Running Away

I just got back from watching The Runaways. It opened in select theaters and opens everywhere on April 9th. The storyline follows the book written by Cherie Currie, former lead singer of the band The Runaways. It chronicles the band's rise to fame and her own downfall coupled with Joan Jett's imminent success.

It was pretty fuckin awesome. Those girls are warrior queens, even though they dabbled in things that I, personally would hope most warrior queens don't do (hard drugs). It was a different time, but Joan fought for her dream. I must admit, I'm a little disappointed in my father for not inundating me with their awesome music at a young age, leaving me able to only recall some of Joan Jett's songs and none of the Runaways (although, I have seen Joan Jett and the Blackhearts live in concert <3)

As far as the acting went in this flick...Kristin Stewart BLEW ME AWAY. I don't generally think of her as a great actress. I suppose she is though, and has just played crappy parts. (Let's face it, Bella has a very flat personality, Kristin Stewart had NOTHING to work with.) She had the stance down, the attitude, the yelling...you name it, she seemed to fit the part perfectly. Dakota Fanning was nothing short of amazing, as always. She really is one of my favorite actresses, and I'm very happy to see her getting roles as she's aged and matured, instead of just being a child star.

***********


On a completely and totally different note...I found this article when I was logging onto MSN just a few minutes ago and really felt the need to share it, but not the need to divide it into another post so, I'm just going to join these two together. I'll link to the article, but here's my overview of this.

This girl from Yemen, who is now 12 years old, has just had a memoir published in her name in America. I need to get it and read it. The story follows her marriage at the age of 9, and divorce at 10. She is such a warrior queen!! There are definitely problems in our world (particularly in the Third World) where poverty surmounts to child brides. This young girl had the courage to run away, hail a taxi, and with the help of a human right's lawyer, appeal and get the first divorce among child brides in her country. She is such an inspiration!!  [[Although, I can't help but think how messed up her adolescents is going to be, since I've started to study adolescents and emerging adulthood in one of my psych classes. I'm beginning to realize just how much your past does affect who you are today.]]

Anyway, enough of my random postings for tonight. I am still working on that other blog, but I needed to throw this up tonight before I forgot about it! Sleep well,

This weekend, Datingish has been awesomely filled with some amazing posts, so I'm quoting another one. I DO have a blog that I myself am writing. But sometimes people say it better than I do (which is why I want a magazine) Enjoy!

Keep It Moving and Expect Nothing

  

I am slowly learning that some things that happen in my dating life are simply not worth analyzing. For example, nothing burns me up more than a guy not calling when he says he will. When this happens, I do not simply think that he forgot or got too busy. I put on my “Ms. Smart Girl” hat and think:

·  He’s testing the boundaries of the relationship to see how often he can not follow through on what he says he will do.

·  He feels himself getting too close to me. He’s trying to pull away and establish his independence.

And then I finally get around to:

· He’s just not that into me.

Now, I firmly believe in the truth of the book (and now movie) He’s Just Not That Into You. However, I often am not satisfied with simply telling myself the awful truth. Rather, I want to do a deep analysis of exactly what went wrong, when things began to unravel, and what I can do differently next time. While completing a multi-level analysis of why a guy and I don’t seem to be “meshing” might make me feel accomplished and in control, it does not make me any happier than I was before I launched into my intellectual exercise.

You conjecturing about why someone is not acting the way you want them to does not make them change their behavior. It just wastes your time, imagination, and saps your happiness and peace of mind.

Therefore, when you are dating a guy and he does something you do not like, appreciate, or understand, keep it moving. 

By “keep it moving,” I mean go about your life, doing whatever you were doing before you met Mr. Flaky and don’t worry about why he is acting up. He could have forgotten, he could be busy, he might be testing your boundaries, asserting his independence, or he could just not be into you. The key for you to understand is that the best thing you can do for yourself—and for the relationship—is to keep it moving. Do not bog yourself down with worrying about it or even with “setting him straight”. As Sherry Argov, author of Why Men Love Bitches, says, “Men do not respond to words. They respond to no contact.”

Keeping it moving is not about playing games or being passive aggressive. It’s about taking a step back, relaxing, and focusing on doing what makes you happy—rather than focusing on understanding the cause and origin of something that is making you unhappy. If you really want Mr. Maybe Right to stop making last minute plans with you, don’t go out with him when he tries to make these last minute plans with you. If you want him to call you when he says he will, do not text him with subtle reminders like, “Hope you’re having a great day!” (Guys see right through that by the way). Just keep it moving, have your own great day, and if he calls, great. If not, you haven’t wasted time and energy on worrying about it. It’s all about encouraging goal-congruent dating behavior.

