Water...Leave It Alone!

This is just something I have to get off my chest.

Stop trying to spice up my water with liquid sugar! What the hell is wrong with manufacturers always trying to make water cool? Mio, Crystal Light and all those other "flavor adding" little packets/bottles etc of a million flavors trying to make it seem cool to drink flavored water. Is water so boring that you have to add some flavor to it to keep yourself hydrated? Seriously? It's melted down sugar with artificial flavorings! Yeah, lets put something unhealthy in something healthy to make ourselves deal with the evils that is WATER and all of it's lack of flavor.

You want to make water more exciting? Try tea. It's 100 times more natural than any of those flavor packets that look oh so pretty when dropping into your pure water and make you feel like you aren't drinking water at all. We all know, NO ONE puts just one squirt in there. You overload it with the flavor so its down right sugary then you might as well be drinking Kool - Aid! Which probably is more healthy than those things. AND can we just be honest here, Kool - Aid is much cooler and less misleading than those other new modern flavor "enhancers". KA never made you think it was just making water better. Nope. It said, want an easy and cheap way to make your kids happy? Here, try KA, it has sugar, millions of flavors and is easy to do. BOOM!

Maybe it's because I LOVE WATER. In all its pure, unflavored glory! I don't need "coconut" added to it either to make me drink it. OH can we stop with all this "Coconut Water" mess too? This isn't NEW! This is barely original...wait, its not original. You aren't doing anything to make your water BETTER! There is no way to make water "more hydrating and healthy for you" people!! NO WAY! The only way to make water MORE anything is to just drink MORE OF IT! You want the added benefits of coconut? Go buy a coconut and drink the milk inside and eat the meat...there, you got the benefits of coconut! I LOVE COCONUTS! I whack those things open and eat them all summer long! It has NEVER crossed my mind to water down the coconut milk with water to make it "healthier". Are you serious? Let's just think about this for a moment shall we?

(Thinking)

What is coconut water? It's watered down coconut milk. But doesn't coconut milk look chalky and weird? Why yes, it does. So how does it look less cloudy in my awesome bottle? Because it's watered down hun. Ooohhhhh. Yep. Do you want to make REAL coconut water? This is what you do...buy a coconut, drill two holes in it, drain the coconut milk, cut the coconut in half, cut out the coconut meat (becareful, it can be tricky), shred/grade it like cheese, put it in cheesecloth, tie it tight and squeeze squeeze squeeze all the juice out of it as much as you can. You can even put over a cup, secure with a rubber band and let it drain overnight in the fridge. Once you've gotten all the liquid out, take a half of cup of water, mix it in the coconut milk and drink. That is the real deal...no sugars, additives, flavors or anything unnatural in it. You can't get more NATURAL than that! You don't lose any of the natural goodness either.

All of these fancy "enhanced waters" add things to water to supposedly make it better. You can't make water better, period. Sure, don't get me wrong, i love me some Vitamin Water because its a water based, flavored beverage with vitamins and electrolytes in it that  i need to keep me hydrated when I'm seriously lacking in the water department. But do i think it's water? No. Do i use it as a replacement for water? No. I treat it like an extra, not a replacement. Just like athletes don't pretend Gatorade is a water replacement. It's an extra. Many athletes drink water when they aren't training and in their everyday lives.

My point in all this? Stop trying to make water something it doesn't need or want to be. Just drink it. I hear so many people say they don't like water, and that makes me sad. Because your body LOVES WATER. It NEEDS water. All these other things you are drinking are only making it MORE thirsty. You will feel such a change if you just add more water to your life and body. But hey, do what you want. Drink what you want. Just know, water doesn't need to be made better, it just needs to be drank.

Drag Me Back In??

It's been a month since I last treated you all to my rantings. So much has been happening in my life and I haven't been that inspired to post anything as of late. BUT the last few days something has been on my mind.

Some of you know I use to write a column online based on dating advice. I haven't written anything in that column for just about a year now. People were always fans of it. I myself was a fan of it for awhile as well. Ultimately, what stopped me from posting aka going on hiatus was the structure I was forced to perform in. I honestly hated my subject matter, "Flirting". I felt so constricted and boxed in. I had to follow really strict rules and guidelines. Everything from length of the article to how long each paragraph could be, tagging, promoting, forcing it down people's throat basically. There was too much emphasis on promoting the site and not just my column, rather than the content in and of itself.

As a mostly creative writer, being so boxed in and smacked on the hand for every little thing is not my cup of tea at all! It was like being force fed sunflower seeds with no water or soda to wash them down with. And heaven forbid you complained about something to your "editor" which i found pretty hilarious that they even called themselves THAT! Every email i sent to her was replied in a scripted, not answering the real question at hand bla bla bla "don't forget to let all your fb and twitter friends/followers know about our great site!" way. Ever since i went on hiatus, she hasn't contacted me ONCE. In fact, i don't think she even knows I'm on hiatus! Oh well, whatever, right.

I seriously LOVE giving advice. My friends, family and complete strangers are always hitting me up for my opinions and thoughts about whatever is going on in their world. I don't consider myself a know-it-all the least bit. I do however give sound, solid advice without forcing people in one direction or not. I have lots of experience...a double edged sword in some cases...and I really don't mind sharing them with others. I also enjoy cluing lost and confused women and men on what makes the opposite sex...or same sex...tick. Perhaps it's my being able to see both sides of any situation, that makes me a go-to person? Who knows. At the end of the day i enjoy helping others any way I can. So this leads me back to thinking...maybe I should go back into my advice column???

The issue at hand is, do i want to go back to that annoying site and try to get another subject so I can cover MORE than just "Flirting" or do i branch out, create my own advice blog and forge out making my own path?? If i do make another blog, I would need people who needed advice to actually send me their questions and issues so I can reply to them in the blog! And I'm not sure people would actually do that...especially strangers. Of course though I would do this blog differently and promote it/myself and hopefully garner some following because of my solid, sound and fun advice and not just because I'm awesome and stuff.

Either way, I have the urge to write and help with my words again. Just not sure if there will be a following as well as good reason for it. I don't want to just be talking to myself. Thoughts???