Seeing Singlutionary

I've been more or less absent from blogging for over a year now. And although, during this time, I very much wanted to write, wanted to continue to participate in the happily single online community -- I also felt like I had nothing to say.

Either I had nothing to say, or I couldn't figure out what to say.

Writing stopped feeling cathartic because suddenly, being single & happy was, well, boring. I was content. My issues weren't around being single but around working out other kinks in my life.

And, for part of the past year I was not single. I was unhappily coupled, trapped in a strange relationship that I have no idea how I wound up in. It was a friendship gone awry which did teach me a few things about myself that I wasn't aware of: That I am seduceable despite my better intentions, that I am ambitious beyond my wildest beliefs and that I am incompatible with a broad range of personality traits which include heavy drinking, annoying questions and general neediness.

I tried to ride out the relationship with grace in order to save the friendship and failed.

It just wasn't something that I wanted to write about. Especially knowing that my blog would be read by said love-disaster.

A good portion of the year has transpired since that relationship came to a close and I am beginning to experience new revelatory interactions which might result in something more than a post saying "I'll be back soon".

I've also been blessed with many free books which need to be reviewed.

So, tonight, this Friday night, three months after my last post, I am finally on that long awaited date with my blog.

I could be on a date with a man. I have a few prospects, all of which are promising both physically and intellectually. But I am not. I am at home, being the homebody that I am and grateful for this time to jump back into the Singlutionary world.

Even though I suspect that I will not feel single much longer. Because, I have now at my disposal a growing community of smart, funny and interesting men.

Being without men was the only thing that was an issue before. Not in a romantic or even sexual way (although missing sex and intimacy was definitely an issue at times) -- but in some kind of yin/yang balance. I need men in my life just as I need friends with various perspectives and upbringings in my life. I need that male perspective and -- to be quite honest -- the masculine quality in general.

Some of the best times I had this year were with men who I am not romantically involved with -- I hiked to the top of Angel's Landing in Zion and spent a week in Chicago discussing Shakespeare with my Comical Cousin and a week ago today I spend the day hiking outside of Vegas to a delicious hot spring with (an admittedly sexy) Future Fed. And lately Tall Turtle has been buying me beers and generally showing me a good, laid back time (OK, so there is obviously some potential romance there).

But, in general, I think I've finally learned how to be friends with men. And it is a great experience and fills the place in my life that was made empty when my female friends all defected to marriage and babies.

And this blog, my Singlutionary life, is here on Friday nights when the best thing to do is check up with all the wonderful single people out there and their creative, interesting, engaging lives which are so full and joyful and positive despite being considered, by many of our culture, to be missing their "other half".

Bored and Boring (Another Toilet Story)

Tonight I was going to take out my toilet, replace the toilet shutoff valve and the hose and then tomorrow I was going to put in the new toilet. This is the last of 3 toilets which I am replacing in my house. The other two replacements were a pain in the ass and a learning experience and are now gleaming white monuments to water conservation. 

This last toilet is my toilet: My daily flusher. It is a vintage throne from the 1970s with a giant tank, a perpetually stained seat and a permanent water ring in the bowl. It also spontaneously gurgles and gushes due to slow leak from the flapper that I haven't fixed because I've been planning to replace it every weekend for the past 5 months. My toilet was also going to be (once upon a time) the guinea pig toilet. It was downstairs, so if I did something wrong (as everyone seemed to think I would), the water would leak out onto the cement slab and the not down into the kitchen. It was also the hall bathroom so if I screwed it up, I could use the upstairs toilet until I found an affordable plumber. 

But when I set out to begin this toilet adventure, I found that the little valve behind the toilet that shuts off it's water was rusted. In order to replace it, I would have to turn off the water to the whole house. That could be a disaster. I didn't know how long it would take for me to replace the little shutoff valve and with 4 women in the house, all of whom eat are eaters of vegetables, it wouldn't be long before there was a major stinky meltdown mess worthy of its own reality TV show in the house. 

So, on this fine Friday night, I was getting excited about my date with Mr. Toilet. I went out to the street to turn the water off to the house. It took me a while to unearth the shutoff valve because it had gotten buried under dirt but I got to it. And I turned it. But it wouldn't turn all the way off. Its rusted just like the one inside. I called the city and talked to a fellow who thought I was a little stupid. He told me to put WD 40 on it. He also told me that that valve is my responsibility, not the responsibility of the city. I sprayed some lube on it and decided to wait until tomorrow.

