Lessons Learned From Reality TV

    The last time I wrote something here I mentioned what this blog should be and today I am going to attempt to meet that challenge by sharing a recent story. This story takes place not long ago in a galaxy very, very close; this galaxy to be exact. 

    In the fall of 2017 I found myself sitting at home one night, alone, sad, and exhausted. I wasn’t physically exhausted but instead, mentally. I was worn out from the psychological torment of the swipe game. If you are not sure what the swipe game is then either you’re not single, or you don’t understand technology. The swipe game is the action of swiping left and right on potential people to connect with and potentially date and slash or screw. It’s the new age of dating people. 

    On this fall night I had decided that I was done swiping and trying to connect with people through my phone when there was no initial hormonal connection, you know  the exchange of oxytocin and vasopressin. I decided it was time to do something drastic that would change my life forever, so guess what I did! No, I did not find a hooker...sorry “escort” off of back pages, I decided to apply for a reality television show for the second time in my life. The first time really isn’t important to this story but it was Hell’s Kitchen when I was 22. This time I applied for one of those shows based around love, I won’t state which one because I may still be contractually obligated not to talk about it, I’m not entirely sure, but the general concept of the show would have resulted in me being legally wed to a stranger. 

    Applying for this process was long and required months of evaluations and interviews but as that time went on I slowly came closer and closer to the final casting decision which was more exciting than it was nerve wracking. I know, this idea sounds crazy, and it probably was but as I moved through this process I began to learn more about myself than I ever expected to. 

    The first thing I learned is that balance is incredibly important in all aspects of life. Everything you do should be in balance. Your diet, your vices, your obligations, and your adventures. We currently live in a world where we are constantly shown images and ideas and told to listen, and many of us do listen, before we even think for our self. Think about your Instagram feed and who you follow, it probably has nutrition information, workout guru’s, and adventure capitalists all over it which is great because it is inspiring, but, it’s also an extreme. It shows you all of these specific focuses that become polarizing. Your Facebook feed obviously does the same. When I was going through this process for this show I had to reflect a great deal and I quickly learned that I made excuses for my vices and they were far from balanced. Once I realized this I quickly tried to over correct and drop all of them which was just as horrible. Luckily in the last month or so I found balance. Drink, but know when you need to stop or what nights you shouldn’t. Smoking, it’s horrible for you, but the occasional cigarette is not going to cause you to drop dead. I also found this balance in my responsibilities, discovering that some days you have to put in the hours at work but it’s just as important to put some hours into fun and relaxation. 

    Another big lesson I learned was one that I wish I had learned many years ago. I had heard this one hundreds of times but never really took it to heart until lately. You can’t love someone until you love yourself. It sounds stupid right, I’m sure we have all loved someone before and didn’t really know if we loved our self or not. Well here is the catch, you can be in love with someone and not love yourself, odds are you love that person because they embody characteristics you wish that you had which is fine, it’s called admiration. The saying, “you can’t love someone until you love yourself” really means that you cannot properly love someone and respect them unless you love and respect yourself. If you have no respect for yourself then you have no problem letting others walk all over you which means you probably will not stand up for yourself which is a sign that you lack confidence. How can you be expected to protect, or stand up for, or even understand someone if you are unable to do those things for yourself. Again, in this process I spent great sums of time having to analyze myself and in doing so I began to realize what by best qualities were and in what areas I could use work. This allowed for me to learn to love myself for my quirky and dark sense of humor, my skills of reasoning and sensibility, and my warm heart that I have a tendency to hide from people. It also allowed me to see that I need to work on being a leader for myself so that I don’t stagnate in one place. 

    These are just two examples of things that I learned but most of the lessons fall right in line with these two ideas. I want to urge you, the person reading this now, to sit down and really reflect and analyze yourself. Find a quiet place and write out your answers to the hard questions you want to ask yourself. If you can’t figure out what to ask yourself then do some role-playing and write out the questions you would want to be asked by your dream date and if playing make believe is hard for you then ask a good friend to help you out by being your interviewer, you may be surprised by what you learn about that person in the mirror. 

