Long-Distance Love Affairs
love knows no time, love knows no distance
Until very recently, in historical terms in the blink of an eye, you were likely to love and marry someone from your own village / town / county / state, after all these were the only people you were ever likely to meet. Then came reliable mail, and I’m talking paper and the mailman here, together with the widespread use of the telephone, and people started to have pen-pals, and fall in love with them.
Fast forward to the late 20th century and we have instant emails, and now video chat, and it becomes perfectly possible to develop a deep and meaningful relationship with someone you have never actually met, who lives a couple of thousand miles away, or on the other side of the world. Add in blogs, Facebook, Instagram, tumblr, and sundry chat / dating / sex sites and the potential for a long-distance love affair is as good as meeting the boy / girl next door.
But, all you have is electronic, and you can’t actually have sex with an electronic person….. and I’m not going into the esoteric and erotic world of remotely controlled sex toys.
How can you actually be friends with someone you have never met, and know only through their blog, and some emails, and online chats? It turns out that it’s very easy, maybe easier than meeting someone from the office, or in a bar, or a friend of a friend. To begin with if you meet someone online you are both starting with a clean slate, and there are no interfering family members or other friends to get in the way. Also, and in my experience, it’s much much easier to be completely honest and open with someone you meet online than it is with someone you meet in any other way. Perhaps most importantly, for women thinking of being online friends with a guy, he isn’t going to be a stranger expecting first date sex.
The bottom line is, your long-distance friend might just be the best friend you’ve ever had.
However, leaving aside the whole sex thing for now, there are a few downsides in an online long-distance relationship.
- Time zones. If you’re in California and he’s in England he is 8 hours ahead of you.
- Identity. Are you talking with who you think you are? Who you think is a cute 30 years old woman in California might be a fat trucker from Detroit.
- Marital status. She may say she’s single, or he may say he’s divorced, but both of them could be married with kids.
- Honesty. It’s easy to lie if you are 5,000 miles apart, how do you check the truth?
- Meeting. That first meeting could be fraught, you will be nervous, it might never happen. But that is no different from having a blind date.
It’s an on line relationship, so use the internet to your advantage. Google the object of your affections is a good start. You know the rest.
Some might say that it’s difficult to have a relationship if you’re a couple of thousand miles apart. And, how can you have a love affair if you hardly ever see one-another? All I know is that it happens all the time.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
at least she’s a woman
and not a trucker from Detroit
Monochrome Monday
a journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Desert Journey
the immense desert, empty and inspired with spiritual promises
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Like many Englishmen, from that green and pleasant land, I have a strong personal affinity for the desert. I like the high plains and the heat of Red Rock Country in the late summer. There is a simplicity about the desert, you are either right or you’re in deep trouble, and there’s little ground in-between.
And now, when England cowers cold beneath our autumn mists and morning frost, I yearn to be back in the blazing sunshine and heat of California, New Mexico, Arizona, or Nevada. Preferably on a long spontaneous road trip, driving a Mustang convertible with a cool lady riding shotgun.
Sweetheart, yes it’s true, I’m so happy to be stuck with you
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
deep in red rock country
in that desert we pray to God
but we trust in ourselves as men
Tunes on Tuesday ~ Ladyhawke
a very sensual, strange, physically beautiful, dangerous place
Back in the day I spent a lot of time à Paris, la ville lumière. I learned that, while Parisienne women look chic, they often smell of Galoises overlaid with a lot of Chanel #5.
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Love Paris and you’re hung up on something that’s never going to love you back.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
when good Americans die they go to Paris
Relationships, Travel, and Self-Development
self-affinity, self-awareness, self-confidence, and self-development
Life is better for me today, and looking back I can see why things didn’t always happen the way I hoped and expected them to go. Partly it was because my expectations were unrealistic and depended upon others acting the way I would wish them to, (and that almost never works out). Partly it was because I suffered from a lot of negative character traits such as judgementalism, jealousy, and impatience.
By accepting what were my downfalls in the past I can work on developing better ways of living, and also deciding consciously what I don’t want to be, what I don’t want to do, and where I don’t want to go, (in a literal and figurative sense). This is the right time for me to push on through with no regrets and no hesitation. This is the time for me to re-evaluate some of my life path choices so I can drop everything unsatisfying and toxic, and instead concentrate on that which adds to my success and happiness. People, places and things that have just ever taken from me, giving little in return, no longer have a place in my life.
