by Laurie Wagner | Jan 22, 2018 | Blog
27 Ways To Tell a True Story Write from where you are. Don’t think about what others might want to hear. Think about what’s moving through you. What’s actually moving through you now; the man you ended a relationship with a few months ago who you know you shouldn’t text or call. How the last two men you dated have been posting up a storm on Instagram, pictures of their new girlfriends and their travels together. Write about how even though those relationships weren’t right for you, you still go over and over in your mind how you might have made them work. Write about how the sweet one said, “I’m just a simple guy who wants to love and be loved,” and how that echoed in your head for months, how you wondered if you were too complicated for love… Write about how self-care looks like a concentrated effort at avoiding Instagram because you know that’ll only make you feel bad about yourself. Write about the long walk you took in your neighborhood, fighting back tears, one foot in the “I’ve got this” camp, the other in the “What’s my problem?” camp. Don’t think about something better to write. Write about how every single person you pass on that walk seems as lonely and uncomfortable as you are; putting on a good face – trying to seem like they have it together – like they’re going somewhere – just like you. Write about this. Start where you are because that is a real place, and I’m telling you, there is nothing better to write about. If you reject...
by Laurie Wagner | Jan 3, 2018 | Blog
Last week I sent a letter to 25 of my posse asking them to help me find a sweetheart. I thought of it like a barn raising, like something I had to reach out into my community to get help for, something I couldn’t do entirely alone. I’d been on the dating sites off and on for a year or so and it felt like shooting fish in a barrel – except the barrel was as wide as the sea, and the shooting felt like a sloppy, blind spray of arrows flying out into infinity, never to be seen again. I’m sure there were plenty of good men on the sites, but rarely did I see someone who I might want to know more deeply. Most of the men never seemed to recognize the specialness in me either, passing me by, and I often felt invisible. I found myself checking the sites multiple times a day to see if anyone had found me. I was on three dating sites at once. That’s a lot of checking, and a lot of wasted time. It was like some horrible high school punch in the stomach over and over, and it did nothing for my self-esteem or my nervous system that got jacked up each time I logged on in the hopes of finding someone. It’s a helluva way to start the day and I don’t recommend it. Sometimes if I hadn’t been on the dating sites for a month or so – because I’d randomly gotten off when I’d had enough – but then found myself lonely, I’d get on for...
