Reason #2 is that I don’t like to be so transparent about my life. I’d love to go back to the old days of writing thinly-veiled romantic fantasies but the idea makes me cringe even now. Cynicism or good judgment?

Reason #3 is that I’m secretly worried that my ex is reading this. Except that she’s probably not. And I’m not really so concerned about her anymore so much as what she represents. It’s been a year since the breakup and she is now a symbol for all the reasons I’m unhappy. Which is patently unfair to her but I think it’s ok for now as long as I don’t drunk dial her and tell her that. (Don’t worry, I deleted her number long ago. I can’t even remember her area code.)

So it’s been a year of being single (and a year-long dry spell, ahem). I’ve spent a few months of that moping and being a miserable mess. A few months doing the right things. And a few months pursuing the, uh, wrong kind of girl. And here I am, the week before Thanksgiving, tired as hell and wondering what it all means.

That being said, it’s been a marvelous year. One full of change and decisions and friends and stress. I don’t regret going through this.

I saw the movie adaptation of Eat Pray Love this weekend. The elevator pitch is that it’s a privileged New Yorker lady traveling to different parts of the world to find herself after her failed marriage. Gun to my head, I actually like the movie. But I understand all the criticisms. The main character just feels shallow, entitled and whiny; there’s a false sense of empowerment and feel-goods with no real advice for the heartbroken.

To me, the movie is high on the emotion and low in logic. You have to emotionally be at a point where you can tolerate listening to Julia Roberts live out beautiful travel fantasies and go on oddball spiritual journeys in order to deal with her divorce. I haven’t read the book but I have a strong gut feeling that the book does much better in fleshing out the characters and capturing the moments and the grittiness and moral ambiguity. The movie is a glossing over of the facts and its more of a fairy tale for the naive modern woman.

I did enjoy it though. I’m in a place where I can look back and see that it was a good decision to break up. Even though I was the one who got dumped, at some point each person has to decide to let go, to forge ahead on their own, to look after themselves first and trust that the other person and the rest of the world knows how to look after themselves. I’m glad that we broke up because things were already broken. Some of these things could be fixed trivial but others ran deep, deep into the structure and the foundation of the relationship. I am thankful for all the lessons I’ve learned as a result. Hence, it was enjoyable to watch a movie about a person breaking up and leading a fantastic fairy tale life, I’d like to believe I’ll have the same fairy tale one day.

It’s been about 8 months since we broke up. When people hear me mention my ex-girlfriend, they assume it’s far in the past. In a lot of ways, it is.

I asked a girl out the other day; first girl I asked out since I dated my ex. A disarmingly cute and creative girl that just charms the pants off of me (literally). I don’t know her that well, the chemistry hasn’t really been established between us but she’s beautiful both inside and out and distraction I would readily welcome. She hesitated in answering, for a variety of reasons. I think she hasn’t really looked at me in that way. I’d like this to be an easy and simple seasonal romance but things are not really set up to be that way. Playing with fire perhaps but I’m tempted to try asking her out again.

Sure, there’s the uncomfortable situation of never meeting any single girls but that’s an issue that can be addressed in due time. The important part is that I’m ok with being alone. I’m not standing at the precipice of a gaping void and wondering how I could ever hope to fill it.

I started counting calories again this week. It’s something I do because it helps me control my portions. It doesn’t work for everyone but it has had limited success for me. So I use it. 1450 Calories on Tuesday, 1700 on Wednesday (we were drinking shots), 1300 on Thursday. Not bad at all.

It’s made me realize that I’m happier when I’m left a little wanting. It’s ok to be a little hungry when I go to sleep because I’m trying to break my overeating habits and lose some weight. It’s ok to be single and looking because it keeps me on my toes, keeps me wanting to go out more and challenge myself to meet new people.

After every new post on that site, I feel like I could write an essay in response. Being that I am a hopeless, shy, and nerdy, I feel like I have tons to add to the conversation. In another life, I could be one of those angry Mormon mothers that sends hate mail to Dooce on a regular basis.

