Rebecca Fisseha, Writer.

Apartment-hunting can be a soul crushing royal pain in the behind, so yesterday I copped out and took the easy way out on my response to What’s the best piece of advice you ever gave someone that you failed to take yourself? In doing so, I totally pissed in the face of my own all time best pieces of advice ever: a) take a deep breath, exhale, and go with the first thing that comes to your mind (for making decisions or figuring out what to say to someone), b) in everything you do, always give your best even if you can’t possibly see any benefit in the moment, and c) be open and say yes to the possibility of a new beginning (where relationships are concerned) because even if it turns out horribly, you’ll be glad for the lesson learned – you’ll come out better marinated and tastier for the next round of whatever life throws at ya.

So, yesterday, when I saw the daily question, I did advice “a” and what I exhaled was advice “c”, and that’s what I was going to write about – except driving around Toronto all day (I refuse to live outside the city) visiting one too many dingy bachelors (by which I mean studio apartments) with smelly hallways got me so wiped out that I wimped out on advice “b”. I took the easy way out and scribbled Don’t smoke, the Jesus wept of blog posts, I’m sure. Analyzing that choice with my now-sharp 4am mind, I realize that I was as much giving myself advice for that day as answering a daily prompt question. Lord knows I contemplated having a cancer stick or two between bachelor #3 and bachelor #4.

So (I really ought to stop starting all my paragraphs with “so”), here’s what I should have posted yesterday (hey, since there’s no one monitoring my posts I can do whatever I want and I’m also real big on advice “b” hence the lack of sleep): the best piece of advice I ever gave that I failed to take myself was : say yes. It concerned a friend of mine and a guy who had taken a liking to her. He was sending just the right amount of Hey babe, how about it? signals but she was completely in the Hella no! zone. She liked them tall, dark and chiseled. He was short-ish, dark and soft. Well, at least the brother had one thing going on! I don’t know if it was his coco skin or my advice to her to “say yes” and just go with it that finally did the trick. I like to think it was the latter, because there were plenty of other candidates who fit the profile (I’ll come back to them later) yet she went with Mr. Soft & Short-ish and, tall story short, I expect to receive a Save the Date for a Ghanaian wedding sometime in the near future.

The part where I failed to take my own advice is the part where the “other candidates who fit the profile” come in (see bottom of above paragraph beginning with “So”). The Lord was generous, they were plentiful, but like a yin-yang symbol I carry my own contradiction within myself, so I stayed stuck on “say no” and, well, here I am – party of uno. In my defense, I was in China and dead set on nothing – not even true love – making me stay there longer than I had already signed away my life for.

Good thing I have my fallback advice to soften the sting of moments squandered: everything happens for a reason.

No shit, genius. (But really, whew!)

There, now I can sleep, looking forward to another day and another round of dingy bachelors.