So, I usually write a rant at the end of the year going off about how I’m going to change and how things never go as I expect. This year, I think I’m going to spew out optimism instead.
The optimism comes because a woman I work with, who is usually overly cheerful, super social, and always extremely happy said something out of character the other day. As she wished me a happy new year, she said something to the effect that the next year simply must be better than the last, that it was the worst year ever and she just couldn’t do it again. Hmm. Strange. She always seemed so….content.
She walked out of the office and her works stuck. I’ve had my share of pretty average years. I have yet to have a year that I wouldn’t want to repeat, though. And, in all honesty, 2011 kicked some major ass in my little world. I have a list of awesome things that occurred last year that still blow my mind a little when I think about them. My big worry with 2012 is that it will be a disappointment after the year I just had. I can’t imagine so many cool things happening again. Like the house. I bought a HOUSE. I’ve lived there three months and it is still a surprise how cool I think it is. I look at projects I want to do and I just get excited. This is MY house.
And the Jeep! My new(ish) Jeep, Rufous. Oh, I love that thing. He’s amazing. I can’t not grin when I think about my Jeep.
Same thing happens when I think about hockey. I can’t NOT smile. And if you ask me one question about hockey, I’ll talk and talk and talk until you just walk away. And then I may follow you and talk about it some more.
I seriously could not ask for more out of a single year of my life. And after the last rant I posted, who knew I could be so content. I’m still not dating anyone (when I even think about going out with a person, I get a mild case of heartburn. No, thanks), but I like that, too. Freedom!
So here’s to another year. I have my fingers crossed and a cheesy grin on my face.
Now, before I jump in to this, I just want to clarify. I’m not bitter towards men. Men are great. There are so many great men in this world that I simply can’t live without. I’m not bitter towards men. I’m bitter towards dating.
And I’m bitter towards Utah.
People who live outside of Utah may have to clarify this for me, but I think being a 30-year-old woman who doesn’t believe in or attend the LDS church is a bit of an obstacle when it comes to dating. It’s so difficult to meet guys unless it’s at church or the bar. Where’s the in-between? The good guy who likes a beer every now and then? And where can I find a pile to sort through? I’m ready. I’m done playing around. I’m looking for an adult male to build a life with. Where do I find those?
Being an Internet junkie, I decided (much to my mother’s dismay, if I’d tell her or if she reads this blog post) to give the online dating thing a try. Ugh, right? How cheesy and gross. But it works for some people. It has to. There are so many dating sites out there, it HAS to do something for a person. I KNOW people that have met off the Internet and are in happy, healthy, grown-up relationships. Besides, with a concealed carry permit AND a tube of pepper spray packed away, I would be alright. Right?
Physically, sure. However, I’m now mentally exhausted and wondering if there’s some huge problem with me.
Online dating is a simple process. You find a site. You check out a few and wonder if paying for digital matchmaking is really going to be better than the free service. Since you decide this is already horrible for your ego, you go with free. Then you can at least saved the money for a case of beer and a carton of ice cream with it all goes south.
Then you sign up. You give this digital mystery site all your deep dark secrets. You’re 30. Your last decent relationship ended over six years ago. You don’t smoke. You pause over the question asking if you drink socially or if you drink often. Can’t I do both? Is drinking with my cat and the entire cast of Grey’s Anatomy on demand considered ‘social’? And if it is and I do that more than three times a week, is that often? You pick social because it seem like the less ‘alcoholic’ of the two. Now, you want a beer, so you have to go get one to finish the rest of this questionnaire, as your soul cries that this is what it has come to. You do want kids (even though you can feel your eggs drying up and you realize you don’t really want to pick up crayons off the floor). You do have a job. You do have a car (are the men on this site really going to be that shallow?).
Now, you have to write a paragraph about yourself.
Lord.
You know what this is. This is the “I like pina coladas and dancing in the rain” paragraph. This is the “I like long walks on the beach and laughing” paragraph. This is your chance to make yourself as attractive as possible and not let on that you’re really just tired of begging your friends to ask how your day was, and killing spiders, and changing your own light bulbs. You can’t say in here you’d honestly just like to have to not worry about EVERYthing in the house. You want someone to eat the crappy food you make and take over making sure the oil is changed in the car. And that you’re tired of Facebook posting ads for your horoscope asking ‘Will you get married? Janet can tell you!’ That’s it. That’s all you need.