So instead of spending a perfectly good Friday night on a perfectly productive plumbing project, I am sitting around in pajamas. It is only 6pm. Other homeowner projects on my list include working in the backyard (which ideally utilizes daylight and requires getting free woodchips from the city which are only available on weekdays), painting (which requires sanding and creating a giant mess which I am not ready for), more plumbing stuff (which, again, requires shutting off the water) and getting a big girl bed (which is the future topic of a long overdue blog post). 

It is Friday night and thanks to some rusty valves, I have nothing to do. 

There is no word from Teapot who seems to be uninterested in traditional dating schedules (I can't blame him) and who has also explained to me that he is "Type B" and I am "Type A". He pointed out that Type As get bored but Type Bs are OK no matter where they are.

I get bored a lot. 

But life isn't boring for long. Even while I was writing this post I talked to one roommate about going to a movie and my fellow Singlutionary, Handy Woman called. My parents called too.

*If you haven't yet entered my this week's giveaway remember to post a comment before the end of the day on Sunday. And never fear for there are many more giveaways to come.

My Personal Singlution

Before I started this blog in January of this year, I had spent the 10 months prior in my own personal hell. It was a hell of transformation and while I did not survive unscathed, I did survive it.

I'm not a religious person but I am a faithful one and I put a lot of my hopes and dreams into things I can't see or touch. I have faith that I am doing the right thing, that I will be led in the right direction, that people are inherently good and seek to do good. I had faith in my pursuit of an acting career, in starting over in a new city, in saving trees, in telling stories through film, in my friends which I consider my family. Before last year, I'd lost faith in various causes, organization, processes (the government, for example) but never had a loss of faith cut so deep to the core of who I am. What was this crisis or crises? What is the story that led to the Singlution? There is no way in heck that I am able to recount that hell in a mere blog post. But what I can say is this:

I am a different person than I was a year and a half ago. I am a different woman than I EVER was. People keep growing and changing in tiny ways all the time but if you've ever experienced an avalanche in your life you'll know what it is to wake up one day and not know who you are. 

For many days I woke up and I couldn't recognize myself. Who was I without my sister? Who was I without my best friend? And what had happened to the man that I truly truly thought I was going to marry and had already sacrificed many aspects of myself for? And worst of all, what was I going to do with my life if I wasn't going to be an actor anymore? What was my calling and why did the calling that I had placed so much faith in seem to leave me high and dry? Why was I exhausted? Where was my enthusiasm and joy? What had happened to my youth?

These days I wake up and I've gotten used to the new me. I still feel heavier than I used to (both in my body and in my soul) but I know that in time that heaviness will transform into groundedness and I'll be back to my sprite-like ways. 

Tonight, I socialized for the first time since I became the Singlutionary and started writing this blog (at which time I finally began to understand the post-crisis me). I didn't think of this evening as a test in any way: I just knew that I had things on my calendar which I had committed to doing despite feeling rather ambiguous about them (as I do with most public interactions these days). If this evening were a test, however, I passed with flying colors which means is that I am getting confident in my own skin again, that I have gotten to know myself well enough to stand on my own two feet and not shake in my boots.

I attended two functions tonight. The first one you can read about below. The second one will have to wait for another post.

Function 1: A friend's birthday party. This friend actually lives in my neighborhood but we rarely see each other. We met through a group I led when I was still a realtor and our main common ground is environmentalism, mainly personal sustainability (not using throw away stuff, composting, recycling, etc). Little was I to know that there were three tests waiting for me at this event:

Test 1: Being surrounded by enviro people and not feeling alienated. 

I used to be a pretty hard core environmentalist. And then I lost faith in environmentalism. I still am an environmentalist except I no longer wear my green on my sleeve. I ignore a lot of bad things that go on in the world and try and do my best but I accept that I am a human being and that other people breathing and eating and farting on this earth are human beings as well. But the super-earth-conscious-crunchy-granola-activist community used to be MY community. I used to be one of them. And I'm not anymore. I always looked a little mainstream so sometimes I would see real hippies quietly passing judgement on me because I wasn't patchouli smelling enough to really understand. Oftentimes recently I've passed judgement on liberal enviro folks for what I consider to be uber-negative/never-good-enough thinking. 

There were plenty of moments tonight when I could have felt frustrated or where I could have passed judgement and thought "that kind of alienating attitude is what is holding us back". But instead I just thought: "Gosh, its good to be back with my people, hearing them talk about these things. Its good to remember those times and to know that this community still exists and that I am still here on the periphery of it. I enjoy the periphery."

