Well that didn’t work out

Spurred on by the success of several friends and multiple recent conversations about needing to meet people I tried online dating.  Or I guess I should say I considered online dating.  I got as far as creating a user name on a dating site and looking through 15 pages of tiny thumbnail pics of guy in my age range near my zip code before I deleted my as yet uncreated profile and cried for an hour.

So either I’m not ready to start dating again, I’m suffering from worse social anxiety around meeting new people than I thought, or the potential dating pool in my area is really distressing.  No lie, the very first guy that looked halfway decent, clicking on his profile immediately produced “I have three cats” and “I really want kids.”  It’s like my own personal dating hell, unmarried 40ish guys desperate to procreate, fat guys who think they deserve a supermodel, self involved pseudointellectuals who are more interested in appearance than actual intelligence, and guys who seem convinced that their love of jesus will make you want them.  *shudder*  Yeah, I don’t think I’m interested in jumping back into the dating pool.

And here it is Friday night.  I haven’t called any of my friends to go out, or gotten dressed to go out on my own to a regular haunt.  Instead I’m sitting around in my underwear, in my too hot house, watching crappy straight to video romantic comedies and being irritated with myself for not working on any of the multiple creative projects I have strewn about, half done and languishing.

I’m fairly certain that my current wave of self loathing is brought by hormones and work being really stressful.  Sadly I was just discussing in detail how much my wild mood swings bother me earlier today.  It’s like I set myself up for it to happen.

Friday and I’m probably just going to finish writing this and go to bed.  I need to figure out how to make my weekend positive.  My plans were to go to the flea market with Hawthorn, then clean my house and go grocery shopping and finish a web project I promised a friend and hopefully work on something satisfyingly creative for myself.  But it appears the plans with Hawthorn have derailed (by the inclusion of his 18yo son and said son’s friends, which just seems like it would make the flea market awkward, tedious and really uncomfortable for me).  So that leaves me with chores, more chores, some other chores and hopes that I can pull it together to do something I enjoy. As a weekend prospect, that seems pathetic event o me, who would usually rather be left alone at home. And yet I am not at all motivated to try and make a new plan and get out and do something.

I spent part of the week mulling over how I felt after Cedar was here and how I felt while I was back home.  My conclusions were that I need to meet more people, socialize more, find some friends who share my interests (who aren’t Hawthorn).  I also decided that I feel like work is my secret identity.  It’s my Clark Kent costume of middle aged, practical, uncoolness.  It’s just that I seem to be that person all the time lately.  I need to unleash my inner superhero.  I need to dress up and go out and be awesome.  To remind other people how amazing I am and to display it enough to myself so that I don’t forget again. And yet here I find myself with 60 hours stretching in front of me, with which I can do anything I want and the best I can manage is pouting about the monkey wrench in the lame plans I had and going grocery shopping. As I said, unmotivated.

Maybe my expectations are too high?  I don’t want to waste my time going out because it won’t be worth it? Anxiety has something to do with it, but not as much as, uh, fear of failure, I guess? I need to go out and have fun in a low-key, stress-free, low expectation environment.  I’m not even sure how to do that.  Instead I’m going to sleep and hope the wild mood swing is in the POSITIVE position when I wake up.

re-beginning the beginning of things all over again

Let’s get this show back on the road, yeah?  I definitely need to spend more time writing, thinking and working on my shit and less time shopping for shoes.  Shoes only so temporarily fill the void, you know?  Still the latest shipping binge did leave me with some great date outfits. Assuming anyone ever asks me out again.  Well, actually some one did ask me out, in a round about way and I’m still not sure exactly if it was platonic asking because, erm, I’m not sure if he’s married or divorced.  So that’s weird, he was a casual about the asking and he hasn’t called, so I’m gonna assume it was casual.

The last two guys I’ve set my sights on were utterly unavailable.  One turned out to be married and the other chose celibacy (not over me, I guess he chose it before I got there, ugh).  And after my recent trip home I”m definitely feeling the lack of eligible, single men here.  So I guess I need to get out more?  To places that aren’t my job or the grocery store. Stop going to events with Hawthorn?  I can remember a time, just a few years ago, when I would have laughed at anyone who said it was hard to meet people.  I didn’t do anything but meet people.  But now if I don’t want to hang out in bars or go to church I have no way to meet people.  Online dating seems creepy or like only a way to hook up.  I’m not against hooking up, but I’m not sure I need online to find hook ups.

So that feels like an unsolvable problem.

Then there’s the somewhat surmountable problem of doctors’ appointments I need to go to but haven’t yet made. Still dealing with a ton of anxiety and hell over that stuff.

Yep, goals for this week:

1. Finish project for my friends that I over committed myself on.
2. Meet one new person.
3. Make one doctor’s appointment.
4. Write two more blog entries here about real things going on with me.

Doable, hopefully!

And in an effort to continue to remember goodness, here’s three things that were good recently:

1. Finding a dress I look great in.
2. Waking up to the sound of the rain.
3. Standing in a parking lot after a storm ans seeing a heron fly overhead.