Who Will I Inspire Today?

Ask yourself this every morning...

At night recap what you did that day in your head, out loud, in a journal, or blog about it.

Live with this in mind...and you can't help put be great in every way possible.

Watch your accomplishments increase, but also watch how many people tell you how they have been effected by you.

Finally, encourage others to keep trying to inspire...tell someone today how they have inspired you!

-The Socialite...trying to inspire and motivate one post at a time. Love you all!

25 and I Found the Secret to Happiness

I am turning the big 25 tomorrow and am pleased with my growth and development as I approach a milestone that many people tend to worry about. It is the milestone that reminds you that you have truly entered adulthood and there is no turning back.

I thought that when I reached this point that I would either be doing my dream job or almost in tears because I wasn't where I wanted to be. I am happy to say that I am at neither points.

At the amazing age of 25 I think I have unlocked the secret to happiness, or let's say I have finally been passed the torch. No I am not doing my dream job, but I have discovered at the age of 25 what most people will never discover in a life time...that is how to look at life in a certain way in order to remain happy.

Ready for the big secret?

....Clean space, clean body, clean mind.

Clean Space: The first task is to make sure that everything around you is in order and organized. Your home must be clean and in some type of order that you understand. You should feel like your home is an escape from the cruel outside world. You should feel relaxed and comfortable. It should smell good, look good, and feel good. This also goes for you car or desk at work. The key is to create mini paradises. Everyone is always trying to escape on a vacation; create one in the spaces you live in everyday. Clean space allows room for you to sort out all the other craziness in your life. I have never been the organized type except when I was younger...I have changed that in a matter of a few days and already a weight has been lifted from my shoulder. I am adding things and taking away things from my "living" space that allows me to truly escape...(great things to add to your space: fresh flowers, plug-ins, paintings, comfortable mattress, and candles)

Clean Body: You must clean yourself physically. Start with a healthy diet. Everyone loves to pig out on the worlds great foods, and believe me I am one of them, but you must mentally convince yourself that a clean body is important. Decrease the amount of junk you put into your body, and watch the "junk" in your life come out. Add exercise to your life, a morning run, gym membership, or simply a physical activity you enjoy doing. You can simply do it for 30 mins a day, and you will instantly feel better. When you feel good physically, your entire attitude changes. You look better in your clothes, so you feel better. You don't feel heavy from junk food. It also takes a certain type of discipline to maintain a healthy physical lifestyle. The mental and physical strength that it takes to maintain this lifestyle will help train your mind to accomplish many other goals in your life. A clean body makes room for a clear mind...

Clean Mind: Time to train your mind! You need focus, discipline, balance, and faith in your life. Finding something to focus on daily, weekly, or monthly is very important. Having focus gets your brain in the habit of obtaining goals. For example I made a monthly goal of reading four books a month. That is a small goal, but accomplishing that small goal creates a feeling of being able to accomplish anything. You also need to have discipline. You need to create challenging goals, and force yourself to stick to them. Take away something you enjoy in your life until you have reached your goals. I have a goal of getting my body in shape, so I took away certain foods and liquor until my goal is reached. Discipline is the secret to success, period. Finally, you need balance. You need to combine work and play in your life, and never too much of either. If you don't have this balance...you will feel like you are missing something in life. Trust me when I say that you can focus all your energy on work and die tomorrow without being able to say you enjoyed life. You won't be buried with your bills....

But what about faith? This gets a paragraph of its own. FAITH is one of the most important pieces to a puzzle of happiness. It is faith that no matter what happens everything will work out as planned. You have to live a life of NO WORRIES! Every time something happens that isn't how you planned it, you must have faith that there is a reason for it. I was in the hospital two weeks ago and was not able to go on a trip that I had planned for a year and I lost all of the money I paid for it. While I was sad for a second, I quickly bounced back with a smile on my face; life could never have been better. I am someone that bounces back from sad to happy in a matter of seconds, because I trust that there is a reason for everything. I trust that there are lessons I must learn in order to become a better me. People often wonder why I am always happy or always talking about how much fun I am having, it is because there is never a moment in my life where I am not celebrating the fact that I am alive. Good, bad, positive, or negative....it is all positive to me!

