And no, I don’t mean TAKE the bus. I mean USE the bus.

You see, we all have those guys who we SHOULD NOT speak to. Under any circumstances.

Maybe he was too much of a bad boy, maybe we broke up for a very good reason and we need it to stick, maybe he was married or jerky or his third nipple weirded us out.

But we keep “forgetting” (usually with the help of alcohol or self loathing) that he needs to be gone for good.

This is where the bus comes in:

The “Bus” moniker was selected after a particularly nasty breakup and I was fantasizing about Mr. Meanie getting mowed down by a bus in a crosswalk. Now I’ve spread it so far and wide in the world , they made a someecard about it. (see above)

When it’s clear that it’s time to “wrap it up” with a certain fellow – whether it be on the first date, the tenth year or 30 seconds after he used “u” and “peen” in a text message, I reprogram him in my phone as “Bus”.

So what happens is that I end up with a long listing of “bus” entries in my phone and some are men who I will never speak to again under any circumstances and some are men who I know I don’t have the willpower to resist. Of course when one calls, I don’t know which is which so it trains me not to answer.

And I admit, it’s almost always the ones I don’t want to speak to that do the calling.

Now I know there are many out there who would think this insensitive. It’s not. It’s dating like a guy. Men are simple creatures and when they decide to not like you anymore, they just vanish. This is why generally speaking, calling men is a bad idea. If he wants you, he’ll come find you. If you aren’t hearing from him, he’s probably hit you with a bus. And the converse is true too. If he likes you and you don’t like him back, he will never go away and he will never get the hint if you continue to lead him on by being “nice” or “friendly”. I promise, it’s not as mean as it sounds, it’s merciful for you both to just use the bus.

The bus does come with some willpower. You have to block his ability to email you (and your ability to email him), disconnect from him on social media and generally prevent the various and sundry ways to contact him to be readily available to you. This is putting in a process for women who tend to be relationship and interpersonal driven. This is actually exactly opposite of how we usually behave. AND we all know that women are really good at being crazy internet stalkers. This helps you stay out of the crazy zone – remove the temptation immediately.

Sometimes, I have bussed men who I really really like but who exhibit really poor behavior – the game players, the narcissists. I don’t tell them they are being bussed, I just “vanish”, never to reply again. This really scrambles the brains of some of them – they become suddenly and intently interested and the begging commences.

I think it’s important to really really emphasize that especially in the two instances depicted. These were bad bad boys who did very mean things (stood me up in a restaurant more than once etc.) The bus is healthy and cathartic. Both of these boys went unanswered and I can only hope it helped curb their poor, disrespectful behavior to future women.

So, if you’re doing any dating, I implore you to put in the bus process:

1. When you think he isn’t a good idea anymore, he’s not a good idea anymore
2. Be swift and thorough in your bussing and if you do it correctly you won’t have to be resolute
3. Maybe I’ll like him if I go out with him one more time, maybe he’ll get the hint or I know I really should bus him but… are all reasons the bus should come immediately
4. The bussing process is a secret – if you tell boys about it (usually when you like them), they’ll find a way to trick you out of it when it’s time to be bussed.

Good luck #dgwcs!

I took Amytastic’s challenge to try some stuff that was different for me.   Today I…

• Bought a sampler of 12 kinds of perfume since I’ve never worn perfume before
• Bought some new funky jewelry, and a pair of gold hoops (and I never wear gold jewelry)
• Bought a pair of 4” platform heels
• Even bought two dresses that are form-fitting, instead of the loosely worn clothes I normally wear.

