Just another sad love song rocking my brain...

I'm not sure how much to write in this post, because it's something I've written about before, and the thoughts haven't really changed.

Suffice to say, I met a girl, thought it might go somewhere, it didn't.

People often characterize me as negative, or pessimistic, or even depressed. But I'm only those things when I have reason to be - when things aren't going well, when there are things in my life that I wish were different but haven't figured out how to change. When it looks like things might get better, I'm hopeful and optimistic - but when they don't get better, and when they go back to where they were before, I'm more unhappy, because I've gotten a glipse of hope, a taste of what could be, only to have it not happen.

I feel like there must be something about me that separates me from pretty much the rest of the world. Most of my friends, coworkers, ect have found someone, and those who have had it end have generally found someone else pretty quickly. I, on the other hand, seem to have an anti-woman gravitational field. Dates in my life are rare, and go nowhere. I find myself looking at couples - at the store, driving in their cars, wherever - and wondering why I can't be a part of something like that. I don't believe that humans are meant to go through life alone, but that seems to be my destiny.

For most of the goals I've had, there has been pretty clear things I do that produce the desired result. Need to lose weight - eat fewer calories, burn more calories. Need to save money - earn more, spend less. But when it comes to dating, there doesn't seem to be a simple formula.

There are usually two pieces of advice I get. The first is to improve my appearance, and that's probably good advice. While I've lost a lot of weight from where I was, I'm still a few pounds overweight by BMI standards, and I plan on going back to watching what I eat more carefully. I also am not very muscular - my arms have been described as "spindly" - and while I've started doing some strength training, I obviously need to work out longer and harder. I currently do about 2 hours a day at the gym - hopefully I can bump that up to 2.5 or more, but I fear that I am just too weak to put in the time that I need to put in to be attractive. And can I really blame women for not wanting to date a guy who doesn't care enough about himself and his health to put in the time and work to be healthy and in good shape?

The other advice I usually get is to "be more confident", which to me is like telling someone with cancer that they need to "have less cancer". Confidence isn't something I can will myself to have. In reality, it's not something I should have - I'm a failure at dating, and when you think about it, if humans have one goal on earth it's to propagate, and I'm failing at that. I've had the same job for years and don't have much likelihood of moving anywhere anytime fast, my net worth is barely positive, I dropped out of a graduate program because I was unwilling to put the time and effort it would have taken to finish, and I'm sitting alone on a Saturday night writing about my life on my blog. I don't really have a whole lot to be confident about. If I was confident, it would be a sign of insanity, because I'd be ignoring the reality of my life.

But could I fake being confident? Probably not. I wrote a while back about my thoughts on using "The Game", and it still pretty much holds true. I don't really want to start hitting on random women in bars, I don't want to be a jerk, and I think there has been so much coverage of the ideas that most women are wise to it anyway. It probably wouldn't hurt to force myself to talk to more strangers, and it might make me a little more comfortable around new people, but I feel like I'm not going to be more confident until I have something to be confident about, and I'm not going to have something to be more confident about until I'm more confident.

I often think the best thing to do is to give up on dating - delete my profile from the couple dating sites I use, to tell myself anytime I see an attractive women that I have no hope with her, and otherwise give up - focus my energy on work, on working out, on making money, on my ebay and hamfest business. But I have just enough hope to think that there might be something out there, and that usually just leads to disappointment.