Tag Archives: self improvement

Forgetting the Basics

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Sometimes you forget the basics when a problem seems huge and you get stressed.

Communication is very basic. Even if you’re afraid of what the other might say, even if you think you’ve talked about it before, bring it up. Thinking about what and how you want to say things beforehand is great, but don’t make any big decisions on what will come out of the conversation beforehand. The idea is to have a dialogue with the person and work through things.

You may be surprised at what the other person has to say.

For example, I thought I was clear that the boy was sure we would never be exclusive or be in a relationship. What I didn’t realize is that it’s more that he’s sure it can’t happen right now, but there are possibilities. He feels that more now. He feels that recently we’ve gotten closer.

I didn’t understand his point of view, and maybe I still don’t even after hearing him describe it- a sort of all or nothing. I look at relationships as the next step to being closer, but not a huge commitment. It could mean we’re together for a week, a month, longer, who knows? On the flip side, he thinks that he has to be sure of things to even think of going there. I clarified that I wasn’t talking about marriage.

I asked him about seeing other people and why he thought seeing people was important. He told me a long story about learning about all kinds of people, social interactions, and experiencing a variety of life. I told him he sounded like a fortune cookie- adding ‘in bed’ to after everything. I think you can do all of this while interacting with people without dating. For him, not being tied to a single person and working on his ability to socially interact is part of his self-improvement regiment.

I also think that you lose something in interacting with a person if you’re never willing to take things to the next level and have a relationship. He thinks he’s broadening his understanding of human interaction, where I think he is really limiting it in a different way.

Just because you discuss and communicate something doesn’t mean you’ll agree or understand.

What I’m starting to wonder is where he even has time or opportunity to see other people, or if he has the real desire. I also wonder if this works for him just because he knows I’m not seeing someone else and doesn’t think interested in seeing someone else. I have a low jealousy content, but even this has the potential to get to me. What about him?

I started meeting his friends lately, guys mostly. It got me wondering about how much we don’t have defined in this area. It got me thinking about what ifs and situations that could try to arise. Can I assume that certain things are off limits?

This goes back to the communication thing. It’s another conversation we probably should have, even if it’s not something I’m likely to test with the way I am. I actually like knowing boundaries, being able to rely on an agreement. I also would hope it’s a conversation he would have with his friends. Different people can have very different takes on these gray areas- from a recent conversation with someone:

“I dislike terms. They restrict relationships. You are what you are. Relationships flex back and forth in different stages.”

Some people apparently think I shouldn’t be making an assumption here about things being off limits since things are undefined. Alls fair in love and war? I don’t like the sounds of this. I hate drama.

With that sort of attitude existing, neither me nor the boy should be assuming anything here I guess. Communication is a good thing- and not just between us, but those around us.

These fine lines when there are no lines…

Can you steal something that isn’t yours?

Blogging

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I know, a blog post about blogging is kind of the saddest of the sad as far as topics go at a glance.

Yet, I have a specific topic I want to bring up. I’ve had this blog for a couple years now. I have no problems posting about the people in my life (as long as I don’t reveal their name). I have no problems with the people I know reading it. It’s actually created some cool dialogues with people. I’m not ashamed of anything I put on here.

The thing I want to bring up actually has nothing to do with my blog. It has more to do with the fact I found someone else’s personal blog- the person who I’m dating. I know the handle he uses in video games and the like, so I google searched it with a few key words, a few sites clicked, and there it was.

Maybe about three quarters of the way through reading all of the posts I start to feel guilty. Is it right for me to be reading this stuff? It’s on the internet, sure, but he didn’t give me the link or anything. Then I start to think maybe he’ll be upset when I tell him I found it (I mean, was I supposed to?).

The posts end a short time after we meet- so there’s nothing too recent. It was on the internet, so it’s not like rifling through someones’ sock drawer, but I wonder if he’ll take it that way..?

Update:

So, surprise, I told the boy I found his blog. I was worried he’d be weirded out by the fact I googled his handle, or worse, would view it as an invasion of privacy.

What I didn’t expect is for him to initially be defensive, as if he was expecting me to go after him for the content.

I don’t expect him to apologize for his honest journaling about his journey to self-improvement. ::looks around the blog:: I mean, after all… I think he expected me to find issue with some of the content of his self-improvement regiment which included learning to talk to, pick up, and date women. I’m not going to fault him for that stuff. I’ve posted about how hard it is to communicate and connect with people and my failed attempts at breaking down those walls.

…as well as posting about me avoiding dating all together like the bubonic plague. We all deal with bad breakups in our own way. I’m not embarrassed or regretful about anything I’ve posted, I would be a hypocrite to try to make him feel that way.

