Making a relationship work

I am probably the worst person to write about this, I've had many failed relationships and the reality is that I am one of those human beings who is just too damn scared of entering a romantic relationship but I guess I feel that because of all the failed relationships I've had I've learned with each of them what made them fail and I guess if you know what can make something fail then you can sort of figure out what can make it work.
Most people enter into a relationship pretty much hiding themselves behind an image they think will get others to like them, they make the other person believe all this greatness about them and then struggle to keep the facade as time goes on.
Other people do that same thing but they do it just because they think that the idea of having a relationship means that their job is to make every effort to make the other person happy, they don't understand that happiness is an inside job and therefore as time goes by they realize that they have wasted time and effort on an impossible task, it was not their job to make the other person happy.
Which is what brings me to the first thing that makes a relationship work: honesty. Yes, yes, I know, no duh! hello! you all did not need to read all of that in order to know that honesty is one of the things that make a relationship work. But I am talking about being honest from the very beginning of it, from the first conversation, why waste your time trying to impress someone else by not being who you really are, if at the end of the day if  they don't fall in love with who you really are or you make them believe you are someone else then eventually it will all go to hell, eventually either they will find out the little things you do that they can't live with or eventually you will get too tired of pretending and that will be it.... Then you both realize that you were with someone you really did not know and then how do you know you love them if you don't really know them?
I wish people would actually take heart to that first advice, but I know they won't. Everyone will say I will do this, this makes sense but in the end fear will take over and it won't happen.
That brings me to my next advice... As humans we are always thinking about tomorrow, I've said this millions of times, we are so worried about what will happen tomorrow that we forget to live in the right now, we make plans for many months to come and we forget that life can change in a heartbeat. Because of our need to plan out our future, fear tends to take over us, we are always afraid our plans will not come to fruition, we are afraid that we will fail even though we have not tried yet. And so it comes that we fear that the relationships we enter into will fail, we keep thinking that the other person is too good to be true, we keep thinking they are lying to us all the time, we think they don't love us enough, we worry that it will end tragically when it has just began, the wheel of fortune tells us that our fortune can change at any time but life shows us that when that wheel is going in our favor the best thing to do is actually take full advantage of it and enjoy it.
I, myself, am one of those that will think of the worst, in the end I like to be pleasantly surprised than to be sadly disappointed, my soul, my heart, my intuition, all of it has always had a way of guiding me but when it comes to other people I have sometimes led myself be guided by logic and really that has not helped me at all, lately I've been learning to just follow that intuition and "hunches" that "gut feeling" when it comes to other people and it has not steered me wrong, even this past time when at the end I lost someone I love very much, but that thought logically (just like I once did) about life. And even though I was hurt that everything just sort of ended and I tried to make all these rationalizations as to why it would have never worked out either, even though for some reason I felt like if we just kept going day by day neither of us would have ever regretted it. We were just friends and that's where it was left. I know I followed my intuition and my heart and I know that my mind had played a lot of tricks on me before and I know that I used to be one of those people that would listen to everyone else and not myself, trying to make life rational and logical when it is neither.
And the mind this time continues to do so, it is the way it wants to protect me from being even more hurt. Constant battle I would say, that's how I know I was correct, because my mind is trying to make some illogical logical... Which is what brings me to my next advice:
Don't try to rationalize love, don't try to have an insane amount of set rules for a relationship you want, life has shown me that a good relationship flourishes in the most illogical ways, it is when you start to try and rationalize it that you will end up failing at it because love is not logical, it is a force you just feel and that's it! You can't explain it, no one can, you just feel it and it's magnetic, always magnetic. If everything else is working and you have one or two things you think that will just completely ruin everything, think about it again... Do you and this person have good communication? And in saying good communication I mean, can you two talk about things without getting into huge arguments, or if you ever get into arguments can you guys settle them promptly and calmly? Can you talk about what bothers you without the other person getting offended?
If the answer is yes, then it does not matter what things you think will make the relationship not work, you can talk about those things and I believe you will be pleasantly surprised at how things end up working out.
That brings me to the most important thing of all... Communication! Communication is the key to every successful relationship, whether the relationship is just a friendship or a romantic relationship or even a relationship with your kids, if you are not able to communicate with another person you will never have a chance of the relationship working out. Communication is the base of every single relationship, it is what allows trust and respect to grow and that trust and respect are the base for love. As the picture shows, it is not love that we start with, is communication... A long time ago, I had a great relationship, I was 18 years old and this guy and I, we were able to tell each other almost everything, I learned that the more we talked the more we trusted each other, the more we respected each other, 2 years later we forgot this is what made the relationship so great, we never argued, I think in the two years we only had 2 big arguments, and while for some people that might be boring, it was our ability to talk to each other honestly from the very beginning that made all the difference. The last argument we had was what ended up causing the breakup, as stated we had forgotten to talk to each other and he started to mix in that fear of failure and because of lack of communication he started to not trust me, and in turn that ended up making me not trust him, so he started to think logically and decided the best thing was to plan his life out without me and without me knowing, by the time we actually sat down and talked and realized we loved each other very much, it was too late, we had lost (or at least I did) that trust and it was only a matter of time before respect went away with it, and of course the communication between the two of us had already been damaged, so we had two choices we could try again or we could go our separate ways, after a month or so we decided we needed to go our separate ways, mostly because I was just not in it anymore, I could not get over that he couldn't talk to me about the fears he was having, even though I was always open and never judging and that was an even bigger betrayal than if he had gone out and cheated on me. (yes I know that is weird but it's true)
Just like that relationship failed because of lack of communication, so did all my other relationships. Some were never going to go anywhere because the people involved could not ever talk truthfully to each other, or when they did the other wouldn't listen and would just try to make themselves believe something different.  That's what happened with my ex-husband, he was great at talking but everything he said was a lie, I never followed my intuition and so I decided to just go with the logical approach, it turned out that my intuition was right, and the reason I could never seem to trust him was because he was not telling me everything, sure there are things and secrets people should keep to themselves but not the ones that will affect the other person, when you are in a relationship you are a team and if you can't trust the other person with all the things you feel, fear and the things you do that might not be socially accepted then your relationship is doom to fail! If you don't have the courage and strength to show your true self to the other person then you have nothing. And if you have the courage and strength to show yourself to the other person and that other person decides that they will judge you for it then it won't work either.

