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Hello Sugar Loves and Happiest of 2024!
How do I maintain a solid firm age of 37, for all these years? Good clean living and vodka, lots and lots of vodka! I received some great emails over the holiday season and have selected a couple for some advice. Hope you enjoy! Write in if you fancy… I love dolling out the advice! Now that I said dolling, I want a Dole Whip…

Dear Idiot,

Thank Christ, Christmas is over… better late than never on this question, but over the holiday season, I found myself really running on a short fuse. I love my family and friends, but more than a few mentioned how quick I was to get angry. I’m not usually like that, but I must admit, upon further reflection, I was definitely more combative than I normally am. What’s happening? How do I fix it? Am I just a monster?

Thank you and happiest of new years!
Calmly,
I Swear I’m Not the Grinch

My Dearest I Swear I’m Not the Grinch,

Of course, you’re NOT, I AM! Hello love, and you’re not a monster at all! This is something so many of us deal with around the holidays (of course for me I’m like that in a dead sleep), and it is no surprise the holidays get us all on edge. It’s a panic riddled, over exposed, non-stop event, that has us believing, we need to make magical happy moments the entire time. YUCK! It sounds to me like you may not have taken enough time for you. For myself, I need HUGE amounts of time on my own, even when visiting family and friends, so I don’t get burnt out. I truly believe that’s what it is. Taking even 10 minutes to hide, and I do mean HIDE, where no one can get to you to regroup and just chill, makes all the difference. The other thing I read, or maybe Jeff Goldblum told me, I can’t remember where and how, is this – “The only thing we have control over is our reaction.” I was like…damn. My initial reaction is to yell, and growing up, the loudest yeller always won whatever the nonsense was. As I too am feeling the burn out, I started this new thing, where I don’t react at all. When I know I am ready to blow my stack, I simply stare, like a crazy person, but I don’t react. Nine times out of ten they think I’m nuts, but it really helps to keep my sanity in check. I think it’s because I am controlling the narrative, and honestly not draining my own energy fighting and having and all the drama that comes with that. Try it out! You don’t need the holidays to yell, or not yell!

BF


Dear Advice Idiot,

Happy New Year!
Although I hate the expression “new year, new me”, my New Year’s resolution is to stop doing the same things over and over again. A lot of the time I see myself going down the same roads, making the same choices, places, people, all of it. And I thought this year, I would try doing different things and not what I have done before. Any advice on how not to fall back into old patterns and traps? You look like you’ve been around the block and figured you could help.

Thanks,
Rickie with an ie

Well Hello Rickie with an ie,

I’’m not sure what you meant by, “you look like you’ve been around the block,” especially since I just had two grand in Botox injected into my forehead, but I will let that go for the moment. I’ve gone down so many of my old paths, so many times, they built a Starbucks. I will tell you one thing that helped me was playing out the situation when and old issue, person, trip, place, comes up. I would literally say to myself, ok, you will talk to them, they will say this, you will say that, and talk it all the way through until I could see the end result. So many times, for me anyway, the action of talking it through not only stops me from making the same mistakes, but it helps me to see why I think “this time will be different”.

One year I said I was not going to visit anywhere I had been before. It helped, I had new experiences – new people to hate, new places that drove me nuts, it was wonderful. Not sure if that is the true spirit of the exercise, but the outcome was different. I did do new things, and I did feel different, dare I say better, afterwards. So, my advice is talk it out loud. I really find that helps.

Now if you keep implying that I’m old, your first new experience will be the ER. [Laughs]
Thank you Rickie with an ie.

XO, BF


My Loves! Thank you for writing in, please keep those messages coming to theadvcieidiot@gmail.com

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