Once you get that....happiness will never go away! I promise!


I am about to be 25 and I have never felt more alive...

Humans are Scaredy Cats...

I think that humans are the biggest scaredy cats out of all animals. Humans fear contradicting themselves so much that they end up sacrificing opportunities of a life time. You have to know what I am talking about. Deep down inside you have come across a decision that you wanted to make, but opted to stay right where you were in life out of fear that you would be making the wrong decision.

You graduated from college and decided that you wanted to be in marketing, but after 3 years of doing just that you get an itch that tells you that maybe you should be in non-profit. You get scared because you know you would have to start over, and you keep asking yourself do I have time for all of that?

Or....you once believed that every woman should be married with kids, but deep inside you simply want to travel the world and not be tied down to a family.

Everyone has these tiny things inside of them that are telling them to do something different, but out pops Mr. Scary Cat, and you opt out of listening to the inner you. It is like people are afraid of their own damn shadows. We want to live a perfect life that we outlined in our heads when we were five years old without a clue.

We have to understand that we are living a life not to find ourselves, but to create ourselves. Everything that you decide creates a more unique person every move you make. You design the rules of your life. There is no set path laid out by the people before you. Don't be afraid of what people might say. Don't be afraid of it not seeming as secure or logic as your original choice. Dare to be YOU!

The greatest people in the world learned to listen to what was inside of them and just DO IT! They were probably the ones people called weird, crazy, insane....but they are also the ones the people eventually called genius.

What are you waiting for? Stop being a scaredy cat, and do what you always wanted to do. If you want to make a career change, do it! If you want to travel the world, save the money, and do it! If you want to eat at every restaurant in NY (not possible lol), just do it! The only person stopping you from making that sudden change in your life, is you and that scary cat you let sit on the top of your shoulder telling you to play everything safe.

Safe is boring, boring leads to regrets, and living with regrets suck...

-The Socialite (What am I doing? That's right I'm doing me...)

Simple and Cost Effective Dates for the New Age Guy...

Okay, so it is clear that we have lost the old school guy who use to court a female and work to get her affection. We have now been introduced to the new school kid who's idea of courting is watching TV at your house and ordering take-out. Why this change has occurred is beyond me, and my mom would laugh if she knew half of the things these guys come at me with. (And before you are the guy who loves to take women out and show them a good time, and is ready to scream that all men are not like this...I will save you the energy...”All Guys are not like this.” There!)

I am going to give the guys of our generation the benefit of the doubt just for this post. Let's just say that we are all going through hard times, and financially taking a woman out just isn't in your budget. I am quick to say then maybe you shouldn't be dating during these hard times, but that would be unfair cause you deserve to be in the company of the opposite sex *rolls my eyes*. But I won't speak so quickly, and instead I will possibly give you a few ways to get around the "finance blues".

Before I get into my suggestions on how you can successfully court a woman without coming off as a cheap bastard, someone who lacks creativity, or someone who simply wants to get in my pants (and if you do, the list below might help you be a little more slick...nothing worse than I guy with no game *shaking my head*), let me just say this post comes from months of frustration in dealing with random guys in NY who I much rather die than to ever go out with again. Also, GUYS every woman is not a gold digger looking for an expensive meal. Women want to be swept off of their feet, and a good woman won't settle for your laziness. You should not settle for hers either.

It is summer time, so courting a girl becomes very simple and cost effective.

1. Take her out for ice-cream. It isn't a full meal, but can be such a delight in the summer time. Go to a place that maybe has outside seating to eat the ice-cream, or go eat it on a bench near by. You can enjoy the sweet treat together, talk, and enjoy the weather.

2. Take a walk through the park. It is always nice to walk and talk to the sounds of birds chirping (unless you are in the hood, then maybe the sounds of everything else will do), nice scenery, and you can always stop and chat on a nearby rock, grass patch, or bench.

