By the by and by, if you’re looking for the best latte in San Francisco, please stop by Dolce Gelato on Sutter. I’ve had 3 mornings of a nonfat sugar-free caramel latte and it’s possible this cuppa is my next meaningful relationship.

It’s been a week that’s reminded me that I’ve felt as if something’s been missing. But what that missing thing is? Elusive. Couldn’t put a finger on it. Yesterday sorted that out.

Sometimes you meet people who put things into perspective – yesterday was one of those days. The entire day felt different. Full of good meetings, great conversation, laughter, exhaustive speed walking to get from one place to another and while finally sitting down at dinner last night at a cozy wine and tapas bar called District, it hit me.

That is what’s been missing.

It’s my discovery, and I don’t feel it would be right if I told you what it was, but it let me sleep. It let me smile. It let me not say a word (something remarkable as I’m one that fills voids with sound). It left me yearning for a museum trip – and if that doesn’t happen here, I’ll do it in Denver over the weekend. But no – it’s not the museum that was missing.

I go through my life (and perhaps you do as well) looking to label things as best I can. I’m like a human card catalog, wanting to file and sort everything I possibly can. Manageable bits. Morsels. And for all of my sorting, I’m still left on occasion with things that I can’t identify. Like What’s Missing.

I have no idea if anyone else ever feels like this, but this morning, it’s good to know that I’ve got a clue what that missing thing has been. I even woke up in the middle of the night and smiled as I rolled from one side to the other. It skipped through my head and heart like a flat rock across a pond, and while I didn’t care where it landed, the ripples rocked me back to sleep.

Maybe you have your thing. Maybe you’re someone like me who was trying to put a finger on it. Regardless – we spend so much time trying to fill those voids with everything we’re not looking for that it’s not surprising we end up with a pile of shit we don’t need. Maybe the first step is getting away from the pile we’ve built/accumulated. And the next step? To stop looking.

Just some random BS tripping around my brain this morning and I’m sorry it’s been since Monday that I last posted. Traveling is the one thing that throws me for a writing loop and today, we both got lucky. Since writing is my catharsis and I had a much needed ah-ha moment last night, you got a post and I got therapy.

Carry on smartly.

I left the breezy, sunny, early spring evening behind me and walked into the lobby of the auditorium. Tweens and teens running everywhere. I had to pee. I made a beeline for the bathroom and when the door swung open, I was met by a chorus of giggles and “Uh mah gawwwwwwds” dripping from a group of girls all trading and changing clothes.

And then I couldn’t breathe. Panic attack.

For the first time since Jason died last year, I couldn’t breathe. And it all came rushing back to me: I hated high school and hadn’t step foot in one since the day before I graduated in 1991.

I was always the girl whose glasses were a bit (okay, a lot) too big with lenses tinted too lavender (shut up). I thought silly t-shirts were cool. I never had the latest fashions and hated that I had to roll up my shirts so they were the same short length as all of the other girls. Girls who were cheerleaders and on the drill team – they were cool. Girls like me…weren’t. And it made school, from elementary all the way to high school, a living hell.

I coped with academics. I have a photographic memory (I see words), so studying wasn’t much of a challenge. I read fast, got bored faster and was the girl one grade below in the AP U.S. History classes that all of the popular kids wanted to sit next to on test day so they could copy off my paper. I played volleyball but was never good enough for anything other than the JV squad. I managed the varsity softball team.

I never got asked to Homecoming.  I also got pregnant late in the summer before my senior year and spent the first Friday of that school year playing hooky so I could get an abortion. The girl who never had a boyfriend until her senior year of high school fucks it up first time out of the gate. He broke up with me a week before the prom.

But holy shit, could I take a test and write a paper.

A’s were easy. Well, except when it came to calculus my senior year of high school. I was a wiz with proofs. Unfortunately, we only spent 2 weeks on them. And then I pulled a D for my first six-weeks. That’s also when the assistant principal told my mom that if she spent less time working and more time in the home, maybe I’d be different. I could mentally hear my mom telling him to go fuck himself.

My friends were the freaks. The goth kids who wore funky clothes and all black and we had an ongoing contest to see who could bleach their hair the whitest. And the day of the honor graduates reception, nobody expected to see me walk in. Sure, I was a geek, but I looked funny. I wasn’t popular. I was pretty forgettable. And that day, a classmate asked, “What are you doing here?” with regards to my audacity to show up for the (invitation-only) honor graduates reception. My reply?

“Graduating above you.” (And it was true.) 9th out of 360 students. But I was unpopular. I had lots of time to study.

The best day of my life was the day I walked out of that school, never to return, because I got to leave behind over 300 students who had followed me for the past eleven years. I got to go be someone I never had the chance to be: me.

And Friday night, it all came rushing back. The pop show was stunning (some amazing talent – whoa), but it was everything I could do to stay until the very end because I just wanted to be able to breathe again.

