Month: September 2023

Hello, everybody! Well, it is back to the hard-hitting stuff that could affect our mental wellbeing and health.

This week, it’s about rejection.

I did a blog post about this earlier this year, as a matter of fact. Please see below:

The Fear of Rejection Robbed Me of My Life

The above post was more general. Today, it is going to be specifically geared towards GASP!! 😱 love and relationships and romance. (Cue the violins) 🎻🎻🎻😁

Nobody but nobody likes to be rejected romantically.

And it has happened to all of us.

And no, Madonna, it is NOT the greatest aphrodisiac, as you stated in your glorious song, Forbidden Love. 😓😁😓😉

The past hurts, rejections, and romantic disappointments most certainly plays a key role in us acting like scared little crybabies today. Okay, I shall speak for myself. 😁🎻

When someone rejects us in that way, we feel unworthy, unloved, unlovable. We ask “well, what’s wrong with me?” “There MUST be something wrong with me.”

No. There isn’t.

People have the right to feel how they feel. And if they don’t feel an attraction to you, that’s okay. We most certainly don’t feel an attraction to everyone we meet, do we?

Sounds good. But of course, getting rejected STILL hurts!

But what do you do when getting rejected turns into a blow not just to your ego, but to your self confidence and mental health? What happens when it affects your overall self-esteem and mental wellbeing? Then it’s time to evaluate things.

Getting rejected, especially if it happens constantly, can become a bitter narrative in your head of why should I bother to even try again if I am going to get rejected anyway?

After it happened to me repeatedly, I just didn’t want to try anymore. I was afraid to put myself out there. I suffered from the “why bothers.”

Why bother when I am going to get rejected anyway?

Why bother when I am going to lose?

Why bother when I am only going to be told no anyway and not get what I want? Again.

As I said above, this rejection thing can turn into a broken tape being replayed over and over again in your head of “what’s wrong with me?” “Why doesn’t anybody want ME??”

Am I doing something wrong? Should I reevaluate myself?

And you do reevaluate yourself, and STILL it happens!!!

I am not going to rehash the ENDLESS and voluminous times I have been rejected romantically. We’d be here all day.

So, I will only mention the two most recent ones.

In 2022, I faced not one, but TWO romantic rejections. The first was at the beginning of 2022, and by someone I had dated 13 years prior who came back into my life. And yes, I think it was during a mercury retrograde, and I’m just going to leave that right there. 😉

The second occurred at the end of 2022, when after initially meeting someone for coffee, he told me right then and there that there wasn’t a sexual spark. Well, I never!! I wasted a trip out, especially when I was going to leave anyway when I thought he had stood me up!

Then I remembered what someone told me once that rejection means not you, not at this time. I suppose that lessens the blow a bit.

Or you can look at rejection as a good thing, that perhaps the thing you want isn’t good for you after all.

In the above two “romantic” situations, I now consider it a good thing. 😊

And to be fair, I’ve done it, too. Rejected someone romantically. And in some of the most horrific ways, particularly not calling someone back, which is now referred to as “ghosting.” Who comes up with these inane terms anyway?

As adults, it is definitely going to happen. But it is how we handle it that makes the difference. Are we going to move on and not let it bother us? Or are we going to sink into a deep hole of feeling not just rejected, but feeling worthless?

Will the rejection keep us from trying again?

I would never presume to tell anyone how to handle a romantic rejection, but I can sure tell you I’m much better able to handle rejection now than the first time it happened, and I was at the receiving end of Phil Leonard’s rejection at the Power Company back in 1989! We’ve come a long way, baby!

I would hope I wouldn’t let it bother me. The old me would have taken it extremely personally and would have cried, like that cold night in October 1989 when Phil Leonard told me he wasn’t interested in me romantically. I think the new me would be more angry, to be honest, and say “Well, what’s wrong with me?” 😂😂😂

But seriously, I just think I would be more adult about it, and develop a who cares mentality.

My new strategy is more of getting a feel for the person or situation first. See what their vibe is and where they’re coming from before I declare my undying love. 🤣😁😂

Feel the waters, as they say.