So, if you find someone who is truthful to you, someone you are able to see all of their flaws and weaknesses, someone that makes you fill up with joy only because they are so happy, because seriously no one can make you happy but yourself but if there is someone who lights up when you light up or you light up because they light up in joy that's it! Someone with whom you can communicate in the best ways possible, someone that somehow makes you want to be better, that pulls out the best of you and sometimes the worst in you but you know that pulling the worst out of you means that they give you the chance to better yourself without judging you, and they give you the time to either accept yourself the way you are or change it if you want to and in the end they accept whatever decision you make, someone that something inside you just tells you that they are not lying, that you should just give it a shot, even though this person might not be what you thought you wanted in life, then take a leap of faith and jump right in, you will be amazingly surprised at how great things will end. Listen to your inner voice and don't be scared of it, don't give into fear and run away, I know it's hard to do and takes lots of practice, I, myself, continue to struggle with it but I have faith that slowly but surely I will come to just follow my gut feeling and nothing else, because every time I follow it, it never steers me wrong.

F**** AT&T

And so here I am once again complaining about a company which I should have just seriously gotten rid of a long long time ago but only because their reliability of the actual service has been excellent to me I haven't gotten rid of them but after today I am more than sure that reliable service means absolutely nothing if you can't get an excellent customer service experience.

After 4 long years of having the same account and transferring it from location to location every time I moved (mind you I've moved a lot in the past 4 years) and having an issue with AT&T every time I moved because someway somehow they could never check that the dates they were given for connection were not correct, or that there was no line going to the property I was moving to, or they decided to have the wrong address put in so I would end up having to wait for days to get my services while spending countless hours on the phone with 20 different idiots all of which would give me a different story and then finally having to after getting so damn frustrated with them talk to their cancelations department because guess what no matter which company you do business with, it seems like unless you end up in their cancelation or retention dept you never get any help. Which brings me to another thought...