What This Blog Should Be...

It has been a few years since I have written anything for this blog. When I started it my goal was to write about my life and journey to make up for the lost time of my life from the four years previous. I had hoped it would be a tale of debauchery and drunken idiocy, something equivalent to that of Tucker Max or Hank Moody. It was nothing like that, instead, the pendulum swung the other direction. I spent the past few years growing more than I ever would have expected. 

I had this idea that since I was in a committed relationship from the age of 21 to 25 that I had let a great deal of the those crazy moments escape me and it was time to catch up, so while some of my closest friends were having kids or getting divorced, I wanted to try psychedelic mushrooms or sleep with a multitude of loose women. I was fresh out of a breakup that was not my choice so I obviously was not in my right mind. I started by spending most nights drunk. Actually, it was every night. If I was not out with a friend in Dallas then I was sitting in a dive bar drinking with 50 year old addicts and failures. I would drink enough to get to sleep at night and go into work hung over every morning. I nearly lost my job over it. This probably sounds depressing or pitiful, and it was, but the truth is, I would not trade those days for anything.

It was those days that led me to meeting new people and those new people who gave me reasons to drink in high spirits instead of low. I spent the next few months, no, years re-learning who I was and began to love myself. The stories that I thought I would write in this blog all changed. I was living life but the stories were not about sowing my oats or destroying myself, instead they are about appreciating who I am, growing as a person, and learning to love myself. I have not written any of those stories here because I quickly realized that my story is not the same as someone else’s. I have kept most of those stories to myself because they were the exact opposite of what this blog was supposed to be but now, I look back and realize that those were the stories I should have told, the only problem is that no matter how I tell them, you would not understand them unless you live them yourself. 

What I can say is this, never look at a decision you have made and see it as a mistake. Don’t regret those past relationship or choices. Don’t regret what you did on a whim. It is those decisions that can shape your life, it is those decisions that could take you from drinking yourself to sleep, to sleeping soundly knowing you are appreciated and loved.

Tales from the Mythos

      Many have uttered the name of this mythical realm; some swear to even have their mail sent there. Located somewhere between the Matrix and Oz but adjacent to Never Land is a lonely and dark desert where its inhabitants roam looking for that single oasis. Much like Never Land its residents never grow up and live with sore wrists. I am speaking of course of The Friend Zone. Thousands of men have used the term Friend-zone and possibly just as many women but with a different context. I decided to explore this vast wasteland of anger and pent up sexual frustration in hopes of discovering the truth.

      I began my journey like any explorer would, by hearing about it through myth and legends spoken in low voices in dark places where the spirits were dismal and flowing, the place that mind gathered and discussed the bigger things in life, I’m talking of course of Facebook. It was there that I noticed the writing on the wall, “One does not simply escape the friend zone.” I found this peculiar because in all of my travels I had heard of this land many times but never saw it with my own eyes.

     

     I quickly delved deeper into this mystery and turned to the treasure that it the writings of the prophets amassed into one tome called Wikipedia which explained, “The friend zone, in popular culture, refers to a platonic relationship wherein one person wishes to enter into a romantic or sexual relationship, while the other does not. It is generally considered to be an undesirable or dreaded situation by the lovelorn person.” This sounded like some form of curse inflicted on bright eyed and love stricken warriors who had fallen victim to Aphrodite or the sting of cupids’ arrow.  I feared for my safety but knew I had to continue on, not just for myself but for these poor hopeless souls that had been lost to this trickery.

      I set sail in search of someone who has seen this land with their own eyes had it been someone who has wandered this lost plane of existence or even some magical deviant who had sent defenseless souls there. After a long voyage through The Google Sea I came across a clump of islands and docked in a small cove and began the trek across the sands and into the woods towards a column of smoke in the distance. I hacked my way through the forest while wondering what perils and surprises lay before me and with one final swing of my machete I found the source of the smoke, a rather large bon-fire in the middle of a cozy mud-hut village. I approached cautiously with my blade in hand but was taken by surprise when a gaggle of sheep run up on me and before I could swing they began to change before my very eyes. I stood there mesmerized as the sheep began to grow in size and take on familiar forms, they began to rise up onto two feet and stretch out long nimble arms, these sheep were no ordinary sheep, they appeared to be people, or possibly some form of hybrid, some form of…Sheeple.

