as you know, i like to pass along little bits of info sometimes.

i was just thinking about this one, in light of some current issues in my life....
i know i don't speak for all females, but i also know that i speak for a whole lot of us when i say that, as females, we often try to make other people feel good by saying certain things, affirming, supportive, positive things, that may or may not be true. or maybe they are kind of true, but we exaggerate the magnitude of these things, or their importance.

i am so guilty of this sometimes. for whatever reason, i like making people feel good about themselves. i have also been guilty, in the past, of not letting a person know when he is wrong. it's often been easier to just go along with what someone thinks - let him think what he needs to think, in his own mind, in order to feel good about himself. avoiding the confrontation of correcting someone's inflated sense of importance or straight up delusional thinking in various situations.

i don't know if this makes sense to whoever happens to be reading this. maybe it does. maybe you do or have done the same thing.

i guess what i hope to achieve by writing this is that someone reading will go "hey - i do that and now i know i need to stop!"

because you do.

it seems like such an unimportant thing at the time, right - let someone believe whatever they want to believe - it doesn't hurt me, because i know the truth and that's all that matters. i think my hippie parents put that thought into my head. (hehe i love you mama and papa!)
they obviously weren't thinking like business people. and i'm glad they weren't, for the most part, because i love the way i was raised and the values they instilled in me.

but back to the point - ya, knowing the truth is all that matters until your faulty praise and aversion to acknowledging shortcomings are used against you in some way. imagine the pain of seeing words you wrote only with the best intentions, always thinking about someone else's feelings - imagine finally wanting to let that person know how you feel, and there it is, in writing - your words - used to try and disprove your own true thoughts, your own truth, once you try to set the record straight.

ahhhh
it's all hypothetical, of course.
of course.
uh huh.

but in my recent pursuit of the truth i realize that i have done this so much in the past and i want to stop. only the truth from here on out. even though it is so much easier to let things go by and make someone else feel good for the moment.

it's all just a cop out. even with the best of intentions.
and we just make things harder for ourselves.
please stop putting other people's needs before your own.
(that is a message to myself.)
i've pretty much stopped doing it at this point.
telling people the truth about how you feel, even when it's not complimentary, is much less scary than it seems.
if you're doing the shit i wrote about in the above post, just stop.
ask yourself what YOU want. who YOU are. what YOU think.
and know that you deserve to express yourself honestly. even if it makes the person you're talking to feel kind of bad. more likely, you'll just let that person know that your opinions matter and you value yourself and your needs. and if you are being honest and reasonable, and the person reacts badly to that, then you need to get away from that person!

ok - i sound like a self-help book - sorry.

it's just so painful, frustrating, infuriating, maddening, intensely awful to go through some of these things and learn the lessons associated with them. i know everyone has to learn for herself, but if i can help someone figure something out a little faster, then there is at least one positive thing which comes from having gone through the shit.

and now for a laugh:
check out my friend arlan's latest blog masterpiece:
stuff straight people like!

it's a reaction to this little masterpiece of social commentary:
stuff white people like
62, "knowing what's best for poor people" just plain kicks ass. genius.

i laughed out loud many times, and there's still so much more to read.

this is pretty damn accurate, too:
the top 10 rap songs white people like
although they forgot NWA's 'straight outta compton' and pretty much anything from snoop's first album produced by dr. dre. we love that shit. although we tend to feel a bit uncomfortable singing along due to the liberal sprinkling of certain unmentionable words.

talk about a change of subject, yo.

mad love
terra

oh well.