Hurray!  Now I just need somewhere fun to wear them

There are many things new or notable – the no smoking sign has been replaced with a warning about using electronic devices. I was asked to remove my headphones for takeoff – really? I promise, if we’re crashing and I can help, I’ll silence the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo… and no, they probably wouldn’t drown it out. And the flight attendants – gosh, I remember how classy that used to be – yes I know it was sexist, but they were so beautiful and exotic and unruffled. Now they remind me of diner waitresses – they have to push those carts so quickly – I assume they have time incentives like Wal-Mart cashiers. They expect the clients to be displeased – lots of apologizing and rule citing. I feel the airline squeeze when I give the woman a dollar tip for my paid drink and she is for a minute surprised, then conflicted – visibly, as to whether I misunderstood the price and then finally grateful as she hurries it into her apron pocket. The other woman does not know what she is serving for dinner – she greets me with an apology, thrusting it at me – ‘I’m sorry, this is all I have’, to which I respond, ‘that’s fine – does it contain fruit?’ she looks at it hopelessly – ‘I don’t know she says, I’m sorry – are you allergic?’ I say ‘yes, but it’s fine, thank you’. I smile warmly.

The seats are smaller, of course, and finally, finally the airlines have caught up and each seat has a screen. The irony is that it doesn’t matter now – I have two iPads and an iPhone – I have enough screens – I only wish for wifi. And this is the story of late innovation – but this is the story of the airline industry.

The things that are surprising – the flight attendant is fastidiously collecting pop tabs as she serves drinks – I soon realize she has an ornate bracelet of them. She beams when I notice and boasts she makes bracelets too. And then the signs that I am older – my widening bottom doesn’t fit the seat the way it used to and I’m pleased they have Glenlivet. And after the meticulous wrangling that involved leaving both sunscreen and body wash behind (in favor of bar soap), I fit my 3oz-ers in the baggie, only to realize the miniature whiskey bottle is made of glass. I’m tweezerless but could easily impale anyone on the plane with a homemade glass shank. The comic relief continues when I buy a duty-free cologne and they literally encase it in a huge bio hazard bag – red |do not tamper| foil so that I can get through security with it. It is clear that governmental policy is as fragmented as corporate life – and by the time it reaches the minutia of execution – it is senseless and penal.

But I’m happy to be here – the brilliance of airline flying is that it is a very present experience. There are distractions of entertainment but being confined to the seat so close to the people around and the presence of morality in the entire exercise forces presence. I feel naughty because my new book is boring, save one page, so I may tear that one out and toss the rest of it in the back of the overhead bin. I already know this will shock the mild-mannered new wife passenger next to me. She is fascinated and uncomfortable with me all at the same time – it makes me feel like I have arrived – this vision of being the jet setting troubadour with the big framed sunglasses. Here I am in this little girl fantasy. I am centered with the feeling that I am exactly where I belong in this moment.

Now that being a grown up has caught up to me, I will tell you that I did have it all. My first job ever was at Taco Bell, I do work at the library… as a volunteer… and I have been known to spend some time on planes with big sunglasses.

Whoo wee! It should be so exciting to have achieved my dreams – the glitter unicorns, rainbow confetti and swirling pink clouds should be upon me. I’m sorry to report that was not the case. Instead, I’ve come to realize that I feel unfulfilled in my life.

In doing the work to understand how I arrived here, I was challenged to come up with: what character do I play in the movie of my life? It was an easy answer, almost instantaneous. I’m Katherine Banning from The Thomas Crown Affair. I remember seeing the movie in 1999, in the movie theater, and deciding, then and there, that this was my fabulous in big sunglasses muse and I was going to grow up to BE this character.

I haven’t seen the movie since, but it made such an emotional impact on me that I can still quote lines from it – “Damn, I hate being a foregone conclusion.”  This was something of a joke to my friends because I can’t quote any movies so they bought me a copy of it for my 30th birthday. It sat in the cabinet in the wrapper and I planned on getting around to watch it. I never did.

So when challenged to identify the character of my life, I fished it out, dusted it off and popped it in. I was aghast to learn that 1) I did an excellent job of growing up to be just what I wished for and 2) what a sad, unfulfilled life this character lives.  It’s an excellent foil – this woman is:

~smart, cosmopolitan, disengaged, homegrown, sexy, posh, sarcastic, arrogant, narcissistic, multilingual, showy, likes to win, grandiose, fills a room, a worthy adversary, tactless, manipulative, workaholic, emotionally distant – “men make women messy”, self made, temporary, driven, goal oriented, resourceful , insatiable, committed to looking good, witty, terse, wild, doubts in a happily ever after, distrustful, fabulous, intuitive of others, proud, lonely, gorgeous, distrustful, clever, well dressed and has an excellent strategic mind~

Oh crap.

