…and she took out her shoelaces

i’ve been on a mixtape making rampage lately. maybe it’s my way of feeling feelings, or contrastly, avoiding my own by channeling someone else’s… or i just like music, a lot. either way, here’s another for your listening pleasure.

it’s pretty awesome if i do say so myself.

…and she took out her shoelaces (click to download)

track listing:

badaboom- tapes ‘n tapes
fader- the temper trap
idiot heart- sunset rubdown
take off your sunglasses- ezra furman and the harpoons
waiting on you- sun airway
know better learn faster – thao with the get down stay down
an ear for baby- the thermals
not sick- tokyo police club
dlz- tv on the radio
becoming a jackal- villagers
red letter day- the get up kids
we’ve been had- the walkmen
16 days (acoustic)- whiskeytown
smithsonian liver- hot rod circuit
what a drag- bear hands
strictly game- harlem shakes
heat & hot water- arms
this bed- horse feathers
understand at all- cloud nothings
bruises to prove it- say hi
helplessness blues- fleet foxes
onion- sean hayes
answer to yourself- the soft pack

interest and power. we’ve forgotten why we’re fighting.

we’ve been walking sideways, waiting for the cold days. finding strength in numbers, on the ocean floor.

lean mean thirteen.

it’s friday night, and i’m at home. alone. and was loving it. until 20/20 came on with a segment of true honest to goodness crazy old cat ladies. then i started to fall victim to thinking about what i am supposed to be doing because it’s friday. then i turned on music and shut out the ’supposed’ to thoughts.

i’m happy where i am. in bed, with laptop, tv on mute (for company reasons only), indie folk playing, alone, in my studio apartment in sf. the only thing that would make this better, ok, well i guess THAT was the wrong way to start that sentence, as a zillion things entered my head. try again: the one not so ok thing with this moment is my upstairs neighbors that are ruining my life with their hardwood floors, no rugs, three dogs, wooden shoes, constant vacuuming, unnecessarily loud conversations, and 95 people living in a 14×15 ft room. phew, got that out of me.

either way, i’m ok. with life. and right now. in fact, i’m good. and thinking about love.

a girlfriend of mine had a date this week, that she thought went really well. and was waiting for him to text, or call, or contact. and i suggested that maybe she text him. and she said that she’s always the one to contact, and this time she wasn’t going to. and i was right there with her. for quite a while that was me. and we are very similar. so i told her i got it. and then she retweeted something on twitter in response to me, that really really got me thinking. she said @stephdub RT Dating Tip: He who calls more has the most interest and the least control. I can’t say it enough…let HIM call YOU!

and i had some weird sort of view of myself, from what seemed like years ago, but in reality, i don’t know when this girl left. but that tweet made me realize it was for real. my immediate response was enlightening.

you see, i realized that it seems like, in dating, in big cities, as successful smart attractive intelligent people, we have forgotten the real purpose of dating. well, at least what i think a lot of us want the purpose to be. to meet someone with whom we connect.

it has turned into such a game. a game of power, and control, and winning. but that has really just manifested from loneliness, and missed connections, and longing. i want it. i want that someone that i connect with, to be here, with me in sf. she wants it too, to be with her. and so on.

we get so wrapped up work, and life, and success, and winning, that we forget to stress the importance, and allowance of opening up, and making ourselves available for connection. i say we as in society, not her, nor me, individually. we place so much pride and value on success and power, and the way to get that is through rationale and strategy. we have completely devalued, and thereby, disallowed any sort of emotions and feelings, in space where feeling are what are supposed to be leading the way. winning the game.

maybe it’s all this feeling i’ve been letting myself do. maybe it’s a recent reconnection that reminded of its value. maybe it’s seeing someone i care about go through the exact same thing that i am. maybe its longing. maybe its hope. maybe its trust. maybe it desperation. but i want to remember now, the purpose of dating. to meet someone. to connect. to laugh. to share. to support. to enjoy. to embrace.

let’s get back there. together. maybe, yea?

we’re thinking with our brains, we’re living in our veins, we’re swimming in our skin, grinning through our pain. here we go.

tiger tamer. arms.

adult life spring break destination: austin, tx.

the balance between starting fresh and remembering where we came from

trying to be a good girl, and give em what they want

so, i’ve mentioned before that i have been writing a blog for years now. well, i was reading a dear friend’s blog the other day and was instantly reminded of something i wrote. and in my mind it was so present that i was sure that it was already on stephdub.com. so, i scoured my archives and came up blank. which led me to my myspace blog posts. after perusing the many years of posts, experiences, emotions and ramblings i finally found exactly what i was looking for. a post i had written about the balance of wanting to forget your dating past and start over with new people, and remembering all that has gotten you to where you are right now, presently.

the most shocking thing about this post is how present it was in my brian (like i had written it in the last 6 months) and how long ago i actually wrote it. in honor of my personal growth, experiences and roller coaster ride through life i have decided to post it in it’s entirety, with no rewrites. so here it is, word for word, in all it’s messy glory.

