If you know me, it’s no secret that I turn to books for just about everything: wisdom, insight, humor, entertainment. So indulge me for a moment, this post is pretty book-heavy. It starts with The Princessa by Harriet Rubin, and her directive to “tell your story,” both what it has been and what you want it to be on future pages. Telling the story up to this point is the easy part. It’s what comes next that’s usually hard. So I tried to think about what areas of life might be the scaffolding for my story to assemble around. And the result amounts to a checklist of sorts that includes career, family, friends, home, and love.My family is, for once, a happy and stable part of that puzzle. And though they sometimes drive me nuts, I’m pretty happy with my friends. Home is taken care of with a lease finally signed (woohoo!). Which leaves career and love. And that’s where my next two books come into play: Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man by Steve Harvey (I know, I know, that again?) and Hot (Broke) Messes by Nancy Trejos. Now, I am thankfully not a hot, broke mess, but reading that book raised an interesting thought in my head. Trejos writes that her financial and romantic lives are both screwed up and that she feels like she can have one of those things be a mess, but not both. So she picks her financial life to clean up. But for a lot of women, couldn’t it easily have been romance instead?

Steve Harvey writes that for a man to really be in a relationship, all other aspects of his life have to be in order first. For women, though, it seems like when our whole world is a mess, we’ll settle for just one aspect coming together and it’s kind of arbitrary which one comes first. If we me the right guy, it’ll make us feel good about ourselves and that confidence will get us the job. If we just drop that last pound, we’ll have guys at our beck and call, and job offers up the wazoo. We’ll take anything just to get us started. But that doesn’t really work outside of our imaginations does it? Because we need the total package to be happy, whatever the individual wrapping might be.

I realize this now because I’m checking off boxes and feeling my happiness rise (and fall) and a new though occurs to me: that maybe romance is part of that story I want to write for myself. With my life becoming less transient, the idea of (gulp) settling down in other areas sounds more appealing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about putting a ring on it. But the word boyfriend seems less cringe-worthy and I wonder if “relationship” might not be such a dirty word after all. Okay maybe not. I still don’t think I’m quite ready for all of that. But it doesn’t seem like such a far-fetched, long off idea anymore. I still need a little time before Prince Charming, but maybe it’s time to put romance back on the table.

xoxo

Cat