For eleven years, I found ways to survive. I thought it would end there, but it didn’t. I spent the next five (I took a year off) at college, wanting to fit in with all the cool actor kids in the Theatre department at the University of Houston. I eventually said fuck it and went to the scene shop and costume shop and never looked back, opting to build things instead of try to compete in the games for which I didn’t know the rules. And while I graduated with a solid knowledge of costume history and proper use of pneumatic tools, it didn’t end there, either.

I went to work, like most of us do after college. In my biggest year, I had seventeen (one-seven, 17) W2s at tax time. Nothing fit.

Now, this whole story isn’t to gather up attendees for a pity party thrown in my honor. I have a feeling that many of you are all to familiar with the tune I’m hummin’. Being where I am today, I wouldn’t trade 30-some-odd years of unpopular for anything because I learned an invaluable lesson: how to survive.

What Unpopular People Have That Popular Ones Don’t

We can identify opportunities and slink off into the background to tap into them. No one is paying attention to us anyways. And by the time you figure out what we’re doing, you’re already relegated to playing a game of catch up if you decide to play any game with us at all.

The unpopular kids don’t rely on the opinions of others in order to deem whether something is a success or not. It’s why we love science, competitions, academics and research. Information offers validation.

We’re resilient. You can kick us time and time again and we’ll find ways to hide, morph, adapt and thrive.

We’re made to be entrepreneurs. There was a kickass article in Forbes not so long ago that speaks right to this. When no one’s your champion growing up, something really cool happens over time: you find ways to get things done without a whole lotta help. We’re born bootstrappers and have a lot of time to strategize since we know we’re not getting asked to the dance. But we’re all about organizing our own little Bootstrapper’s Ball.

And Wouldn’t It Be Lovely…

If we changed the way we thought about being unpopular? As kids, we’re awkward and always on the offense because kids are mean little shits. We’d rather be a Freak than a Shitkicker, because any label is better than none at all. Someone is always going to dislike us. But some of us have better tools for dealing with that (perceived) rejection than others.

There will always be kids like me (like us) who don’t get asked to Homecoming and who get dumped a week before the prom. Even though in my case, I got dumped for two girls (yes, two, dos, 2) and I enjoy to this day the irony of him wanting me back after the threesome had lost its charm. And yeah, it would have been really nice to be asked to a dance. To be someone’s date (which actually happened once in all those secondary years). But given where I am today, I like the unpopular route.

I did a poll on my Facebook page asking: “What’s the one thing that’s made your business more successful? Is it blogging? Networking? Hiring great people? Lay it one me and tell me why.” Do you know that not one person said that it was being the prom king or queen or being “well-liked?” The top responses, hands-down, were:

• Networking
• Relationships
• Referrals

The first two are things that are second nature to The Unpopular. We have to make our own networks because we didn’t get them by simply buying the right pair of jeans. Our networks bring us relationships. Relationships are real, multilayered things that require attention and nurturing. Perhaps we pay better attention to our relationships because no one paid attention to us. But those relationships earn us business and then, the referrals come.

Symbiotic, ain’t it?

Finding My Breath

So, for the first time since dealing with Jason’s death, I was without breath on Friday night and wondering when I could escape. I’m glad I stayed as long as I did and even more glad I got the serendipitous chance to revisit something that apparently scared the living shit out of me. Come 11pm that night, my heart had stopped racing and I was laughing that being on a high school campus alone had freaked me out to completely. Whodathunk? I’m never above being scared, so long as I walk away with some benefit from it. The takeaway this time? What makes us and a reminder of everything that makes me. And moreso, what doesn’t (and never will).

Why is your business successful and what do you struggle with? We all have our demons and if you’ve stayed this long, you’re pretty well acquainted with one of mine. But I figure if I’m going to have my demons on the payroll, they’re going to do some work, dammit.

image via CreativeCommons.org

This morning, I’m off on a jet plane to San Francisco for a last-minute pitch with my friend and colleague, Merredith. As I zipped over to drop the dogs off for a day of doggie fun and a night of boarding, I poured my car into the glowing pink horizon and…

started to cry.

I finally realized something I’ve been afraid of (and no – I’m not sharing…some things are mine). As I hurriedly wiped the tears away in anticipation of arriving at what we call The Puppy Place (aka Barkly Manor), the sting from my psyche’s little Bitch Slap remained.

What scares the everloving daylights out of you?

Fear’s a huge motivator, whether we realize it or not. Sometimes it propels us into action. Others (MOST others), it paralyzes us. Maybe it’s disguising itself in your life, because it’s a clever bastard designed for survival. A shape-changer of X-Men proportions and chameleons ain’t got nutin’ on its ability to morph and blend in with your life’s canvas.

Is it anger? You’re pissed about your job. The way a friend or lover treated you.

Is it depression? Doing nothing is easier than doing anything. With anyone. Ever.

Is it money? Not having enough, spending too much, afraid of what your friends/colleagues/kids will think about the gift you can afford versus the one you want to give.

Is it love? Yes, love can cause fear. Fear of disappointing or hurting someone you love. Pervasive. Powerful.

Is it loss? Tired of losing. The hurt. Pain. When will you stop crying? You never want to feel this way again.

It it Analysis Paralysis? You’re not done thinking because you’re afraid to make the wrong decision. Maybe there’s something you haven’t thought about! YES! There must be something!

