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Setting Boundaries

Sep4

I want to discuss something that has been pretty relevant to me through my life, and pretty much my entire life, and that is the importance of setting boundaries for yourself in your relationships. Now when I say relationships, I don’t just mean your boyfriend or girlfriend, but romantic relationships are included. What I mean by boundaries are things that you find acceptable and things you do not. Everyone has a line to be crossed somewhere, and it is always good to think about where you draw the line in any given circumstance, if you haven’t already. Most of you will notice that as you go through life, you will meet people that will push your limits, test you, and take advantage of you.   They will lie to you, ignore you when they know you need or want them for something. They will dodge your questions, and tell you “I don’t know” so you don’t ask anymore questions. They will try to involve you in things that you want no part of. They don’t necessarily do this on purpose either. Well a lot of times they probably do but many people won’t even realize that they are pushing the envelope with someone else, it’s just their natural personality coming out and it happens to inflict on the comfort level of another person. But here’s the thing,  you have to tell them when it happens. Just tell them. For example, if you and your spouse are looking for houses together and they try to convince you of buying a house that you know for a fact that you can’t afford and will send you into bankruptcy, don’t let them talk you into it! Stand your ground and tell them that no, you don’t agree. Now a lot of you that probably comes as second nature, but there’s people like me who find that harder to do.

But that’s just an example and I don’t mean that you shouldn’t think about certain situations when they come to you. If you have thought about it and you know that you aren’t comfortable with something, it’s your responsibility to communicate that with them. Don’t be an asshole about. Tell them firmly but with a smile. They will likely be disappointed with your disagreement or rejection, but they should shake it off pretty quickly. If they can’t, then that just shows how immature they are, and they are likely to feel like the ass they are behaving like. Whatever you do, don’t argue with them and let them talk you to down. Say your peace calmly and walk away. They can’t swing back at you for that without looking like a total douche. If they do, then you might want to reevaluate why you surround yourself with people that can’t simply respect your wishes. Truthfully, communicating things like this is something I still struggle with myself.

I have went many years without having clear boundaries because as I have talked about before, I have had a history of being a doormat. Doormats don’t have many boundaries, and if they do then they will usually let people pass through them, as I have done many, many regrettable times. So through time, I have set boundaries for myself on a lot of different things and they are pretty set in stone, but I still have trouble with letting people talk me into shit anyway. And something weird has been happening lately. I can suddenly so easily tell when I am being fed a line of bullshit. It’s a very strong intuition in my gut. And sometimes the people trying to BS me are just bad at it and the details don’t match up. I mean, I am nobody’s fool. But for some reason, this keeps happening. People keep trying to attempt to take me for an idiot. My problem might be that I am not firm enough with the ones who I am at risk for being taken advantage of by. They know I will fall to their persuasion. I guess I just have to drag the bitch in me out from time to time until they learn to back off of me for good.  Y/N?

So what do you think? Have you thought about what your boundaries are? And how do you deal with those who try to push your limits? 

Movie Review: Something Borrowed

Sep3

Warning: Spoiler alert


I recently saw the movie called Something Borrowed and decided to do a little review, of sorts, and open up discussion. The movie stars Kate Hudson (as Darcy) and Ginnifer Goodwin (as Rachel) and are best friends who grew up together. Rachel is a lawyer who met her crush, Dex (played by Colin Egglesfield) in law school, but she assumes someone as hunky as him would never go for a girl like her so she doesn’t pursue him romantically. Rachel introduces Dex to her best friend Darcy, an outgoing go getter, who wastes no time in snagging Dex for herself. Rachel hides that their budding romance bothers her since she still has feelings for Dex. A few years later, Darcy and Dex become engaged and Rachel is her maid of honor.  Darcy throws Rachel a surprise 30th birthday party where Rachel blurts out to Dex in private that she used to have a thing for him in law school. Dex is stunned by this and he then, after a few drinks, kisses Rachel in a taxi they share after the party, and then he goes home with her that night. They wake up and realize what they have done and try to forget it happened, but soon they both realize that they can’t, they both have strong feelings for each other and they continue to spend time alone together when Darcy isn’t around. Rachel tells her good friend Ethan (played by John Krasinski) about everything and he tries to convince Rachel that she deserves to be happy and that she will regret everything if she doesn’t do anything and keeps allowing herself to be strung along by Dex. Meanwhile Dex is very conflicted and avoids  making a final decision between Rachel and Darcy until Rachel gives him an ultimatum.

