#datebynumbers

[meltakesthecake]

If you ask someone out and they say no you didn't receive an insult, you gave a compliment. Act accordingly.

Kelton Wright, KeltonWrites

[atensia]

Really fucking beautiful and profound - “that someone better can be you”

From everythingisgay.com -->

"He’s gone now. I gave him a second chance and he still chose to ignore me in the long run. He promised he wasn’t “that guy”. I know it makes room for someone better, but I don’t think he’s out there. My faith is gone. Please, big sister from the Internet, tell me something to make it better."

-Question submitted by Anonymous

datebynumbers Says:

I want to tell you real quick about my bike. I get on that bike when I’m sick and dizzy and lost in my head, I get on that bike and the world changes.  It’s all ascents and descents, dusty turns and tailwinds, howling into the ether like the only thing that matters is not falling off because it is the only thing that matters. And I feel like I’m going to explode into a million shredded pieces of metal and carbon and bones and blood, but I sit back, crouch down and breathe deep into the calm and ride the wind like diving into the sea. In those hours, I am invincible. I am untouchable. I am cut and lean and hard and fast. I’m not heartbroken or fearful of being lonely.  I am not alone at all.  When I am on that bike, I am everything I wanted to be when I was little, choosing tackle over touch, choosing battle over tattle. And with my hair pinned back, dressed in kitten heels and a soft pink dress, you can still see the bike grease on my hands and the scars all over my legs from sloppy dismounts and nasty falls. I wear my scars like a topographic map of my life. This is not a highway, this is a story of lush valleys and ice-picked mountain passes. The highs and lows of hospital beds and sail bags, and I don’t want to look tidy and pretty and clean. I don’t want to look like someone would be lucky to have me, I want to look like someone would be lucky to survive me. I don’t ride the wind; I am the wind and I am carving my topography with brushstrokes both delicate and bold.

So when I think about falling in love, I also think about all the things that happened because I wasn’t in love, because there was no one to ask me to stay. I think about blasting down a mountain pass on a bike the same weight as my cat. I think about how I moved to the Virgin Islands and raised $100,000 for kids before becoming a stowaway. I picked ‘shrooms and danced at a rave ‘til my shoes disappeared over the edge of the speedboat we took home. I made out with German journalists, Irish kiteboarders, ship captains and pool boys. I ran the southern perimeter of Manhattan at midnight. I rode on the back of a motorcycle through the streets of Florence as the sun came up, singing loud enough to hear it over the muffler, both hands in the air.  I got a cat, got an apartment, got a dye job, got a nose ring, got a tattoo, got a tattoo addiction, got a promotion, got a plane ticket, got a tan, got a blog, got a life. And it’s not that I couldn’t have done these things if I was in love, but it would have been different. It would have been safer. And regardless of whomever I’m with for whatever amount of time, I’ll be with myself the whole time and I want to be good to her.  I want her to have a heart like an ocean: endlessly vast, full of wonder, and navigable only by the brave.  I want her to wake up in the biggest, empty bed and stretch like a cat, taking all the space just because she can. I want her to have control of her happiness. I want her happiness to be her own… to be my own.

So let me tell you a little something about that “someone better”, because that’s within your control. That someone better can be you. The squalor of heartbreak will rip through you, tearing down all the old walls and ideas and misconceptions about how love looks and feels, but when you clear the debris, you see all the best parts of you that weathered the storm.  You see all the parts that you built before him, survived him, and do not belong to him. You will see yourself.  And you will make her better.

[keltonwrites]

GUYS, I'M DOING A THING

And you'll see that the URL has changed from datebynumbers to keltonwrites. GET IT?

It's time for a new chapter.

Ask box is still open. Life is still full of possibilities. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you for sticking around. 

[shenanigansandadventues]

I just spent the better half of the past two hours looking at and studying the catalog of classes I have to take to be a dietitian. Because I already have a degree, I can just get a certificate, meaning I just take all of the major classes, and then do an internship and sit for the National Exam to be a registered dietitian.

I'm going to do it. I'm going back to school.

[postcards-to-myself]

Birthday Weekend Bold Moves

Well, I’m sick. But it was worth it because, when I consider where I may have picked up a virus in the last 7 days, the following options arise:

1) In a crowded airplane, on my way back from a national conference where I presented professionally in front of my peers for the first time.

2) In the crowded lobby of our office, where I hosted and organized a special networking event for my students on Wednesday

3) In a crowded nightclub, where I brought together sixty people and somehow managed to corral them into a group photo along the way

Bold Moves October is in full force. Show me what you got, 26.

[amandafiguresitout]

It was the first time I wasn’t remotely bothered with anyone’s pace but my own. I needed to go slower then. And I had needed to go slower a few months ago. Gearing down into the speed that allowed me to climb the mountain I alone could see. When I’m intimidated by someone else’s success, when people say maybe I should take it a little slower, when I’m just not ready to give up quite yet. Don’t let someone else set your pace. When people post baby photos, job promotions, engagements, race times, diet plans, re-blogs, retweets, redesigns, renewed leases, renewed vows, re-done bathrooms, torn out kitchens, torn up contracts, taped up boxes, and tallies on life’s smallest achievements, don’t let someone else set your pace. Don’t let them rush you. Don’t let them restrain you. Don’t let them tell you that it’s too late or you’re not ready. If you need sleep on a Friday night, take it. If you need a drink or four on a Tuesday night, get it. If you need to keep going, do. If you need turn around, turn. If you need a break from life, block as many of the mind-cluttering websites and people you can. If you need to get back into high gear, absorb all of the music and fun and suffering you need to get you there. Don’t let them say you should be further along. Don’t let them say you should be happy with what you have. Don’t let their expectations of you cloud your expectations of yourself. Your finish line is different. Your half-way point is somewhere else. And when you become obsessed with what people expect of you, with the image you think you need to project, you lose the ability to surprise them. You lose the ability to surprise yourself. Reset. Figure out what it is you want for yourself. And the next time someone tries to set your expectations for you, smile, walk away, and say, “fuck that.”

Datebynumbers

[teenvogue]

Have you ever given your best friend advice about a crush who's just not that into her? Or maybe a class she's struggling with? Have you told her she should probably quit track if she hates it so much? We give advice all the time to our friends, classmates, even our parents—but the one person we never seem to counsel?

Ourselves >>

[postcards-to-myself]

On Responsibility

It’s okay to forgive those who hurt you with their poor choices. It’s okay to keep loving them. In fact, you should. We are all human and we are all weak sometimes. It’s okay to favor the positive memories and continue to hold that person in high regard.

But as you get older, you realize that even though you can love and forgive someone until your heart turns into a puddle, you cannot escape the consequences of their actions. You cannot undo the way something makes you feel. Someone you loved betrayed your trust, and that is important. It is unrealistic to expect you can brush off your emotions the way you brush yourself off after a fall. It doesn’t work that way.

You may think it’s easier to forgive and forget, because when you punish the person you love you often are punishing yourself. Maybe facing consequences means temporarily/permanently losing a best friend or a boyfriend; maybe it means divorce; maybe it means a lonely gap will form in your life. No one wants to be kicked when they’re already down, because that absolutely sucks.

Facing the music is a hard thing to do, but it may be exactly what you need. It is not easy to earn a strong sense of self-respect, but those who manage it are the most free and fierce of us all.

"Self-respect is a lonely emotion. It is the quietest dignity…self-respect doesn’t wrap you gently in warmth - it is a steel rod in your spine. It is height and pride and honor. It is better than being wrapped in warmth because it is warmth from the inside. It is the fire of dignity."- Kelton Wright (Date by Numbers)