Youthful Life: X

"I learned a lot about falling in love when I fell out of love. I learned a lot about being a friend when I was alone." Unknown  Forging connections with new people is a challenge the older I get. Maybe it's because I'm stuck in my ways or I'm just cynical and closed off. Whatever it is, it makes my efforts to connect with others few and far between. When I do connect with people, I struggle to overcome my default behavior of comparing them to all the others who have come before them. I think I want familiarity but in reality, it just shows up as trying to replace one past or far away friend with someone who just isn't them. Whether it be in like, love, or friendship it's been a challenge to unlearn that woefully limiting behavior of comparing the new people in my life to those my people of the past. What I miss out on is the opportunity to get to know someone who they actually are, not who I imagine or want them to be. I want so badly for someone to...

"Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact" William James Toxic. It's this new way to describe people and the malicious behaviors/words they spew. It's the go to word for how people are articulating their big moods, goals, and mindsets for this year - removing toxic people from their circle. Distancing yourself from people who bring you down, make you feel bad about yourself, and cause you nothing but hardship, anguish, or anger will never not be commendable. There does, however, come a point where branding anything or anyone who does not make you "happy" as "negativity" undermines the integrity of that duality. Especially in this political time and space that we find ourselves in, more and more people seem to be removing anyone who does not share their views from their lives both digitally or in reality.  And that's not to say that letting go of people whose ideologies, opinions, and beliefs are dehu...

“Rejection is inevitable. The goal is to minimize it.” Keith Grafman Language is a constantly evolving sociopolitical construct. It changes with the locale, culture, and context in which it is used. Words take on new meaning. The world of relationships and romance has been revolutionized itself with the onset of digital mediums through which to communicate. With it though has been borne a potentially toxic culture of miscommunication, micro-communication, and no communication at all. No one really knows how people will utilize inventions, and oftentimes users dictate the uses of products more than creators do. People are both predictable and simultaneously an unsolvable enigma of the most epic proportions. They exist both in the centerfold and the marginalia. They are creatures of habit and wildcards played to disrupt the flow of things. People can be cruel regardless of intent just as easily as they can be kind. Time for a vocabulary lesson, this time on breadcrumbing, windows...

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." Barack Obama The start to a new year means inevitably the promising of resolutions that will most likely not be kept. The idea behind the tradition is noble but in practice rarely goes according to plan. Maybe it's because the declaration is arbitrary, or because its easier to fall into old habits than it is to make new ones. There's still merit to resolutions though but the most effective ones often are limited in their scope, or else involved a mindset shift. It's the difference between committing to a paradigm shift versus a one-off goal. One of mine this year is to be more mindful about my time and how I spent it. This is the year I reclaim my time. Time might be a social construct but it's one that guides the parameters of our realities and how we experience said reality. Where we spend in time is ...