So@24′s subject matter stirs up this deep emotional response because it feels like I can almost reach back in time and yell at myself for being such an idiot. Maybe I haven’t made peace with the fact that I had to do things the hard way. I (usually) spare So@24 from my ranting comments but it depends a lot on how itchy my trigger finger is that day. This is probably what psychiatrists call “transference” although I prefer the term “self-loathing by proxy”.

Anyway, today he wrote about meeting a girl face-to-face for the first time after lots of talking online, going out for drinks with her friends and finally asking if he can kiss her.

I just wanted to say that the whole asking if you can kiss a girl is a great move. It’s an ice breaker for the physical stuff. It was probably appropriate for So@24′s situation because here were two people that knew each other well and previous signs indicated mutual attraction even if there was no obvious chemistry that night. Pros: She might say yes; it demonstrates politeness (chivalry?); you put your intentions into crystal-clear words; and the rejection is less harsh than if you just dived in. Cons: You might have to listen to her talk about how she just wants to be friends. You might get your feelings hurt but that’s a lame excuse because you’ve already spent the entire night checking her out, gradually letting your heart wander outside its protective cage of bone and on to your shirt sleeve. Are there other cons?

Oh course, this is one specific move on a whole spectrum. If you want to play it extra safe and sound really adorable, you could ask to hold her hand instead. If you want to be the strong, silent type, you could put your hand on her cheek and use your proximity and body language to convey that you’re requesting permission to dock. My previous go-to move was to say absolutely nothing and return home alone to either a) wallow in self-pity and the slow onset of sobriety or b) talk yourself into thinking you still have a chance with this girl and you haven’t been boxed into the dreaded Friend Zone.

I’m sure you all have your opinions about how to get things started physically. Comment away! Jack demands it!

The singer’s voice rasps through the speakers of my old Mazda hatchback; it’s a slow, distorted melody of self-torturing. I drive quietly and automatically, letting the orange streetlights strobe across the windscreen. She sits in the passenger seat, perhaps wondering why this other girl had such a grip on me.

“I got so jealous when she met someone else,” I volunteer.

She nods.

“Have I played you this song before? It’s my favorite song of the moment and I guess it’s appropriate. He’s toasting the girl that he likes and her new boyfriend. He’s devastated but he has no plans to get over her.”

More nodding.

What follows is a long silence. I don’t waste any more time trying to articulate my feelings; I let the song wash over me. The song grows in distortion, the rasping is replaced with an undignified wailing, violins enter and it becomes a cacophony.

“But… is she happy?”

There’s optimism in her voice; she expects me to wish the best for people. That’s not the point, is it? The point is I’m dying and this other girl is the opposite of dying. She’s oblivious to me. I’m torturing myself over her and I’m torturing my friend in the passenger seat and she’s too busy to even notice. Such imbalance should not exist in this world, things should be fair and maybe I don’t deserve to be happy but I wish she could feel just a slice of this. She should know, right?

I wanted to write and complain about girls but forget that. It’s not hard. It’s something people solve every fucking day and something they’ve been doing for millennia. If you think girls are hard then you should try blogging. That shit is hard.

I’m just gonna blurt it out: I am a master of hiding my crushes. It’s a skill I’ve perfected since my early childhood. As I learnt my ABC’s, I also learnt to love from a distance. The earliest crush I can remember was Tina; I was seven. One of the few other Asians at my primary school, she was one year my junior and nothing else about her remains in my memory. To be honest, I didn’t even realize I had a crush on her until, years later, I looked through my books and saw she featured prominently in my literature. She moved away before I turned nine.

There’s a fear that if someone should know about my crush, they would meddle. And there are very few people I trust to meddle. My best friend once turned to my then-crush and bluntly stated she should give me a blowjob. Right. Smooth. (In his defence, he was probably trying to sabotage this thing because I was being an absolute fool about it but do you see how this does not help with the trust issue? Good.)