I wouldn’t call it your typical romantic comedy because this movie travels to a different place than most of it’s counterparts. Most movies and even real life situations, with a story line of  ”girl falls for a taken man”, will usually have that girl’s feelings being shamed, invalidated, and chalked up to being just a fantasy, due to the fact that her crush is unavailable. Then, in a typical story, she is convinced that it wasn’t meant to be so she forces herself to move on, the end. But I have always felt that whole ideas as kind of  BS.  Am I the only one who feels like it isn’t always that easy? This movie portrays a different spin on things. It offers the idea that sometimes people end up with the wrong person and it also explores the idea of  ”what could have been” before it’s entirely too late. To me, that sounds like a more realistic situation, or at least just as real as anything else, but for some reason we don’t often see that kind of twist on things portrayed in the media, and it makes me wonder why.

Aside from that, I felt it was a very nice romantic comedy, or “chick flick” if you will. I can’t deny I am a sucker for chick flicks, and this one left me hooked and even surprised towards the end because I couldn’t think of a comparable movie that I have seen. If you haven’t seen it and you enjoy this type of movie then I highly suggest checking it out.

If you have seen it, what did you think of the movie and the story that it offers?

Also, is it me or is Dex the 2nd coming of Tom Cruise?

TLC’s Big Sexy

Sep1

There’s a new series on TLC called Bid Sexy.  The show features 5 plus sized women living in New York City and working in different areas of the fashion industry. The show premiered this past Tuesday.

I haven’t seen a full episode yet but the clips I have seen make it seem pretty good. I am in favor of it as long as they don’t get all, “Real women have curves!” and all that.

Your thoughts on the show?

Tumblr Is Not A Blog

Aug30

Everywhere I go I see people referring to their blogs. Now when I think of a blog, I think of well planned out and constructed ideas written out, usually with a word count of more than 8, and usually with an option for commentary and discussion. I have to admit that I am often disappointed when I hover over their link and discover that it is a tumblr account. Giving them the benefit of a doubt, I click the link and I see the expected: Hardly any text, and if there is any it will be quotes from their favorite celeb, song lyrics, youtube  links, animated gifs, photography and other graphics. To me this is not what I consider a blog. These are micro-blogs if anything, because they often take less than 2 minutes to compose. And most of it is just reblogged from other blogs. Actually when you think about it, how different is most tumblr entries than your average twitter account? Not that much different. Ok now I know there are exceptions. I may have seen a couple of tumblr pages that were wordy like a real blog, but these are few and far between. For a long time, I didn’t really “get” tumblr. Maybe I had a reason for finding it pointless because why make an account there and posts photos, links, and internet trends there when I can just do it here, which is what I sometimes do, but not every day.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to hate on tumblr users. Do your thing, it’s cool. I’m just saying that I don’t consider it real blogging. Then again, maybe I am just being picky because I am an aspiring writer and more about words. And I get that not everyone is internet savvy. I myself once had a xanga page, livejournal, freewebs, angelfire, and all those little beginner sites that sweeped the internet. This is most likely the same type of idea.

What are your thoughts on tumblr?

How do you deal with haters?

Aug23

Everyone has people who criticizes them or just flat out is a hater. You know, no matter how you try to keep peace in a situation, they will always do something to try to bring you down and make you look bad. How do you deal with their comments? Do you address it and stand up for yourself? Or is there a point in which you just ignore it? This can mean both in person or online.

So how do you deal with haters?

Trigger Warnings & Comment Policies

Jul31

For quite some time now I have been seeing other bloggers using trigger warning and comment policies. First let’s talk about trigger warnings.

Trigger warnings are when the author of the post will warn a reader of potentially offensive content within that post that might trigger an intense emotional response, usually of anger, disgust, or sadness. This is usually done in either the title or the first paragraph of the post, and is usually for the benefit of the reader so they can decide whether or not to proceed reading. Now I have to admit I have always thought of these as somewhat useless to me, because I am not afraid of any potentially offensive content. Even I were, I think curiosity would always get the best of me. I doubt I would say to myself, “Oh there’s a trigger warning, better hit the Back button.” And I have to admit that I am unsure of who would actually do that, but who knows. But my “Sexism: Only Ugly Bitches Complain About It” post the other day seems to have offended quite a lot of people. Some were just disgusted with the message within the motivational poster. Other apparently, “can’t believe I posed it as a serious question.” Now first let me say that I didn’t post that pic as to say I agree with the message it contains. I didn’t mean to purposely offend anyone, and if I did, I apologize. My motive for posting that was that I was just curious as to what different people had to say about the idea. I know other bloggers might not care and they might completely ignore or dismiss anyone who wants to defend the message of the photo, but not I.

