Yet another post where I contemplate single-hood...

So I have this coworker who has been known to complain when women talk to him, because he didn't like being distracted and didn't have time for it. A few weeks ago, he announced that he has a girlfriend.

I've heard people say many times that you meet someone when you are least looking for it, or when you've stopped looking. I don't have any scientific proof of this, but there seems to be plenty of anecdotal evidence that it's the case.

And in some ways it makes sense. Being single and being desperate about trying to attract someone is sort of a downward spiral - you feel lonely (and thus not too good about yourself) and seek someone out. You fail, you get more desperate, and as someone who is desperate you become less attractive to members of the opposite sex, because few women (or men) see desperate as an ideal character trait. Nobody says "he's so dreamy, he just exudes desperation". If that was the case, I'd have to beat the women off with a stick. So the trick is to become comfortable with the idea of being single, to be OK with the idea that you may be on your own for a while, but that you can handle that.

So I won't dispute the idea. The problem I have with it is a lack of an easy way to apply it. You can't really tell yourself "I'm happy with being single" and have it become true. I've tried, but I'm a horrible liar, so I didn't believe it.

More practically, the solution is probably to do a bunch of stuff so that you are busy enough not to care about being single. Of course, if you are the kind of person who is chronically single, chances are you don't have a huge social circle or an outgoing personality, so that limits some social activities. I try to take and to create opportunities when possible, but I still don't have as active a social life as I'd like to, and I'm not sure how to change that.

I have noticed that there are handful of things I find myself telling myself that it's not worth doing, and the fact that I'm single is usually one of the excuses I've made - for not traveling, for not fixing up my house, for not using my grill more (because who wants to bbq alone). I do sometimes wonder if taking a vacation would be a good idea, but I'm not big on meeting new people, I hate spending money on travel (especially when I've got nearly a quarter-million dollars worth of debt to pay off), and I can't really think of anyplace I want to go. Plus, I don't really like being alone with my thoughts.

There probably are a ton of things I can do that fall into the "keep me busy" category - work more, go to the gym more, read more, clean up the mess that is my house, start playing drums again. These are solitary things that won't help me meet people, but do at least occupy my time, and some are enjoyable. There are also a handful of things I could probably do that have a very slim chance of putting me in contact with someone date-able, like starting another graduate program (ah, the perks of working at a college - free tuition) AND would occupy my time.

So I probably should try to expand my horizions, if I could find a horizon that I want to expand into. But I'll probably keep checking match.com weekly, even though it usually just depresses me when I've flicked through 10 pages of matches and can't find anyone who seems like a match.