I am very aware of what I don’t want in my life, but I think I need something like a bucket list, or a vision board, or maybe a mind map to help me to decide what I do want in my life.
There’s a list of places I want to visit in the next year or so; starting with California, and maybe Arizona in the USA. In England I would like to see Stonehenge again and some of the other weird places such as Lindisfarne. I have no desire to spend much time in London, but seeing Amsterdam, Paris, Rome again might be cool ~ after I’ve been back to Florence, Sienna, Pisa, and San Gimignano. I do so love Tuscany.
The Mediterranean might well be the most favoured region on the planet; the Greek Islands are fabulous, as are Crete, Cyprus, and Malta ~ maybe I’ll take a cruise. And of course it’s been a long time since I’ve been to the West Indies ~ and the islands are a great winter destination. Never, ever go to the Caribbean during June, July, August, or September ~ unless you really like hurricanes.
I have no issues with finances nor responsibilities back here in the garret, (apart from Marmaduke), but what hold me back a little is the ultimate joylessness of travelling alone. Maybe the first thing I need on life is a new friend and travelling companion, or to change my relationship with an old friend for the better.
Some say that no matter where you go you always take yourself with you. And that freedom is not just a long holiday. All I know is that the world is my lobster.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Marmaduke likes travelling with me
Skills Men Should Have
learning is not compulsory, neither is survival
learn woodworking and gardening
There was a time when most men could turn their hand to just about anything; from growing their own vegetables to completing their tax returns, from plumbing to motor maintenance. Yet I know some young guys who are so impractical they can’t even put up a shelf. I once met a guy who didn’t know how to open the bonnet, (hood), on his car ~ let alone check the oil. Hell, I once met a blonde girl who couldn’t open her fuel filler cap.
But we are not talking about girls here, we are talking about real urban survival skills for real men. What does a guy need to be able to do to survive and thrive? Leave out the whole surviving alone in the deep woods thing, (with a camera crew, doctor, and evac helicopter on standby). Let’s concentrate instead on what a cool guy living a great life should be able to do, and most can’t even make a decent attempt at. In no particular order;
- cooking ~ from making an omelette to an impressive signature dish. including doing the shopping and cleaning afterwards.
- DIY ~ how to you loosen a bolt?
- finance ~ budgeting, balancing your income and expenditure, completing official paperwork, negotiating a loan.
- first aid and CPR ~ from the Heimlich Maneuver, to using a tourniquet.
- health and fitness ~ fresh air, diet, food supplements, exercise.
- motor maintenance ~ from checking the tyres, lights, and fluids to doing a complete exhaust rebuild, to building an entire damn car.
- navigate from A to B without sat-nav ~ can you find north, use a compass, read a map, know how far a mile is?
- read, write, and do arithmetic ~ do you read interesting and challenging books? can you write a letter in cursive script? Can you make change, approximate pi, and work out a right-angle?
- safety and security ~ is your home safe and secure and can you walk the streets at night?
- disaster recovery ~ what will you do if there’s an earthquake, or a wild-fire, or flood, or your home just suddenly becomes uninhabitable?
For once, I haven’t given you lots of links, because a man should be able to find appropriate stuff on the internet, and not just be able to find his own particular taste in porn. So whatever you can’t do, start learning…..
There are a lot more things that a true Renaissance Man is capable of, from building and sailing a boat, to building a car, to building his own home from scratch. In extremis a real man knows how to survive natural and man-made disasters. There is even a list of 100 skills every man should know, (but no Englishman needs to know how to throw a good spiral). And, a real man understands the art of attracting women and keeping her happy once he has won her.
Some say they don’t need to do anything because they can always hire someone else to do it. And that guys don’t cook, clean, or do the laundry, real guys just have fun. All I know is that I can’t bake a cake.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
learn car mechanics
Monochrome Monday ~ San Bernardino County
adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience
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jackcollier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Zzyzx, the strangest town in America
founded by a religious nutcase
Pictures by The Girl Riding Shotgun
Scenes on Sunday ~ Arizona
in Arizona they salt margaritas, not sidewalks and roads
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
in Arizona, nothing but a Mustang convertible will do.
Monochrome Monday ~ The West
nobody said that the West had to be fashionable, just big and empty
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
the West is a big, big country
Monochrome Monday ~ Arizona
Arizona is beautiful ~ in an inspiring, rugged kind of a way.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
these rocks are all a dark red
it’s known as Red Rock Country