But I hope I’ve turned a corner on this issue. All these years of fuck-ups and watching other people’s fuck-ups, I’ve realized one fundamental pattern: after a certain point, I am no longer a rational adult. I make stupid decisions but I’m smart enough to rationalize it all away. These bad choices just lead to a bigger hole and before you know it, I’m a lost cause.

There are two straightforward steps in fixing this problem of suffering in silence. The first thing is to ask other people for advice. The second is to actually follow it.

We all know people that only do the first part; they are megalomaniacs. These kinds of people will talk to you and only seek encouragement. If you try to disagree, they’ll just stop talking to you and find someone that agrees. Coincidentally, people with this personality trait have a habit of getting stuck in toxic relationships. I’ve certainly been guilty of it but I hope it was just an intermediary step in order to transition to the second part.

The second part is a toughie. You need trust and a few shots of bravery. Sweet, velvety bravery that goes down smooth. You need to understand that people on the outside see it so much clearer than you do but at the same time you have to make sure they have all the facts. It’s not a particularly easy job so it helps to have a large group of people to consult with: old friends, new friends, family, bartenders, members of your AA group, etc.

And what about those that are out to get me? How can I ever trust that there aren’t people out there to sabotage my happiness? All I can say to that is: haters to the left. I’m wearing the big-boy pants now and I need to trust my instincts about people. If they’re a bad influence then I need to just cut them out of my life.

I had a bad day at work today. It sucked and I was feeling low and lonely. I felt unattractive. On the bus ride home, I listened to Feist and finished my novel. I stormed into the supermarket and bought a tub of ice cream. I sauntered into my apartment and stared at the mostly empty bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon but I decided to stick to the ice cream. Then I slipped into sweat pants and I watched a pre-recorded episode of Top Chef. (Spoilers: Thankfully the lesbian couple did not get broken up and I did not have to reach for the Kleenex.)

And after all that, I was done. I had indulged in my bad feelings and made peace with them.

I snapped out of it and I cleaned up all the crap in my living room that silently encouraged me to retreat to my couch. I put on some Jay-Z and returned my living room to a state that I could be proud of. I flirted with a girl over IM and I put on some going-out clothes, returning my self-esteem to a state that I could be proud of. I went out the door and drove to a party where I knew nobody and I engaged people. I got someone’s digits. And slowly but surely, I felt better about myself.

And it doesn’t hinge around whether girls like me or whether my apartment passes muster. It’s whether I like me. Sometimes I don’t like what I can be but I need to remember that I can surprise myself too.

Also, I am totally getting a red-wine headache now.

I’ve been single forever. And I don’t mean like swinging bachelor single, the boring kind of single. When there is another warm body sharing my bed, it’s my MacBook Pro. It plays back episodes of 30 Rock, Flight of the Conchords, No Reservations and Top Chef. It makes me laugh but it doesn’t really laugh at my jokes nor does it provide me with backrubs and rambling anecdotes about the frenemies at work.

I’ve had friends comment about how non-plussed I am about being single. I’m not freaking out about girls, I don’t sniff about them and I much more readily incorporate them into my life as friends instead of more than friends (although sometimes “more” doesn’t actually mean more). I try not to even talk about girls, I always end up with my cards held close to my chest like I’m afraid something might happen if anyone knew my master plan.

The obvious truth is that I freak out just as much as any other single person. It’s part and parcel of the experience. I think everybody has voids in their life; places where we feel unfulfilled and empty, places that we want to enrich and fill with flowers, rainbows and unicorns. I think being single can be like taking a highlighter to these voids. But I certainly acknowledge that people in relationships continue to have these voids. I’ve seen couples that Eternal Sunshine refers to as “the dining dead” and I’ve seen couples that build on each other’s strengths and become greater than the sum of their parts. Being part of a couple changes the equation but it doesn’t remove those voids. Having someone to come home to doesn’t magically help you learn that musical instrument, write that novel or reconcile with that long lost family member but it certainly helps to have the right person around at the right time.