Fear is a symptom. How dedicated are you to uncovering the cause?

Truth creeps in and as humans, we’re pretty fucking efficient at burying the truth when we catch a whiff of it. Don’t believe me? Ask your gut.

Your gut is as honest as it gets. It never tells you what you want to hear. It tells the truth – what you need to hear. The bitch of it is, we’re not great listeners and would rather tune into MEFM (that’s ME, a very popular FM radio station, owned by the same broadcast conglomerate as WIIFM, What’s In It For Me FM).

We do it (myself included) all day long. We even tell ourselves out loud what we SHOULD be doing:

I should end things. This doesn’t feel good.

I should find a new job.

I should tell him I love him.

I shouldn’t buy this.

I should save money.

I should get my taxes done.

The minute we put “should” into the mix, we’re already treating ourselves like assholes. Because that means you’re not going to do it. Period. We’re experts at seeing the truth long before we ever do anything about it. Our guts are as old as we are, yet we treat them like a petulant six-year-old and think they couldn’t possibly know anything about Being An Adult.

That’s bullshit and you need to stop it right now (and yes, I’ll be in line with you for the slapping).

The fear revealed in my car ride this morning…I don’t quite know what to do with it yet. Seeing it for what it is, though, out from under the mask of love and anger its been wearing – well, that’s a step. It’s the time of year where fear is pervasive. What are you going to do? While a certain dose of fear is healthy, isn’t it time to give yourself a gift this holiday season and stop using it (albeit, unwittingly) as an excuse? It’s a symptom. You owe it to yourself to discover the cause. Doctors all to frequently treat symptoms and leave people living with the cause for years. You have the option, and I’m not saying it’s easy. But the cause of your fear is ready and waiting, and a Bitch Slap all by itself.

Brace for impact. You’ve been slapped.

Okay – back to the list. I’m going to run down five things that don’t suck today. They’re all things that might seem to suck on the surface, but if you turn your thinking inside out, they’re pretty much da bomb. And if you’re looking for a great tool for turning your thinking inside out, check out Hank Wasiak’s Change the Way You See Everything. I was lucky enough to meet Hank back at SOBCon earlier this year, and this book has earned a permanent place on my bookshelf.

• Traffic: Ordinarily, traffic sucks balls. Hairy ones. Not sexy ones. It makes you late and nothing’s more annoying than the city shutting down two lanes on a three lane one-way street at 11am. Screw that angst. Traffic at a dead stop is a place to think, sing along with the radio, answer emails (yes, I’m THAT person), and…look out the window. I never realize how much I’ve missed in my life while driving from one place to another until I take the time to look out the window. Try it.
• Losing a client: There goes the cash flow, right? Screw that angst. Your schedule just opened up. If you loved the client, mayhaps you wouldn’t have lost ‘em, so it’s time to think about the kinds of awesome that can fill that time. Make a list of everything you haven’t “had time” to do (aka put off doing because we love to make excuses). Now get it done. Go have coffee with colleagues, take a few mid-day bike rides and ask yourself what you missed. A new client will come along…or maybe you’ll find the time to dig deeper and lend more value to an existing one.
• Breaking up with a lover/divorce: Life ends, glitter stops falling from the sky and unicorns die. Elmo is no longer tickleable. Batman starts driving a Prius. I speak from vast experience on this one – when you sit on your ass, it only gets wider and a wider ass isn’t awesome. When you stop focusing on whatever that dead weight in your life needed, you can actually focus on what you need. Call your friends, get shitfaced drunk for the first time in six years (and remind yourself why cool porcelain and bathroom tile is soothing), have a yard sale and get moving. We tend to inadvertently place ourselves in these positions where we believe that everyone else is more important than we are. Yet when we stop taking care of ourselves, life goes to shit and we’re the ones who pay the price. Breakups are awesome.
• Being broke: Wondering how you’re going to pay the bills feels great, doesn’t it? If you spend your days avoiding your online banking login based on the principle that, “If I don’t look, it’s not so bad,” quit that shit. Being broke is one of the best teacher we have in life. When we can’t spend money on things, we have to get creative. How do I get what I want? Stop saying you can’t afford it. Start asking yourself, “How can I afford it?” And these ideas aren’t mine – pick up a copy of Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It’s not the bible but it will shake-up how you look at your finances. (Another great read is – and again, NOT the bible – Stanley’s The Millionaire Next Door.) We’re only ever broke because of our own decisions. Start making decisions to get un-broke and you’ll look back at today in a year and go – Wow. I really started taking care of myself!
• Getting sick: Before you ask how the hell I’m going to spin this one, I’m already way ahead of you. Being sick has many unpleasantries associated with it. Snot, sore throat, coughing. Maybe it’s beyond that. Maybe you’re facing a critical illness. The gift inherent in being sick is we give ourselves permission to rest. Recharge. Our bodies ask for it, so we need to give it. And when we slow down, we look at life a bit differently. No matter who you are, you can always stand a dose of looking at life different and slowing down for one damn minute.