No. Instead, you type out some overly cheerful version of yourself saying how you like jeeps and ice hockey and you’re ‘just looking for a friend, nothing too serious.’ Bullshit. You want a husband and you know it.
You sigh, take a swig of the beer, and hit ‘Submit.’
And wait.
Of course, you can go surf on your own. But you’re a woman. Women were engineered to be wooed and pursued. So you wait.
And lo and behold! The emails come pouring! Yay! Success. A pile of men. Let the sorting begin.
Hopes are high as you diligently read every email, and check out every profile, rejecting the ones with young kids and custody schedules. Deleting the emails with grammar so dreadful, they are impossible to read. Keeping a few potentials on the back burner in case you change your mind, then deleting them anyway. Delete, delete, no, next, are you kidding me?, delete.
I’ve had my online profile up and active for about three months now. I made a pact to myself that any guy who emailed me a few times, then asked me out, I’d go out with. I’d at least give them the benefit of the doubt and a first date. I’ve found, mostly, I don’t want to meet the people on these sites. I’m too snobby and close-minded to deal with baggage, or grown men who live with their mothers, or anything short of an intelligent, successful, adult male.
I’ve met interesting people, sure. But they’ve all ended with one of us feeling really badly about ourselves. Some say they want an opinionated woman, but as soon as I voice an opinion, they get mad, tell me I’m too judgmental and stop talking. Another was doing some herbal diet I didn’t understand, and in my efforts to learn more about the thing, I ended up telling him it was stupid, we both yelled at each other, and I walked away feeling like a failure. When I try to be open-minded, I fail. When I try to speak my mind, I fail. When I try to be the exact person they want me to be, I hold everything in then explode and fail.
I’m coming to determine that I am simply not dating material. I’m not suited for this social convention, even with the assistance of modern technology. I think it may be time to delete the profile, pick up a hobby or two, and grab another beer.
I have a bug up my butt. It’s been gnawing at me all day and I’m hoping that by writing it down and throwing it out there in the world, it will leave me alone.
And it’s work related.
See, I have this boss, of course, with which I don’t exactly see eye-to-eye. And we have to make this two-day trip to Blanding. Of course, he schedules this trip during the two days I have hockey commitments.
Hockey is the newest most important thing to me. I love this game. Love it. I want to spend every minute I can becoming better at it. And I can’t do that if I’m stuck in a van on the way to Blanding. I need to be on the ice, with my teammates, like I said I would. So I mention this to The Boss, that I have hockey those days and I’d really prefer to go another time.
He then said the fateful word: extracurricular.
Excuse me?
Being the mean, spiteful person that I am, I pointed out that if what I do after work hours qualifies as ‘extracurricular’, then his children fall into that category.
Hey, I said it was mean.
But seriously! He planned this trip around his kids’ schedule. Sure, I can see why he did that, but does that make his time and commitments more important than mine? I certainly don’t think so.
I come from a school of thought that your life is your responsibility. It is up to no one but you to make it what you want it to be. If you then choose to get married and have children, you have chosen to then give your life to those people. That’s fine. I’m ok with that. I still don’t think that automatically makes your life more important than mine. It simply means that you have made choices that differ from mine.
I honestly think this is a form of discrimination. The single, non-parent person generally has to cater to the married parental people in the office. It’s like the smoker who gets five breaks during the day when the non-smoker does not. Schedules, who works late, who comes in early, those poor folks in retail who have to work holidays…the single person usually has to take care of these things.
Because they chose a different lifestyle.
I’ve been in my office, sitting at my desk for just over a half hour today. That’s all the time it took for me to fire off a snarky, yet professional, email to the one guy giving me grief. And my boss asked me how getting into grad school was going.
Not well, I told him, renewing my mourning for my low GRE scores and huge lack of confidence.
“How am I going to be incredible if I don’t get into grad school?” I thought to myself one more time.
See, I have this new great fear in my life: being mediocre. But this comes from a very valid source. I was listening to Dr. Laura, probably about a year ago, and she said something to a desperate woman who was pushing 30 and single. (You guys can rail on me about Dr. Laura later; it’s not really the point of this story.) The woman was complaining that she couldn’t get a date with an incredible guy; that the only ones left lived with their mamas and had dead-end jobs. Dr. Laura asked the woman what she was doing to be incredible herself. Turned out the woman lived with HER mama and had her own dead-end job. Therefore, my little brain said, the key to finding an incredible man who’ll stick around is to BE an incredible woman.
