the lightbulb effect

What do you do if your long standing perception of something or someone is challenged? Or worse still, when you realise you misread your own thoughts, beliefs about yourself that have changed or become clear in a different light? I thought i liked my on off beau because he was difficult, lazy, and self destructive, because i thrive on flaws as i can use these as excuses to run away, i hate commitment... or so i thought. It has come to my attention that the real reason i keep going back to this boy is not to keep myself at a distance by choosing him for his annoyances, but in fact because i don't know what he is thinking, i hate having a plan, knowing what his next move will be is boring, i like spontaneity, drama, the thrill of the unknown. All this time i was angry with myself for allowing him to disappoint me, when i have only just recognised that truthfully, i am not disappointed at all.

second guessing the opposite sex

I like to think that when it comes to relationships, i know myself quite well. I know my type, i understand what encourages me and what deters me from entering into a relationship. I don't trust men i have a fixed slightly sexist view of them and what they want from me, or women in general. This perhaps is the reason for my recent mistake in love, I met a guy and we had fun but i took this to mean light, meaningless and nothing too deep, which is great but i also decided this meant i could only have a purely sexual relationship with the guy. He by the way did not have a choice or say in how casual i was keeping it. And a year after it began he has snapped, telling me that sex is not the answer to everything, making it clear to me that this boy has feelings, and maybe just maybe *gasp* some of these feelings involve me. From this i have had the revelation that communication really is the key to a healthy relationship, although... can anyone really call love healthy?

what's the craziest thing you've done lately?

When all you can think about is the boy, surround yourself with friends and drama, there is nothing more distracting than the punch line of a plot that falls into your boring little universe and shoves all your routine plans out of sync. So ask yourself now... what's the craziest thing you've done lately? If the answer is nothing, get your friends over or just wander out into the big bad world and make some new ones, the more you put yourself out there, the more fun you'll have.

You have the biggest opportunity as its the summer holiday, get out in the sunshine, buy yourself and a lonely neighbor a pint of good old Carlsberg and travel wherever the wind takes you on your wild adventures. I leave you with a fond little quote i picked up from St Augustine "the world is a book, if you don't travel, you only read one page" use this in your day to day adventures as well as your physical summer travels my loves

you only get one first impression

Friends are best kept close, but everyone knows it's your enemies who are better kept closer. Manipulating people is an art, it requires time, effort and a little self confidence, without these and practice you won't go anywhere. It is an art because not everyone can do it, and i don't mean the kind of manipulation that druggies use to beg for money for their next fix, or the kind that loser next door does to obtain a free fag/ fiver/ ride to the party...this kind of manipulation is that of the amatures, and it will never last, people aren't that thick, they catch on.

No, i mean the type of manipulation where by you make friends with people, purely on the benefits they can provide you with, for example i have a friend with a holiday house in thailand, cool if i need free acomo next time I'm traveling, and a friend who works in a designer handbag store with tasty discounts, and a friend who's boyfriend is well off and will quite literally keep the drinks coming on a night out. You see the art behind manipulation is to befriend the person whilst you don't need them because you never know how soon, but at some point they are going to come in handy...

love games

Playing affaires is alot more fun than playing happy families, however in this game someone nearly always gets hurt. The art of playing affaires is simple; you can flirt all you want with a taken man but you cannot expect anything to come out of it. However depending on how into drama they were at highschool, you may have a hard time decifering the truth behind "I'm going to dump my girlfriend for you". This brings you to the danger line, which if crossed becomes less of a game, but more of a full blown, all out, feelings get trampled on kind of an affair. At the end of the day you know his love will triumph over the other woman...so play nicely