicked "Yes, I want to meet you too." She went on and on about how handsome and wonderful I was, how she wanted to travel immediately down from Albany to meet me, how we'd talk every day and share everything, and she kept apologizing for being so forward.

At first it was endearing. After a short while, it got overwhelming. Today, it's scary.

I can't be too upset with her, because I get it. I've been her. I'm really picky, and when I find someone that I actually like and connect with, I latch on to them with the excitement and desperation of a five year old, thinking I'll never find someone else and that they MUST love me. That isn't the way to woo the heart of the object of your affection.

I'm starting to feel good in my own skin for once. I'm starting to realize that I create my own value and that I don't need someone to make me happy. And now I have to help this girl learn that, at least a little bit, by doing the right thing and letting her know that she's laying it on a little too thick. Just because we love the same activities, Scrubs, Video Games, music, etc...doesn't necessarily mean we're going to make a great couple. Besides, she lives in Albany and I live in Philadelphia.

This is a great lesson for me to learn, especially now that I'd like to be a little more laid back with my relationships, and that's to let things move as they should. Slowly and effortlessly. Pressure and coercion don't create good relationships, patience and wonder do. I can see clearly by her actions that she's making the same mistake I was making with OAOA. She's already depending on me for her happiness.

I can see now how I've made some girls feel in the past by being intense. I think I'll now opt for the confident, secure, and mysterious disposition. :)


-Spontaneous K

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 Second Steps Forward

They say the first step is the big one. I say it still takes a manner of awesomeness to take step two and keep going.

I want to thank everyone who provided me with the insight that I was begging for yesterday like an incapable fifteen year old: Passionista, imerika, Katie, and JenJen. (All girls! Booya! Oh, and please check out their blogs via the comment section of this post, cuz dey legit [Note to self: Stop using street talk. And colons. And ellipses...and parentheses, especially parentheses within parentheses]). Sometimes a verbal smack from someone who isn't clouded by their panicky emotions is enough to bring us back to reality and allow us to think clearly.

From the bottom of my heart...I'm not an incapable fifteen year old, no matter how much I act like one (It's fun sometimes, when there isn't a real problem). I'm a capable 25 year old, and I'm going to start acting like it. Each of my blogger friends said much of the same thing with their own special touch. I'm a grown man, I'm awesome, and I need to live my life independent of what this girl is doing.

She wants her space? She's got it. Best for the both of us. So onward from her.

From this point forward I'm going to attempt to keep any words of OAOA to a minimum. I've been writing this blog for 17 days now (Woot!) and I've noticed most of my talk is about her. That's unfortunate, because I have an entire life to talk about. Like a whole one. Whole being key word. Not sort of empty because I don't have her or some other girl, but a whole life.

Even though I have written a lot about her, the point of this blog has become truly apparent to me now that I'm 17 days in. It doesn't matter what's going on, there's always a story to be told, there's always something that you can learn and experience in your day, even if you think you did the same thing you always do on a Tuesday. (If you recall from My Hump Day, I don't even know where to start on how I feel about Tuesdays. Staff Meeting. Blah.) I'm proud that I've kept it going for this long, and I'd love to be able to reach the month milestone, the two month milestone, and, god willing, the year milestone. How cool would that be to be able to look back at the year and see a story each day? To truly understand what you went through over the course of one year? I'd like to see it. At this age, time flies by so quickly that I've found myself come each December 31st going "What the hell happened this year?"

If I write here, I'll know. :)

I should start labeling the posts though. It's hard, because I do the posts remotely, since work blocks www.blogger.com. I'll figure something out though. Perhaps go back at the end of the day and label the shiz out of them. Okay, I'll keep with the street talk. It's funny when a neurotic Jewish guy tries it.

On a great note, my new roommates, Jess and Josie, are awesome. I stayed up (WAY too late) talking with them and getting to know them. They even invited me out with them, which is really cool. It's nice to be able to come home and have people to talk to for once, people you enjoy. Even though it's only for three months, I'm thinking it'll be a three months that makes a good mark. And if it doesn't...oh well, right? Onward Ho:

Lastly...and I'm not a vain human being, I'm just completely surprised at this...a friend of mine suggested I try www.hotornot.com to try and meet girls. He's dating a few from there right now, and I was like "Really? From there?"

Why not.

I posted my pic. Now, I use the Internet a lot. A lot a lot. People are assholes. There are some mean mother-effers out there (I'm feeling the need to keep this blog semi-clean). For those not familiar with "Hot or Not", you rate pictures of others from 1 to 10 based on attractiveness. You can't really get more superficial than that. I expected myself to be in the 6-7 range, average.

Hmm. No.

Very much to my surprise, after having 54 women vote me thus far...FIFTY-FOUR (that may not sound like a lot in terms of the Internet, but imagine 54 people standing in front of you and then telling you what they rate your attractiveness. It's enough to make or break your ego)...I have an average of 9.3.

I'm not bragging. Because I still don't really believe it. It doesn't make sense. Somebody's joshin' with me.

Or maybe I should just give myself some more credit.

But a 9? Really? :)

-Spontaneous K