And then strike 😂 – er I mean, keep it light and airy and see if they want to hang out.

I don’t want this to sound like Derek’s dating advice, but I’ve been down this road too many times. The one thing I definitely don’t want to do is assume anything. I assumed too much in the past and misread signals.

I definitely do not want to play a scared little rabbit who let the previous jokers and tokers keep me from putting my toe back in the proverbial water. I don’t want them to have power over me.

Atlanta Men, Cliques, Tricks, and Apps

Now, I am going to talk about the Atlanta gay men. Le sigh.

Now, they say that gay men are the same all over. But are they? I wouldn’t know. I have only lived in North Carolina and Atlanta as an adult.

Not meaning to make generalizations – oh hell, yes I do — but Atlanta gay men seem to be very cliquish and into their little categories – the gym bunnies. The bears. The twinks. The white men who only prefer black men. The black men who only prefer white men. It is rather boring.

So, sometimes in trying to break into said categories, the rejection quota went up. In other words, if you don’t look like them or act like them, then go away. And no, I am not crying racism!

Times have changed. And so have the men. The Silver Daddies now all WANT to look like Santa Claus!!! Ugh!! And now EVERYBODY and their gay mama flock to the damn gym! And all of the endless gym pics with these suckers posing. EVERYONE does it now. It’s annoying and quite dull. And these pics are rampant on these dating “apps.”

Speaking of which, these apps are atrocious!!!!!! I don’t know where to even begin with that hot mess. For starters, it is very easy to misrepresent oneself on there. Can we say profile pics that are 30 years old?

Then you’ve got the ones who will CONSTANTLY, almost DAILY look at your picture. And you can tell because usually there is usually a visitors tab to see all the men who’ve viewed you. They look at your pic, yet NEVER say hello or cat, dog, kiss my ass or anything!

And in the middle of the madness, you actually DARE to say hello to any of them, and it’s like – cricket cricket chirp chirp. Nothing. No response. To me that equals rejection.

I can hear some of you now: Derek is BITTER! Easy buzzword to throw out there when it’s true what I’m saying! Just take a look around. You really have to distance yourself from the madness and rise above.

Or, again, as I like to say DETACH. My new favorite word.

And definitely go for it anyway if you feel that strongly. And never allow it to be a reflection of you or your worth.

Now rejection to me is like – “okay. Next?” If this one doesn’t work out, let me try the next thing and the next thing and so on and so forth. I will no longer allow it to rob me of my self worth.

And I most certainly will not allow it to stop me from going after what I want!

I think it’s almost like if you fall off a bike, you have to keep getting back on it.

Above and beyond anything else, TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF!! Do something fun for YOU. Better yet, treat yourself as if you are “dating” YOURSELF!

Do YOUR thing. The right person will notice. 😊

That’s it for today.

BUT WAIT! Before you go, a word from our sponsor! 😂

Don’t go away hungry! Click on the link below to get your DoorDash on!!

Come back next time as I delve into hypochondria! Oh I feel sick! 😁🤣😂

Until then, please be safe and mentally healthy – ALWAYS!!!

DEREK’S DISCLAIMER:  I am not a medical professional, neither am I giving any medical or legal advice. If you are seeking help from a doctor or an attorney, please consult said professionals.  These are my personal thoughts and feelings on the subjects discussed, and my blog is my own personal experiences and journey with mental imbalance.  Thanking you in advance!

I do not own the copyright to any songs or videos listed here. 

AFFILIATE DISCLAIMER:  There are products on this page.  By clicking on the links, you will be redirected to that page at no cost to you.  However, I will receive compensation if you purchase something (which I hope you do 😊).

Hello and welcome back! As promised, I am keeping it light and airy for just a couple of weeks. And this week I am talking about soap operas! And the daytime soaps. If I delved into the nighttime soaps, we would be here all night!! 😂

Also please be forewarned that I will be speaking mostly about the ABC soaps, since they were the ones I primarily watched.

However, I became very interested in Another World, Days of Our Lives, and Young & the Restless, too!

And I do have a bit of knowledge about nearly ALL of them, the main ones anyway.

Now. I am going to take this time to answer my own question, which is the title of this post. Are soaps trash or revolutionary?