Well, now I know what I’ve gone and built.

The time in my life has arrived when the fabulous woman in the big sunglasses no longer serves me. In an odd twist of fate, I have realized that I am happiest when I am of service. And service can exist in many forms – serving an idea, serving the poor, serving a company I care about, being of service in an emotional relationship (hint – this creates intimacy and emotional connection!). The new possibility I bring to my life is creating a space for others, not filling it and using my charisma to make an emotional connection with others so they can see where THEY are fabulous. It is these things that bring joy.

So I am pleased to report that, like Katherine Banning, I was not left at the end of the pier with a painting I chose on a whim. I did make it to the plane and got to finish the game knowing that winning isn’t the prize. Whoo hoo! I see the unicorns on this one!!!

Roll credits.

Here in the dark, I’m left to wonder – what character will I be next?

Er?

Juxtaposing the two above statistics demonstrates the how warped we have become in defining “NEED”.

So let’s apply Maslow’s theory back to NEEDING cable television during a financial crisis.

At publish date, NPR was reporting 6.5 million people are jobless. AND despite Obama legislating help for 9 million foreclosed homes, roughly 60,000 more are being added to the list monthly. I think this qualifies as an upset in financial security – threatening need #2.

Let’s get this straight – the majority of people are affected enough by the crisis to modify their behavior, close to 10% have no job to secure it, but more than half consider cable a non-negotiable necessity.

Cable seems to fit into need #21 – Fun and Play.

I know this can be rationalized ad nauseum (that’s how we arrived at this situation in the first place) but it is a great example of how we trade true happiness for momentary pleasure. People are deathly afraid of finances  so instead of aggressively planning to arrive at security, they can’t live without cable because it provides an ESCAPE from life issues. Make no mistake, escape is fundamentally different from happiness or contentment.

I’m not picking on cable or the financially insecure,  I am instead demonstrating how incorrect prioritization of needs disrupts the path to happiness. The theory works on any two needs prioritized out of sequence.

Return to the idea of becoming happy by reorienting your priorities to your needs. Take the needs list, start at #1 and write how you are ensuring each of these needs are being met now.  The results will surprise you and reorient you to what’s most important to build your path to happiness.

So Barry -winks- at me on match.com. I read his profile:

Barry’s MATCH Profile

~reprinted verbatim~

Barry Grove, Did I mention he's a Penn Guy?

I think, well, give the guy a chance – I mean, maybe he did make it all the way through Penn three times and still didn’t learn basic marketing/advertising 101.

So I -wink- back. He emails me to ask for my number. I give him my google voice number. He calls me at 10:03pm the following day. We talk for about 30 minutes. I mean, he talks for 30 minutes. He tells me all about how he’s a lecturer at Penn and has three degrees from Penn, he’s an accountant and a lawyer and now teaches entrepreneurship.

“Wow,” I say, “how many exits have you had?” (This is entrepreneur speak for: how many businesses have you run and then sold successfully?) He says – “I don’t know what you mean?” Now, I’m annoyed. Because if you’re going to beat me over the head with your credentials, you better be able to converse intelligently about it. I explain myself and he says – oh, well none. I’ve never owned a business.

I’m shocked into dead silence, speechless that Wharton allows someone who knows nothing about business to teach in their entrepreneurship program. So I guess he reads my silence and says – “I have a tutoring business, and it’s a little business where people give me money to tutor them and it makes me happy.” I say, “Oh, that’s good.” So he says, “Well, come on, I have three degrees with Penn, it’s not like I can’t do anything I want – who would tell me I couldn’t teach there with those credentials?”

Then he says, “Do you want to go out for dinner or something next Wednesday?” So I say (not wanting to go out with him at all), “Give me a call next week and we’ll see what works best, I think Monday is actually better for me, but we’ll see. I really have to run and get these gifts wrapped.”