Why in the world have all these other departments if in the end the ones that will do all the job will be the retention dept? From a business perspective it seems like it saves them money to have 1 out of 10 calls be able to be handled by the monkeys you have to talk to first that work in the regular customer service side of the business, they earn less and therefore getting them on the line with you, the consumer, cost them less.

Now don't get me wrong, I have been a customer service rep myself for 10 years and while I will admit the customer is not always right, I will also admit that one of the biggest challenges of my job has always been that I've had to deal with the mess my fellow co-workers created for a customer that would cause the customer to see me as much of an idiot as they were and really I never blamed them because seriously I would have done the same, so for those reps that actually have the brains to do things right, I'm sorry but you are gonna be put in the same group as all your fellow peers because there is just more idiots working with you than competent people and I truly feel bad for you because the ones that do a competent work actually should be better rewarded than the idiots that cause customers like me to insult you all.

It is a shame though, a company that has had such a reliable service but whose customer service level just keeps going down every time I call them, so much so that in the past 2 years there has been a brand new trend that has been happening, the social media trend, customers now go online and bash the companies they do business with because they are unable to get a positive result when they call the company directly, so AT&T has decided to have a social media customer service department which used to work wonders, they could get things done quickly but it is my believe due to recent events and recent contacts with them that the social media dept is getting bombarded with issues that their idiot customer service reps can't handle because they are too stupid which in turn has made the level of quality service of their social media dept has gone down rather than keep it at a level where more customers are satisfied with it.

What does all this mean? It basically means that AT&T is losing money, before you had the customer service side, tech support side and retention side, now you have to add more people to solve simple issues which costs more money which at some point gets pass along in the customer's bill.

Today AT&T made me even more aware of this, the company could really care less about their customers (I should say their employees could care less about the customers, I guess they forget they are customers too) I spoke with a supervisor today, her name: Jaquita Chappell (or so she said that was her name), in the past four years my bill has always been paid in full and even years before that when I had to cancel my account completely because I either moved somewhere they did not have service at or was going to be out of town where I did not need their home phone or internet service, I've always paid my account, never asked for any credits from them, even when the services were interrupted and not connected because they were idiots and did not check the addresses right, never asked for anything... Today all I asked for was for them to reage my account, in the past two months things have been hard and today the account was disconnected, my fault and I admit full responsibility for it, but because it was the first time this has happened I figured hey, I've been with this company long enough, they are always asking for my loyalty even when they don't deserve it and I've kept being loyal to them even though every time I call they make me question why I'm still paying them over 300 dollars a month between all of my accounts (cell phone, home phone and internet) when I could certainly just take my business elsewhere and do what most people do: switch from one company to the next in order to pay 19.99 a month for internet and 10 dollars for phone service, it is easy and a hell of a lot less expensive on my part (now I feel like a total idiot) but I said today I need help so I will ask the company that I've been loyal to for the past 4 years to help me this one time and see if they really appreciate the loyalty or not...

It appears that they do not, see even though they are able to reage an account and they are able to set payment arrangements for at least 30 days, they refused, why? Just because they could refuse, then after speaking with them and the first supervisor told me that they would go ahead and reage the account but that they couldn't do a payment arrangement for the time I was requesting even though they actually can do that but it is up to the supervisor to do it, once I said I was going to speak to the office of the president and complain about this, said supervisor wrote notes stating that there was to not do a reage on the account ever and that this was told to me... I seriously wish I would have recorded the call, they have the power to type on the notes anything they want and no one will question it... From then on it was 3 hours of hell... Of course once I got to the cancelation department it was not 1 but 3 reps that I spoke with who confirmed that they could do the reage but it was a matter of them wanting to do so, apparently four years of asking absolutely nothing from this company is pointless, never did I ask for credits to my account, never did I ask for reconnection fees to be credited back, it was my mistake but I just needed help at that moment since I work from home and needed my internet back on.