REVOLUTIONARY, BITCH!!! 🤣🤣🤣

They may be trash now, but back during their heyday – OMG!!! NOBODY missed the soaps!!! And I do mean NOBODY!!!

Housewives didn’t miss their soaps.

Kids out of school for the summer didn’t miss the soaps.

College kids across America scheduled their classes around the soaps. I don’t recall doing that, but then I got my first VCR in college and didn’t have to worry about it. College students caught the soaps in the student union, too!

And even husbands and men who worked night shifts, didn’t miss the soaps!!!

My mother brought in a portable TV on her job so she and her coworker could watch THE SOAPS!!!! 😂🤣😂🤣

People, no doubt, thought soaps were originally about the romance. However, there were MANY times soaps delved into some pretty heavy, real-life topics.

Back in their heyday, soaps were great storytelling vehicles, covering such topics as alcoholism, rape, sexual abuse, cancer, breast cancer, heart disease, eating disorders, DID (formerly known as multiple personality disorder), Alzheimer’s disease, the AIDS crisis, coming out stories, LGBTQ+ stories, prostitution, the mob, and the list goes on and on.

Soaps provided an opportunity to learn and talk about subjects we did not dare discuss. They taught us about certain diseases and ailments that were also happening to real people.

Okay. Don’t play with me, as y’all know at some point in time you watched them. And no doubt you even got hooked like I did. 😂

The whole legend of getting hooked on the stories because of your grandma is very true. That’s where I got my start. My beloved grandmother, Costella, would watch from 12:30 till about 5 p.m., watching both the ABC and NBC soaps. And whenever one of her gal pals would call or she was on the phone and her shows would start, she would ALWAYS end that call by saying, “I’ve got to go now. My stories ’bout to come on!!!” 😂😂😂

And my mother and aunt watched, too. Their soaps were mostly the CBS ones, and whenever they were together, they talked incessantly about Victor Newman, brilliantly played by Eric Braeden, from The Young & The Restless – Y&R. Oh boy, I will never forget what my mother would say about Victor Newman: “Victor can play some games.” 😂

As a child, I remember very vividly various scenes from the soaps. See if you remember or know what and/or whom I’m talking about:

Kim (played by the wonderful Kathryn Hays), from As the World Turns caught in a tornado!!!

Mary Kennicott (Susan Blanchard) visiting Jeff Martin (then played by her real-life husband, Charles Frank) in the hospital as a ghost on All My Children – AMC!!!

Victor Newman locking that poor man up in a secret room!! That poor man was Michael Scott, portrayed by Nick Benedict who played one of the Phil Brents on AMC and was a part of the whole Phil/Tara/Erica storyline!

YASSSSSS, HONEY!!! 😂😂😂

When I was a preteen, I began to think soaps were dumb and stupid. However, things took a dramatic turn (no pun intended) around 1980-81 when I was watching an episode of AMC, and Monique Jonvil (Gillian Spencer, who was the original Viki on OLTL!) was on the witness stand testifying in the Sybil Thorne murder case. In testifying, she revealed some things that made Nina Courtland (Taylor Miller, who has such gorgeous eyes) realize that she was not just her friend, but her MOTHER!!! And her father Palmer Courtlandt (the absolutely amazing James Mitchell) had lied to her all those years saying she was dead! I remember like it was yesterday Nina standing up, muttering “Mother?” and then collapsing!! Nina hit the floor in the wake of the news, y’all!! 🤣🤣😁😁

But it was the summer of 1981 watching General Hospital – GH – and the Ice Princess caper that truly got me HOOKED, when both Luke Spencer (yes, THAT Luke – Anthony Geary) and Robert Scorpio (sexy Tristan Rogers) shimmied across this rope suspended high above water to get aboard the Cassidine yacht!!!! Laura (the extraordinarily talented Genie Francis) had already snuck onboard. LOL

And the Cassadines wanted world domination, and to achieve their evil goal, they had plans to freeze the entire world, if necessary, starting with Port Charles, and Luke saved the day!!

So, soaps even delved into Sci-Fi!!!! Talk about revolutionary!!!

