Labor Day Pains and Pleasures

So I had a crisis over the weekend. I am afraid to admit that I may have strayed from my Singlution.

On Saturday I went on my first official date with Abstinent Admirer. It was super fun, his sister and brother-in-law were hecka nice and I felt comfortable even though I knew nothing about football. Let me amend that last statement: I felt comfortable when we were all four together. I think that Abstinent Admirer (who now shall be upgraded to the name of "Sexless Suitor") prefers to spend time with me well chaperoned. I felt a little rejected that he didn't touch me at all. In fact, he made great effort NOT to touch me. His sister, through the course of normal social interaction touched me more than he did. I'm not taking about anything sexual here. Sexless Suitor has already laid down his no-sex card. I'm just talking about a hand on a shoulder, a gesture, a tap, a bump --- the normal things that happen when you're sitting next to a person or (gasp) lightly flirting. I think Sexless Suitor is terrified of touching me. And it kinda hurt my feelings. 

Between that and realizing the next morning that one of my roommates had unexpectedly skipped town, I feel a little rejected all weekend. My confidence was in the crapper.

So I had a mighty unproductive weekend. I called all my friends and told them the story of the evening, about how Sexless Suitor sat on the very far end of the sofa and I on the other. I told them about how I had to initiate a HUG at the end of the evening. I said I didn't know what to do! Does the man like me? Does he not like me? What is going on? How do I proceed? I felt at a total loss. I felt overwhelmedly confused. It had taken me so long to embrace his abstinence and now it appeared that I was going to have to embrace puritan standards of pre-marital conduct. Or maybe Sexless Suitor just isn't attracted to me at all? Excuse my language, but my little heart just spent 48 hours in a cluster fuck.

And then I went swimming, solo. I had planned on going with a friend but she was too tired and swimming in 68 degree water at 9pm does require some extraordinary willpower. So I just decided to go by myself. I was a little scared of jumping into the cold and dark depths by myself (this is an outdoor, natural water pool and you really don't know what is down there) but I just did it anyways. And once I was in the water the Singlution came flooding back to me. 

I remembered that I am fine on my own and that I don't need Sexless Suitor to build me up. His admiration is extra but I already admire myself. If I want to go swimming or go running or travel, I can do all those things on my own. And if I can't snuggle myself I can do other activities which reduce my craving for snuggling. And I remembered how much I enjoy my own life and being able to do things on my own and spending time hearing myself think. Until now I've NEVER in my adult life had so much freedom to do what I want when I want and to focus so much on myself. I am enjoying that for now, living my life with my dog and my house and my job. 

Going to the game with Sexless Suitor was a bonus because it was an experience I wouldn't have had on my own. The things that I most enjoy about Sexless Suitor have to do with our friendship. Yes, I am attracted to the man (which makes sitting on one sofa while he sits on another quite aggravating) but I am in a great part attracted to him because of our conversations and the things I learn from him and the way we seem to be perfectly matched on the strangeness scale. I don't have any peer-aged siblings so attending a football game with Sexless Suitor's functional family was an interesting thing for me to participate in. It was a new experience all around and a rather pleasant one. There were some awkward moments and some disappointing ones and some frustrating ones and for the most part I felt like a foreign exchange student the whole evening. But it was fun. It was a good experience. And that is the only thing I need to take away from it. If Sexless Suitor wants to ask me out again, I will certainly say "yes". I like the man. But I also have to accept that if I am going to get involved with a guy who hasn't had sex in 18 years, I am going to have to be patient. 

And its so much easier to be patient when I am busy swimming through my own life and jumping into my own unknown depths while he builds up the courage to hold my hand. 

My Holiday Card (in July)

I've been inspired by a great post over at The Spinster Chronicles. Spinster Leese wrote about receiving Christmas cards as a child and enjoying the updates from relatives and friends near and far and dreaming of writing her own one day. I enjoy this too. As a single person, it would be easy to think "Well, I've got nothing to write home about". But as a Singlutionary, I can't even wait for the holiday season. I am going to write my (summer season's greetings) holiday card right now:

Dear Friends and Family,

Its been quite a half year for the Singlutionary and I hope that your half year has been ripe with blessings as well. 

Singlutionary DOG is now eating a new kind of dog food which she much prefers and which is less expensive but just as nutritious. She escaped into the neighborhood three times this year and has not yet been run over by a Prius.