Expect Nothing

An important part of keeping it moving is to expect nothing. As an optimistic person with high expectations for myself and others, this has been a hard pill to swallow. But I have finally swallowed it, and I hope the time-release capsule works well enough to constantly remind me to expect nothing from guys I am casually dating. This is not me giving you permission to let people treat you badly.

It is about not putting expectations on people who do not have the title associated with such expectations.

For example, if a guy is not your boyfriend, do not expect him to do boyfriend things like buy you gifts, move you out of your apartment, or go shopping with you. If he does these things, this is a wonderful thing. He is doing these things because he wants to be your boyfriend someday, and is showing you how great of a boyfriend he would be. However, expecting someone you are casually dating to do these things will likely lead to disappointment and frustration on your part and confusion and distancing on his part. Now, the “expect nothing” mantra actually extends to some pretty everyday things like:

· When he says, “let’s get together some time,” do not expect him to take you out. It might happen; it might not.

· When he says, “I’ll call you later,” this does not mean “I am now setting an alarm for exactly six hours from now after which I will dutifully call you and talk about your day with you.” It means, “I might call. I might not—depending on how I feel.”

When men and women have these misunderstandings, it is not because either party is doing something wrong. As John Gray says in Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, Men and women speak different languages even when we are using the same words.

By expecting nothing, you are better able to keep yourself from a) putting unrealistic expectations on guys who are not your boyfriend, b) getting upset when people don’t meet these expectations, and c) keep it moving. If you didn’t expect him to actually call later, you won’t be stressed out when the call does not come.

Now, “keep it moving” and “expect nothing” have to go together. If you simply keep it moving but continue to have boyfriend expectations for men you are casually dating, you will end up bouncing from one not-your-boyfriend guy to the next, continually feeling let down. If you expect nothing but you don’t keep it moving, you will end up accepting crumbs from guys you are dating. You’ll stick around with guys that you expect nothing from—and you will get just that—nothing.

Keep It Moving and Expect Nothing must go together. When casually dating, you do not have high expectations for the guys. Let them show you how much they care rather than you decide how much they should care. And if they do things you don’t like, understand, or appreciate, keep it moving. I don’t mean break up with them, refuse to see them, or lecture them about what they did wrong. Just do your homework, go out to dinner with your friends, go to the gym, use those acrylic paints you bought, or go on a date with someone else. Do not spend time being upset or worried about what is going on.

I’m still learning how to expect nothing and keep it moving, but I get better at it every day. So far, it’s been better for everyone involved in my dating life. The guys don’t have me lecturing them about how “I’m a catch, and I deserve to be treated with respect,” my friends don’t have to listen to “Why doesn’t he just do what he says he’s going to do?!” and I have more time and energy to study for my finals, hang out with my friends, and of course, date the guys who are most interested in me.

Ending Note: To those of you who may be confused, this post was written before Mr. C and I were boyfriend and girlfriend. So no worries! We are together and fine.

How do you keep it moving? How have your expectations affected your dating life?

I found this interesting...

Emotions Are Not Entirely Illogical

 

Many people talk about emotion and logic in a manner that suggests the two don’t match up, as if they are always distinct and separate. They assert that emotion has no basis in logic, and logic has no basis in emotion. While one could make the argument that the latter is true (does physics have a foundation of emotion?), I propose that the former is never true. No, I do not believe that ideas of pure logic match up with ideas that incorporate emotion, but the reasons behind the emotion are always logical.

I recently came across a Datingish post entitled “Are You Overthinking on Love?” (you can read ithere). The author of this post claims that “Ones who have been in love know that love defies all logic. We see an imperfect person oh so perfectly. We fall head over heels for someone who may not even have the slightest interest. We can’t seem to find the reason we’re in love with him/her…” This raises a valid point: One doesn’t always know why they’re in love. However, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a logical reason behind it, it simply means that that logic is hidden in the subconscious. People can ‘fall in love’ for a plethora of reasons, ranging from positive traits that person has, the way that person makes us feel, or even that we long for what we can’t have, among others. Perhaps the person he or she is ‘in love with’ does cause him or her emotional harm, but there’s something about them specifically that attracts the other person specifically. That comes down to personalities, and personalities are largely emotion-driven.