Choose to see something differently today. Bitch Slap yourself. Pull your head out of your ass. The best days in my life are those where I choose to see. And there’s something magical in seeing things differently. Go forth, slap thyself. Give yourself permission to have another.

You were going to stop being a pussy.

Some days I really lose faith in humanity. Sunday was one of those days. I got stood up for a 7:30am riding date. No call, text, carrier pigeon, smoke signal. Zip. Jack shit. But 2 hours later into my three-flat tire ride…

pling!

Text message. From the offender. Apologizing profusely.

FAIL.

You stand me up, you pick up the fucking phone and you CALL me. You do not type an apology. You do not send me an email. You would have only had to touch 10 numbers to reach me, but instead you hammered-out a 200 character text message to say you overslept?

HUMAN. BEING. FAIL.

I didn’t text back. To the first message OR the next two that followed – one later that day and the one that came last night.

Why?

Because if you don’t get that an apology requires you to tap into the human side of the communication process, there’s nothing I could type back that will have any impact whatsoever.

You can think I’m a bitch or add in a “Gee, Erika – no wonder you’re single” snide remark. Please – be my guest. But when someone disrespects you or hurts your feelings, do you want a digital “I’m sorry” coming your way?

We hide behind technology because we want to distance ourselves from the fallout of our actions. Whether actions were intentional or completely inadvertent, we’ve thrown a grenade. And we’re the ones who get to duck and run for cover? That’s complete bullshit. If you chuck the grenade, stick your head up over the fence like a grownup and take the blast. If you show up late for the office or don’t bother to call in to work, will your boss stand for a text message or email apology? I’m thinkin’ not. And I’m thikin’ you’ll have some ’splainin to do, Lucy. There is no such thing as an iRelationship or iFriendship. Stop gnawing on the digital teat and start tuning in real, live human behavior.

And I get that taking the blast might not feel great (then again, what you did probably didn’t feel great, either), but you might end up with something that feels pretty great: a continued connection with a kickass person. And you’ll also show the person that you’ve got some balls. We suck at humbling ourselves. Which is why we should probably do it more often.

So I’ll ask you again: Put the phone down. Stop typing. Every type of communication has its place. I’ve done it. You’ve done it. Let’s stop it.

You’ve been slapped.

PS: I’m a shameless vote whore – stop by and vote for The Redhead in Westword’s Best of the Web Awards 2010! (I’ve included a plug for one of my favorite blogs in there as well). It’s Denver’s coolest pop culture pub and shucks – it would be awesome to win!

PPS: No phones were harmed in the making of today’s Bitch Slap…

Not an *actual* Awesomeapottamus

A day or so ago, someone mentioned my post Access to me. Just over three months old now, it was a post borne from heartbreak (and in some very unexpected ways). And under last night’s full moon, I simply thought…

isn’t it curious what slips through the cracks when your heart breaks?

It takes a lot of energy to keep a heart from breaking – whether you’re driving a business or relationship forward. Shit. It’s exhausting trying to hold an egg shell together with an iron fist. And when it’s exhausting, we look back later (after the carnage) and realize that all that energy we spent trying to prevent heartbreak could have been better spent elsewhere. And there’s much that got neglected.

Hearts break. Lovers, friends, family, pets, jobs…we lose them. Things don’t turn out the way we planned. One of my cycling coaches has an adage that if cycling were easy, it would be called “beer.” If heartbreak was easy, I’m figuring it wouldn’t have “break” as part of the word.

But how often do we look at what seeps through the cracks of a broken heart?

In a mere three months, I’ve managed to put myself and my business first. Dropped a pound or two. Moved my ass in every sense of the word. I’ve fallen in love with me again and am in the process of seeing multiple mind-blowing things come to fruition. I’ve booked the trip of a lifetime. I’ve saved money, made plans.

And all of this…just slipped through the cracks of a broken heart.

When we’re so close to something that’s gone awry, we can’t help it but to get caught up in the fact that my fucking shell just c-r-a-c-k-e-d.  Somehow, we’ve got the energy to go out and buy party hats and beer for our own little pity party, but we don’t have the energy to sit down and deal. We’re more content to shove nomnoms and self-deprecating comments down our throats than get off the couch and start living again. The sucker punch hurts. Sometimes we punch ourselves. Either way, the shell is straight fucked and if we’re not going to cowboy the hell up to pick up the pieces, who is?

I looked at my broken shell this week. Funny – it’s not so broken. A little spit, duct tape and “fuck this” put it back together. But I’m really glad for what seeped through the cracks. I see every broken heart I’ve ever had as a gift. It’s like a herd of pet Awesomeapottamuses (a mythical creature I created yesterday on Twitter). They subsist on a diet of  love and dreams and in the environment you least expected.

THIS is a moment

I sat down tonight and watched A Single Man. Floored at 8:06pm on a Friday night, I’m here on my laptop because I can’t stop thinking about moments.