      In front of me stood two women of this tribal flock and I quickly asked, “What is this place, what are these islands I have landed upon?” The first woman looked at her friend and then back to me and explained that she was Krystie Lee Yandoli and her associate was Tracy Clayton and I had landed my ship on the islands of Buzzfeed, named so for the gossipy hum and constant consuming of everything possible by the inhabitants. I explained my quest to these two women and when they offered me some insight. Krystie quoted the words a world famous wizard known as Daniel Radcliffe to me, ‘“Friend-zoning is a terrible thing. The idea of a friend zone is like a terrible, male… have you ever heard a girl say she’s in the friend zone? It’s a thing I think men need to be really careful about using… I definitely think the idea of friend zone is just men going, ‘This woman won’t have sex with me.’” I found this odd and twisted, and Tracy’s adage helped little, ‘“I also love it when this happens because I feel like privileged people are more likely to be heard in general, so when they speak about privilege there’s a better chance that the people who need to hear the message will actually hear it and maybe receive it.”’

      Surely this was lunacy, how could one of the world’s most famous wizards know of the friend-zone, who in their right mind would reject the powerful and mystical Daniel, even without his magic he had money and talent enough to make any women swoon. That is when it occurred to me; maybe no woman had been put in the friend-zone before, could it be that this plain of existence was only reachable by being banished there by a witch? I had to know more, I had to discover the secrets these hags knew!

      I sat down by the fire with them both and began to take in their knowledge and reading through their notes. They went back and forth telling me stories of the advances men had made towards them, how these men would present them with flowers and fermented beverage and then expect entrance into her most holy of grails. They explained how society had even chastised them for taunting and tempting these men when they simply enjoyed the company they offered and wanted nothing more.

       In the distance I could see the gleam of the suns eye just peaking over the horizon when Tracy stopped me in my tracks by saying, “Rape culture made the construction of the friend zone possible. Rape culture strips a woman of her right to consent, and it punishes her when she dares take control of her body, and the friend zone does the same thing. They’re both built on the premise that in the face of a man’s will, a woman should never say no.” I was truly stunned; it was all starting to make sense. These women were no hags or witches; they were simply defenders doing all they could to keep their castles from being penetrated. Their provinces had no qualm about creating alliances and opening their gates to those who wished to assist but once their friends became their aggressors they had to find a way to banish thee!

      I knew what had to be done, I thanked the women for their information and made haste back to my vessel, the only way to stop this madness was to lock the gates of The Friend-Zone and make sure no soul could escape once banished there. I cut my ship free from its restraint and set sail, uncertain of where I was going but driven with fury. I sailed across the ocean, seconds turned into minutes, minutes into cups of coffee, and coffee into business calls, but finally I came to a ship graveyard.  I sailed towards shore through the wreckage and fragments of pas voyages. Masts pointed towards the sky from beneath the abyss and hulls rotted into piles of driftwood. I could feel it in my bones that I had arrived.

      My ship hit land with a hard thud and I was thrown forward and into the soupy sand. I stood up and tried to brush it off of my sleeves and pantaloons but it was sticky and only seamed to spread into the fabrics the more I rubbed. I glanced around me and could only see the dark mountain ridge before me, there appeared to be only one way to go, over it. I began my climb up the mountain stopping every so often to catch my breath or rest my arms but I finally made it, I had made it to the mountain top and unlike what others have said, it was not glorious, the view was not beautiful, no, instead it looked down into a dark desert where black specs seemed to dredge across it. This was defiantly it; this was The Friend-Zone.