Then I got to thinking that maybe I should have put up a trigger warning for that. But if I start doing that, I might have trigger warnings up all over the place, but would it still be necessary? Just something that I started to ponder.

Now on to comment policies. Those are when a blogger will post a set of rules or guidelines for readers who choose to leave comments. If a commenter doesn’t follow the policy, there posts are usually removed and the person who made the comment could face being banned if it is a repeated offense. I have thrown around the idea in my head of making a basic comments policy. Nothing extensive, just something to ensure that no one within my blog community, including myself, feels disrespected in any way by another commenter. I want everyone to be able to have their say but also know that they don’t have to put up with someone else harassing or bullying them, which on a blog that tends to bring up controversial subjects (as I often do) seems to be a potential issue. I think I have put off making a comments policy until I gain more of an audience, but maybe I could use one already. This idea was partially inspired by a conversation and mention of a comments policy that reader Aoirthoir brought up.

So should I use triggers warnings when necessary?
Do you use them as a blogger or reader?
And should I post a comments policy?

Any ideas or thoughts on these two things would be very much appreciated.

Blog Suppression

Jul10

I come up with blog post ideas all the time. I’ll start to write them, and sometimes finish them but then I decide not to publish it because then I think, “Well what if this offends certain people?” or “What if I piss them off? No I better not publish it.” Then another thought runs through my head going, “Who cares? It’s my blog, they can deal with it.” I start to feel conflicted because I don’t don’t want to offend people who read my blog, especially friends and family who I care about, but I also don’t want to suppress my thoughts and censor what I write either. So I’ll usually just try to think of another idea, but it’s sometimes hard for me to find neutral topics to post about.

Readers, what should I do? Should I publish these posts anyway or should I be careful of what I write to avoid offending other readers?

Vaguebooking, Drama Queens, & Attention Seekers

Jun15

Last night I was on one of the message board I go to, and someone mentioned the term vaguebooking (on facebook). Having never heard that word before, I did a little google search. According to most of the urban dictionary definitions and blog posts from around the world, vaguebooking means  when someone leaves a vague status message on their facebook to which most people don’t know what they are talking about, creating an element of mystery and prompting friends to wonder and ask what’s going on. Example: “How can someone be so heartless?” Most of you can right now either recall a number of irritating posts made by your friends, or recall that you have been guilty of this yourself.

I’m not going to lie that I have done this a few times (few, meaning less than what I can count on my hands) back when myspace was cooler than facebook, but I quickly ordered myself to knock it off after I saw friends making nearly the same posts and finding myself laughing at how attention desperate they were being. Now I hate myself for doing that, ever. Ick. But attention seeking is exactly what it is. And what pisses me off more than anything is that with many of the offenders, when you ask them what’s wrong, they will say they can’t talk about it or they complain about people getting into their business. Wtf? If you can’t talk about it or don’t want people to ask you about it, then don’t post it. At all! Don’t even hint about it. You cannot post hints about something and then demand your personal life to be kept private because that is so hypocritical.

These people are often the drama queens in real life too. They always seem to be arguing with someone, or in some sort of crisis at all times, and then they see facebook as a perfect opportunity to maximize on the drama and attention they need. I’ve seen arguments within statuses and comments about pretty much everything personal you can think of, when they could have been sending the messages privately, they chose to make it public. It’s pretty ridiculous.  I’m so sick of it, and this is why I have a love/hate relationship with facebook, because I can’t stand the drama and the attention pleas, and many times the friends of theirs who enable their bull too.

“I’m going to delete my facebook forever!” (Yeah, until tomorrow)

“I hate men! I’m done with them.” No, you’re not. Two hours laters “I luuuuv my bf 4eva!” (God shut up!)

Single, in a relationship, single, engaged, married, single…from one person all in one week…is just fucking stupid. Just pick one and keep it there.

The fighting within status messages…just text them privately please.

…… If you are under 18, this behavior is expected in my opinion. But if you are older than that, it’s unacceptable.

And many people say,” Just hide that person.” Well that’s a good point. Yeah I can, and I probably will. But if I have to hide someone from seeing their updates, it’s because they are being god damned annoying, and they need to stop. It takes a lot for me to be annoyed by people, and even more for me to say something about it. The point is, why should I have to hide them from my news feed? No one should be made to feel annoyed enough to have to hide a that person. People need to just stop  living their roller coaster soap opera through facebook. That is all.

Opinions are welcome, as always.