Perfect Moment

“Whatever; you were totally thinking it.”

“Argh.”

“Yeah, you were…lol.”

…

I Want To Snuggle With You

By Karyn Spencer

Via Thought Catalog

I want to snuggle with you. I’d like to lie on you and put my head on your shoulder and breathe in the same rhythm that you’re breathing. I want to use one of my hands to rub your head, down to your neck, then to your arm, and then hold your hand. I’d like to rest my other hand on your hipbone, which is my favorite part of your body because it’s a straight and bony hip, nothing like my curvy, soft one.

I’d like to stay there long enough so that our awkwardness goes away. I’d like to feel you give into the moment. Don’t ask yourself if this is too intimate. Don’t worry about sending me signals that you like me too much. Don’t think about what will happen with us tomorrow. Stop wondering if your team is winning and how much longer it will be until I get off of you so you can turn the game on.

Make a joke after a few moments of peace, one of those jokes that isn’t funny because of its sharp wit, but funny because it’s a comment on our current state, designed to make both of us ease further into the bubble of each other that we’re currently floating in. You could say something about how I’m as pale as the sheets, or how your pet is staring at us from the corner, or how the lady upstairs is walking like an elephant. And we’ll laugh together. Not the laugh that we shared in the bar with our friends. Not the laugh that comes when you watch an episode of Flight Of The Conchords. Not the laugh that you force when your boss says something mean. This will be the laugh that you saved just for me, the one that’s vulnerable and soft and sweet, because that’s how you’re feeling towards me right now. You won’t think about what I said last week that made you angry. You won’t feel guilty for that thing you did that I would be upset about if I knew. You won’t plan what you’re having for dinner tonight. You will soak the right now of this up. Our moment.

I’d like you to play with my hair. Don’t pat my head with a flat hand, put your fingers under my hair, on my scalp, and then run them through my hair like it’s a waterfall. Wrap both of your arms around me and give me a long, tight squeeze, the kind where in the last second, I need to inhale but I can’t. Then I’d like you to close your eyes, so I can prop myself over your face and study your features freely without you looking back at me. I want to kiss your jaw line, fondle your earlobes, sweep my cheek against yours. I want to stroke the slope of your nose and your eyelids and admire your eyelashes.

I’d like you to run your thumb over my lips. Cup my face with both of your hands. And I want you to kiss me. This will be a kiss that liquefies from light to deep and then back to light. A seemingly endless kiss that doesn’t lead to anything else. It doesn’t need to. We’ll share it simply to feel the warmth that it brings on its own. Then I want you to roll me over. Lie on top of me and hold our arms over our heads so that I can feel all of your weight, strong and heavy and masculine.

I want you to start at the beginning and do it again.

…

“Miss you.”

“Miss you, too.”

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TMI

The latest cataclysmic event to affect the Millennial Generation: Facebook has decided to change its look, features, etc. AGAIN. And if the 484809485738019832 status updates about this state of events are any indication, apparently even we have a threshold for over-sharing. Who knew?

I See You: Note the realtime mini-feed in the right corner, the complete elimination of the default status update box (to allow for more posts, I presume), and the lists on the left generated by a Facebook algorithm. Stalking for dummies.

The fact that so many people felt the need to update their 547 closest friends on their feelings about the new(est) Facebook speaks to the place this social media behemoth has carved for itself in our lives. Facebook is a reflection of our real world existence, or at the very least, a portion of that existence. It’s the vehicle we use to keep in touch with friends near and far, to catch up with family members we haven’t seen in a while, to publicize the causes we care about and the events we’re planning, to document our memories, to grow our professional network, to keep tabs on people we won’t readily admit we want to keep tabs on, and (above all) to procrastinate. Every time it changes, there’s massive resistance–it’s like going to your favorite coffee shop and finding out they don’t make your usual anymore. But eventually, we get used to it and come to accept it as the “normal” version of Facebook.

(via)

But now, it seems Mark Zuckerberg & Co. have taken things a little too far. Not in any ethical sense…well, I suppose after The Social Network that’s up for debate, but that’s not what I’m referring to here. What I mean is that Facebook may have gone too far in assuming how much we really want to know about our friends and how much we really want them to know about us. (And “friends” in that sentence means “Facebook friends,” which, as any card-carrying member of the Millennial Generation knows, includes everyone from your core group to that guy you sat next to in poli-sci class two years ago but never talk to anymore.)