       I camped at the top of the mountain and regained my strength in order to prepare for what was to come knowing all too well that it would not be pretty. When the morning came I made my descent and came to the edge of the desert but I was not alone, I was greeted by many shambling creatures that walked aimlessly while moaning and groaning. I began to move slowly past them when one noticed me and with a deep grunt alerted the other creatures. I drew my machete and a smaller hunting knife from my boot and began to run through the wasteland. One of those blasted creates grabbed my pack and I quickly spun around and lobbed off its arm but I wasn’t quick enough, the horde was starting to gain on me. I began to hack and slash at them all, cutting one’s torso, slicing off the fingers of another, slowly moving forward, stabbing one in the skull with the hunting knife, running another through with the machete. These demons kept coming and I was growing tired when I noticed a stone structure near to the north. I lifted my boot and kicked one of the plagued down into the sand and tore off towards the building, kicking up sand behind me.

      I crashed into the door and tore it open, slamming it behind me just barely in time. I could hear the monsters beating on the outside of it, moaning, groaning, it was pitiful. I took a deep breath and looked around in the dark before reaching for my lighter. I patted my pockets but before I could pull it out a lamp ignited in the corner and a man stood there grinning at me. I stared at him and sized him up; it took all of two seconds to realize he was no threat. “What are those things,” I asked?

      The man chuckled, “They are no different than you or I they are just unfortunate.” What the hell did he mean by that, they were very different from him and I, neither of us were groaning sacks grabbing for anything that moved…shit, it hit me, “Their men aren’t they?” The man nodded and lit another lamp before sitting down. I sat down across from him and he told me his tale. He was Michael Kimmel, the Director of the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities and he had sought out this land for his research. I then told him of my journey, how I had heard the myths and met the Sheeple of Buzzfeed  who opened my eyes to the evil of men and how I had come to lock the gates of The Friend-Zone once and for all to prevent these sick men from getting free and endangering the women who sent them here.

     “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAaaa,” Kimmel laughed.

     “What’s so damn funny?” I asked.

     “There is no gate to The Friend-Zone that can be locked, no magic portal that just spits these men out here.”

     I scowled; he was obviously trying to stop me from completing my quest. “What do you mean there is no gate, these men have to get here somehow!”

     “The friend zone is an extension of constrained gender norms and the need to constantly perform masculinity in front of other men. If you grow up learning that sex is adversarial — he chases, she is pursued; he gets, she gives — then how do you deal with what amounts to relegation to the losers' bracket? The friend zone is thus ‘"face-saving."’ Explained Kimmel

      It hit me like a ton of bricks, the final piece to the puzzle that made the picture clear. The Friend-Zone wasn’t a magical plane of existence created to be a prison for men, it wasn’t created by women as a way to punish men or keep them away, it was a state of mind created by men to protect their frail egos from being shattered like eggs on a rock. Each and every one of them has put themselves there by being unable to accept their short comings and instead created a false concept that blames the woman instead of owning their own issues. These men outside of the hut were walking around like zombies to the average person but in their own heads they were seeing visions of grandeur and power. They didn’t need someone to lock the gate and throw away the key, they need someone to wake them up and show them that it is ok to be rejected, and that it is perfectly fine to be friends with the opposite sex without there having to be an expectation of more. They needed someone to guide them and explain to them how to be their best selves and to truly love who they are before expecting any woman to want them.

     I shook Kimmel’s hand and encouraged him to continue with his research before stepping back to the door and pulling it open with one thrust. Bright light shone through the opening and blinded my eyes as I stepped through the portcullis and into the desert…or so I thought.

References:

Buzzfeed: Why the Friend Zone is Actually Dangerous for Women.

Written by: Krystie Lee Yandoli, Tracy Clayton, and Julia Pugachevskt

http://www.buzzfeed.com/krystieyandoli/why-the-friend-zone-is-actually-dangerous-for-women#.af9KeG9Vo

Salon: Reasons the Friend Zone Needs to Die.

Written by: EJ Dickson

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/12/6_reasons_the_friend_zone_needs_to_die/

Mic: It’s Not the Friends Zone Guys it’s you.