Test Two: Sizing up Skinny Enviro Landscaper and then Letting Him Go

When I was more at the center of the environmentalist community, I was always trying to find a fellow treehugger for a mate. I thought we could get together and hug a tree so hard that we would conceive and give birth to our own tree offspring and be a true forest family. I was desperate to find someone who loved the earth as much as I did. And I acted crazy because of it. I let lots of hippie artist types freeload off my spirit, my money, my time all because I so desperately needed to be loved and acknowledged by the activist world. Anytime I met a guy who was single and who was an activist I fell in love with him. And they never liked me, never were interested in committing to me. The thing about activism is that it has its own culture of stars and status and since my job put me close to these heroes at the center, other people wanted to be close to me because through me, they could get access to these treehugging stars. Once, I thought this giant peace dove making artist was going to confess his love to me but instead he confessed his love of my boss to me. Lets just say that I never need to have that experience again. 

Tonight, when I found myself talking to a young-ish/seemingly unattached/possibly straight eco landscaper my old habits came back to me. I started sizing him up, trying to figure out if he might/possibly/maybe be interested in me, etc. And then I took a step back, looked at myself and laughed. What did I want with this skinny landscaper with bad posture who drinks smoothies every day and waxes on about the detriments of compostable disposable cups. Nothing. Nothing aside from pleasant conversation which for me was entirely nostalgic and enjoyable in-so-far that it never happen again. 

Test Three: Seeing the guy-I-though-was-bi (and was just plain ole gay).

I had an uber crush on this man when I first moved to this town. He looked like Jeff Goldblum. He was the interior designer for a restaurant I was working at and although years my senior, he was an artist (ahem. dysfunctional freeloader) and he could relate to me (ahem. immature). Anyways, I saw this guy come in and recognized him but at first I couldn't really put my finger on it. I thought he had skipped town or got sent to jail for a longer stint so I needed to be convinced that it was really him. He'd also aged in three years from looking 45ish to looking 50ish. And he is still hot and still charming and still throws off my gaydar completely.

In the past, I would have felt so humiliated by my previous attraction to this man and equally so angry at him for being such a self-centered dysfunctional in my life. But instead I was entertained. I doubted that he would recognize me and if he did I wasn't afraid to interact with him. But I did enjoy observing him and trying to see what clues I missed, not to his sexual orientation, but to his level of sanity/functioning. I decided to size him up and see what I saw in him now that I'm older and wiser. Conclusion: I can't blame myself for being attracted to him. But the red flag was in his posture. He is very tall, so its hard to notice but he betrays his confidence outward charm by a certain crookedness in the way he walks. Note to self: Start noticing posture when sizing up sanity levels in strangers.

So an event that could have beaten the stuffing out of me merely sent me home with several light observations which, although based on where I've been, should serve me well wherever I am going.

Friday Night with the Singlution

I love being the Singlutionary. So the fact that I don't write as often as I used to isn't because I don't want to: It is because there are other things that I want to do more right now. Tonight is Friday night and I thought I'd sit down for my weekly dose of Singlution. It feels good to check in and unwind with the wonderful world of singleness after almost a week's absence. 

I always find myself in a quandary at the end of the week. I am always so busy pushing through each day trying to get things done that when Friday night arrives, I don't really know what to do with it. I don't want to date and the rest of my social circle does (or is married or in a long term relationship) so I am usually on my own. I've never really minded because by the time Friday rolls around the last thing I want to do is be out in public dealing with people.

Tonight I went to the gym to swim. I've been once before on a Friday night thinking it would be dead but both times there have been plenty of people there. The myth that "Everyone is out having a great time with their significant other on Friday night" is a myth after all. I am not the only sane single swimmer in the universe! I guess my pre-singlutionary self would have thought that I was a bit of a loser for swimming solo on a Friday night. But that thinking is now so weak and lame to me. I love swimming and this week I didn't get to do it at all so if I am going to do something good on a Friday night why WOULDN'T I swim? Why would I torture myself by NOT swimming? 

Swimming on a Friday night is great when I haven't been able to get to it all week but blogging on Friday night seems entirely appropriate and perfect. I think I'll make a habit of spending Friday night communing with my single online community. Honestly, there isn't anything else that I would rather be doing!

So, dear fellow Singlutionaries, what do you choose to do on Friday night? Do you feel like a loser or like a champ when you spend Friday night on your own? I'd love to find out all the diversity of highly anticipated Friday Night activities!

And, before I head to bed, I'd like to offer a belated THANK YOU to Susan Walsh over at Hooking Up Smart for complimenting me with a "best of the singlutionary" style post. If you're in college, female or need a couple boosts of confidence and humor to get you through the week, subscribe to this blog!