I then decided to go and do the social media thing and got a response a couple of hours later, I keep track of who tweets to AT&T and the issues they have and yeah I realize those poor social media reps have more than they can handle when it comes to customer service issues, some of which could actually have been fixed by my 5-year-old but because their customer service department seems to hire people with no brains and that have absolutely no care for the actual customer, someone else with a higher authority ends up being grabbed and dragged into the whole situation ousting the company a hell of a lot more money.... Then eventually it ends up being escalated to the office of the president, which last time I spoke to them for a technical issue (which their tech support dept is another one that leaves much disappointment) it took them 3 days to contact me vs the 24 hours that it usually takes, that just tells me how many issues they are having to handle and I'm sure most of them could have been avoided if they had competent people working in their customer service dept.

It is a shame that a company so big as AT&T that knows the cost of getting a new customer vs the cost of keeping one they already have, one that rarely calls (which btw every time you call any of the companies you do business with it costs them more than it costs you) has employees who have no idea on how the business runs, it is a shame that a company so big would much rather employ 30 different idiots and pay them for a job they don't do, that they won't empower their employees and teach them to research the accounts and figure out the best ways to negotiate and help the customer and lose money in the process instead of actually taking more time to hire people that will actually get the job done and pay them accordingly. It is a shame that a customer would notice how a company so big could be making more money and keep their customers around longer but that the company does not see it and makes absolutely no effort to change it's ways for the better.

How sad is it that all these companies thrive to try and get as loyal of a customers as they can get, that they ask for loyalty from us the consumer but that give no loyalty in return. How sad is it that even after everything is paid to them they still take over 24 hours to reactivate your service because hey! It's easy to click and deactivate it but we won't go ahead and activate services again that quickly for you, it's better for you to learn a lesson and really you are not worth out efforts. And this is just one example, I have a friend of mine who after being with AT&T for 13 years decided to switch over to a different internet and phone provider because AT&T decided to screw up her account and when they asked for help they receive none, took them 4 days to figure out what was wrong and it was something so simple as to just check what kind of account they had and what kind of account they actually needed...

I'm sure that just like my friend and I, we are not the only ones that have ever felt like this from one of these big companies, worst part of it is that I know nothing will actually be done to change any of it, worst part of it is that even when I do switch to a different provider they won't really care, all they will offer is more credits even though we are not asking for any, and the customer service that we actually deserve and want to get will never really be there, in fact it will continue to keep getting worse.

What does it mean to be a dad?

What does it mean to be a dad? It is a question I have always asked myself, and this past week it has been a question that has been even more in my mind because certain events have spiked that thought in my head.
When I was little I thought a dad was someone that will always be there to protect and defend you, basically a dad was a hero, he would come in and make sure that you were always safe no matter what happened.
As I grew older and then moved in with my real father, I started to think that a dad was a friend and one that could never be wrong, therefore taking his advise was a very wise decision.
Then as I kept growing and seeing the true image of my father, I really started to think that everything I had thought a dad was supposed to be was completely wrong, that a dad does not really protect but that harms in order to teach you to protect yourself, that they impose what they think is best for you without you having any say in it. I thought that a dad was someone that provided things for you like food, clothes, a place to live and then that was all there really was behind that figure in our lives.
Now as an adult and having a child of my own and after having a failed marriage where the supposed father decided to not be in my child's life, I had to become both mom and dad for her and with that I started to think more and more as to what a dad really is.
A dad is someone who is there for his children, no matter what they do, he is always there giving them advice on life but never imposing on them to take such advice because he is someone that guides and guiding someone to the correct path means that they will get to choose what the correct path is.
A dad is not someone who necessarily has to give food, clothing and shelter to a child, those are things that every responsible parent has to do, but those are not the important things in life, a dad is someone who gives his time to his children, time to play, time to get messy, time to laugh and just simply have fun.
A dad is someone who protects, a dad always wants what is best for his children, he is someone that will fight for them 'til the very end because to them his children are all worth the fight. To a real dad his children are the biggest blessing in the world and he thanks the universe each and every single day of his life for that blessing, because it was not until he became a dad that he actually knew what it meant to be a real man.
Most important of all is that a real dad does not have to share DNA with his children, a real dad is not someone whose sperm helped create the child, a real dad is someone who helps shape that child, someone who above all else has only the best interest for that child, someone who puts the time and effort to learn to know that child because is only then when they also get to know themselves.
A real dad is someone who is always thinking they can do better for their children, they are always striving to be a better role model, a better friend, better husband, better parent, better human being, only because they know that children learn by example and what bigger example is there than being a dad.
But most important about what a real dad is, is that they know their job is never done, it is never over, a dad knows that. A real dad knows that he does not stop being a dad when a child reaches a certain age, a real dad knows that he does  not stop being a dad when his children are all grown and having their own lives, a real dad knows that he has to always be available because his children will always need him at one point or another, they know that their job is a 24/7 job and they never regret it.