Wednesday at 2pm, I’m partaking in the Ann Taylor 40% off sale in the dressing room. My phone starts blowing up. Barry calls me FIVE times in succession. On the fifth time, he leaves this rather pleasant voicemail.

I get back to the office and I call him back. I explain that I’ve been really busy and that I apologize he booked a slot for me in his calendar but that I won’t be able to make it. I do also mention that I received his six calls but sometimes I’m not available to answer the phone. He says, “Okay, maybe some other time then.” I wish him a happy new year and we get off the phone.

And then the phone rings. He’s calling me back. I let it go to voice mail and he leaves  THIS MESSAGE.

I can’t help it – I bust out laughing. It’s my fault he had to be so inappropriate with the calling and hanging up – AND I’m not even apologetic that he had to go to so much trouble to abuse me.

The saving grace is, that he’ll never call me again (hopefully?), and I think I’ll take his advice…

I’ll NEVER bother to call back and explain myself to anyone I’ve never met….. even if he does remind me a bit of Mel Gibson.

I believe that is what I’ll call a successful exit.

As the holidays come around, I am doing my standard year end reflecting and my standard run from house to house to house for festivities. I realized (and have written in journals) that it upsets me when people do not bring a gift/dish/bottle when they go to someone else’s house for dinner or to a party. And no, I don’t mean that every time my mom stops in for a cup of tea or my best friend comes to lounge on my couch on Saturday night that they should bring me a bottle of champagne. I mean that when someone has put some effort into treating you, you should express your gratitude. I personally keep an eye out for inexpensive hostess gifts because I find they are far more valued and memorable to the host/hostess – they feel special that I’ve taken some time and selected something nice for THEM (that they don’t even have to share with their party guests). The point of this behavior is to acknowledge the work the host/hostess has put into creating the evening. It’s important to me because I put a lot of work into making guests feel special in my home.

For me, this extends beyond superficial social courtesy – in many ways I use it as a barometer for acknowledgment in life. I thought about my past suitors. I gave much more leeway to those who brought flowers, a bottle of wine, a gift when they came to eat or stay at my house. In fact, one guy I dated (hands down the worst boyfriend candidate ever) never walked into my home without SOMETHING for me – be it a slinky, a light up pen, mentos – and god, did I give him ridiculous chances that I shouldn’t have. It’s because I never felt that he was taking advantage.

On the flip side, I dated a guy I absolutely adored but finally felt that he wasn’t contributing what was necessary to create a relationship. It was then that I realized in physical actuality, I had nothing to show for our time together – he had never once brought me ANYTHING. Wow. That was my -proof- that I was right in this feeling all along.

Luckily, Gary Chapman has put some sense into this incompatibility of human relationships. He has developed an entire series of books on the languages of love.

The premise is that each person expresses their love for other people in different ways. The feeling of loneliness appears when we expect love to be expressed exactly how we express it or exactly how we need it without understanding what that means. Gary believes we love in these five languages:

• Quality Time
• Words of Affection/Communication
• Gifts
• Acts of Service
• Physical Touch

Obviously, I love in gifts. Someone else may find the friend who shows up an hour early to help put together the food far more loving than the one who brings a bottle of nice wine. That would be -acts of service-. We can be a hybrid of many of the languages. We have needs related to all of them, the quantity and importance vary from person to person.  The point is to classify how we and the people around us are expressing their emotions so that we recognize the expression is still there, just in a language we didn’t understand at first.

So back to the slinky guy. I always felt appreciated because he expressed himself in my primary love language of gifts but someone else may have felt very unappreciated because he was never around (quality time) and he surely wasn’t walking the dog on a snowy night for me (acts of service).

And adored guy? He wanted to spend copious amounts of time with me (quality time) and had no problem pouring his heart out to me (communication). So the fact that he didn’t bring me flowers didn’t mean that he didn’t love me any less than slinky guy, it was just a different language of expression.

So thanks to Gary and his Languages of Love, we can recognize when someone is loving in a language that isn’t our primary language. We can also recognize the loving languages that people around us respond to best and try to use that language with that person as much as possible. It also provides a fact based center ground to acknowledge what someone is doing for you and start the conversation on how to have other needs met too.