I don’t know what this door I’ve opened means. I’m not going to grill him on anything, but I do have questions. There’s a lot of terminology he uses specific to this ‘learning-to-get-women’ class/group he was in. My instinct is to be, “Damn, was that used on me?” But then, he met me at jiu-jitsu- sweaty, nasty, with a thick cotton gi hiding my curves. So, no, I don’t think I was picked up all text-book style. I wasn’t part of some class experiment… I don’t think at least. Even if I initially was, we get on well. What does it matter? It’s just kind of weird to read about it from the other side.

Another funny thing- he mentioned he was using tarot card reading as a romantic ice-breaking sort of thing. Guess what I brought over his house my first time over? Yeah, I brought my tarot cards. I bet he wasn’t expecting those tables to be turned. Ha.

This whole thing brings up a lot of points for me- that we still have a lot to learn about each other, and strangely (after reading) we have a lot more in common than maybe we know yet. It looks like we were going through some of the same bad times and started turning our lives around in a similar time frame, only to meet after we’d started to get our respective shit together.

Joining jiu-jitsu was part of our self-improvement/goals regiment- separately, but there we met.

Life and its sense of humor know no ends.

And speaking of turning tables, my blog is easy enough to find.

Self Improvement’s Guise

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If you’ve been reading this blog, chances are that you know I’m all about self improvement. I’d like to take a moment to make what I think is an important distinction, which I don’t think is always clear.

By being an advocate of self-improvement, I’m not saying that the Celes of yesterday was so flawed that a new me is needed. There seems to be the theme among people who are into self improvement that you need to hate yourself to want to be better. I don’t think improvement works well this way, nor do I think that improvement is about being better each day, every day.

I try to improve myself and my life, but I do so with knowing I will never reach level 1000. Life if not like some games where you’re gaining all these experience points and leveling up and leveling up until you’re at level 1000+ by the time I’m seventy-eight years old. As much as I wish it were, life just isn’t like that, my friends. Everyone whose self improvement is a linear picture of reaching perfection will be sadly disappointed in the end.

We as people, and life itself, go in cycles. You can’t always be happy or healthy. The best you can do is try to extend the times you are and minimize the times you aren’t. If anything, learning to deal with the times when things are bad in the best way possible is self improvement. To try to reach a state where you never trip, never falter, and never stray from the best of the best is not only an impossible goal, it’s a step backwards. To improve you first have to realize that you’re not horrible the way you are now, you’re never going to suddenly morph into that butterfly or swan or whatever, and you’re going to make terrible mistakes and have horrible things happen to you on your journey.

You are you, with your own faults and particular qualities. To pledge to make slight changes is one thing, but to act like some day a Honda Civic is going to become a Hummer is delusional and sad (about as sad as that metaphor).

Today is as important as tomorrow, and as much as you should be working towards something, you need to realize, accept, and live in the moment of who you are today as well. Do it because there may not be tomorrow. Do it because to really improve you have to love and accept who you are now. Do it because tomorrow, whether or not you like it, you will still be you no matter what you tell yourself. Do it because even if right now sucks, it is part of you and your story, and only you can do something with it that makes it worth having happened.

I know some things about myself, others I’m sure I’m still learning. By knowing I am a certain way, I can embrace and express that in ways that I am increasingly more comfortable with. Faults are not always faults, and finer qualities not always so fine. To focus on ‘changing the bad things about yourself’ is to place a black and white value on a part of who you are and either try to cut it out or replace it like some kind of Frankenstein graft. To see both sides to a coin is to admit the world is flat on only has two sides. Consider the many sides to the tetrahedron, or other polyhedrons that are the building blocks of life, and try to find how each piece can fit together.

I try to be realistic. Combine slight tweaks with strategies and meet yourself somewhere in the middle before you fall off the edge. If you hate who you are now and set an impossible goal for tomorrow, you will fail in the worst way. Don’t kid yourself into thinking you’re not who you were, because you will always be some version of yourself. Accept it as everything you were has made you today, and will make you every day after until the end of this life. All things shape us, the best we can do is try to take some control over how they do and accept the things we cannot so we can move past them.

Acceptance is the biggest piece to the puzzle I think most people miss. You have to accept yourself, your life, and the general way of life, that it is not a perfect pearl or even an oyster, before you can move on.

And move on to what? What do you really want? Figuring is as much part of the journey and figuring out how to get it.

I want to be better than yesterday may seem like a the daily goal to strive for, but in the long term it makes little sense as it is a generalization, a judgment on the unquantifiable, and an impossibility.

More than self improvement, I think of this as learning to live by living. This involves thinking and introspection as much as it involves getting out there, taking chances, and doing.