Hence, grad school. Which is proving difficult to get into. Le sigh. This difficulty is simply reaffirming to my already poor self-esteem that I’m doomed to be mediocre.
So then, I think, what if I settled for interesting. I could be an interesting person, and therefore attract the interesting people.
Sadly, I’m already certain I’m a boring person. I simply never have anything intelligent to say. And I’m just awful at small talk. I’ve bored away one incredible guy and I’m pretty positive I’m currently boring away another. How dreadful to lose people because they are bored to tears when they talk to you or spend any amount of time with you? Ugh! I cannot live like this!
People also do not find insecurity to be interesting, either. I don’t understand this. As a whole, people don’t like the cocky, the over-confident, the braggart. But they don’t like the person that honestly expresses their doubts in themselves or says “I think I’m boring’ out loud.
What’s a mediocre girl to do?!
In what seems to be a hugely vain attempt at killing the mediocrity monster, I’ve joined a women’s hockey team. Why hockey, you ask? Well, because a very interesting, horrifically incredible friend of mine asked me to join. And I thought, hey, she’s amazing and plays hockey, so this could be a route to awesomeness. Unfortunately, the Good Lord did not bless me with natural hockey skills, and the general consensus is it takes about a year to hold one’s own on a hockey rink. Double le sigh.
Since it appears there is not a swift route to incredibility, I suppose I shall try the grad school thing again, resubmit my application, beg on my knees for letters of recommendation, and pray I actually get a good GRE score this time. I sorely wish I hadn’t convinced myself that grad school is the sure road to awesomeness and confidence. But, at least I’ll feel like I’m moving forward, working toward something, and not simply existing in this world.
I just returned to work after the most awkward lunch of my life
Seriously awkward.
Enjoying the high of my new job, and a week gone well, I decided to treat myself to some awesome Greek food from my favorite little hole-in-the-wall joint. I snag my GRE study book off my desk and cruise on down there.
Not long after placing my order, and finding a booth along one pistachio-colored wall in the almost-tacky joint, a family of three sat at the booth next to mine. The place was mostly empty, so the fact that they sat as close as they could to me caught my attention.
Shrugging it off, I opened my book and started reading about reading comprehension passages while the family next to me engaged in soft conversation. The three of them obviously got along well, the parents asking the child about work and school. He was older, twenty-something, maybe thirty.
My food arrived to my table, I pushed the book to the side to be able to read while I ate. And then the awkwardness happened.
“We brought you to lunch to ask you a very personal question,” I overheard the mother say.
Of course, I stopped reading, didn’t move, and listened. Yes, I eavesdrop. Like a bandit. Don’t talk about anything you don’t want me to hear and blog about when I’m in the room. Nothing is sacred.
“Your father and I want to know why you haven’t been going to church since January.
Ooof. Awkward.
The poor son hesitated; I could almost hear the gears in his head coming up with an acceptable answer. You know, one of those responses that is vague enough to appease your mother, or at least to make her stop asking questions. Something that would hint that maybe, eventually, he’d do what she wanted. Before the poor guy could answer, Mom interjected, “We think your wife needs a therapist, and that’s why you’ve been missing church.”
WOW.
My chin still has a bruise on it from hitting the floor.
I think the number one and number two things a mother has no business in are her son’s church habits, and the sanity of his wife.
The son mumbled something, the dad noticed I had stopped reading and eating and that I was sitting on bated breath waiting for the reply. The conversation was then dropped to a level I couldn’t hear.
Sad.
I guess I don’t understand the stigma of church. I was raised in an open-minded, accepting household where my brother and I could make our own decisions about church. He and I have nearly opposite views on the subject, but no one seems to care. We follow our own happiness in the matter. We’re still close and talk about pretty much everything.
I can’t help but feel bad for that poor guy. He was obviously old enough to make his own decisions, but his parents felt they had the right and the power to make him do what they thought was right.
The part that really slays me though, is mentioning that the wife needed a therapist. Of course she’s nuts! She doesn’t go to church!
I often wonder if there’s this much pressure and ridiculousness about religion outside of Utah. Why do parents tell their kids they just want them to be happy, but when it comes down to it, that happiness has to be just a certain way?
I don’t think I’m bitter toward the Church, but as I get older, and as I hear about more instances like this, it’s getting harder to stay open-minded.