What is your primary love language? The secondary? Which language do you need expressed to you? Which language do you most express to others? What do you think the primary languages are of those closest to you? Do you already see there could be something lost in translation when you are expressing emotion with that person? This book is a great start to feel more appreciated and doing your best to appreciate others in ways they can easily understand.

After staring down my mortality at the age of twenty six, I became the poster girl for women who thought they were living life until a health scare sucker punched them in their faces and told them that they weren’t.  As I recovered and my life (thankfully) continued, my quarterlife crisis began.  Like every good crisis, the question at the center of mine was “How different is the life I have (or thought I should have) than the one I really want?”  Like any good crisis victim, I set about making important changes: reducing my hours at work, taking time for myself, doing things that really made me happy.  As I began living what was left of my (hopefully long) life to its fullest, I determined that it was about time to get serious about my Bucket List.

I decided that I needed to take the list in my head and commit it to paper, because when you lay out your goals in front of you, you are more likely to get them accomplished.  I had found that when you put your desires out there for the universe to see and hear, the universe will help you actualize them, often in strange, unforeseen ways.  You’ve experienced this, haven’t you?  I also decided that as much as I like lists, I didn’t want to just cross these things off my Bucket List and forget about them.  Instead, in my mind, I envisioned placing them in an actual bucket, where I could collect them, hold onto them, and cherish them like treasures I collected after a day at the beach.

I spent the next few years filling up my bucket with all sorts of things, placing precious items in it that I had already collected that had been sitting on shelves in my memory and tossing in shiny new items to add to the colorful collection.  What have you collected?

I now find myself becoming a very different, yet again all-too-common cliché:  The Successful Yet Single Twenty-Nine Year-Old.  As I hurdle toward thirty I start thinking about everything I’ve put in my bucket, and perhaps more importantly, what I haven’t.  Does the fact that some of the “biggest” items on my list, like “get married,” “start a family,” haven’t made it into the bucket yet devalue all the things that are already there: the visit to my dad’s birthplace in the Dominican Republic, traveling to Ireland to see where my mother’s ancestors came from, conquering my fear of heights by scaling pyramids in Central America?  Do some items have more weight than others?  Is the lack of certain items wearing a hole in the bottom of my bucket?  How often have you questioned the value of your choices?

I decided that maybe it was time to dump my bucket out and take a look at its contents, to remind myself of all the wonderful things that I had put in there and to assure myself that I had time to collect those things that were “missing.”  Fortunately, I had been documenting the items in my bucket even before I had realized I was collecting anything.  I had photos of many of my adventures and accomplishments to remind myself of what I had achieved: pictures of myself grinning in front of my first home, waving from the bottom of the ocean, skiing down a mountain.  I created a photo album on Facebook to remind myself and the universe of my desire to live a rich, full, colorful life.  After all, what better way to release something into the universe than to put it on the internet?

As I got ready to ”publish” the album, the fourteen year-old girl in me freaked out a little.  What will other people think of what I had collected?  Undoubtedly, some people would think it was stupid and a majority of my five hundred plus Facebook friends probably wouldn’t even view it, or care.  Some would probably think it was bragging or shameless self promotion.    Once I clicked that button I was opening myself up to worlds of ridicule in a place that has no takebacks, that doesn’t forget.

At that moment my twenty-nine year –old self spoke up.  Of course my bucket would be self-indulgent.  That’s the point: to fill your bucket with the things that fulfill and enliven you.   Who cares what anyone thinks about the contents of my bucket?  It’s mine.  They can put whatever they want in their bucket.  Your secret dream is to scale like Eiffel Tower like Spiderman?  Good for you.  All you want in life is to see an ocean, any ocean?  Get after it.  Like my friend Amy says, “Live your truth.”  After all, that’s what makes you, you.   What’s your truth? 

Within half an hour of dumping my bucket out into cyberspace the “likes” and the comments started pouring in.  One of my high school friends said he shared my dream of visiting every major league ballpark and another admitted that she was also afraid of being eaten by sea creatures.   My family was touched by how much our ancestry meant to me.  But my favorite comment of all was simply “love this album…so you.”  Both of my selves were vindicated.