Making sense of planning Life

I feel like I have been waking up lately with every random thought I could possibly have and I am feeling like I can't keep up with myself... So here is the one for the day:
Does life makes sense? Do we need to make sense of life in order to live a fuller one?
Truth be told, life rarely makes sense, in fact life never makes sense, but of course it is our human nature and curiosity that is always thriving to make sense of life, make it all fit, figure it all out. Why did I go in that direction when everything seemed to be telling me to go in the other, I did not listen but it just made no sense to go the other way so I went this way instead and now I am late for work...
I've learned that the more we try to make sense of how life works the more time we lose actually living life. I keep saying to leave in the moment, I don't plan, I rarely do make any plans, mostly because life has shown me that plans will change, you can plan your entire week, your entire month, your entire life and in the end when you look back nothing, absolutely nothing went according to plan and that never makes sense to us, we figure we can control everything around and make sure that with hard work and dedication our plans come through and we reach whatever goals we have set for ourselves, then everything falls apart and we get pissed off that life is unfair and we did not get back what we were hoping for.
The reality is that when you are planning things you are only planning based on the things you can and will do, you are not taking into consideration that you are not alone in this world, there are billions of people out there that can affect the course you are on. Then to top the billions of people, there are also billions of living things that can also affect the road you are planning on going into and then to top that you cannot predict any natural disaster that can happen while you are on the road to reaching your goals.
All of it can change your plans in a matter of seconds, why? Because everything that happens to us is a learning experience, we get to that point and we learn something new and when we get this new information we decide whether we need to change things or we end up due to circumstances adapting to a new way of thinking.
Which is why I no longer plan things, unfortunately that has put me in a constant battle with the world because most people like to plan, they want to know what will happen next, it is their way of saying "hey! I am in control of my life" and that makes them feel better, it is a natural thing, we are born with the need to feel that we are in control and no one else is, so when I am asked to plan out something and I don't, people tend to jump at me and then suddenly I make absolutely no sense.
I have had people actually get really angry at me because they want me to go ahead and plan out where I will live, where I will work, what I will do next and I just refuse to do it, none of them understand why and it makes no sense to them, but it does to me. Why? I realized that the only thing I have control over is the decisions I make in life, I have no control over the outcome, I am fully aware that I am not the only living creature in this world and because of that I will encounter things in the road of life that will make absolutely no sense to me but if I stop in the middle of the road and start contemplating and trying to make sense of them I will end up either causing an unnecessary accident or I will end up getting hurt, I just have to try and keep going even when things make no sense. This is something I have learned, life decided to teach me this lesson in the hardest of ways and sometimes I forget because again I am (or at least I still think I am) human, I once had plans, I had my whole life planned out, someone would ask me where do you see yourself in 5 years and I could tell them with absolute certainty where I would be in 5 years time, then 5 years came and I was no where near what I had said 5 years before that. I had worked hard for the things I wanted and in a matter of a week I ended up losing them all, something I had not planned on doing, it just happened and it made no sense, still it doesn't no matter how hard I try to make it make sense, the only thing that I can go back and say I did differently back then was that I had stopped following my "hunches" because they made no sense, they were illogical thinking so why follow them? well then I didn't and as people say: "shit happened", so after years of falling down the same hole and asking myself why I did not go with my hunch because I knew I shouldn't have done that but I did it anyway because logic had to win... I decided to just go for it and try the different approach and went with my hunches and guess what every time I went with my hunches everything turned out fine, it never made sense, it still doesn't make sense, but then again I have been on both sides of the spectrum and Life itself doesn't make sense.
Life will never make sense, life has a way of giving you directions and you have the option to follow those directions (hunches) or not follow them, what happens after your decision is made you have no control over, sometimes I wish we did but we really don't, it is a hard lesson to learn and it is really hard to change the way we are hardwired to think and act, I still battle it myself and find it a lot easier to just ignore other people when they start trying to get me to plan the next thing I am supposed to do according to them and just hide away for a bit to try and avoid the stress it causes me to try and stick to a plan because really I don't know where I will be tomorrow, I really don't even know what will happen in the next minute so how can I possibly plan out one week of my life, a month of it, or even years of it...

