My Adventures: Both Real & Imagined

"I hate to break it to you babe But I'm not drowning There's no one here to save Who cares if you disagree You are not me Who made you king of anything So you dare tell me who to be Who died and made you king of anything" - King of Anything Lyrics Late one night I was sitting up with my friend and in the giddiness of night signed me up for an on-line dating service. I spent 15 minutes trying to think of the right tag line. I don't think this world is for me. I took my profile off the next day, mainly due to embarrassment. It was hard to admit that I needed to explore on-line dating to find a date. As I was talking this over with my friends and family, my brother remarked that you needed to be able to just put yourself out here and not care what anyone else thought of you. Two years ago this would have been a completely foreign concept. Now, this is something that I work on everyday. Am I completely comfortable with who I am? Isn't that the first ...

I have long since forgotten when music became an essential part of me. It reaches down and touches my soul (or me for that matter). When I am driving and the windows are down and the music is as loud as my speakers will permit, I feel the fingers of love, heartbreak, passion or rock creep down and move something in me. As I think about it, I was raised on rock and roll, country and classical music. My appreciation has grown over the years to include jazz, metal, emo and just about every other form of music. What determines whether I like the music is not so much what genre that song falls into, as much as whether it gets through my outer skin, sinking into the cracks of my armor and permeating my soul. I believe that the music I listen to is the soundtrack of my life. The mood I am often leads me to turn up a particular song, or skip another. At one point I thought I was uncomfortable with silence, but I found I was just more comfortable with music. Music to me is a modern form of ...

Every time I miss a particular person I reread our last words to each other and I remember the pain. I remember it was like a part of me fell away. Pain can be a good reminder. Pain can also be good inspiration to live the life we have and enjoy the good things. How come the happier I am the guiltier I feel? Why do I need to find a way to sabotage every relationship without giving it a chance? Is this relationship good for me? Yes, beyond a doubt, this relationship is a very good thing for me. Is it scary and do I want to run a way? No. Yes. No. Gosh, it is, but the best part of it is that I am not letting that dark side of me win. I can’t do this alone, but this time I don’t have to. I am going to inch by inch start to shed the walls I have built. Nothing I can say or do can change what happened before. But something can be said for the future. And for the first time in a really long time, I can see a future I am not afraid of.

To Ask or Not to Ask, Is That Really the Question? The news of what Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer did with Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (SB1070) has slowly trickled into my life. I don’t ever watch the news, so hearing about this from the grapevine has been my only source of information. Until recently. A few months ago I found out it was unlawful for a police officer to ask an immigrant’s legal status in the state of California. My native Mexican friend was explaining how police officers have harassed him and a friend of his. I know that this particular police force has been known for being vicious. I have experienced being cited by them, and let’s just say it was the first time I felt afraid in this particular city. Any how, back to the point. He told me they asked a friend his status and was trying to tell me how this was a basic violation of his rights. I try to be a very understanding person, but I didn’t get how asking someone if they are breaking the law,...

This discussion came up between two of my friends and me. We where getting our morning coffee and passed a rather metro-male. My friend asked me why all the males of my generation seemed to act like the stereotype image of a gay. I told him it was the style. It was called metro-sexual. He pondered my response for a moment. Then he told me that wasn’t it. It was an attitude, a walk, a way they held themselves. He said they almost seemed weak. So the question came up, with all the cross gender styles and attitudes today, what makes a man and a women? I like male things. I like quite a few things that could be categorized as very male things. Does that make me less of a female? Am I putting off men because I am too manly? Or is there a delicate balance that allows us to remain feminine while enjoying some masculine qualities. Why as a woman, I judge men to a different standard than I hold myself to. No matter how I cut it, I like a manly man. I like the tough guy. I like the guy that ...

This last week I have been working on myself. It is good to take a few moments and reflect and see what you would have done better, or differently so that in the future you learn. I have made some mistakes. I have said and done things I shouldn’t have and I won’t be making that mistake again. I thought I would tell you what they are, so you can see another fragment of me. I over indulged myself again. Have you ever heard that saying “Too much of a good thing is never a good thing?” I realized that I am an impulsive person and I don’t think things through. I listened to one friend bad mouth another. “There is so much good in the worst of us. There is so much bad in the best of us that it ill behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us.” But it is not only that, it says a lot about someone that they would feel the need to do this. I discovered who my friends really where. It is funny that when you are feeling your worst, looking even more so, you can turn around and there is ...