What Time Reveals

Everyone knows I am an extremely busy person, perceivably by choice.  I work many jobs, which currently can add up to over 70 hours of work in a week.  My free time is rare and it is precious, but I am quite capable of fitting it time for fun.  Sometimes I believe I appreciate my personal time more due to its scarcity.

My mother always told me, "If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it."  This has proved very true, and I have often been that very individual that people would ask to even more.  A busy schedule fosters time management skills.  As for me, I know how to rearrange, renegotiate, reschedule or rethink plans so that all is still accomplished in a timely fashion.  It becomes a conceptual puzzle, a game for those who dare see it that way.  I enjoy the challenge.

Passion drives how I spend my time.  I work a lot so I make enough money for the other things I want in life.  I will also forsake many things, including sleep, in order to spend time at an event or with a friend or date.  Even when I am exhausted, I can draw on my passion to sustain me through something for which I want to be best.  There is time to crash afterwards.  I feed my relationships with passion and give time and energy freely where deserved.

Tardiness can even be planned for, but the busy person only offers a small allowance for lateness. I had to learn how to accept someone being late for a meeting because people kept doing it!  Accepting this fact took time, but now I build it into my schedule.  So now, I postpone my annoyance until a courteous amount of time has passed, and then I give myself permission to get anxious or annoyed.  There is almost always something I can get done in the time I am waiting for them.  I can only control my own actions, but continue to wish people showed respect to each other with punctuality more often.  How I wish that I could demand a doctor's note before I would excuse a late date!

No one wants to be waiting by the phone, or sitting alone at the restaurant, hoping their friend or partner really cares to show up for the relationship.  I am not a beggar for anyone's time.  If I care about you, I will call, I will email, I will show up for you and be all yours for a time.  Too often, my friends or my dates have made some plan with me that ends up discarded for something they forgot they had to do or for something "better."  I am not going to accept anyone who does not respect my time and keeps me as a low priority.  I will always prefer going out on my own to associating with people who cannot be counted on.  I deserve a man or a friend who goes out of their way to make time for me.

Thank you to all of you who already give time to those you care about...and for the rest of you, be warned that how you spend your time reveals your priorities.  If I am not your priority, then there is no way you will be mine.  Let's not waste each other's time.  Give the gift of time or honesty; walk away if you cannot honor your time commitments.

Earning The Black-and-Blue Heart Medal

More often than not, dating ends with something other than lasting love.  Dating is a dangerous activity, that can lead to many bruised hearts and egos.  I have gained some of my most salient dating lessons through messing up a relationship and have also enjoyed a vast array of experiences through intimacy with many people.  Many others have already navigated through the dating battlefield to find a life partner or just peace with their singledom.  I have lots of great stories and some valuable experience, but I remain in the trenches, expecting to incur many more wounds, until I am thoroughly weathered by love.

There is definitely something idealistic about marrying your first love.  Dating is a bitch; who wouldn't want to skip out on all that pain?  When you first find love and commit to it fast, you get so many rewards right upfront: growing together through all of life's stages, having an ever-present helping hand when you face a road block, enhancing experiences through simple companionship.  Making the choice to marry someone without "shopping around" saves many from falling victim on the battleground.  Comparably, arranged marriages achieve partnerships independent of the outcome of dating.  The pressure is off to perfect one's mad skills such as the "yawn-move" or the "oops-I dropped-something move."
[note: I do know not all marriages that either started young or were arranged end up lasting, but that also goes for other kinds of marriages, so...]

Not only is it getting harder to be psyched by dating, but acting "properly" on a date gets really old.  None of the behaviors seem natural or real.  Of course I want to make a good impression, but I want the guy in question to fall in love with me, not some imaginary girl.  How I must exasperate my friends who offer advice that I routinely disregard!  Since I have dated in very unconventional ways since I began, I have likely picked up more bad habits than good dates.  In some ways, high school must serve as a dating boot camp: the hormonally-driven competition inspiring people to be what the opposite sex seemingly wants.  It is all about embodying generalizations and manipulating impressions.  Somehow I tested out of boot camp, but missed the experience of being broken down and built back up in the image of what is expected of me.

Will I ever know how to date well?  Do I even want to get good at it?  I want to form a partnership, not just be a serial-dater.   Sometimes, my dating record brings me pain to recall, but I am still here, hoping.  I think we have to look at lost-love differently.  I refuse to wallow in self-pity that I do not have a husband, fiance or even a boyfriend right now.  I am hereby awarding myself The Black-And-Blue Heart Medal for being brave enough to continually putting my heart at risk, even after receiving multiple injuries on the battlegrounds of love.