Bad to the (Wish)Bone

Whenever people make a list of what they are thankful for, they tend to go for the pretty obvious good stuff – family, health, etc. And while I’m thankful for those things, there came a certain point where I recognized that I should also be thankful for the things that were bad or that didn’t quite go so well, or the things that aren’t quite perfect right now but are getting there.

So, instead of listing all of the awesome things in my life, or the awesome people, I figured I’d say thanks for some of the more uncomfortable and unpleasant things that have made me who I am today:

Thank you to my first love for showing me what a relationship with a supremely emotionally unhealthy person looks like so that I could avoid it in the future.

Thank you to the beardy lover of Star Wars I recently dated. You made me realize that tentative plans *maybe* once a week, coupled with a very serious lack of communication between those plans, leads to an unsustainable situation – no matter how cute, beardy or funny you are.

Thank you to my old supervisor, who fired me from working at the nursing home front desk because I was surfing the internet too much. That job was crap, I wasn’t looking for anything better, and getting fired from that job gave me the opportunity to move in with my husband (who was my boyfriend at the time).

Thank you to the obnoxious old-school lawyer, who showed me what a truly incompetent manager looks like so I could avoid it in the future.

Thank you to the first and only “bad boy” I’ve ever dated. You made me realize that guys who don’t have their shit together really suck – and you gave me the surreal opportunity to sit next to a stripper while she did heroin, so that’s a memory that will last forever.

Thank you to my husband’s most recent ex-girlfriend, for making my life a living hell for 7 months. At this point in my poly journey, I feel like I can get through anything because of those 7 months of emotional insanity. It’s made me a lot more skeptical of who hubby is dating, but that’s ALSO a good thing.

Thank you to modern medical science for allowing me to see the damage I was doing to my body with my terrible eating choices and giving me an opportunity to address my health before it was too late.

And lastly – thank you to the inventor of blogging for giving me an outlet for my writing, even as putting my thoughts, opinions, emotions and creations on display continues to leave me feeling vulnerable. But without vulnerability, how are we meant to grow?

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone.

Did Somebody Call The Doctor?

I wanted to exhibit my nerdery to some extent, so I thought I’d show you what arrived in the mail today as accessories for my adorable little writing/blogging laptop!

And here’s the completed product. (What you can’t see are the really annoying bubbles in the decal. I did a very bad job putting it on this laptop, but I still love it!)

You can find both of these on Amazon(and available for Prime shipping!) here, if you’re interested!:

Doctor Who Laptop Sleeve (For 11.6″-12.1″ laptops)

Bad Wolf Decal

 

If you can’t tell – I’m kind of a big Doctor Who fan!

I Lost 29 Years of Baggage in Just 10 Months! Ask Me How!

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is

                          – My grandmother

You learn a lot of lessons when you transition from monogamy to ethical nonmonogamy. It’s inevitable.

And as a writer/blogger thingy, there’s a temptation to make my stories wrap up into nice neat little packages, and then move on. I present the conflict, the resolution, and the moral. The End.

But the reality is: there is no end to the lesson. If you go through something rough, and you learn about your boundaries and your feelings, you might fall into the trap of thinking to yourself “Boy, I sure learned my lesson on THAT one!” and then voila, you’re More Enlightened™ and you’ll never make that same mistake again!

But you will. I certainly have.

Chances are, you’re going to make a lot of the same mistakes over and over. Because you’re human, and you’re flawed, and years of influence on how you view yourself and your relationships doesn’t just disappear after you stretch your boundaries once or twice.

As I continue to recount stories and lessons I’ve learned from my journey into ethical nonmonogamy, it’s not meant to be a testimonial about how everything is sunshine and rainbows after I learned to stop worrying and love the poly. I still have days where I lapse into old habits. I still have days where I miss how simple and easy monogamy was. I still have days where I hate everyone and myself – and honestly, I’m not sure how much of that is my depression and how much of that is the reverberations of emotional upheaval I have experienced intermittently throughout this whole change.

I’m not an expert, by any means. I’ve only been practicing ethical nonmonogamy for about 10 months now. I’m definitely in a much better place than I was, for sure. But I wouldn’t say “I’ve arrived”. And honestly – anyone who says that they never struggle or have issues owing to some indirect or direct root in poly is selling you a bill of goods. I don’t care how long they’ve been poly. When you add more people, you add more complication. That’s how it works. Just like I wouldn’t believe anyone who tells me that they eat healthy and work out every day and NEVER EVER have days where they just want to be lazy and eat a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup (because seriously, those things are DELICIOUS!).

Beware anyone who suggests that they know The One True Way™ to do ethical nonmonogamy, or solve conflict, or package the perfect communication style that will please every person in their polycule. Beware anyone who sets themselves up as an expert. Beware anyone who portrays themselves as the perfect protagonist in all of their stories, and in every story their partner or meta were the ones Doing It Wrong™.

I can be petty and shitty and mean. I can be hurt and angry. Most importantly: I can, and have been, WRONG.

So, dear reader, I make this promise: I will do my best to portray my moments of weakness honestly. I don’t want anyone to walk away with the impression that I haven’t been a shitty human being on several occasions. I don’t want anyone to walk away with the impression that I always fully learn my lessons. I still beat my face against some of the same obstacles I always have, and in those instances it’s because I haven’t truly accepted things The Way They Actually Are™.

Blogger? I Only Just Meta!

Yes – I love puns and you’re just going to have to deal with my attempts at “creative” blog titles.

So, I was struggling to come up with something to write about for today’s blog post. I’m trying really hard to get into the daily routine, as I decided to treat myself yesterday to a cute little laptop for writing on the go. (Seriously, check this thing out: Lenovo Ideapad – it’s only $160 after tax, and it’s so portable and does everything a writer/blogger would need it to do, plus has killer battery life, and is a super adorable red color! And I was able to go straight to the store and pick one up for instant gratification, haha!)

Well, I’m not on the go right now – but I am totally sitting in my basement, watching My Little Pony, and contemplating what pearls of wisdom or cautionary tales I might have for you.

I’m coming up blank, so I’ll just write this meta post about how tough it is sometimes to come up with things to write about.

On paper, I’ve got a lot going on in my life. You’d think it would be pretty easy to come up with something to write. But the truth is that most days as an adult are pretty routine.

I mean, I finally perfected the cooking of my keto-fried pork-chops, and I could do a quick post about that, I guess… but do I really want to do a cooking post? Maybe – I’ll put a pin in that one, because I did have the forethought to take a picture of the finished product. (Though that was only because I wanted to send it to my mom, haha).

I had a fairly busy day at work that was about 10 hours of running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to fix other people’s mistakes – but the minutia of that whole mess isn’t really blog-worthy.

I miss my boyfriend, as he’s on a job in Boston, but everyone misses the people they love when they’re away.

My husband is engrossed in Fallout 4, so I could write a satirical post about being a Fallout 4 widow…

I do have some things coming up in the the near future that will be much more interesting to discuss, though, so I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be perpetually short on content.

I think I’m going to get started on that pork chop post, now…