Time heals everything...

I woke up today with that thought in my head: "Time heals everything" what a bullshit thing we say to ourselves to make ourselves feel better...
The only reason why we say time heals everything is because with time we get used to our new ways of living, nothing more than that.
When it comes to losing someone we love, whether it is because the angel of death takes them from us or because the circumstances of life pushes us in different paths, we never really heal over the loss of someone we love... I was sitting here remembering all those times I've lost someone I loved, some of them it has been years and I can say it does not hurt any less that they are gone, all that's different is that with time I've gotten used to them not being around and so that's how life became easier, but it does not hurt any less to not have them here...
Same thing happens when you lose things, life takes a turn for the worst and suddenly your entire world is upside down, everything you had you lost and slowly you are forced to rebuild everything, you never really get over that, you just get used to rebuilding, you get focused on rebuilding and sort of forget how you felt, eventually you get used to not having the things you had before and you get used to the new things, it's not healing really it's changing and getting used to that change even though deep inside you still liked the way it was before better...
Time heals everything... How crazy the human race is, we like to believe these things to make us feel better without even realizing exactly what we are saying, our ability to adapt to change is what makes everything bearable and our inability to realize how quickly we adapt to new situations even when we don't want to is what make us suffer and sometimes the suffering becomes so unbearable because we think we can't adapt to anything that happens to us. We want to think that if we create the change then it will be more bearable, we chose it and therefore it's good because we were in charge but we know we are never really in control, we can control our decisions but not the outcome but we will get used to the outcome, as hard as it will be at first, eventually we all get used to the outcome, sometimes the outcome changes us and sometimes we decide that we have to change again in order to get a different outcome but regardless we will get used to it.
Time does not heal everything, the hurt will always be there because we will always remember how we felt, but time allows you to accept those feelings, accept the outcomes of your decisions, accept the outcomes and lessons of life and as time passes we adapt quicker to the changes we are put through... And it's ok to be sad, it's ok to feel, we have to feel, feeling is how we learn to appreciate the good and the bad, we learn that without one we couldn't know about the other, we learn that sometimes bad is good we just don't see that it is until we adapt and realize even though it hurt to change, it was eventually for the better of everyone.