Written by Elizabeth Plank

http://mic.com/articles/115122/it-s-not-the-friend-zone-guys-it-s-you#.5nCKs3xmb

WikiHow: Escape the Friend Zone

http://www.wikihow.com/Escape-the-Friend-Zone

Wikipedia: Friend Zone

Written by: Who the hell knows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend_zone

Why Ashley Madison is Ruining Your Life.

    You can’t escape it, and be honest a part of you probably doesn’t want to escape you. You may have even come across this because you were planning to dive deeper into it. Ashley Madison is everywhere right now and everyone wants to know the dirty little secret their not in on. Is your better half not any better, is your religious figure head seeking a side of sin, or maybe your local newsman is making their own headlines.

    I have news for you, we have all fallen victim to the Ashley Madison hack, yes, all of us! Your kids have also fallen victim to it and even our elders! I don’t mean that everyone has signed up for Ashley Madison and been found lusting for some strange, what I mean is it is affecting all of our lives. It is on every radio and news outlet across the U.S and it is tearing apart good and wholesome families like the Duggars! I’m sorry you can’t see the smart-ass grin on my face when I type that but just imagine that it is there.

    First, let us all understand something, depending on which site you use to check your e-mail addresses will depend on if you were “compromised” or not. I would highly suggest you avoid Trustify.info because it is hoping to sell you a service that will hide your leaked information but it will contact every e-mail address you plug in and of the four addresses of mine I could remember using since the Internet came out all four were “compromised.” Let me clarify, I wouldn’t doubt that hormonal driven 13 year old me would have signed up for something like this even though I had no credit card, but I am also certain Ashley Madison did not exist when I was 13.

    That being said, when I used the site: 

https://ashley.cynic.al/

    None of those 4 e-mail addresses were found and there were no e-mails coming to me to report that they had been tested along with no products to buy. Allow me to summarize this point, since people love their privacy so much someone has decided to take advantage of this hack and use it as a business opportunity to scare all of the sheeple into spending money. This is how most of us have been affected by this Hack.

    Second, your poor children and elders are now confused as to why the middle generation is running around in fear of some lady named Ashley Madison. The children now equate her to being the Boogie-man’s wife and the elders assume she is running for president on a democratic stance that will turn American into a communist nation. In all seriousness, children are not dumb and they are going to ask you what Ashley Madison is so be ready to lie and just tell them it’s daddy or mommy’s work friend. The elders are going to lecture you all about how in their day they didn’t need a website to cheat; they just waited till the other one went to war. Either way we are all stuck listening to the stupid repeated news coverage of this stupid story.

    The best part of all of this though is how many people are so surprised and shocked by it. People are upside down about the idea that 40 million people have signed up for this site and had their information shared. Out of the United States 321,569,738…9…740 shit it will not stop going up and I know one of those people who were just born… ok sorry back on point, of the U.S’s  population that is roughly 8% of the population who signed up for this site. Keep in mind, that doesn’t consider people who are under-age or not online. 8% big deal, the real problem is that people are so afraid to admit who they really are in fear of being judged

.

    We all have our kinks, our perversions, and our twist of lemon in our tea. People are freaking out because they don’t want to be labeled a cheater or sinner or a kink. We are all so focused on putting on this mask that makes us look clean that we forget that we all have stains on our clothes and if anyone wants to judge you on the fact that you accept how you want to enjoy your life then they are probably guilty of something the same or possibly just as “dirty.” I’m not saying we accept every perversion, I’m not condoning things that guys like Dahmer, Bundy, or Fogle do; there are lines, but what does it matter that someone is trying to extort you for money because you cheated, you knew your marriage was shit, you had all right to seek outside help in any form, and you should own the choice you made. Then again, maybe you’re mad because someone took away your decision to fess up or not.

    P.S. the views and ideas expressed in this article are simply comedic satire based off one man’s opinion who could give two shits how you live your life as long as you understand you have no room to judge anyone else you dirty dirty piece of shit.

    P.P.S really, we shouldn’t judge each other anyway, all that does it create un-needed hatred.