On Faces

The interesting thing about faces is that they always tell you the truth of a given person, especially as that person ages. When a person smiles or laughs a lot, you can see it in the way their face has wrinkled, settled, or changed over the years. The same thing happens when a person does nothing but pout, and frown, and complain. The effect is most obvious in older people, but you can see it in young people as well.

I've known a lot of people that claim to be super positive, happy beings but aren't really that way in practice. If you didn't know any better from actually observing the realities of the person's life, you could look at the permanent pout burned into their face and see the truth. Same thing goes for people that may appear sour and depressive on the surface, but have faces that give away the fact that they actually laugh and smile a lot.

I'm realizing that I might be the second sort. Outwardly, I complain and bitch a lot. I would even say I see and describe myself as a brooding, pensive person for the most part. But when I step back and really admit how much I laugh and how often I smile -- how often I ultimately wind up seeing the best in something -- I realize that isn't actually accurate. And my face gives me away. I have the face of a happy, pleasant, inquisitive person even if I don't always feel like one.

Writing Lab: Changing, Evolving, Regrouping

Prompt: "Some people find it difficult to rebalance their lives after making a big shift. Do you welcome change or struggle with it?"

I don't think that anyone really likes change. My own personal feelings about it honestly depend on what kind of change we're talking about. Obviously, I don't like being forced out of a situation that was comfortable or beneficial for me, but if we're talking about a situation that had been stagnant or unpleasant for a long time, then I welcome change with open arms. I'm not one of those people that prefers the devil I know. If something sucks, I will always be willing to take a chance in the hopes that it could get better. 

I've even been that way when it comes to major life changes. For instance, I was slowly suffocating to death in my failed marriage years ago, so I was happy to reach a place where I felt like I could ask for a divorce, move out, and eventually start a relationship with someone new (not necessarily in that order, but that's a story for another day). Facing a change as monumental as divorce was super scary. It obviously would have been much easier to just stay where I was and continue with the person I was already with, but the possibility of one day being in a relationship that would be everything I wanted and needed it to be instead was motivation enough to see things through. I figured that even if things didn't go so well, I'd at least be able to say I tried instead of wondering "what if" and continuing to settle for a situation that made me unhappy.

Writing Lab: On Relationships and Technology

Prompt: "How has technology enhanced or detracted from your relationships?"

I've never been a member of the camp that thinks technology is nothing but negative when it comes to human relationships. All technology does is give people more options. What is done with those options depends entirely on the person. Some people do use it to tune out and disengage from the world around them. However, there are plenty of others that take advantage of the opportunity to be more connected, as opposed to less. I consider myself to be the latter.

I've always been a loner, as well as extremely introverted. While I have always enjoyed having at least a few close personal relationships with other people, I have never enjoyed what has to happen in order to obtain those relationships. I hate being in the physical presence of people I don't know and I loathe making small talk, attending social events, and pretty much everything else that people used to have to do if they wanted to make friends or find people to date. 

Thoughts on the Passing of David Bowie

Beautiful artwork from the Rolling Stone review of Blackstar

I'm really not the type of person that takes celebrity deaths super hard. Generally speaking, I am comfortable with the idea of death and loss, as I don't necessarily see dying as a horrible thing. It's just another type of very long good-bye. Sad, yes. But unless it was a gruesome, tragic, or grossly premature death, I see it as the most natural thing -- as natural and normal as birth.

Even so, the news of David Bowie's death hit me very hard. I've always known that it would, but I still don't think I was very well prepared for the reality of it. He'd just had a birthday two days prior. We celebrated it by watching the Five Years documentary and his newest music video for "Lazarus". I even remember verbally hoping that he'd be around for another 20 years, because his drive and creativity didn't appear to have diminished at all. Then I heard all about it. That he'd secretly been battling cancer for 18 months and knew he'd be leaving all of us very soon.

Get Off My Lawn, Kids

I must be getting old. Like... seriously, I've officially reached the point where the way "kids today" go about existing on Planet Earth baffles me as badly as I'm sure my own lifestyle and value system baffled my parents or grandparents. 

I think the weirdest thing to me is the going attitude toward relationships today. It honestly seems as if everyone under the age of 50 considers an open relationship to be the way to go. Like it's some kind of punishment to be expected to actually be faithful to your mate. I've even heard people saying that they think it's abusive and selfish not to be OK with it if your partner wants to sleep with other people. 

Now... I've been the last thing from perfect in some of my past relationships. I've cheated on people before. I'm even relatively open about the fact that my relationship with Seth started while I was still married to Greg. However, I never actually saw that behavior as something that should be socially acceptable or that my exes should have freely allowed me to do. Ultimately, I wanted to be with someone that was not only 100% faithful to me, but that kept me happy enough for me to want to be the same. I fought for it and searched for it until I found it and it's amazing to know that I have another person that belongs to just me and that I belong to in return. I honestly feel bad for anyone that's willing to settle for anything short of that. That isn't a relationship at all as far as I'm concerned.

Writing Lab: On Work Life Balance

Prompt: "Do you think you have a decent work/life balance?"

BlogHer's Writing Lab was so helpful to me last month that I think I'll continue responding to prompts now and then as we make our way into 2016. I may even start writing posts ahead of time and scheduling them to auto-post at later dates the way I used to. When I get in the mood to blog, I often feel like writing more than one post, but I don't always feel like updating more than one of my individual sites at a time. 

On that note, I can definitely see I'll have plenty to say about this month's theme -- balance. The tradition one kind of covered foreign territory for me, but I feel like my entire life has been about learning to understand balance and set appropriate boundaries, both for myself and for other people. This has especially been the case when it comes to my professional life.

I am about the furthest thing there is from a workaholic and I've always been that way. I very definitely believe in working to live, not living to work. When I'm working too much, I'm irritable and upset all the time. If I'm too stressed or too overworked for too long, I can also get incredibly sick -- mentally and emotionally, as well as physically. That said, achieving and maintaining a healthy work/life balance is of the utmost importance to me. It's also been easier said than done for most of my life.