Life is not hard

I woke up today with one thought in my mind: "Life is not hard" but why is it that the majority of the people in this world will tell you that life is hard? I mean what makes life hard? How hard is it to just live?
The more I thought about it the more I realized that life is only hard because we make it hard, we make it hard for us to live life, it is our nature as humans to do just that. It is probably the most ridiculous thing we will ever do, making life hard to live.
The first way we do this is by thinking everyone is the same, we are all the same and therefore we should all accomplish the same things even though we are fully aware that each of us is a completely different world, we know we are different but we want to be the same. Why? Because of our intense need of belonging, we need to belong somewhere, we can't possibly be happy on our own we have to try and fit in and in trying to fit in we make our life hard because it takes a lot more effort to be someone you are not than to just be yourself.
That leads me to the next thought... Society has this ridiculous set of rules, we grow up thinking the way to live a fulfilling life is if we do certain things certain way even if that way is not the way we want to do it, we think that we have to go study hard, get a degree, get married, have a family, get a house, get a car the latest in technology and well whatever else society thinks is the norm. But we don't want to do any of that and when we decide we don't want to do any of that then we either have family and friends telling us how wrong we are and how we are never going to reach happiness by that thought process and thus it shifts us into the ok this is how other people got happy and so I guess it will have to work for me, but it doesn't work because that is not what you wanted in the first place.
And that takes me to here: when you do things you don't want to do, life itself has a way of shaking you up and to try and bring you back to what you really wanted out of life. Have you ever noticed how when you do something you really don't want to do everything seems harder to get or once you get there it falls apart extremely quickly? Yeah, that's life telling you that you are not like everyone else, each one of us is unique and the idea that we have that we all must follow the same paths is ridiculous because if we all did that then nothing in this world would work, but do we ever listen to that? We know this, we are fully aware of it but we go against it, we go against the tide of life and swimming against the tide is freaking hard!
I know many people don't believe this but there are signs everywhere, all around you, always there is a sign trying to get you to the place where you belong, we choose to either follow the irrational signs we know full well that will take us to our ultimate goal which is happiness, or we choose to not follow the signs and be like the majority of people on this earth. I can attest that every time I followed the irrational signs my life has gotten better and better, it was when I follow what everyone else told me I should do that my life got harder...
Let me explain further...
Years ago I worked really hard to go to this acting and modeling competition in California, it was an amazing opportunity for me to be seen by many people in that industry which could help me launch my career, that is all I ever wanted to do. At the end of the competition I got two callbacks, 2 more than what anyone that knew me was expecting, I called home and told my father how it had gone, his words were: well congrats, I am proud of you but now you can come back to reality and work towards something that will actually feed you, you have proven to yourself you could do it now go back to school. I was 18 years old and because that was my daddy, the wisest of all men (or so I thought) I decided to go back and not think anything of it, let me just forget my dream, it will be too much hard work to actually do what I want and in the end I will gain nothing, seemed reasonable... So I did it, I went back to school with the thought that I had to pick out a major in something that will actually give me a good job, it did not matter whether I liked what I was doing, it mattered only that I was going to be able to feed myself and eventually raise a family.
Thing is that I had no idea what major to pick, there was only one thing I wanted to do with my life and that was acting and modeling, I never had a backup of what I wanted, so then I said well what if I go into the computer business, I will learn how to program a computer, create websites, manage networks blah blah blah... Dad said: No, you don't have the passion required for that field, you have never shown any interest in Computer Technology, so you won't be good at it... Ok I said, I have not really shown any passion for anything else other than acting or modeling so what does it matter what I pick, I will learn, I have always proven to myself I could learn anything.
So I ended up being a Business Major, cause why not, you could learn to manage a business, and even if you don't love it, it will pay the bills and "feed you", give you enough money to raise a family and blah blah... Since it was just what every other person that did not know what to pick as a major went into, dad did not object, he just said: well if that is what you are passionate about then go for it (which completely contradicted what he had said about me going into show business, but that is how a lot of people are, if to them their dream did not come true because of one thing or another then everyone else has to follow into their footsteps and go with a second dream not with their ultimate one that would just bring an extreme amount of happiness beyond believe, even if you are making absolutely the bare minimum to get by)
What was the outcome of all that, I never finished college, the reality was that I was miserable paying for an education on a major I did not want to have, I got my boyfriend at the time and we decided we wanted to go live somewhere else, we could get jobs paying us enough to pay for our bills and live comfortably so why not... The thing is that every job was just that, a job and every job was not what either of us really wanted and that just made each of us extremely miserable, especially me, I always had in the back of my mind that I could do something different, why was life so hard? Life was hard because I made it hard, I kept listening to what everyone else was telling me that life is, how hard you have to work for this, how hard you have to work for that... Ten years later I realized that working hard for something you really want is not really work, is having fun, you have fun when you are studying the things you want to study, you have fun when you are working in the industry you always wanted to be in, it does not matter who else is there and trying to make your life miserable, they can't because you are happy doing what you love to do and suddenly you realize that it's their problem if they want to be miserable not yours!
Another example on that, I went to work as a promotional model for a show, I was having fun, there was this girl next to me who kept complaining about everything that was going wrong, she had this set of rules for everyone and she was just another model, not in charge of the event at all, all she was trying to do was make life hard, but it never bothered me, why? Because at the end of the night even though I was extremely tired I was doing what I love to do and because of that I did not care about her misery and her misery could not make me miserable because I could really care less about her attitude, I was happy.
So, please stop thinking life is hard, life is not hard we make it hard! And stop making your life hard for yourself, you don't have to do what everyone else did, you don't have to follow your parent's advice on how life works, they had their lives to live and they lived them the best way they could, their job was to guide you, provide for you and protect you until the day you could open your wings and fly on your own, your decisions should not be made because of what they said you should do with your life, your decisions should be made because of what you want to do in life, what are you passionate about that you want to do, go for it, it is tiring but not hard, it's only hard because we have tons of people telling us that we are doing it all wrong and that tends to make us doubt ourselves when we shouldn't, when you are following your heart, your soul, you never lose, you always win and if you are having a hard time believing in that, then take a break from the world, stop talking to those that believe they have the answer to your happiness, they make life hard, the only one that has the answers is you!