Behind all of the bitch slapping and f-bombs, I’m an incurable romantic and closet eavesdropper: a story well-told is better than an orgasm I didn’t give myself, the finest chocolate or the creamiest banana milkshake. A great story reminds you that everyone has one, wrought with passion, piercing pain, utter fuck-ups and victories both concrete and imagined. I think myself a selfish bitch some days because I get so caught up in my own bullshit that I forget about other people’s stories. And those stories give us moments.

Back in Access, I talked about how I don’t think we leave the house in our single years each day looking for love – we go in search of access. People who will let us in and ultimately, our stories will intertwine. A dance of quirks and perfections – it’s like the nerds all get to dance with the prom queen and captain of the football team. For once. No one gets sprayed with pig’s blood. Life becomes a John Waters film.

If I think of the greatest moments in my life, they don’t have words when they happen(ed). They’re a curious blend of timing, circumstance, participants and whatever happens to be aligned or in retrograde. Romantic love is always referenced in terms of “chemistry.” Moments – well, maybe they’re the times where we share chemistry with the universe. They’re fleeting and were they to last longer, they’d become du jour. Sagas. Epics. De rigeur.

Expected.

Today, each of us has a love lost. A nightmarish ex-whatever. The friend who fucked us (and not even in the at-risk-for-an-STD kind of way).

But what about the moments?

In spite of it all, there’s the electricity that ran down your spine when he unexpectedly touched your hair on a first not-really-date-is-this-a-date. The one time you saw the human side to the sociopathic narcissist you left a great-paying job to come work for. Hours spent on IM trading nonsensical hilarities that delightfully interrupted all the work you should have been doing. Times where you laughed so loud at an email in your office, people walked in and you claimed a sneeze.

We forget them. Like leftovers in a takeout box, we leave them on the table at the restaurant seven times out of ten and when we realize we don’t have them, we’re pissed.

But we never go back for them. We just miss them when they’re gone.

No matter how magical, we forget.

Tonight, I’m sitting here thinking of moments. Reminiscing, smelling each one, smiling, some tears. Laughing a lot. Missing. See, here’s where I miss them, these moments. But I’m craving, too.

Do you remember the moment where you first realized you love a friend? Not college gay I-love-my-friend. Love. So fucking thankful they’re in your life you have no other words but I love you to describe it love.

That moment.

You are lucky. You are the homecoming queen and the guy everyone wants on their team. A rock star. Famous. People applaud, you run across home plate and Ed McMahon’s on your doorstep with a Happy Gilmore-sized check. And it all happens in about ten seconds.

That’s a moment.

Moments don’t cause enduring pain. They don’t lie to us or keep reminded us how much they suck. We don’t much remember them when something ends – the other seeps through. Moments? Well, they stand in the background, waiting to be remembered again.

They pass through. The people, pets and things that facilitate them may persist, but why are we so anxious to let go of the moments?

I still remember the moment my grandmother gave me a tube of red lipstick in a bright gold, ridged cylinder. I got to put it in my purse before church. Mine. I smiled.

That’s a moment. And I miss her. I miss how I felt at that moment. Like at age seven or so, I was all grown up and I got to keep a Big Girl Thing in my little white patent leather purse and she knew how much it meant to me.

Moments always come along when we least expect them. Seriously – when’s the last time you left your house and said, “I’m gonna go make some moments today! Hell yeah.”? We don’t do that. They sneak up on us, blindside us. And if we’re lucky, we acknowledge them and a part of us changes forever.

I love them. Moments. I’m having one right now as I watch Big Dog sleep, his paw twitching and exhales varying in depth and frequency. I wonder what he’s dreaming and realize I love watching him sleep. For all the drool and water dripped from a sloppy jaw throughout the house, he’s the same 12-pound explosion of fur I adopted in November of 2007 after listening to Shirley Temple’s “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” play on the radio as I drove to the shelter. I’ve never seen his paw twitch. His name is Hippo(potamus, of course).

Next Thursday, I won’t remember his paw twitching or the flashback I had to the moment he plopped himself in my lap at the shelter. The sweet face that told me he was going to come home with me and make the cats’ lives a living hell. The same sweet face that didn’t tell me dogs don’t speak English, or more notably, that puppies know how to crap, eat and chew – none of which are ever done in the proper place or with the proper things. Moments make us remember when we allow ourselves the luxury. They’re plush and lush and while not every moment evokes an inner glow, each hits us in an indescribable way. It’s a gift to share a moment with someone or something, but I find an odd comfort in knowing the same moment is experienced differently by everyone involved. A gorgeous game of telephone where everyone gets to keep a little secret.

What are your moments and what do you do to honor them and the people who were a part? Endings we didn’t plan don’t have to mean we discount the moments.

As a resident of the greater Cherry Creek and Glendale area here in Denver, I receive the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle in my mailbox each month. While I generally only give it a cursory flip through, your recent article “How to Date in Denver When You’re Dead” caught my eye. I hope you don’t mind, but I felt the headline was inaccurate. Hence, I renamed it in my column here today.

Somewhere along the way, you’ve acquired the moniker “Sheik of Cherry Creek,” while I can’t imagine who comprises your harem. Your recent column is a cesspool of misogyny – and the last time I issued a smackdown of this magnitude, it was to Douglas Brown over at the Denver Post for his ill-researched, faux exploration of cougar culture. Pull up a chair – you’re about to get Bitch Slapped.