Meanwhile I went a got myself a full time job, installed two low flush toilets, built a chicken coop, picked out some young Singlutionary hens (with a little help from a friend) and met up with best-friend-since-kindergarten for a half day during which time we "ate and ate and then ate again" according to her 3 year old. I successfully got friends from another time zone to quit calling after 10pm (with a few exceptions of course). And I think (this may be premature) that my sister has forgiven me for whatever I did because she kindly allowed me to take her out for lunch and a margarita and to buy her a flamingo on her birthday. Haven't heard from her since. 

I welcomed a new roommate, met up with my mom in Canada, visited both my parents back in the homeland and will be attending the wedding of my cousin to "The Fanny Patter" next weekend. My (insane) ex-boyfriend quit trying to win me back by leaving kinkos-self-published books by his-truly on my doorstep or in my mailbox and he has finally been reported to the proper authorities by his other (ex) girlfriend. I attended a screening of the first full length movie I ever acted in and realized that I don't suck as much as I thought. I cut off all my hair and rekindled my love affair with water. I have not had sex this year and I'm not really bothered by this fact. Oh, and I started a blog.

Have a Singlutionary Summer!

Love, 

Singlutionary

OK. That was pretty cheesy.

But what is your list of accomplishments and new beginnings for the half year? What do you have to celebrate? What news do you want to shout from the rooftops? What have you overcome, overdone or overcooked since January 1st? What would your Summer Singlutionary card say?

Singlutionary Employment

For the first time in years, I have a full time job. For the first time in years, I do not work with total douche bags! I count myself super duper lucky.

Not only that, but today I realized how Singlutionary my job itself is. Let me provide some background on the new job: The job is in apartment management & leasing. I used to be a realtor, selling people homes, so this is a good transition for me. I get a steady paycheck but I still get to sell people homes, just apartments on lease instead of houses on a mortgage. 

I love love love my house. I realized this today. I don't have to pay a pet deposit. I'm not tied to a lease. I can paint the walls and plant a garden and I can park my car on the lawn and wash it. I change the oil in the driveway. None of these things are allowed at the apartment complex that I work at.

But I also miss living in an apartment. I miss the convenience, the simplicity. I miss NOT worrying about painting my walls or my garden or getting home in time to put the garbage out. I miss having a sense of community, of chit chatting with neighbors in the parking lot. I miss being around young single people.

Most folks who live in apartments in my city are young and single. Houses here are fairly cheap compared to other cities. So renters tend to be younger and childfree and single, more or less. 

This particular apartment complex is located in a part of town where fitness is king. There is a smoothie shop, bike shops, running shops and a big ole trail with plenty of eye candy in the vicinity. Its abs-a-go-go. And of course, its summer and everyone is working out their ultra buff bodies with the least clothing possible sticking to their sweaty frames. Kinda gross. Kinda awesome. 

Today, for hours, my sole view was of hot topless guys working out in the on-site fitness center. This is about as close to actual sex as I want to get these days and it counts as one of the major perks of my new employment.

Also, it appears that my co-workers are single. So far, neither one of them has mentioned a significant other. 

But the biggest change, aside from a regular paycheck, is that I'll be working with the public: The single, athletic, apartment renting public! There are fellow potential Singlutionaries everywhere. Because single people who can afford these apartments aren't sitting around waiting for a partner to provide them with the good life: They already have it. And single people who are so busy running the trail and swimming in the springs and biking the greenbelt aren't sitting around pining away for someone to make their life fun and healthy and exciting: It already is!  And if you're living the good life and enjoying your time in the city and on the lake, well, you're NOT going to be a desperate dater. Everywhere I turn there is Singlutionary (and fitness) inspiration. 

Which is not to say that just because you can't afford to live on the park, you're not Singlutionary material. There are Singlutionaries everywhere. But there are places that attract greater numbers of singles and places that attract greater numbers of people who are really living and enjoying their lives. The place I work is one of them. 

And, yeah, there is also free coffee/tea and soda AND a free massage chair. And a greenbelt view from the business center.

Oh bliss. Utter bliss. I work days in a bastion of Singlutionary-ness and I go home at night to my four bedroom house with the brightly painted rooms, chicken and vegetable filled backyard, an over 20lb dog who always gets dog hair all over the sofa. 

I truly have the best of both worlds!

True Love

One of my former lovers, Crazy Pot Farmer, is in the hospital with serious head injuries. This is how I found out: His cousin posted a bulletin on myspace asking people to pray for her cousin, Crazy Pot Farmer, who was, at the time, in critical condition (he is now stable although I don't know how extensive his head injuries may be). My sister saw his cousins post and forwarded it to me. So I learned from myspace that someone who I love had a brush with death and may or may not recover. But why do I feel glad to have been informed that Crazy Pot Farmer is in the hospital? How does my knowing his condition help anyone? He hasn't been a part of my life in a long time so what does it really have anything to do with me? Does this even really affect my life? Especially in comparison to the lives of his mother and the rest of his gigantic family who are deeply affected by this on a day to day, moment by moment level?