Last week after a barrage of tests, my doctor called to tell me that I am completely, spectacularly healthy.  With a tear in my eye I reveled in the fact that I am going to be collecting treasures in my bucket for many years to come.

I think I’m going to need a bigger bucket.

What would you want to make darn sure you had a good chance of doing?

What would you STOP doing?

What naughty or irresponsible or reckless things would you do?

Which would you add if you didn’t have to consider the risk of shortening your life span limiting your resources?

Who would you make amends to? Who would you purge from your circle?

Where would you go? With whom?

Write it all down.

Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson made this idea famous with the movie “”The Bucket List” and it’s a great story to show what happens when mortality catches up to the daily grind.

After you have a good list of the things you need to do before you kick the bucket – measure it up to your life today. What you are CURRENTLY doing today, this week, this month, this year to get yourself there? The answers will give you a good indicator of how close you live to your ideal.

If your dream in life is to be wildly wealthy, what are the tactical steps you are taking to get there? Going to work every day and buying lottery tickets is hoping – and hope is not a strategy.

What are some of the things on your list?

]]> https://thislifeonearth.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/put-your-head-in-a-bucket/feed/ 2 Amytastic bucket https://thislifeonearth.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/10-ways-to-find-your-inner-bad-girl/ https://thislifeonearth.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/10-ways-to-find-your-inner-bad-girl/#comments Tue, 14 Apr 2009 03:03:14 +0000 http://thislifeonearth.wordpress.com/?p=377 There’s always plenty of talk about nurturing your inner child, but rarely do we hear about feeding your kick ass inner bad girl.  How to get there in ten mischievous steps:

1. Find a photo of yourself as a little girl being a bad girl. Look for devilish grins, sparkle or general naughtiness. Clip it to the top of your bad girl list for inspiration.

2. Collect some pictures of bad girls who inspire you. They can be famous (think Harriet Tubman or Angelina Jolie) or someone you know (your college roommate with pink hair and a lip piercing).

3. Write down all of your – shoulds-. I should learn French, I should scrub the bathroom floor, I should tell him how I really feel. Give yourself permission to delete one from the list (forever) and DO one as soon as possible. Try the site http://www.diddit.com/ to record what you’ve already done and what you -wanna- do.

4. Now it’s time to build your posse. Think of someone you know or would like to know to be your bad girl mentor. Then think of someone who needs your help to be naughtier. How you can recruit them both in your mission?

5. Purge the people in your life who are BAD FOR YOU and continue to replace them with people who can be BAD WITH YOU. Think steals your man vs. rides shotgun when you do a drive-by.

6. If money wasn’t an issue, if you didn’t need your job, if your responsibilities instantly vanished, if you could say or do whatever you want, if you weren’t afraid, what would you do? Make a list of all these things. Be as crazy as you want – don’t worry, you can burn it later.

7. Watch The Bucket List for a great example of how to execute this list and claim your inner wild child. Don’t let the cancer overtones fool you – this movie is seriously motivating in your mission.

8. Reframe your life. What disappoints you? What holds you back? You’re broke? You’re lonely? Make a list of your -disappointments-. Then take a big red marker, draw a line through each item and scribble a reframing statement next to it. I’m not single, I’m keeping my options open. I don’t live in a dump, I rebel against the consumptive society to save the earth.  Think W.W. M. M. S?  (What would Marilyn Monroe say?)

9. Bad girls know that if you’ve got it, flaunt it – otherwise, fake it till you make it. Pick a recent boring event (meeting at work, traffic ticket) and spin a fabulous story about it. Share it with your naughty mentee (see step 4), then tell it to three unsuspecting people and watch their reactions.

10. Make a list of the compliments you’ve received (physical, work ethic, sense of humor, personality etc). Add some you should have received. Circle your favorites and carry this list in your purse. When you’re feeling less than bad girl-o-riffic, bust it out and read it.

Congratulations! You’re well on your way to breaking the rules AND respecting yourself in the morning. Go forth in your sassiness and remember, well-behaved women seldom make history!