The new(est) Facebook has revamped (or ruined, depending on your viewpoint) the news feed, making it more stalker-friendly. The pictures are larger, posts you may find interesting are flagged, and there’s a realtime mini-feed that follows you down as you scroll. It’s beginning to look a lot like Twitter, only with longer posts and somewhat creepier mechanisms. Take, for instance, the new lists: Facebook has decided that it’s going to sort people in my life based on certain characteristics and compile this information into categorical lists. This is all good and well–and frankly, we were able to do that before if we chose, either in a list or just in a friend search–but the whole let-me-get-that-for-you kind of approach is a little weird. At least Google has the decency to ask.

But really, it’s amazing that Facebook has finally reached a point that’s gotten so many of my friends riled up, and they have a point. Do we really need to know at any given moment what our friends and our friends’ friends (and our friends’ friends’ friends’) are doing? Is that realtime mini-feed really that necessary? It’s just encouraging people to creep. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the news feed is also continually updating, so the longer you scroll, the more stuff you’ll see. It’s a never-ending cycle of stalking.

(via)

I think a personal anecdote is relevant here. I was at brunch with Lauren and Sara over the weekend, and as we were catching up on each other’s lives, Sara made a comment suggesting that she wasn’t with her boyfriend anymore. This was the first time I was hearing about the news, so I had a WTF moment right there, at the table, and managed to coherently say (despite my constant exclamations of, “Wait, WHAT?!?!”), “When did this happen?” She updated me and we all got on the same page, but in the midst of that conversation, I said something like, “Omg, I need to stalk you on Facebook more,” to which Lauren chuckled and said, “Or, you could just TALK to your friends.” Wow. So this is where we are.

Facebook has done a lot of things to the way we communicate–but ultimately, we need to remember that a friendship can’t be cultivated only through Facebook. We need real interaction, too, like phone calls and catch-up lunches/dinners/drink nights. And frankly, the new(est) Facebook is only further encouraging stalking over talking. Not just creepy, but also deceiving.

(via)

The Facebook generation is calling TMI, and for good reason. Seriously, if I wanted to know what you were doing, thinking, laughing at, promoting, attending, not attending, sharing, tagging, commenting on, posting, or capturing on film at any given moment, I’d just ask you. If we’re real friends, and not just Facebook friends, I’m sure I’ll learn about it without the help of technological realtime. Trust.

So please, Facebook, leave us some privacy options and stop making it so easy for people to creep. Because social networking shouldn’t be surveillance…well, in America, anyway.

Present Tense

I think the reason why twentysomethings are so fixated on age is because we feel a pressure to be a certain way at 23, at 25, at 29. There are all of these invisible deadlines with our careers and with love and drinking and drugs. I can’t do coke at 25. I need to be in a LTR at 27. I can’t vomit from drinking at 26. I just can’t! We feel so much guilt for essentially acting our age and making mistakes. We’re obsessed with this idea of being domesticated and having our shit together. It’s kind of sad actually because I don’t think we ever fully get a chance to enjoy our youth. We’re so concerned about doing things “the right way” that we lose any sense of pleasure in doing things the wrong way. Youth may be truly wasted on the young.

~Why Do Twentysomethings Always Feel So Old | Ryan O’Connell (via infra-redactivity)

One of my friends posted this quote on her Tumblr today and it wound up on my Facebook news feed. I blogged about a similar idea in a previous post several weeks ago, but I think this quote really gets to the heart of the matter. The message may be about young twentysomethings, but the core idea applies to virtually everyone: sometimes, we’re so focused on planning for the future, setting goals for ourselves, and making sure we stay on the right path that we forget to enjoy what’s in front of us.

I suppose when you’re out of college, in that strange limbo between carefree undergrad and established adult, this is especially true. Society, our friends, our parents, our own expectations tell us we should be at a certain predetermined point in our lives by the time we reach a certain age. Having all those deadlines hanging over our heads is hardly ideal, but it’s a catch-22–we need deadlines to keep us on track, but they place a lot of unnecessary, even arbitrary pressure on us. Does turning 25 automatically mean we need to kiss the fun goodbye? The rest of the world seems to think so. And what’s going to happen if we’re not married by the time we’re 27? Is there something wrong with us? Romantic comedies seem to answer that in the affirmative–and suggest we fix that, fast.

