Timing is Everything

About a week ago, I sent a message to my good friend Joy saying "hey." It was some ungodly hour of the night when I couldn't sleep. My friends know I get like that once in a while.

By pure chance and possibly due to sleepy eyes, I sent the "hey" message to someone else. Someone who I'd forgotten or blocked out to the point that his initials triggered nothing in my memory. None of our texts had been preserved which either meant his number came from my old work phone or I'd trashed the messages. That would be rare if I didn't send the number down the shoot with them so I figured there was a work-friend connection.

He responded commenting on the late time to send messages. I apologised saying I didn't meant to send that to him and didn't know who he was anyway. It didn't take too much banter to realise who he was.

Now, I don't regret the past. It is one of my rules. Living in the here and now, accepting what has happened to make me who I am now and going on with the lessons learnt has been my ethos for many years now.

This one however caused that twang of sadness or doubt or a just full sub-cutaneous jab to something with exposed tendons and lots of nerve endings.

There has been only one time in my life when I met a person and the chemistry was amazing and everything else was brilliant and thanks to crap timing on my part the first time and his part now, it all adds up to nothing. Just a twang like a string on a broken guitar.

And this proves two things to me...

1. Don't look back; and
2. Delete phone numbers from your phone that you should never ever text.

A New Year of Respect

2011 was an interesting year for me, as they always are. This one highlighted one thing that I knew but had to realise. It goes along the lines of being happy first before you can make anyone else happy. That I realised, goes for most things in life.

Be rich before you give money. Be happy before you give happiness. Be wise before you give advice... or have a blog and too much spare time.

This year, I focused on honouring and humouring myself by finding the things that I liked and wanted to commit my life to. Work has been narrowed down to two areas I like and think make me a better contributor. Now I have to continue on that work path and make it work for me and my job. Friendships have solidified or dissolved to ensure that they are healthy and not damaging. Passions for hobbies and interests lost have been retried and some rekindled.

I am more of who I want to be.

One thing that I found repeatedly was sacrificed was respect. Respect for my guiding principals. Respect for people who deserved it more. Ultimately, a recognition that I sacrificed self-respect to make others happy and to respect them, when I should not have.

There is a fine line between generosity and giving because someone insists on taking from you.

Yesterday was Christmas. A symbolic day for new life. The right time to take back some of what had been taken from me. A time to stand up and silently rescind the hold that others have had over me that came from my giving and giving and their never actually asking but always taking.

Maybe everyone else is just so good at maintaining that balance but I suck at it. That is why I had to bring it back to one concept and one word that I could focus on for 2012.

Respect.

Respect for myself first then I'll deal with the rest of the world.

Trust Degraded

One of my New Year's Resolution was to be more open to different kinds of people in the world. To not judge and reject people because they failed to meet a set criteria for those I would associate with.

For the last three months, that attitude has seen an array of characters waltz in and out of my life. It has to be said that I have never made a more stupid of harmful resolution in my entire life.

It was a mistake.

I have been used, abused, fooled, embarrassed, humiliated, hurt and brutally re-educated by the lowest forms of life, crawling this pretty enough planet.

Men have told me all I want to hear and then turned on me. Women have gained my trust, only to betray it so easily.

Wow! What a seedy world there is underneathe that one that I inhabit. There be dragons.

Resolutions are a good idea because they give you a new set of rules by which to try new things and reform your life. They don't always work. It's not often they fail so miserably for me but I guess that happens.

My trust has been degraded but I am learning more about myself and the environment around me. Is this a bad thing? Yes and no. It menas I will be less trusting but that is a good thing. Am I learning? Yes and no. Some of the things I am learning suck though and I wish I didn't have to suffer so much to gain the knowledge. Has this changed me for the better? Yes and no. I see that there is so much bad in the world but the contrast has made me appreciate the good.

For the record, this resolution has stopped dead. There will be no more accepting idiots for who they are and thinking they are deep-down good types. Nope, first impressions. Trust my instincts. Be less bleeding heart and more realistic.

The good ol' days are now

“People so seldom say I love you
And then it's either too late or love goes.
So when I tell you I love you,
It doesn't mean I know you'll never go,
Only that I wish you didn't have to.”

-- I don't know who said this