Slightly Bitter and Single. Party of One.

For a long time I was a firm believer in the whole "age is just a number" thing when it comes to relationships. However, after some personal experience with the idea, I beg to differ. A little while ago I was dating a guy who was a good bit older than I. He was cute, sweet, and we had a lot in common....however....there was just a lack of that spark that you need in a relationship. At first I thought it was because of bad timing, however after some thought I realized that wasn't the case. He was just too old for me. We were at two different points in our lives, and I feel that after a while he realized that as well. He had experienced much more than I, and while he never made me feel young, the fact was that I WAS young compared to him. Luckily, we are still friends but we won't ever be more than that, and for good reason. I took this as a lesson learned and looked to move forward.

Now if we fast forward to today, I'm standing in a somewhat similar position. Sort of. 

A few weeks back a friend who I met in undergrad got in contact with me. We were in the same major and had a large number of classes together. I never thought of him as anything other than a friend, and that still holds true today. However, he has expressed an interest in me before, but I made it clear that I didn't see him in that light, and I thought he was cool with that. However, in recent exchanges with me he as made references to me being "the one" and "that girl" and not only is it really confusing since I've never dated this guy, nor have I led him to believe that I wanted to, but it's also really uncomfortable. He is being really adamant about taking me out to lunch, and I'm super reluctant because I'm very confused on his possible intentions. He's a good friend, but not only is he too old for me, but I'm just not attracted to him. I hate saying that because I know it sounds really shallow, but it's just not there for me. 

I'm so confused as to why a guy so much older than me can think that I would have something to bring to the table in a relationship. I don't mean this in a self-deprecating way, but the fact is that we are in two very different places in our lives. He has had a career, an ex-wife, and a life that has a much longer story than mine. My story, in a way, is only really beginning, and his has a good few chapters. Now, while that is not a bad thing, it just makes it very hard for me to understand why he could think that we would ever work. 

And now I have found myself getting a little frustrated not only with him, but at my dating karma as well. I've been single for a good while now, and I'm ready to date someone seriously. However, it's as if I am either interested in someone who has no interest in me, or someone is interested in me, but I do not feel the same way about them. It feels like I'm constantly just missing the mark in either direction, and after a while it starts to get to you. I feel that most single people are expected to be happy about being single. Now this is not to say I am not happy, because I am content with being single, it doesn't really bother me most of the time, but I feel like you are also expected not to care. It's kind of looked down on if you express that you want to be in a relationship. Some view you as being desperate or lonely, and I just don't think that is the case. It's just that it gets really frustrating from time to time. I start to wonder if it's something to do with me, and thus starts the lame, but usually short lived cycle of questions that include; Am I boring? Not attractive? Too fat? Not girly enough? Too shy? and yada yada yada. All the stuff in retrospect that I am dumb for thinking about, but I can't deny that I have my days where it just kind of stinks. 

So what's a girl to do? Your guess is as good as mine. 

“Suddenly she realized that what she was regretting was not the lost past but the lost future, not what had not been but what would never be.”- F. Scott Fitzgerald, A Nice Quiet Place

Brief Biking

This is short and to the point....

I busted out my bike today, which was much overdue. I only went 4 miles and it only took me a little under 30 min, but I forgot how much fun it is. The hills aren't a walk in the park, and after not biking for so long it was a little shock to my legs. However, on fairly flat stretches or down hill is such a good time. On flat ground I got up to 17mph, which isn't mind blowing, but it sure is fun!

I'm going to try and bike more and log some more miles. I could have gone longer today, but nature was calling and could not be ignored. Anyway, it's a particularly nice way to end the day and I hope to do it more.

The Duhks- Annabel

You can ignore the video and just listen to the audio.

Autumn is Coming!

I am such a autumn baby. I love just about everything that comes with the season; the food, the drink, the activities, the clothes, the colors, the trees, the smells. Everything! The weather here the past few days as been eerily fall-like and it's just put me in the head space of getting ready for it. I've been thinking about all the fun things I would like to do. I particularly would really like to finally get to go camping, and maybe even spend some time in the mountains in a cabin.  The beach is actually also really nice at that time. The water is a bit too cold, but it's still really nice.

There is just something about this season that consistently puts me in a good mood. I think it's mostly the scenery of the trees changing color, and a smell that come along with it too that I enjoy so much. It's just the perfect time to be outside just enjoying the world, and people around you. 

Not the best audio of this song, but whatcha gonna do?

My "type"

Here I am, circa 1am and I have yet to find any trace of sleep. It's always when you need it, that you can't find it, and when you don't want it, you have it.

Figures.

My mind has been kind of a swarming mess the past few days. I've been thinking about several different things independently, and simultaneously. I think I've made at least three different mental notes to write which, obviously, haven't happen. Mostly because when I actually get the time to write about them, I've lost most of my thoughts from earlier in the day. This is slightly funny considering I pretty much always have some sort of journal or notebook with me at all times for this very reason. I'm very much guilty of writing little lines or thoughts on a piece of paper or in my phone of something that has struck me during the day. Out of context, it would mean nothing to anyone who read it, but I use them later for my personal journal entry's or the ones on this page. However, I've somehow managed a way to be without any of my trusty journals/notebooks this past week....but such is life I suppose.