3. Have a picnic in the park. You can suggest that you make things together for the picnic, therefore you don't have to spend all of your money. But to make things simple, get a nice fruit and cheese platter and some wine (it can be a $6 bottle...she will be just fine with it).

4. Go get coffee at a local coffee shop. Starbucks in the best tasting by far, but the fact that it is a big brand might throw everything off. Try going to somewhere cute and intimate.

5. Take her to somewhere that screams you have culture! Maybe the museum, zoo, or a play during the afternoon (cheaper).

6. Go out for dessert late night! Saves you money on the full dinner, but it is still cute enough to pass as a good date.

I can come up with tons of more ideas, but I don’t think that I should do all the work for you! I am confident that you can come up with more than “can I come over, or do you want to come over here”? But if you need any more ideas, just email me!

Now before I go I must must address one more thing. I have heard a few guys say lately over twitter or in passing the following things:

1. A woman must earn the right for me to take her out.
2. A lot of women will just take a meal and run.
3. I am really just trying to have sex with her, and she isn’t worth all of this.

All three statements annoy me to great lengths. Saying that a woman must earn the right for you to take her out is beyond me. First, how does one do that? If you mean yall have to get to know each other through a few conversations first than I agree! So continue to have phone conversations with her, but the first date should still be nice once you are “convinced” she is okay to take out. Anything else you might mean by it, like I need to chill at her house and get to know her, don’t be dumb!

The statement about a lot of women taking a meal and running, just remember this...if she runs after a meal you have simply lost a few bucks, if you run after yall have sex, she has lost a part of herself (Yet you don’t seem to care about the last part, and are quick to do this). So give me a break about her running after a meal. Have more faith in yourself anyways.

Finally, if you are only trying to have sex with her, like I said above, you still need to learn how to be slick. If you don’t want to be slick, then simply be honest about what you are trying to do. Those are the only things that are acceptable in my book.

Until your next date...

-The Socialite

The Not So Traditional Path...the Creative One That Is...

Being a creative person in a creative field sometimes makes you wonder if you should have went the more traditional route instead. You wonder if it would have just been easier to go to law school or medical school? If spending tons of dollars on additional education just to be a little bit more confident that a job will be waiting with your name on it, is a easier plan?

Going a route that doesn't land you big bucks by following an already concrete plan can be very challenging. If you are any type of artist you spend days trying to come up with the right song or painting that will wow the world or at least someone other than yourself. If you are into marketing, pr, or advertising, you know that you must start at the bottom and work your way up, hoping that you land on the right brand that helps you make a name for yourself. If you are into fashion, Devil Wears Prada is more than just a movie, it is the life that you live.

Although all of these fields can be quit fulfilling once something is truly accomplished, and at times can seem very glamorous when you are out covering an event, working with top designers, performing in front of thousands of people, or selling your painting at a top art gallery, it is a special kind of grind that few survive.

I remember being younger and the teacher asking everyone what they wanted to be when they grew up, and voices came from everywhere yelling "teacher", "doctor", "lawyer", "police officer"... You rarely heard someone say "writer", "dancer", "publicist"....

At some point while growing up you realized that the way your brain worked was meant to be used to decorate the world. You were suppose to create the clothes that help define who people are. You were meant to create the music that helps someone get through a sad moment in their life. You were meant to come up with the idea that would convince people to buy a product that could save their life. You were the one that was meant to write the book that would change someones life, or finally the painting that someone wakes up to every morning...making them smile just a little bit more.

If you picked this route, realize your path could never be straight, because the curve in the road is what is needed for you to create the next masterpiece of the world. People are not entertained by anything that seems regular or plain...why would you think your path wouldn't resemble what you were meant to create?

Keep going down the path you were destined to walk...

-The Socialite

Is there More Than One Mr. Big in New York City?

Saturday I went to my very first Bridal Shower. Tons of emotions and thoughts came out of this experience. I think that that if I had to BBM (blackberry message) this post to anyone, that I would use more than half of the emoticons to express this experience. Of course I had signs of joy, happiness, and cries; my Line Sister is getting married and I could never be more excited for the joint union of her and her fiance...a much anticipated event!

