About Me

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I moved to Dallas from a medium sized town in Louisiana in 2003 for a job. I lived in North Dallas for the first 3 years that I was here and moved to the downtown/uptown area about 3 years ago. It took me a while to acclimate to the whole scene in Dallas, so I decided to create this blog to help speed up the process for people like me.

Friday, January 30, 2009

GO!! GET OUT!!!!

Get out of your apartment, get out of your comfort zone, get out of your box, whatever you do GET OUT!!! You will never meet people in this town if you don’t do anything. Take it from me, I lived in North Dallas for a couple of years and the first year of it was spent going to work, coming home and staying in. Guess what, I had about 6 friends the entire first year I lived here and 3 of them were from my home town. GET OUT!! I am a very social person, but I don’t really like to put forth the effort. I’m socially lazy, I love to hang out, but I don’t like to actively reach out to people. It took me almost 4 years to realize you have to do that in this city. Sure if you’re a guy and you actively seek out guys to become friends with some will think you are gay (newcomers, do not practice this on Oaklawn, we will go into this in a later entry), and if you are a girl you will have a hard time finding good girlfriends to hang out because women are generally bitches to other women they initially meet, but this is part of the process of finding good friends in Dallas. For every 75 people you make an effort to hang out with, one will become a good friend. Almost all apartments in Dallas have social functions a couple of times a month, happy hours, parties in the clubhouse, football watch parties, etc. Go to these and meet your neighbors. Any chance you get to hang out with people you work with, GO!! GET OUT!!! Whether it’s a happy hour or volunteering, go do it and introduce yourself to as many people as you can. Go out to bars, even if you aren’t a big drinker, go and drink water, but GO!! GET OUT!!! Dallas has so much to offer and so much to do, but it’s no fun alone. The more friends you have the better your experience here will be. Life is all about timing, being in the right place at the right time. That being said, the more places you go and the more opportunities you give yourself to be in that place at that perfect time, the better your chances are of finding some really golden relationships and memorable experiences. Think of a great novel you’ve read. Now think of your life in Dallas as the beginning of your new novel, guess what, you get to write it. Do you want to open it one day down the road and realize you wrote the same thing on all the pages? How boring is that? Or do you want to go back when you’re old and read a novel that was full of adventure and each chapter was unlike the one before it? It’s your choice! Make yourself do things you normally wouldn’t do, make the effort to meet new people. I promise you it will be well worth it. NOW GOOOOOO, GET OUT!!!!!!!! Keep it real…

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

KEEPING IT REAL IN DALLAS

I chose this topic to start this blog, because it will become a recurring theme throughout. This is the single hardest thing to remind yourself of while you live here. It seems everyone here wants to be something they aren’t, or even worse, everyone else wants you to be something you’re not. This town is all about excess, more is better! The rich people want to be richer, the girl with the big boobs wants them bigger, the coke head wants to do more coke, the guy with the condo in the Ashton wants one in the W, and it just keeps going on. The longer I live here the more I realize that you are who you are and the people that will ultimately really matter in your life will appreciate you for being comfortable in your own skin. Dallas is such a big city that you can (and believe me, people do) live multiple lives and never have them cross. You can be married to a girl in Frisco, have a girlfriend in Addison and date a stripper in Highland Park and never have any aspect of those lives cross. I promise you, IT HAPPENS! If that’s your goal and that’s what you want, then go for it, you are living in one of the best cities in the US to do that, so enjoy it. But if you are like most people, especially me from Smalltown, USA, then that’s not your gig. Most people are normal guys and girls that moved here for a job and just want to meet a good group of friends and experience all this great city has to offer. The first big acclimation aspect is in conversation. You can be guaranteed that one of the first three question you will be asked in any conversation is “what do you do”? I always thought this was a very pretentious question and it always rubbed me the wrong way, but the more I live here, I realize that it’s just an ice breaker. There are so many people living here that aren’t from here that there is no common ground. Asking someone what they do isn’t really trying to find out if they are important or how much money they make, but more of a conversation starter to lead into other questions. I use to be totally against this question and would actually go out of my way not to ask it until the 3rd or 4th time I met someone, if I would ask it at all. Now I ask it all the time. Almost every time I either know someone that works in a related field or for the company they work for. If not, it leads into questions about what they do and makes them feel like you are interested in them, even if you could care less about what a mortgage broker does or how many chunks of chicken are in one scoop of a Chipotle burrito. Asking questions and responding draws people in and keeps their attention and you will definitely need to get people interested and keep their attention in this town. Just remember, when the question is directed at you, no matter what you do, keep it real, tell them the truth and be proud of it. Who cares if you don’t make $50 - $100k a year, not many people do, even in Benzville (Dallas), you are who you are, be proud of that and if someone makes you feel like who you are isn’t important, then you don’t need to be around that group of people anyway! Keep it real…