One of the several things in my thoughts lately comes from a conversation I had with a friend of mine a couple of nights ago. From time to time, we hum and haw about the current state of our love lives. Jokingly (or, on our really bitter days, not so jokingly) about how we will be single for the rest of our lives and die alone in a house full of cats. Blah blah blah, typical single girl complaints. We talked about how we both would like to be in relationships, but time is just not on our side right now. She has the problem of falling for people who are interested, but geographically unavailable, while I on the other hand...well...I have no one who's interested. Ha! I mentioned to her not being surprised by my singleness because I don't think that I am the kind of girl guys like to date. I've kind of always thought this, and it's never really bothered me. Just something I've kind of come to see as fact rather than anything else. I've done my share of dating, probably not as much as your average Joe, but I don't actually think about it all that much. She however was kind of taken aback by my statement which surprised me. She then proceeds to tell me how I'm the "kind of girl you marry".............

what does that. even. mean.?

So I've been fumbling with this for a few days off and on. What exactly makes someone the "marrying" type? Is it a personality trait? A way of acting? A point in time? Where does this idea stem from? Ha, in a way it felt like a nice way of calling me boring.

I've thought about how I would like to get married at some point. You know, if I find someone crazy enough to put up with me. lol I'm by no means ready for it now, but someday it's something I would like. So, for her to call me that now, when I'm single, and not even dating anyone seemed strange to me. I don't think I've looked at someone and thought about whether or not they were "marriage" material. To me, that's something that develops with another person. It's something that happens together. I could be wrong, and it could be that it's different for each person, but just an interesting thing to think about.


Random side note: looking for a new journal is not as easy as I would like.

"Three words that became hard to say"...

"I and Love and You".

I've been contemplating what it means to love someone and to be loved by another person; how you show your love and how you receive it.

I find it very hard to tell people that I love them. No matter how much I actually do, I always seem to have a hesitation to actually saying the words aloud to another person. I've never been the first to say it in a relationship (even though I probably felt it first) and I don't say it as often to my friends and family as I should or would like to.

Maybe it's the vulnerability that comes with it, and a bit of responsibility as well. You make yourself vulnerable to sharing a very strong feeling with another person, that (particularly at its first utterance) may not feel the same way. Then if you are on the receiving end of another's love, you gain a kind of responsibility to that person. You hold a part of them in a way, and you have to figure out the best way to be the carrier of that part.

I want to rid myself of this hesitation to saying I love you. Particularly since I feel that there are quite a few people whom I love that I've never told before, and I think one of the biggest regrets that a person can have is having loved someone but then never took the time to risk telling them. Also, for the future as well....If I'm lucky enough to find a guy to be with, whether it be temporary or forever, I want to be able to say it without feeling vulnerable, or without fear of what might not be said in return. Granted, on the flip side of that coin I know it won't be easy for me to do for vulnerability is not my strong suit.

Canon Logic- Mountain

Strayed...

I'm very much the kind of person that loves quotes. All sorts. Funny, inspirational, thought provoking, silly ect.... because of this I end up marking and highlighting my books from time to time. Highlighting things that stick out to me in a number of different ways.

So I thought I would share with you a paragraph from I book that read recently called Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.

In a short summary, the author, Cheryl Strayed, decides to hike the PCT after a string of hardships that happen in her life. The book chronicles her hardships in life before and during her time on the trail. It's very good if I do say so myself.

ANYWAY

In this section she is talking about the moment during her divorce where she is deciding on what she wants her last name to be...

"I pondered the question of my last name, mentally scanning words that sounded good with Cheryl and making lists of characters from novels I admired. Nothing fit until one day when the word strayed came into my mind. Immediately, I looked it up in the dictionary and knew it was mine. Its layered definitions spoke directly to my life and also struck a poetic chord: to wander from the proper path, to deviate from the direct course, to be lost, to become wild, to be without a mother or father, to be without a home, to move about aimlessly in search of something, to diverge or digress. 

        I had diverged, digressed, wandered, and become wild. I didn't embrace the word as my new name because it defined negative aspects of my circumstances or life, but because even in my darkest days-those very days in which I was naming myself-I saw the power of the darkness. Saw that, in fact, I had strayed and that I was a stray and that from the wild places my straying had brought me, I knew things I couldn't have known before." Pg. 96-97

Anyway, this bit stuck out to me so I thought I would share it. Take from it what you may, and I hope you enjoyed it. :)

Bloggers Block

To say that I've had writers block would be an understatement. I'm not sure if it's the mixture of being a bit busy with a side of some rather not so fun decisions that needed to be made, or if it's something else entirely. I can't count how many times I've opened a blank post, and just been at a complete loss as to what to write. It's not even that I haven't had things on my mind either. There has been quite a bit actually, but for some reason when I go to write, words just seem to fail me. I've even slacked on writing in my personal journal, which I write in fairly religiously. Maybe it's that my thoughts haven't been completely explored yet, and that's why I can't write. I haven't fully investigated them, and because I do not have full understanding of them yet, I am not able to write them down. Or I'm in denial...that's also an option.

But anyway, this has taken a very somber turn so let's turn it around with something completely irrelevant, shall we?

I've found lately that I kind of miss sharing my bed with someone. Not in a sexual way, but just having another person to lay in bed with. To have someone to wake up to in the morning. To have someone to curl up to in the evening. Is that strange? Fun fact: I love to be read to, and I love just laying in bed listening to someone reading a loud. That would be nice too.

This post makes no sense.

Video about woodworking which makes me want to learn even more than I wanted to before.

The Staves- Icarus ( Dead & Born & Grown)

Because they are awesome.