A Miranda Kind of Night

Who will save your soul?

Watching Sex & the City in an apartment by yourself can be somewhat depressing. Add a cat and its a little more depressing. Add the fact that I'm a guy, and its even more depressing. Fall asleep at 9pm and its full blown Where-did-I-go-wrong kind of depressed the next day.

On that show with "Sex" in the title (which is how I got conned into watching it ... I kept on cause I get addicted to shows so easily ... *cough* The OC), the ladies were discussing soulmates. Now, in belief systems, I am usually aligned somewhere between Carrie and Samantha, but I love Charlotte. This episode for some reason found my cynical Miranda side though. In it, she definitely does not believe in soulmates. I could not agree more.

This particular belief is more out of hope. I do not hope that there is one person out there that will make me truly happy. I do not hope that there is one person that can complete me. I hope there is more than one person. The one person idea scares me!

The odds are stacked against me (do the math, 6 billion people, 3 billion are women, and little ol' me.), so what if I don't find this girl? I wasn't very good at those Where's Waldo books as a kid. I lose my keys &/or wallet on a daily basis. And much like an Alanis Morisette song, when I need a knife, all I can find is a spoon. So what would give me any kind of hope to find that single, solitary person that will make me jum the moon? How am I going to find the ying to my yang? The spoon to my knife? The cap to the toothpaste that is my heart? (never did you think you would hear a metaphor about the heart and toothpaste, did you?)

I won't. Or at least not in the kind of dreamy way presented in cheesy, girly romantic comedies. A friend of mine once told me the premise behind arranged marriages in his culture. They began as a way to teach the people involved how to love. You learned how to love the person you were bound to. You learned how to take the good and the bad from the person. You learned how to make it work. You learned to love someone for who they are. It's scary at first, but its exciting everyday when you learn something new about the person or learn a life lesson together. The climax is not the wedding; the marriage is the climax. Kinda makes the American love match not seem so good.

While I don't think we should abandon the idea of love matching, there is something to take from the idea of that arranged marriage: love for how they are & making it work. That is what I believe in. I think that we date around until we find someone with whom we want to make it work. I think we date until we learn ahow to love someone for who they are & how to make that work. And I am totally great with this idea. We learn the same values, just in a different way. We may still choose to learn our lessons one at a time, date-by-date, girlfriend-by-girlfriend, love-by-love, to reach that marriage pinnacle, where although we still have much to learn, we have new challenges to face. But we still choose to learn those lessons. And that is worth the search.

And maybe I have this all wrong. Maybe I'm more like Miranda than I'd like to admit, cause by the end of the episode she gets a boyfriend and the idea of soulmates doesn't sound so unrealistic. So, maybe if I get a girlfriend it won't sound so far-fetched. But until then, I hold steadfast against the soulmate.

And so goes the life ...

Betty Ettiquette's Effects on a College Boy

The chubby bearded man is coming! The chubby bearded man in red clothes is coming!

That's right folks ... Christmas is upon us. I absolutely love this season. I love everyone's spirit of comraderie and love. I love the family getting together. I love decorating the tree. And I love the spirit of giving.

But the stuff that leads up to the spirit of giving sucks. There are so many factors that weigh in on gifting buying. Who do you buy gifts for? What should you buy them? How much do you spend on a person?

Lucky for you, I have worked all of this out. So, if you are a college boy (some rules girls can use too) and are lost at the mall, here is your new bible.

The College-Boy Rules of Christmas Shopping

#1) Make a budget. Then throw that sucker away. You are going to spend more than your estimated budget no matter what. Deal with this quickly, cause rent is due in about 6 days.

#2) Write down the names of immediate family members. Exclude aunts, uncles, and cousins. You love them, but like you, they have bigger Tickle-me-Elmo's to buy. (Special note: Only expect toe socks (for girls) and Christmas boxers (for boys) from your aunts and uncles with kids. They love you, but in this season you are an afterthought while standing in the checkout line at Wal-Mart, so they are not expecting gifts.)

#3) Write down the names of your closest female friends. Limit this list!!! Colsest female friends does not include that girl in your social circle that you had crazy sex with, but really only see at parties. She is not expecting anything. No no ... I promise. Buy the people that make this list gifts that have meaning between the two of you. If you had a special story involving a wooden spoon, if you buy her a wooden spoon, you will be the very thoughtful, best boy-friend (and if you want, on your way to dropping that hyphen).

#4) Write down the list of you guy buddies. Immediately throw this list away! We are guys and this might straggle the border between straight and gay! But, as they say, it is the thought that counts, and you did make a list with them on it.(Exception to #4: If you are friends with both sides of a couple, buy the girl a gift and slap both names on there. Congratulations, you have successfully killed two birds with one stone!)

#5) That girl at the Graduation/After-Finals/ Christmas party that took care of your drunk ass. Yeah, she's getting a gift. Deal with it and make it good.

#6) If your work is not doing a Secret Santa (blessed are those that do), buy only things that you can use for your work buddies. Wait for your gift first! If you don't get one, enjoy your $10 gift cards and the such.

And that is all folks. Christmas shopping in 6 simple rules. Enjoy your shopping experience.
More importantly, enjoy your holiday and your family and friends. I know mine are dear to me.

Merry Christmas!

And so goes the life ...

A Blog ... the beginning

A blog name is so hard to figure out. Especially when they ask you to do it when you haven't even started writing in the darn thing. I attempted to think of a good song lyric, but thought that would be too cliche. Then, a movie title seemed even more cliche. The title or line from a play wouldn't fit, due to me not being a theater buff and other significant reasons.
So I had to think long and hard about it. "What to do, oh what to do," I thought to myself. Then it hit me. I had been writing mass e-mails to my friends forever. It started when I first went to college for my high school friends. Then, since I'm so witty, it went to my friends that I wrote about too. Then, when I switched colleges and became lazy, there was the convenient 'Everyone' option in my address book. (How great is that 'Everyone' button?!? It can make you feel like you know alot more people than you actually do! But I digress ...) It started as the Nac Report (since I went to a school in Nacogdoches, Texas), then the Arlington Report (when I moved back home), and then the San Antonio Report (when I decided that I should go to a school away from home). I have my friend (and pledge brother) Sarah for the brilliant idea of the *insert city here* Report, since she left me high and dry in Naco-nowhere by myself (I'm not bitter, and when I say by myself, I really mean with a bunch of my other friends). She began the Austin Report and I felt that I could not be outdone, so I began. Each time I started that Report, I began with "So goes the life of one Eric L. Pawkett-Cruz..." And since all that won't fit, 'And so goes the life..." is what you get.

To begin, I'll be posting stuff that I wrote in my journal on opendiary. I think I like this site better, and I might even post more often ... so, read the first and let me know how it goes. I'll post the date that they were originally posted.