“Cut this column out, fold it up and put it in your back pocket. I’m serious. What you are about to read should be your first date constitution, the holy grail of dating. You could be a dead guy and use this recipe for success. It’s war out there and you need to be as prepared as possible when you enter back into the dating battlefield and if you’re not you will be left for dead, broke and lonely.”

Incorrect, Greg. It’s NOT war in the world of man-meets-woman. Perhaps for the douchebags who would read your column and take your advice as the holy grail, but not for the average population. It’s no shocker your column is dubbed “Confessions of a Serial Dater.,” as if you’re following your own advice, you’re likely to have more drinks in your face than beauties on your arm.

“First, you have to get your head right. Remember, women are wired to be dysfunctional by nature and when emotion overrides logic you know you’re in for a wild ride.”

This line actually made me spit Fresca. I truly adore the fact that you begin an article purported to be the Holy Grail for dating with a really offensive judgment on the nature of womankind. Now, I’ll hand it to you that there is psycho pussy wild and loose on the streets of Denver, but it’s douchebags like yourself that make it hard for all the kickass guys and gals out there looking for someone to share their lives with (or at least not kick out of bed for an extended period of time).

How about if I came out and said that every guy is a chauvinistic, self-absorbed, cheating, infantile, commitmentphobe dickhead? While I’ve met damn fine array of men in my lifetime who share one or an assortment of those qualities, it’s not an accurate assessment of men as a whole, is it? And it’s guys like you who spew such crap – and in a family-oriented community newspaper and a forgettably trafficked Blogspot blog, nonetheless – that make it hard for the hordes of decent guys out there because the awesome chicks think they’re assholes because some douchebag pigeonholed them. Alas, I could go on about this one aspect forever, but let’s move on to some of the other Holy Grail of Dating-type gems in your column.

“Your approach is everything. Your first impression and getting a woman to go out on a date with you is half the battle. Except don’t ever, and I mean never, call it a date…”

Really? We’re not “dating” anymore? Well, slap me and call me Myrna. See, when I go to sites like Match.com, guess what I’m looking for? A date. I’m not going to Friend.com or BeMyHikingBuddy.com. I’m going to a site that allows me to connect with MEN in order to explore future romantic involvement. And I never want to wonder if something is a “date” or not. So for fuck sake, it’s a date. Women appreciate straightforward. Go “hang out” with your buddies and watch the game. Take a girl on a date. After you’ve been dating a girl for awhile, you can “hang out” with her on the couch. But guess what – you’re probably going to have to take her out on a few dates first.

“So when you say, “Let’s go grab a happy hour and have some laughs” she is hearing a fun statement rather than a question that she can say “no” to. “Let’s go” rather than “Would you like to,” and “grab” meaning quick, in and out if she’s not having fun. Then “happy hour” and “laughs,” the double banger, booze and laughing, which are two of women’s favorite pastimes.”

Heavens. This is simply precious: booze and laughing are two of women’s favorite pastimes. Maybe this is true in the middle of Skankville where you apparently go trolling for your strange, but not among the smart and sexy women I know – and especially here in Denver. My girlfriends’ favorite pastimes include things like cycling, hiking, climbing, knitting, salsa dancing, charity work, going to a Rockies game and working in the garden. And sure – we dig a beer or glass of wine before, during or after some of those activities, too. But I dare say that no lady having any semblance of class, here in Denver or elsewhere, would list booze on any list of pastimes. If alcohol becomes a pastime, that’s called being an alcoholic.

“And remember resistance causes attraction so if you can get her to wonder if you’re into her and create a little mystery you will begin to have women chasing you in no time.”

Aside from my overwhelming urge to copyedit this sentence, I’ll just address the content. No, I don’t want to wonder if a guy is into me. Not at all. It’s total bullshit and a game that douchebag “dating folks” like you need to stop perpetuating. If you want to play games, move along before you end up a chalk outline in my dating neighborhood, because I’ll pass you over and mark you forgettable before you can even check your phone a 17th time to see if I’ve texted you back.

Great relationships are borne out of mutual attraction, timing, circumstance and…that “thing.” And let me just say that if you like someone enough to sit down and think, “Hmmmm…how am I going to jack with his/her head so they know how much I like them?” I’ll just say that you’re probably not too terribly into that person. I’ve been blessed with some amazing relationships in my life, and while they all didn’t turn out to be forever, not a single one of those men fucked with my head. And I didn’t fuck with theirs, either.

(The next outtake immediately follows the previously eviscerated sentence in Mr. Hollenback’s column.)

“After all we are merely extensions of nature; women are little flowers looking for the strongest seed to pollinate them. Be strong and safe out there.”

I am not a flower. Women are not flowers. We are women, and while we may have the urge to become mothers some day, I do not require any man to “pollinate” me. This is, by far, the most offensive fallacy you put forth in your laughable column. You’re trying to tell me that you honestly feel that women are meek and men superior and my days spent looking for one who will bless me with his seed? Let me guide you through a day in my world.