Furthermore, just because one knows why the way they feel is ‘wrong,’ the reasoning behind their feeling is still potentially logical. For instance, in a couple where one person is much more sexually experienced than the other, the less experienced person may not be entirely at ease with the imbalance. He or she may feel that, because the other person has had the same relations with many other people, it devalues the relations they are having together; on the other hand, because the less experienced person has had no people prior to their current SO, he or she may feel he or she places more importance on the sexual interactions. Is this entirely illogical? No. Because it makes perfect sense that when something happens less often, the times when it does happen seem more substantial. When applied to the scenario, this perceived difference in importance can stretch to feelings on the entirety of the relationship, and it can then manifest as jealousy. The reason that this is not a purely “logical” thought process is because it may ignore key things, such as the fact that the past acts were the results of relationships that are not entirely comparable, and relationships that, even if emotion did factor into them, don’t directly apply to the current state. Even so, the emotions are driven by logical thought processes, despite the fact that the logic may be contained to the individual’s understanding of the situation.

Don’t get me wrong: Logic and emotion are distinct in several key ways. Logic on its own isn’t necessarily going to alter emotional perceptions, and emotion doesn’t stand a chance of making something that was once entirely logical invalid unless one is making the point to involve emotional concerns in the logic. The fact of the matter is that human beings are not strictly emotional, nor are they strictly logical. Because our brains control the entirety of our body, everything is interconnected. We cannot think entirely logically, objectively, because every single one of us is in some way biased. The only thing we can do to undermine this bias is consider as many aspects as possible… but the bias still exists in nearly everything, and definitely in psychological questions. In short, anything that involves emotion cannot be looked at from a purely logical perspective (because to ignore emotions when they are a major factor is illogical), and emotions are founded on thought processes that make some logical sense, even if it’s hidden in the subconscious.

The practical difference, I think, in logic and emotions is how the thought process affects the chemicals in the brain. Emotions, after all, are merely the release of chemicals in the brain that make us feel happy or sad, raise heart rate, dilate our eyes, make us sweat, and make us shiver, among other things. Emotions may be thought to be the reactions to certain thoughts that wouldn’t necessarily happen if the thoughts were not as relevant to their interests.

If one acts on 'emotion' over 'logic', that means that person is going after what he or she wants over what he or she knows would be the 'best' in terms of avoiding pain or gaining pleasure for him/her or other people, but the reason the person wants it makes logical sense to begin with.

What are your thoughts on this blog? I found it on Datingish. If you really want to get your mind blown by this, check out the comments on the original post. =]

Girl Cruelty and Jealousy

One thing that I really don't think I could ever understand is truly having negative feelings for someone I've never met and then trying to do something to ruin her life. I'm talking about hatred, mixed with a large dose of the green-eyed monster.

What is the appeal? It's a waste of time. It's a waste of emotion that breeds more negativity  and ill-will and you can literally make yourself sick with that stuff.

Why bother?

Nine times out of ten I can guarantee the ill-wisher is hurt more than their victim. Take the Venezuela Canoe story, for example.

This girl was very jealous of my friend because the guy she liked was hanging out with my friend a lot. They were not dating, my friend had a boyfriend. This girl ended up calling and leaving my friend a loong message. The best part of the message was "Why don't you just get back in your canoe and row back to Venezeula and BE A SLAVE"

Now, of course I quoted the funniest part. But this girl thought that that would really insult my friend. The moral? My friend laughs over this for months AFTER. I even got to listen to it and laugh - and I met her over a year after it happened.

Of course this jealousy always seems to be over a guy. It's easy to take the one thing that can make someone the most insecure (love) and twist it into bad things. It's not worth it.

Shouldn't you be happy with yourself without it?

Oh I know it's tempting, believe me. I've had my fair share of girl cruelty moments egged on by my insecurities. Luckily I have amazing support who remind me that I'm better than that. Which I am.

But what I'm not above is making the public declaration that it seems these acts are always d one against the strongest girls, emotionally. The girls who are happy, don't show insecurity and who love almost everyone.

((I assure you, we have insecurities too, don't be envious of us))

The dream girls. The warrior queens. Don't let their mean words, thoughts, and actions break you. We have something far more attractive...love for ourselves.