Don't Waste the Pretty

So, as girly as it may seem, I just finished reading the book He's Just Not That Into You by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo. And it was freaking amazing. I'm sure to a lot of people (guys especially) this seems like a bitter, I-hate-men kind of book to read. But it's definitely not.

Disclaimer: However much I may gush about what I read in this book, this doesn't mean that I think everyone should read it, that it's drastically changed my life forever, that I'll never be discouraged or upset about my love life ever again. It just helped me realize some things that I hadn't thought about before, and I think it will help me keep some things in mind in the future.

I think what I liked best about this book is that Greg (who writes most of it) says over and over how he believes every woman deserves the best in a man. He believes that every woman is amazing and wonderful and brilliant and they just need to go out and find the men that agree. And the first step to finding a man who will treat you well and love you for who you are is believing that you deserve more than a crappy, half-relationship that is detrimental to your mental health. And I agree. It makes me think of a line from a Barenaked Ladies song: "You'll never love another till you love yourself." That idea just rings true to me. If I don't love myself, how could I expect anyone else to love me?

I don't have a lot of relationship experience under my belt, but the experience that I do have sucks. I know that my relationship sucked. But it took me four years to figure that out. And the hardest part about reading this book is that it pointed out to me over and over and over again just how much that relationship sucked, much worse than I realized. Each chapter is dedicated to a specific sign that a guy is just not into a girl. There are eleven chapters. I could specifically identify with seven of them. Seven! And with only one guy. Boy, I sure know how to pick them.

There were some awesome quotes in this book. One of them is the title of my post. Life is short. Don't waste the pretty on guys who don't deserve it. Another of my favorites was, "You are an excellent, foxy human being worthy of love, and the only way you can pursue that idea is by honoring yourself. At the very least this means ridding your world of dudes who are not worthy and setting a standard of excellence in your daily life." How true that is! And not only when it comes to dating. I think this applies to everything in our lives. Replace "unworthy dudes" with anything else detrimental and it works just as well.

Here are a couple others I loved:

"I believe in love the verb, not the noun. I believe in letting the woman I love know I love her all the time with my actions."--Now this is the kind of guy I want.

"Have faith. What other choice is there?"--If we don't believe we'll find someone, we won't. It's that simple.

"Cheaters are people who have a lot of stuff to work out and they're working it out on your time and with your heart."--So, so, so true. This one definitely hit home.

Bottom line is, I am an amazing, wonderful, beautiful, intelligent woman who deserves the very best in everything. Including guys. And now I have to go out and find one who agrees with me and treats me accordingly.

Funny Story

So the other day my roommate and I went to Chevron because one of my tires was low and I needed to fill it up. There were a couple guys in my apartment, and one of them asked, "Do you need any help?" I replied, "Thanks, but I think I can handle filling up my tire." I mean really, I'm not that helpless.

When we got to the air pump, there was this big ol' red truck sitting there ahead of us. We settled down to wait for them to finish, and then we realized that the truck was idling and the driver was still in the driver's seat. We got pretty annoyed. It was 10:30 pm, and we just wanted to fill up my tire and leave. I just wanted them to get out of my way so I could go back home.

Then a white truck pulled up next to the red truck. Two guys jumped out of the white truck and a girl got out of the red truck. She looked at us sitting in my Honda and mouthed, "I don't think it's working," with this helpless little shrug and giggle. I turned to my roommate and said, "You don't think it's working or you don't know how to use it?"

Sure enough, the blond guy walked up to the pump and tested the air nozzle. We could hear the air hiss from my car. It was working just fine. I had to shove my fist in my mouth to keep from laughing, which didn't work. So she stood around with her "Oh my gosh, I'm so stupid" giggles and watched this guy fill up her tire, while my roommate and I laughed harder and harder. We even took a picture:
Sorry, it's pretty blurry, but we were trying to be discreet.

The best part was that the brunette guy kept looking at us and smiling. It looked like he was trying hard not to laugh too, and appreciated the fact that we were girls and could laugh at this girl who didn't know how to make the freaking air pump work.

It made me feel pretty dang good about myself. I mean, at least I can fill up the tires on my car. We should have offered my tire gauge--I don't think they had one. Oh well, maybe next time.

Making Darkness Light

I love the Barenaked Ladies. They're one of my favorite bands for many reasons, mostly because they're just awesome. My favorite song of theirs is a cover of Bruce Cockburn's "Lovers in a Dangerous Time." Everyone should listen to it, because it's amazing.