I get up between 5 and 5:30 A.M. I head to the gym or yoga. Back home, and get jazzed for my work day. You see, I own a consulting business and am a professional writer. If I don’t move my business forward, who will? Throughout the day, I speak with colleagues, work with clients, acquire new projects and close out ones completed. I laugh, I swear, I smack spiders with a shoe and mow the lawn. I’ll hop on my bike for a training ride my coach has laid out for me, have dinner with friends, cook and indulge in a little Netflix. Then I’ll wrap things up and get ready to do it all again tomorrow.

Do you see a need to be “pollinated” anywhere in my day? I’ll venture to guess there are a ton of guys who have pretty much identical days, too.

I’m looking for a partner, and yes, it’s true: I dig the good old Texas Hangdown. I dig dudes. It will be wonderful when the man with whom I’ll move through my life emerges and we can build a relationship. Laughter (sans the booze), straightforward communication (no cryptic bullshit) and the desire to make one another’s lives better. To help one another be whatever it is they dream of being. That’s what I’m looking for. If children are in the mix, it’ll happen. If my plumbing doesn’t work, we’ll adopt and there’s the miracle of modern reproductive medicine to help things along if that’s the path we choose. But I don’t need pollination. I’ve never met a woman in my thirty-seven years who did.

“Follow me on Twitter at sheikofcc and don’t forget to go to www.greghollenback.com to comment on this and previous months issues of “Confessions of a Serial Dater” along with Denver’s most complete singles social calendar and a way to get a hold of me for one on one date coaching. In the next article, “Happy Hour, Happy Ending” I am going to tell you where to go on your first date!”

It terrifies me to no end that you offer “one on one date coaching.” Frankly, why would anyone want dating advice from someone who describes themselves as a “serial dater?” I want dating advice from friends and family who know me and care, a professional matchmaker or a therapist (since all women are inherently dysfunctional, we all must have one, right?). I certainly don’t want it from you, and I’ll venture to say that none of my male readers, single or otherwise, would either.

And I’m pretty much appalled at the proposed headline for your next column: “Happy Hour, Happy Ending.” The phrase “happy ending” is synonymous with jerking off a patron in a massage parlor. I can certainly hold out hope that the editor over at the Chronicle will do his or her due diligence and strike that prior to publication.

To wind things up, I’m wondering if the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle’s editor was drunk or high when they accepted your column for publication and subsequently featured you on the home page of their website. I know someone had to have looked at it prior to print, as they were sober enough to fix the glaring grammatical and usage errors displayed in your blog version for the most part. But your advice to men looking to get the attention of “hot, modern women” is so simultaneously false, demeaning and otherwise offensive that I can’t believe a neighborhood-oriented publication in the suburbs of Denver has taken it to print and offered it to their audience. It’s not entertaining. It’s not even well-written. It’s just…well, it’s crap.

Glendale and Cherry Creek are places where people raise families. I don’t see a single father out there who would teach his son of the “holy grail of dating” you spew.

And you, Mr. Hollenback, have been Bitch Slapped. And you’re a first: I’ve never Bitch Slapped a person before, yet in this situation, I’ve made an exception.

Sincerely,

Erika Napoletano
Head Redhead/Not a Flower
RedheadWriting LLC

You'll get the image when you finish the post.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.’ We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

-Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles

I don’t know what to say. I stood in a kitschy shop today and while reading cards ranging from sappy to poignant to irreverent, the tears came. So I paid and got the hell out and proceeded to wonder what the hell had gotten into me. While wandering an outdoor shopping center waiting for my dinner to be ready for pickup, I realized…

I could blame my tears on All I Ever Wanted.

On June 14, 2010, I cried. A lot. June 25 pretty much sucked, too. June 30th blew. July wasn’t so great but getting better, as when you’re trying to mend a broken heart, you find everything from cupcakes to shit in your basement and filing past due taxes to be of the utmost import. If nothing else, I was busy. Busy is good. Finding a way to breathe again – that would be better.

September’s here and my business, clients, projects and friends – it’s All I Ever Wanted. I don’t wake up in the morning feeling as if I lack, and while the other side of my bed remains empty (by design), I can breathe again. Maybe it’s the hot yoga I’ve started taking (while today’s class reeked of stale scrotum and lavender) and the completely relaxed yet periodically pissed-off sensation I get before, during and after each class. Every day I can do something I couldn’t do the class prior but I never fail to find something else at which I’m a complete tard. Like half moon pose. I’ve got chair pose down and can hang there all day while the class seethes like a pressure cooker. Half moon? More like full nimrod. But fuck it. I can breathe and for an hour a few times a week, my only goal is to breathe (a goal I wish I’d set years ago).

So, back to All I Ever Wanted. Two of my best friends are pregnant – sharing their joy is soul food. My inbox is full of current and new business. Some clients are being…well, fired. Others are coming in and pulling up a chair, staying awhile.