And from that moment on, I would catch both AMC and GH when I was out of school for the summer!! I skipped One Life to Live – OLTL because back then I thought it was dull, though I did catch some great moments when Marco (the incredible Gerald Anthony) and Karen Wolek, (played by THE Judith Light), hopped that train to go on the run in ’81!! 😁😊

Speaking of Karen Wolek and the phenomenally talented Judith Light, remember this iconic scene from below?? And what it was in reference to? And what Karen admitted to God and the rest of the world and all of Llanview??? There will be a clip of that at the end of this post. Tee hee.

And then there was the whole Echo DiSavoy mess on OLTL in 1983!!! That’s right, Kim Zimmer – yes, Reva Shayne – was on OLTL before she was on Guiding Light!!! Then decades later after GL ended, she returned to OLTL to cause more trouble for Clint, Viki, and Viki’s new husband at the time, Charlie Banks (sexy Brian Kerwin!!!)

My tune about OLTL changed during the summer of 1985 when Viki Buchanan (played by the PHENOMENAL ERIKA SLEZAK) turned into NIKI SMITH on the witness stand when Tina Clayton (the beloved Andrea Evans who just passed away 😓) was accused of murdering Harry O’Neill (Frank Converse)!!!!

See below:

As a matter of fact, I remember seeing bits and pieces of the Niki Smith saga unfold back in the day when Tina found the Secret Room underneath Llanfair, and she found out that she was not Viki’s ward, but in fact Viki’s half sister!!! And when confronted with the news, Viki remembered walking in on her father, THE great Victor Lord, in bed with her college best friend, Irene Manning, doing the deed! Ha!

This sent Viki into a tailspin and caused her to develop her split personality Niki.

In 1995, the story was rewritten to include several more personalities of Viki’s, and the true cause of her disorder was the fact that her beloved father, Victor Lord, MOLESTED her as a child!!! OUCH!

This revelation TRULY showed just how unbelievably and extraordinarily talented Erika Slezak is playing SIX different characters!!! And two of them were male!!

And Erika Slezak has won a total of SIX Emmy’s for her amazing work as Victoria Lord Gordon Riley Burke Riley Buchanan Buchanan Carpenter Davidson Banks possibly Buchanan again when OLTL ended in 2012!

So, to say I’m a Erika Slezak fanatic is an understatement!!

But I digress.

Soaps also brought us pure fantasy and things that people would consider “jumping the shark,” a phrase I HATE! It’s a damn TV show, so what the hell do you expect?

Um speaking of… look at the pic below. Guess who this is and what is happening and which show this is from? Tee hee

Soaps went from being conversations that centered around the kitchen table over a cup of coffee; all the way to underground cities; heaven; hell; being pregnant and going over a waterfall and surviving, both mother and child; and even going back in time!! 😂😂😂 OLTL was the main culprit of all this!!! 😊😉

Yes, hunty, OLTL took Viki to heaven, Dorian Lord to hell, Viki to the Wild West to bring Clint back, and yes, Viki and the gang even went to the underground city of Eterna, buried underneath a mountain!

Tina (Andrea Evans) was the one who went over the Iguazu Falls in Argentina, pregnant! She survived and then she later found out her baby survived too! Oy!

I must give honorable mention to the Casey space alien story GH undertook in 1990. Yes, little Robin Scorpio (Kimberly McCullough who LITERALLY grew up before our very eyes on the show!!!) met an alien from outer space!!

Honorable mention to:

The Kay/Marge storyline starting back in 1989 on Y&R! Kay’s double, Marge, took over her life back then! LOLOL Years later Marge came back not to hurt Kay this time, but to beg Kay for her help. There was a mixup and Marge died in an accident, but everyone thought it was Kay!! 😁 Anyway, Jeanne Cooper portrayed Katherine Chancellor Sterling from the beginning of the show (1973) until her death (2013). Katherine (and Jeanne) kept that show on its toes!! And the Kay/Jill feud! PHEW!!!!