But in addition to the above feeling of complete happiness, the 25 year-old blues began to also come out (well, almost 25). Have you looked around lately and began to see marriages and babies popping up left and right all around you, and can't help but think are you behind, is something wrong with you, and when will you be next?

I hate comparing my life to those around me, and actually preach against this quit often to my friends, but I can't help but wonder will I be the black Carrie Bradshaw and not get married til I am almost 40 years old, or even more dreadful become Samantha who never gets married?

This is the thought running through the mind of a young female living in the city of NY, where things seem to happen at a total different rate than every other city in the world. A city where the places you eat, people you meet, obstacles that occur, and things that you learn come in at a speeding rate of at least 120 miles per hour, while the rest of the country goes the freakin speed limit. But when it comes to buying houses, cars, saving tons of money, and of course getting married, we are indeed going below the speed limit....which probably should be illegal.

I am in a city where women tend to focus directly on their careers, or become lost in a city where it seems like Mr. Right lives clear across the city, and trust me that is far far away. I can't help but wonder if the choice to live a rock star lifestyle, party with celebrities, eat the finest food, meet everyone from models to starving artist selling their CD's on the corner, dating everyone from an athlete to your regular NY dude, and having 3 pretty cool gigs, is it worth the delay in my future?

Should I be considering an alternative lifestyle just to get back on track with the rest of the world? This is something that I battle with daily, and strongly wish that the weight would be lifted from my shoulder and the answer would be right in front of me. I am guessing that I might need to make this decision fast before I am stuck truly being a reflection of the ladies in Sex and the City. I'll give myself at least another year, and while I wait, maybe just maybe God will make all my dreams come true right here in the city that Keys says, "Dreams are made of"! We will see...

-The Socialite

A Friend...And So Part of His Master Plan...

I find it completely charming that God takes the time to carefully select the perfect people to come in and OUT of my life. Sometimes I feel like God has a to-do list with my name plastered across the top, and tells himself that I will make sure to cross every single thing off the list to make sure that my child has everything that she needs to make it is this extremely awkward world.

What brings me to this thought process? Well, many things of course, but today I swear a light bulb just went off in my head yet again. I was reading a friends blog today that she hasn't really started sharing with the rest of the world yet, but I couldn't help but smile from ear to ear at every post I read. I felt like I was reading a much needed novel that would give me a little bit more insight on the thoughts that run through my mind daily.

I must confess, there are not many people that I find have a similar thought process to my own. Yes, there are a few people that I feel have similar personality traits (S/O to all of my fellow Leos who think the world is completely theirs, and everyone else is just living in it), or there are the people whom I relate because we come off as extremely dominant in every situation, and somehow manage to become the center of attention(as if we don't strategically figure out how to make that happen), but I never discovered someone who looked through the same lenses as I do when looking at the rest of the world.

Although, the person that God so carefully wanted me to realize shared a similarity with me that quit frankly scares the mess out of me, also reminded that we handle situations much differently. I started to ask myself why God wanted me to indeed find a connection with a person that is so unique. I then quickly understood that are similarities is what was going to make our friendship stronger, but our differences were what was going to make us so much wiser.

You see, God places individuals in your life for thousands of different reasons, and I am blessed to say that I have some of the most amazing people standing in front of me, around me, and even far away where I don't see them daily. But it is truly inspiring when God reveals that you are not alone in the way that you see the world. You see, the way that one sees the world is very different from the person standing right next to them. One may see that the sky is blue, and the other may see that it is cloudy gray. But when two people see that the sky is indeed no color at all, but simply a color that can be defined in whatever way we see fit (and more than likely will be a brighter one of the choices), you can't help but smile that God has placed this person strategically in your life for you to carry out a plan together much greater than one could ever imagine.

Thank God for friends, and thank God for seeing one of my friends in an entire new light!

-The Socialite