I really have just one thing to say to all that: WHAT THE HELL. Seriously, what the hell. Where did these deadlines even come from? Yes, one could argue that we brought many of them on ourselves, but there’s something that’s got to be influencing our decisions about what chapter we should be starting when we turn a certain age. How is it that many of us have the same idea about where we should be when we’re 22, 25, 27, 29? I guess our views reflect those of our friends and the people around us, but I’m sure societal and familial expectations have something to do with it also. Taken together, all these factors encourage us to set these deadlines–sure, you could go with the arguably more logical, my-biological-clock-is-ticking explanation, but really, is that the thrust (no pun intended) of the issue? Or is it that if we don’t meet those deadlines, something inside us tells us we’ve failed, that we’re not good enough, that there’s something wrong with us, and we’d do anything to avoid feeling that way?

All of this really gets me thinking about priorities in my life. Yes, my career is important–I’m extremely proud of the fact that I’ll be a licensed attorney by the time I’m 25. But in the meantime, as I work hard and stay focused, shouldn’t I be enjoying my twenties? This is probably the last time in my life that I’ll be able to be selfish, to do what I want and to put myself first, so shouldn’t I take advantage of it instead of worrying about meeting my own arbitrary deadlines?

As cliché as it sounds, you’re only young once. I think it’s easy for us to forget that because others expect so much of us, and we expect so much of ourselves. Sometimes, it’s ok to just be young–to take a risk and discover it was more of a mistake than a benefit, to have casual flings (safely, of course), to party hard and fall over drunk, to take spontaneous road trips without a destination in mind, to do something just for the hell of it.

If we don’t do all the crazy, mixed up, stupid, outrageously fun things you’re supposed to do when you’re young, the outcome may be worse than missing our deadlines–we’ll look back at this time in our lives and end up saying, “I wish I had.” Wouldn’t it be better to say, “Damn, I’m glad I did”?

Green-Eyed

It is not love that is blind, but jealousy. ~Lawrence Durrell

In just the last 48 hours, I’ve contemplated, encountered, or confronted jealousy several times. It’s interesting that this emotion is slowly beginning to define my weekend. To be clear, the jealousy is not coming from me. The vitriol, silently emphatic or bitingly vocal, is from other people.  In both cases, I find it unnecessary, as much as I can semi-understand the roots of the feeling.

Constantly comparing yourself to other people is toxic. Simply put, this habit blinds you to your own accomplishments, your ability to achieve more, and your potential to learn from and connect with someone who is where you’d like to be. Your energy and mental capacity would be much better spent on your own endeavors, and your motivation would be stronger if it came from your own desire to live meaningfully instead of from your resentment that someone is doing just that.

In this context, green eyes don’t look good on anyone. They reflect badly on you, not on the object of your envy. So deal with your issues and open your eyes–because none of this is about me.

(via)

In Re Relationships

No matter which box you happen to check when people ask you about your love life, there are certain undeniable truths that must be stated. Whether you’re crazy in love or crazy having fun, it’s important to stay grounded, to remember what you want, and to act on it when it feels right. So for myself and for all the beautiful girls in my life, some great advice is below–whether you’re single or taken.

Things to Remember When You’re Single

By Stephanie Georgopulos

Via Thought Catalog

Remember to take advantage. Accept invitations, talk to strangers, go to sleep at 7 p.m. if that’s what makes you happy. Do everything you have time to do and when you’ve finished, do it all over again.

Believe in yourself. Don’t feel like you’re not good enough to be loved. Self-pity is a good way to stay single. Self-respect is a good way to stay grounded. Remember that people who are in relationships were once single.

Remember that people in relationships have problems, too. Don’t feel jealous or wish them ill or think they have it easier than you do. Sometimes a coupled person, miles away from where you rest your head, will cry himself to sleep because of the loneliness that can exist in a relationship. Remember that.

Treat your dates kindly. Remember that they are people who want to believe in something as much as you do. They might not be right for you, but that doesn’t render them worthless. Respect them: you’re fighting the same fight. Don’t make dating more terrifying and lonely than it already is. If it doesn’t work out, wish them well and mean it.

Remember that sex will not trick someone into falling in love with you. Do not use it as a tool. Do not use it as a weapon. Do not use it as a means to an end. Have it and enjoy it, but do not abuse it or mistake it for love.