Mac (the stellar heavyweight Douglass Watson) and Rachel (the incredible Victoria Wyndham) and Iris (the FIERCE Beverlee McKinsey) from Another World!!! Iris did NOT like the fact that her beloved father, Mac, married much younger, former troublemaker Rachel Davis. Talk about DRAMA! It was the whole daddy-married- an-evil-stepmonster-that-I-hate triangle! It was also done on OLTL with Victor, Viki, and Dorian.

The tortured, yet very adventurous love story of Luke and Laura (Genie Francis) from GH. And don’t get me started on how TPTB of ABC and GH RUINED their story later on!!!

And the tortured love story of Doug and Julie (played by real-life couple Doug Hayes and Susan Seaforth Hayes) from the early days of Days of Our Lives – DOOL.

And Oh. My. God. MARLENA’S POSSESSION TWICE ON DOOL!!!!! And you don’t get any more revolutionary than that! Something straight out of The Exorcist!

I am quite sure Deidre Hall had fun with that one!! (And later being a serial killer on Days, too!!!) Pictured here with sexy AF Drake Hogestyn as John Black.

And who can forget about the great, romantic SUPERCOUPLES?:

Luke and Laura. Luke and Laura’s wedding brought in over 30 million viewers on November 17, 1981!! Yes, Laura married her rapist!!! 😱😱😱

Bo and Hope. (Peter Reckell and Kristian Alfonso) from DOOL!

Clint and Viki.

Mac and Rachel.

Josh and Reva!!! (Robert Newman and Kim Zimmer) from Guiding Light!

Angie and Jesse. (Debbi Morgan and Darnell Williams) from AMC!

Greg and Jenny. (Laurence Lau and Kim Delaney) from AMC!

Cord (sexy John Loprieno) and Tina from OLTL!!!

And of course, I cannot leave this post without mentioning the grande divas of daytime – Erica Kane (Susan Lucci) from AMC and Dorian Cramer Lord (Robin Strasser) from OLTL!!!!!

And the soap themes!!!!! This may be John’s top soap themes, but they are not necessarily Derek’s top themes, in that order that is. But just to take us down memory lane. Haha!

In memoriam:

Sadly the soap world lost the amazingly talented and popular Jacklyn Zeman (who played Bobbie Spencer, yes, Luke’s little sister) from GH. Jackie had been on that show since 1977! Her character Bobbie went through a whole helluva lot on GH! Bobbie was a former teen prostitute who turned her life around and eventually became head surgical nurse at General Hospital and even married a doctor!

Andrea Evans (THE Tina Clayton Lord Roberts) from OLTL.

And John Aniston (yes, Jennifer’s dad), Victor Kiriakis, from DOOL.

Now for THE big scene featuring Judith Light (Karen Wolek on OLTL), when she testified on behalf of Viki Riley for murdering Marco Dane, which Viki didn’t do. And in testifying for Viki, Karen admitted on the witness stand that she was a prostitute for Marco!!! And her poor husband Larry (Michael Storm) and sister Jenny (Brynn Thayer) were sitting in the courtroom to hear this!! To say she shocked all of Llanview was an understatement. Well, Viki found out earlier that Karen was a housewife turned hooker for Marco Dane! 😊 Skip to 45:30 for the drama and the big reveal.

Please tell me what you used to watch in the comment section below.

Now before you go, click on the banner below to get your grub on – DOORDASH!!:

There is sooooooo much to write about the soaps that there is NO WAY I could cover it all in just one post. I am sure that down the road, I shall revisit this topic again.

At any rate, that is it for now. Next time, it is back to the harder subjects. Coming up soon, it’s going to be about rejection!!!!! Stay tuned…

Until then, please be safe and mentally well!!!

DEREK’S DISCLAIMER:  I am not a medical professional, neither am I giving any medical or legal advice. If you are seeking help from a doctor or an attorney, please consult said professionals.  These are my personal thoughts and feelings on the subjects discussed, and my blog is my own personal experiences and journey with mental imbalance.  Thanking you in advance!

I do not own the copyright to any songs or videos listed here. 

AFFILIATE DISCLAIMER:  There are products on this page.  By clicking on the links, you will be redirected to that page at no cost to you.  However, I will receive compensation if you purchase something (which I hope you do 😊).