Just a random thought on love.

I'm feeling a bit romantic today, I guess that's the word I can give this feeling, just thinking about love which I have been thinking about a lot more lately than I've ever had before.

What is love and why is it so powerful, we have yet to figure that out but love is not selfish, love does not hurt, love gives all and when we find that, it becomes the most scary thing, because it's not about how many things you can do together, how much money you have, how much sex you have, it's about the things you do for each other without expecting anything in return and that in itself is scary.

It's scary to thing that another human being is willing to do anything for you and expect nothing in return, that's usually just love that our parents give and even them don't really do that, our parents always expect us to be our very best. 

It's scary to think that someone you know has seen all your flaws, has seen you at your worst, has seen all the bad and good you can be and they won't judge, not one moment will they look at you in judgement, you might think they do because we tend to judge ourselves harshly but they never do. Finding someone that accepts you, all of you, all that you are and is not bothered by it at all, someone that just knows that's you and if you weren't you they probably couldn't love you as much... That's a hard thing to find, a hard thing to accept once you've found it because it's almost unreal! 

We always think how could someone that has seen my all, good and bad, still want to be around me? But that is love, some say love is blind but it is not that love is blind, it is that true love accepts the other person exactly how they are, its only goal is to make sure the other person is happy and their happiness brings you happiness.

But it is a scary thing because with life things can change and being human means we will try our hardest to protect ourselves from getting hurt, so we build walls, we run, we hide when we find someone that's all willing for us, that's so loyal to us but never asks us to be loyal to them. That form of true unconditional love is so unreal, that you find it only in fairy tales.

So we say this is too unreal, it must not be real and because it is not real I should just stay away from it, let me run, let me hide before all this happiness happens because if it happens and it turns out that it was all a lie then I will have no saving.

The thing is that no matter how hard one person tries, true love is hard to hide and it's even harder to pretend that it does not exist, you can see it in their eyes, they light up when you make them smile, they light up when you smile and they get sad when the thought of losing you comes to mind because as humans we always think about loss, we have learned that nothing lasts forever, one day people die and they are no longer physically around but we must always remember that the memories we made with them will always remain and no one can take that away from us.

Once I thought: there will always be new things that come along, there will always be new people, new places to go, but there will only be one time, some are lucky and end up experiencing it twice, when you will meet someone with whom no matter what you are doing or not doing, the rest of the world does not exist, someone who makes you smile just by thinking about them, that will drive you absolutely insane because they can be the most annoying person in the world, yet you can't stand not having them around, one person that will be able to open the walls you've created and that will come right in and make themselves at home, and they will see the house messy and things that need to be changed but they won't want to change them, they know that those things are what make you you and you are the best person you can be and because of that they will inspire you to be better, to do better. One person that will risk it all, that will help you keep going, that will shake you down when you need to be shaken down because you are not being yourself, that will laugh with you, one person that will make a huge difference in your life, one person that you will just feel like you've known them for your entire life. When you find that person don't let go, don't be afraid to jump in. If they've seen your worst and they are still around, if they have a key to unlock the walls that surround you because they kept persisting until they found that key, if they are someone you can just naturally flow with and the idea of ever losing them or not being around them makes you feel like there is a knife being push into your stomach, if the idea of them being unhappy makes you feel the same way then don't be afraid to jump in especially if they show the same amount of caring and love for you, you can replace everything else in life but those kinds of people that love you unconditionally they don't come around as often as you think... You would be very lucky if you get to experience it more than once.