All of this made me think about relationships and about, well, love. Love is the underlying connector between people. When we talk about love we tend to talk about it in romantic terms or in terms of family. Love, in the context of non-family, non-romantic relationships seems watered down and not the "real thing". People talk about finding their "one true love" as if all the other love in their life was false. Especially when friends and lovers slip out of our lives, the love seems to become null and void, to fade in validity as time goes on. When friendships fade away we talk about the love in past tense: "We used to be friends. I used to love him." 

I would like to argue that we extend and empower our definition of love to include friendships, past and present. Even when there is no longer a practical connection, there is still love. I can love an infinite number of people but I can only keep in contact with a limited few. But that doesn't mean that I love the ones I fell out of touch with any less truly.

If I say, "I still love Crazy Pot Farmer", it sounds as if I am IN LOVE with him in this complicated way and can't move on. But that isn't the case. Crazy Pot Farmer and I had/have an on-again-off-again mutually abrasive friendship where we most of the time enjoyed annoying the crap out of one another. Like many friendships it was casual. We would connect every now and again when life threw us together. 

But the casualness of our relationship doesn't discredit the times we did connect or the lastingness of that connection. Crazy Pot Farmer, while crazy, is also one of my kindred spirits. It is rare to feel as if you really know someone at the core of who they are, to feel as if their soul and your soul walked out of all the things which usually bind us and went swimming together. When this happens craziness and compatibility and lifestyle don't matter because the soul knows nothing of socially acceptable behavior. I was never in love with Crazy Pot Farmer. We were/are friends with occasional benefits but there is still true love there.

The last time I saw him was at his mom's house. I was there visiting and he was there with his girlfriend. We were all swimming. He and I were polite socially but a little aloof (I'm sure he didn't want the girlfriend to know that we used to be lovers) until we bumped into each other in the garage. Nobody else was around and for a moment we exchange a few sentences about the house and a photo on the fridge from the old days. But in that 2.5 minutes we exchanged lifetimes of intimacy and friendship. On the surface our human mouths were moving and words were being exchanged. But underneath all that our souls were doing somersaults on the trampoline. And then we went back out into the real world and our souls went back into hiding. 

Just because Crazy Pot Farmer's soul and my soul are no longer practicing their synchronized swimming routine every week or that our bodies are no longer having sex every now and again doesn't mean that the connection is any less valid. Sex might be in the past tense now but our souls live on. Even if Crazy Pot Farmer's brain doesn't. 

A serious accident like Crazy Pot Farmer's is far more traumatic for the people who are a part of his daily life and who have been a part of his daily life for as long as he has been alive. His mother, for instance, raised him as a single mother from the time she was 15 years old. I am not trying to compare our little soul dance with theirs. I am just trying to say that the love which exists in the nooks and crannies of life isn't any less true than the love people share in broad daylight. 

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!

Singlutionary's New BFF

So I went and wrote a personals add for a new BFF: Singlutionary's New BFF. Kinda like Paris Hilton's New BFF except that I want: a man, a grown up, someone who likes trees and rocks and nature, has no boobs and might be interested in some physical affection. But the friendship comes first. I am following in the same vein as the blog I wrote about wanting to sleep with the Libertarian. 

Bosslady told me that the BFFs with benefits is what EVERY guy wants. She also told me that struggling to find peers and make new friends is one of those "welcome to adulthood" things. This was further reinforced when I went on CL to do some research and I found very few posts that were written in grade-7-or-above English much less someone I could really be friends with. 

So, I decided to post my own and see what happened.

I've had 10 responses in 5 hours! Most of which are either illiterate or creepy. Almost all of which are HILARIOUS!  I wish I could post some of the responses here but lets just say that one of the incredibly illiterate ones was written by an elementary school teacher who seemed very upset that some folks can't swim when he takes them out on his boat. I was disturbed that this gent is a TEACHER! 

Then there was a guy who wanted to take a hike on an "obscure" trail. Bosslady told me he might kill me and bury my body in the woods. 

The BEST one so far is addressed to: My Lovely Lady Lumps. It waxes on for eight paragraphs about a whole lot of nothing including the lad's former pot-smoking habits concluding that: "As long as you're not some puritanical bud-hater, we'll be fine."

I love Craigslist! This is the best entertainment I've had all week!