Don’t dwell on the things you can’t change about yourself: your height or your age or your past. Change the way you think about the those things and be done with them. Remember that everyone struggles with the hand they’ve been dealt; in that way you are very much not alone.

Don’t blame everyone for the actions of one person. Give people a fair chance. You shouldn’t have to pay for someone else’s mistakes, and neither should anyone else. We’re all burdened with collateral damage, but blaming other people won’t help repair it. Relearning to trust people will.

Remember to use a condom.

Remember to have fun. Spend time with your family and friends. Read more. Create something you’re proud of. Make your own rules and then break them. Swap spit. Take trips alone. Love yourself. Be selfish without being malevolent. Flirt. Treat yourself to an expensive dinner because you deserve it, you deserve it all.

(via)

Things to Remember When You’re in a Relationship

By Stephanie Georgopulos

Via Thought Catalog

Remember your friends. Friendship is not a vase you can stick in a corner and dust off when you’re ready to use it—it’s a live thing that must be cared for, nourished. Whether you’re in a relationship for the next few months or the rest of your life, your friendships are important and necessary. They will keep you from spinning out of control in ways that your relationship can’t. Don’t neglect them or take advantage of them.

Don’t neglect or take advantage of your partner, either. Remember that they are a person with a family, a dream, a past. Let them be human and make the mistakes you’re both bound to repeat over and over again. Pick your battles. Let them have a bad day at work. Let them call you when they’re drunk. Let them pursue what’s important to them, even when it doesn’t include you.

Pursue what’s important to you. Remember that you’re an individual; that your personal success matters. Have something other than ‘Really awesome girlfriend! :D’ on your resume. Take pride in something. Keep tucked away in the back of your mind that, should there be a breakup, your partner will not be able to take custody of the things you’ve accomplished.

Remember to keep your balance. Remember that your friendships and your family and your job and your alone-time predate your relationship. Consider the ebb and flow of your life: sometimes one thing may need to take precedence for a stretch of time, but it’s up to you to maintain equilibrium when possible. Be fair when divvying up your time—to others, and definitely to yourself.

Take care of your body. Biology doesn’t brake for monogamous relationships. Go to the doctor. Protect yourself. Proceed with caution.

Take care of your mind. If you’re hoping the relationship will fix your broken parts, look forward to being disappointed. No matter how many years you spend with someone, you’re still the sole proprietor of your happiness. Don’t sit around waiting for someone to change how you feel about yourself or your situation.

Notice the way your partner treats people: friends, colleagues, waitstaff. You’re probably getting them at their best, but if you’re appalled by their worst, remember that you might one day find yourself getting the brunt of it. Remember that you are not immune to anything.

You can’t control the course of your relationship or the actions of your partner, but remember that you’re welcome to exercise free will and make the changes you find necessary. If you’re not happy, leave. Someone loved you once and someone will love you again.

Remember that someone loves you. Maybe it’s one or both of your parents, maybe it’s your friends, maybe it’s your partner. If it’s all three, consider yourself lucky. Remember to love back.

(via)

Real Talk

[Credit: Rudy Francisco]

This is the way I want to be loved–this is the way every girl deserves to be loved. The kind of love that appreciates and celebrates our “audacity to be beautiful,” beautiful in our minds, our hearts, our dreams, and even our shoes: this is the kind of love I aspire to.

I promise to love you like it’s the only thing I’ve ever done correct.

I want–I deserve–someone who is brave. Someone who has the courage to risk pain, disappointment, and broken promises, just so we can realize everything we could possibly be. Someone who can cast fear aside for the opportunity to say, “I’ve never told anyone that before.” Someone who is strong enough to deal with his past without expecting me to be the antidote. Someone who can overcome insecurity and trust me to love him.

I want to be your ex-boyfriend’s stuntman. I want to do everything that he never had the courage to do.

And in return, I will do the same.

Smart Girls, Storied Lives

I discovered the blog post below thanks to Lauren, who posted it on her own blog a few days ago. Seriously, this is one of the best pieces of writing I’ve come across in a long time–and the fact that it has an amazing message makes it even better. It reminds women to celebrate their intelligence, their wit, their headstrong determination to never settle. A girl who reads, as Warnke describes her, is the Katie girl for the 21st Century.

The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. […] You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied.

You Should Date An Illiterate Girl

By Charles Warnke

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return, or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

…

For more inspiring, thought-provoking, culturally significant blog posts like the one above, check out Thought Catalog. Happy living 🙂