i was talking to a friend of mine the other day and we had gotten to the topic of dating an ex. for me, i don’t think that i would really entertain the idea of dating an ex. generally speaking i think that’s a bad idea because there was a reason why we broke up. in fact, i think that getting back together with someone you broke up with is a recipe for disaster because it’s already been proven that things couldn’t work out.

but…

what if so much time has passed that the two of you are two different people? does that change things? it made me wonder. i do believe that i am a very different person than i was 10 years ago. would i be interested in the same kind of person that i was interested in all those years ago?

one of the first girlfriends i dated had a very strong spirit…to say the least. she was very demanding, controlling, and overbearing, but back then i think i liked all of those things. i think that i was a lot less sure of myself and i sought to find the direction i needed in pretty much everything from that girlfriend.

nowadays i know for sure that i could never date someone like that. we would butt heads way too often and way too hard. this, generally, is a good thing, i think. i do enjoy being in a more balanced relationship where each person has a more equal footing in the relationship.

but what of other exes? what were the things that made us part ways? do those things still exist? have we changed so much that maybe things could work out?

it’s a dangerous and tricky situation to be in and i think that when one breaks up with someone else, it’s probably best not to try and open that door again. it’s a door that should be closed and sealed. too many potential problems can come up and there’s still that history that you had…some of that may just never go away.

time does have a nice way of coloring the past though. sometimes it gives you perspective, sometimes it gives you rose-colored glasses from which to look upon an ugly situation and have it look less ugly.

another friend of mine asked me if i would ever consider dating a certain ex of mine again if the opportunity came up. i told them that i don’t see it happening because even though a lot of the problems we had probably don’t exist now because i’m a different person, i still don’t think it could work out because of the history that we’ve had. it just gets too messy.

more recently i’ve come to realize that my mood can be largely affected by the people around me. it makes me wonder what that says about myself. sometimes i think that i may need to build a rougher exterior so that i’m not so easily affected by other people’s moods. it was something that i noticed recently that my mood changed drastically when i was around people who were generally down. someone actually asked me what was wrong with me because it seemed that my mood was so affected.

i guess i need to hang out with shiny happy people.

apparently the santa cruz boardwalk rolls back its prices on monday and tuesday nights to 65 cents for all of its rides, hot dogs, and sodas. pretty cool considering that the rides ordinarily cost something like $3.50 to ride. i have to say that the rides that we went on were alright. maybe i’ve been too spoiled with the likes of great america.

it was nice to be at the beach, though. it’s been too long since i last saw the ocean and it was nice to be able to gaze into it and let my thoughts wander for a while. i think that the beach has always been a reflective place for me.

the hot dogs that i had didn’t sit in my stomach very well though and i don’t know if i would really recommend them to anyone else. but aside from that it was good to get out there.

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