I’m on the verge of two ridiculously exciting professional endeavors. My dogs haven’t shit on the rug or peed inside in almost a month and the cats (aged 12) seem to have found a food that flows only one direction. Big Dog hasn’t eaten any more of the fence. Small Dog, while having eaten my entire salad earlier this week, has eased up on the yappy crap barking. If something supposed to be in retrograde, well, I’m missing it.

And now the question: what do I do with All I Ever Wanted? It scares the living shit out of me. Hoping to have it, lamenting because you don’t, commiserating with others who lack – well, that’s a metric fuck ton easier than actually facing measurable success in the face and giving it a proper greeting.

I’m trying to think back to my formative years. Gah – who am I kidding? I’m still in my formative years (and hope to never leave them). My childhood. My parents were epic. Supportive. Congratulatory. Encouraging. I didn’t get paid for reciting Bible verses or bringing home good grades – I got encouraged to do more…do different. So when the hell along the way from 13 to 37-ish did I feel like I didn’t deserve to look success in the face and give it a high five? Maybe it likes Dexter and wants to join me on the sofa for a Netflix Night. So I decided to stare it in the face, hand it a glass of Peach Fresca and white wine and pop in Season 4. And the damnedest thing happened: aside from discovering that the above beverage combination is simultaneously white trash and damn tasty (kinda like those wine coolers that used to come in the 2-liter bottles – you know you got shitfaced on them in high school), All I Ever Wanted stayed right there next to me the whole time. It didn’t get up and leave. It even seemed to settle in – once I let it.

All I Ever Wanted is sitting here next to me on my sofa right now and it’s strangely comforting. Like a lover who brings me flowers when I least expect them and can make me giggle without saying a word. It’s got dimples to die for and spoons me at night while I sleep. It inspires me and most importantly, it reminds me that there’s a difference between resting and losing momentum. That momentum – damn, y’all. It’s crystal meth without all the fucked-up teeth-rotting bullshit action. It’s better than Five Hour Energy Drink shots: it’s the never-waning charge that challenges you to think, regroup, realign and get going. While I haven’t trained it to bring me my morning latte, I’m okay with getting it my damn self. I’m motivated to do so.

If you’ve followed Redhead Writing for any length of time, you know there’s also the “Redhead Riding” side to the equation. I like my bicycles and spend six days a week on one somewhere or another. I have a coach – two, actually (one for the track and one for my overall road and training program). My best ideas come following intervals where I’ve set my body to spontaneously combust through some (ridiculous) painful sprinting effort. Maybe my brain is clearest when my legs are brimming with lactic acid. Whatever the reason, I’ll take it.

This year is the first year I’ve ridden a bike since I was a kid. I fell in love with track and road bikes and decided to see what I could do with it. Hence the coaches and training schedule. Hence the two new bikes (the Tiemeyer and Barbie). And crashes. And days where it would have been much easier to say damn it all straight to H and go grab myself a taco because this whole riding bikes fast thing sucks epic amounts of wooly ass.

But I didn’t. And after one of three ten-minute intervals of pain down at the Colorado Springs velodrome on Saturday, my coach looked at me and said, “You’re really improving, Red. Coming along nicely.” And then I got to sit the motor for the first time.

If you’re not a track cyclist, it’s likely you have no idea what that means. So I’ll tell ya: it means you get to ride your bike with no brakes directly behind the pacing motorbike on the track (a motorbike that has a roller behind it so your front wheel doesn’t ram into the bike and send you crashing into a pile of bike and broken bones). It means you get to use the bike’s draft to go faster and work harder than you could on your own. It’s a workout I’ve watched everyone else do all season. And finally, I got to do it.

While my first attempt was laughable, it reminded me…

There are two kinds of people in this world: ones that get things done and ones that don’t.

If I’d given up because this bike riding think sucks wooly ass, I’d never have had my landmark Saturday at the track. I’d always be scared to descend (a feat at which I’m getting better every day). I’d have hung up my bike the day I crashed this year and scored road rash so bad I couldn’t sleep.

It’s like anything in life: if you’re too afraid to fall, you’ll never even walk close to the edge. But if you begin to realize that every time you fall, you can come back better, stronger and with more resolve – the edge stops looking so scary. Me? I love the feeling that my eyes are welling-up with tears on account of a personal victory. I’ll cry for that shit all day long. It’s a helluva lot better than sitting on your sofa at 3 PM on a Saturday with the curtains drawn, wondering if the sun is going to shine and watching people do thing on TV that you could be doing yourself if you had the gumption to get off your ass.

So today – on a Monday of all days, I’m asking you: what kind of person are you? Do you screw around with excuses, blame and woe-is-me anthologies? Is your legacy one built on harvesting the tasteless low-hanging fruit? Do you kill your victories with self-deprecation instead of celebrating a life well-lived?

Or is it one where you drop a big ol’ f-bomb (or even a little internal one if blue language ain’t yer style) and walk into the world with arms wide open, asking to fail as soon as possible so you can push through towards success? Do you HUG your successes back and after a requisite period of mourning, laugh about your failures? When you jump, do people tell you you’re crazy?

It takes a little “crazy” to get out there and grab life by the man-berries, but hey – a little crazy never hurt anyone. Go find your crazy.