Gina Geppi brings her “Jaqueline of All Trades” gold touch to her Baltimore Magazine column, Riding Solo, the outgrowth of her Baltimore Bachelorette blog. Gina’s column is like sharing a martini with your girlfriends. She’s hysterical and unguarded.

Gina’s honesty in her column is perhaps the most appealing part of her writing. You feel as if you are chatting with a gal pal when you read Gina’s writing. She’s not afraid to be exactly who she is, single and loving it, sometimes flawed, last minute paying bills, your girl next door. She’s your best friend. It’s refreshing to read a columnist as unguarded as Gina. Rather than relying too heavily on clever quips, Gina writes in a straight forward tone, simply interested in opening a conversation with her audience.

Much like she is in person, Gina is no bullshit. She writes about what she knows, and what she knows is a fun flirty single life, with all the heartache that comes with it. Fun and lighthearted one moment, a serious revelation the next, the column is all about those insights, dreams and concerns every single woman today has. No one is one-dimensional, with just one mode of thought; Gina writes as she really is, without a cold calculation of keeping her audience at a distance.

Check out Riding Solo; laugh and ruminate with a new best friend.http://www.baltimoremagazine.net/this-month/2012/03/riding-solo

Every new beginning deserves a clean slate. But like a slate, you can erase the chalk, wash the board down, and there might still be marks, scratches, vestiges of what was once there. It’s that baggage everyone keeps talking about.

The fact is, sometimes that baggage keeps you from making the same mistakes again, over and over, in life. Sure, you shouldn’t attribute negative aspects to someone new immediately just based on your past experiences. Everyone deserves a fighting chance. But, use your experience to your advantage. You haven’t lived, loved and lost for nothing. It’s the difference between going in blind versus with eyes wide open.

There is an art to managing your baggage, or learning from past experience and applying it to new situations. And it’s often very hard to cultivate. Habits and patterns can be hard to recognize and harder to break. But, if you focus on only mistakes, you’ll be paralyzed from moving on to anything new. Part of dating is learning about what works and what doesn’t and the rules are simply not the same for everyone.

Making your own rule book born from baggage is as close to a safe bet in the messy messy milieu of love and sex as you can get. Anyone can proffer any number of dating do’s and don’t’s. There are certainly enough strategies to play. Hiding behind dating cliches to escape baggage is a fruitless indeavor. One size fits all dating solutions never seem to hang right.

Make your baggage work for you instead of allowing it to weigh you down. Pack the essential lessons you’ve picked up along the way, and get rid of everything you don’t need to drag along. A simple carry-on will do. Sometimes the real lesson is knowing what not to take with you.