november 14th, 2006.  (wow that is over two years ago):

so there are times where you believe it is right. that this time it’s going to happen. this is the one. this is the new start. you’re ready to start fresh. but that is the exact mindset that hinders everything about starting fresh. we cannot just stop who we are, and what we do, and most importantly what we’ve done. we can only build on top of everything we think we want to rid ourselves of. there is no such thing as starting over. there is only moving forward. moving forward and working harder to make it happen. working harder to make the life you want. there are people that will be there the whole way, reminding you that everything you have done is you. and you are perfect for everything you’ve done. you are here now. this moment and therefore everything you’ve done makes you what and who you are now. but how in the world are you supposed to meet someone and let them into the parts of you that have been building up for your entire existence before they arrived. how does anyone ever find that someone. you, and what you are, become a business pitch to every new person you encounter. the elevator business pitch. limited time. get their attention. tell them why your last twenty three years should interest them. you make your pitch and you wait for the job offer. the part where you actually have to work at letting them see what you are made of. all the while trying to understand what has built up in them. but what if you say, ‘hey i want to work for you. i want to work for what is underneath those layers of laughs and jokes, careers and facades and get deep into the layers inside you.’ and they consider your pitch and decided on a candidate that they feel is better suited for their needs. why the hell would anyone want to ever start relationships voluntarily… friendship. romance. its work. and like at the job that pays you, its sucks to be the one always working. putting in more that the people around you. getting by just the same as them. but that extra work. thats what builds the layers. and thats the work that makes not starting over worth it. one day all this work will pay off. one day someone will buy that business pitch and that day will be the beginning of everything new. until then. learn to pitch. be rejected. over and over. get better at knowing what you want. learn. build your knowledge base. experience.

don’t know if i’m wide awake or dreaming, but all i ever need is… everything…

the crush factor

do try it once and then you know. it’s your move. settle for less again. again.

i was thinking about the concept of crushing. you know, having a crush on someone. and, though i understand some of the psychological benefits of getting a crush on someone, i realllllly can’t get past some of the icky effects of having said crush.
so, we have all these chemicals in our brian that make us blissfully sheltered from the harsh realities of life. they allow us to ‘be happy’ and see things positively. actually, they say that, simply put, clinically depressed people see the world with more of an accurate lens. these chemicals don’t allow them to float through life thinking that there are good things where others do. now, those of us that are not depressed, or are taking supplemental chemicals for it, see things as generally good. people as generally good. life as generally good.

so, back to a crush. why is it that crushes seem to ALLOW us to blatantly ignore anything real that is not one hundred percent positive. it seems that when we crush, our crushee can do no wrong. we get dressed with the anticipation of the first time our eyes meet that night. we arrange our schedules to allow for the maximum amount of possible hang out time. maybe we see them and get butterflies. we talk to them about all the things we have in common. and sooner or later this crush becomes the next persn we want to date. and efforts move forward in that direction.

but. these feel good chemicals that incite all the previously mentioned behaviors sometimes do us a total disservice. they allow us to spiral into wanting to date someone, without ACTUALLY knowing the whole story about them. we only know the good things. s/he is cute. funny. charming. intelligent. and that is all we need to know to swoon.

so, there was this boy. and he was cute, and we had so much in common. we knew some of the same groups of people. we had similar interests. interesting conversations. and i had a full blown crush. now this crush, thank goodness, didn’t last because of one awkward dating situation or another and i was able to get a more accurate view of who this guy was. and from that awkward moment on, everything he did and said kind of annoyed me. so i immediately started beating myself up for ever crushing on such a stupid boy. and become mad about the crush induced things i did. thinking, ‘why couldn’t i have seen all these things before so i didn’t waste my time on that boy.’  (so i don’t feel the need to berate myself for NOT seeing those things.)
not to get all academic geek on you, but i get the evolutionary psychology perspective on why the tendency to ‘crush’ is a positive thing that helps us survive. relationships are hard work. and we would not actively get into them if we had a realistic vision of all the good AND bad things about a person. it’s the same as the concept of romantic love. our brains trick us into falling for someone, so that once we get into a relationship and this romance fades we are already too deep in to abandon ship. and as cognitive dissonance theory suggests, we as humans would much rather change our beliefs than our behavior when the two don’t match up. so, our brains give us a nice chemical cocktail of happy love juice so that we fall (crush) for someone that we don’t know too much about. we act like we’ve fallen (see previous list of ‘crush’ like behaviors) and then when that cocktail wears off we are in a relationship and have to deal with the hard, honest, and real parts of that relationship. and the only way to rationalize what, in retrospect, we see as something we maybe would not have gotten into (actively) if we knew these things earlier is to change our belief about the not so positive things that we are feeling. because we can’t change the behavior (it’s already done!). so we then enter round two of happy juice lies and tricks our brian plays on us to induce all those ‘crush’ like feelings again cause we were happy then. and we change our beliefs about the things we may not like, to thinking positively about them. and the cycle continues.

but here’s the thing. what we REALLY need is not a happycrush cocktail of illusions when we meet someone, but a realistic person preview. like a realistic job preview. we need to know what we are getting ourselves into. i mean, what if that awkward dating moment had not snapped me out of my crush and i started dating a guy that thinks he is way more important than he actually is?! THEN i’d be in trouble. so my request to you, brain- i want to see accurately and clearly, and if it takes a few times before accurate and clear equals actual things in common, intelligent conversation, mutual attraction, and so forth then so be it. i’ll deal with meeting some not so great guys, just don’t trick me into falling for them. please! thank you.

like a breath. take in restraint like a breath. my lungs are so numb from holding back. eh, from holding back.