My favorite line from this song (yes, I have a favorite line) is, "Gotta kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight." I just think it is so poignant. There are so many people who think that happiness is something that just comes, and that if you're not happy, there's not really much you can do about it except wallow and hope that it will get better on its own. But that's not true. Happiness is something that has to be achieved, something that has to be worked towards. This is something that I think this line captures beautifully. When darkness envelopes us, we have to fight it. It might take a while, and it might take a lot of effort, but if we fight, and if we keep fighting it, the darkness will eventually crack and the light will shine through. Comforting thoughts for those dark times in my life.

"Lovers in a Dangerous Time" is on "Disc One: All Their Greatest Hits." It's a dang good album.












And these are the brilliant guys who performed it.

Just Friends.

For the first two years of my college career, I didn't have many guy friends. I take that back--I didn't have any guy friends. My friends consisted of people from high school and my roommates. I went home nearly every weekend because I didn't feel any desire to stay in Provo. And though I didn't think about it very much, I missed having guy friends, of having that male influence in my life.

It really has only been recently that I have had really close guy friends, and I realized that I had completely forgotten how much I love hanging out with guys. There's something about having guys around that makes me feel more complete. Girls can be too much sometimes, and it's always nice to have that testosterone to balance out the estrogen.

But I also realized that I forgot how frustrating it can be to have guy friends. To know that you are "just friends." It doesn't matter how much I like the boys I hang out with, how much I like just being their friend; it always ends up frustrating me. I don't even have to be interested in any of them for it to frustrate me. But then, when I actually do become interested in one of them, it just exacerbates the problem.

I feel like I'm the safe friend. I'm pretty level-headed and mature, and I handle drama well. I can usually make an awkward situation less awkward, and I'm not the kind of girl who freaks out very often. For example, a couple months ago I had a guy take me on a walk and tell me he just wanted to be friends. Sure, it sucked. I was pretty upset. But I didn't let him know that. I said, "Okay, that's cool," and he was surprised at how well I took it. I honestly don't know how he expected me to react. Maybe he thought I would burst into tears and punch him in the nose. I kind of wanted to, but that's a different story. But something about my ability to handle upsetting situations with poise and even a smile makes me feel like guys don't even think of viewing me as potentially more than a friend. They talk to me about other girls because they know I won't get upset. They don't even have to be asking me for advice. Which is fine. It's nice to be trusted. But getting friendlisted over and over is draining.

And this isn't to say that I want a relationship right now. Sure, if it happened and I did get in a relationship, I'd be perfectly happy with that. But what I really want to do is date. I want to go on lots of dates with lots of guys. And that doesn't happen when you're just friends. Because hanging out is enough. But it's often not. And I hate that everyone seems to think that going on one date has to mean something, or that a guy can't go on a date with more than one girl in an apartment. It's ridiculous. Take a girl on a date, and if it doesn't mean anything but you still want to be her friend, be her friend. Chances are she feels the same way. Not all the time, it's true, but if she's a mature adult she'll be able to handle it, and handle it well. It's only awkward if you make it awkward.

Whew, there's my rant for the week.

Blessed

I was talking to my mom on IM yesterday when my gmail notifier dinged. If you know the gmail notifier, you know it gives a little blurb that says the first few lines of the email and who sent it. All I saw was that this new email was from KLAS research and then the words "employment offer." I almost peed my pants. But I had to go and read the email (obviously) just to make sure I read it right. And I did! I got the editing job at KLAS! I was so excited, I can't even describe it. Excited and relieved and a little weepy.

And I realized that my whole working life I've been crazy lucky when it comes to job hunting. No, incredibly blessed. When I came to college, I already had a job lined up. I didn't even have to interview for it. I started on the same day I started college, and had it my entire college career. Then, the one summer I went home, I went a grand total of about a week without a job. And that was with leaving one temp job and having to find another one. And now, after graduating college, I get the second job I applied for, the first job I interviewed for. And the one that just happens to work perfectly with my internship and is in my field.

I can't help but be incredibly grateful. I know plenty of people who have been unemployed for months and who have tried much harder to find jobs than I have. Because to be honest, I haven't tried very hard at all. I applied for two jobs. Two. And yet the Lord sees fit to bless me. I don't know why, but I'm certainly not complaining.

Just Hold Your Peace

Exodus 14:14: "The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace."

This scripture has been one of my favorites for a while now, since one day last year in Sunday School when I ran across it randomly. I don't remember if it had anything to do with the lesson, but it hit me and hit me hard.

It made me realize that I had been trying to deal with some battles that weren't mine to fight, and that I needed to let them go, no matter how justified I felt in fighting them. Sometimes we are the victims, and I know that when I'm in that situation I get defensive and want to fight back. But sometimes--probably most of the time--we have to let our offenses go and give them to the Lord. Because that's what He's there for. He's there to take upon Himself our sins, our troubles, our heartaches, our pains, if we only let Him. Why would I want to fight my battles when I have a much stronger fighter on my side who's willing to fight for me? The Lord will take care of everything, so sometimes we just have to let it go.

Which reminds me of something my tenth grade seminary teacher said all the time. Any time a student would ask him a hard doctrinal question that he couldn't answer, he would reply, "It'll all be fine." Because it will be. If I just hold my peace and let the Lord fight for me, everything will be fine.

The Next Stage

Life has been pretty dang interesting lately. In December, I graduated from BYU. Woo hoo! And because I felt really strongly about it, I decided I needed to stay in Provo. I don't know why, but there you go. I'm in the midst of one of those leaps of faith that you hear people talk about. Hopefully there will come a time when I know why I was supposed to stay in Provo. Not that I don't like it here. In fact, I love it. All my friends are here and I have much better opportunities to meet more friends here than I would with my parents, which I love. But there's the minor factor that I don't have a job and I have rent and groceries to pay for. Not fun.

But I did get an internship. It's with Paper Crafts Magazine, which is incredibly exciting. It's a scrapbooking magazine, which is definitely not my thing. I don't scrapbook. But hey, it's a real, published magazine and I get to work on it, so I don't care what they publish. I have a friend who did the internship over a year ago, and it turned into paid freelance work for her. I'm really hoping that's what happens for me. The only catch is that it's part time, and it's unpaid. Eek. But it's excellent editing experience that I desperately need.

So when I got back to Provo from the break, I started looking for a part-time job. So much fun! I've applied to a grand total of two places. I'm so on the ball, I know. But I did snag an interview. For an editing job. A part-time editing job to go with my part-time editing internship? Yes, please! It's pretty much the perfect situation for me. Two things to go on my resume for when I finally apply for that dream job, whatever or whenever that will be. Not that it will be enough. But it's a start.

The interview went fairly well. I interviewed for an editing position at KLAS Research. I would be editing comments by healthcare professionals about the products they use. Not the most exciting stuff to edit, but it's professional editing, which is wonderful. Three people interviewed me, which was rather intimidating, and then I had to take a short editing test. I think I did all right. I'll find out next Thursday if I got the job, so keep your fingers crossed.

And tomorrow I'll be talking to the managing editor of Paper Crafts to work out my hours and what I will be responsible for. I'm pretty dang excited, mostly because even if it takes me a while to get a job, I will be doing something worthwhile and working towards something. I'm doing absolutely nothing right now and it's killing me. I'm incredibly bored. Not to mention the fact that it's rather disorienting because I'm living where I lived the last year and a half of my college career, yet I'm not going to classes or working or doing anything. I feel like a bum.

It's definitely weird to be in this stage of life. I always thought about what I would do when I got my bachelor's degree, but it's so different when you suddenly have to not only think about what to do, but decide on it. I knew in my head that I was graduated once finals ended last semester, but it didn't really sink in until after break, until the Monday school started for everyone else but me. Waking up in my Provo apartment and knowing that I didn't have to do anything was so surreal. I knew all my roommates (well, all but one) were off to their first day of classes, and it made me quite sad. I really do miss being in class and learning. But I definitely don't miss the homework. And it's good to grow up and move on. The time always comes when things have to change and you've just got to change and grow too.

Resolutions

It's been about a week since we rang in the new year, but I still want to post some of my resolutions. Maybe having them written down in a public place will help me actually accomplish them.

1. Take more pictures. This may seem a little weird, but I haven't taken many pictures recently and it makes me kind of sad.
2. Eat better and get in shape. I've been working on this for a while now, so I guess it's just a continuing goal for me.
3. Be happy! I have spent too much of my life worrying about things I can't control, so I'm going to enjoy what I have and where I am right now.
4. Get a job. ASAP because I'm bored out of my head.
5. Save money. Which will come after 4 is accomplished.