For a lot of people, being single is a problem to be solved but it’s rarely the most important problem.

My thoughts about singlehood aren’t particularly organised and I’m sure hypocrisy lurks in all the unswept corners but what I’m trying to say is that I’m ok with being single. I’m happy to work on my self-realisation alone, surfacing now and again to get help from a friend and going back to my work. I was always the quiet one in class.

Let’s just clarify that when I say “matches”, I mean “matches”. I don’t find out if someone ticked me for a second date unless I also ticked them, etc. The results line up with my expectations since I did nothing to really flirt with the women and any attraction that was there would be based on my looks (and my accent) alone. Whilst I am obviously a very handsome individual, there is no accounting for individual tastes and obviously the stars did not align this night. No harm, no foul.

So who did I tick? Like I said, there was no flirting going on and I ticked two girls for “second date” based on looks alone. We didn’t have any particular chemistry but I thought the risk was worth the reward. Actually, I lie; I also ticked the drunk girl just because I thought it would be funny. For friendship, I only ticked two women based on the fact we had a real conversation, one of them replied in kind. Who knows if a friendship will really start, maybe it’s just an easy way to signal “you’re a nice person” and nothing more will come of it. For business, I ticked no one.

In summation, I failed to play the game. There’s a reason they call it “speed” dating, you have to move fast. Flirting to me is a long, drawn out process filled with nuance and laughs and gradual exposure to one another. I am not accustomed to making a strong impression in eight minutes. My advice for speed daters is to go in strong and immediately flag your interest. This won’t appeal to everyone but it’s the only reasonable way of getting a stranger to agree to a 1-on-1 date with you. Try to work in some variation of the famous “nice shoes” line.

All in all, speed dating was actually pretty fun. It’s extremely low risk and great fun as long as you go in with the right expectations.

Lachlan: what is this ‘i have butterflies about tomorrow‘ crap?
me: lol u’ll see, it’s funny :D
Lachlan: :( but i wanna know now!
me: too bad. quid pro quo, clarice.
Lachlan: yess, squid pro ro

“Tomorrow” refers to today, of course. Let me just start with, I accidentally told my co-worker friend about my blog. I thought he already knew but he didn’t and he’s smart enough to google my name and find it. Let me just say this: You chew with your mouth open and the sound it makes is really gross. It’s a disgusting habit and now I don’t feel so bad about you finding my blog (assuming you did).

Table Number 1

I went speed dating tonight. Yes, you read that right. This co-worker friend signed up and told me to join him so that a) he’d get a referral discount and b) he’d have moral support and c) he’d have a ride. Maybe I got totally used but it was a good excuse to try something new. I bet a lot of my friends would not have the balls to go speed dating with me.

We arrived early, a dimly-lit sports bar in West Seattle. I collected my name tag and watched the organiser shuffle papers. We were past the start time of 7:30pm and 6 guys had shown up and zero women. I was worried that I’d have nothing to blog about and the organiser was worried he’d paid for all of this and wouldn’t be able to collect a dime. He went over to a table of two girls and started chatting to them.

Nervous Guy came over to us. He was visibly outraged that the organiser had resorted picking up women in this bar and he would have none of it. Later on, he had a private conversation with the organiser and demanded his money back. He smelt a scam and he left in a huff.

Well, Nervous Guy, I can tell you that this is a classic example of when people talk about self-sabotage. First, the night only cost $35 which is considerably less than a first date with most women. Second, those two girls at the bar agreed to join the speed date and they were actually really great to talk to; so it’s kind of insulting that you’d dismiss them just because they had not agreed to this event in advance and paid their dues. Thirdly, all the other women arrived after you left and it was an evening of 10 guys and 10 gals.

My name tag

I can tell you that it’s just like meeting people at a party. You chat, exchange tedious banter about work and hopefully strike on a conversation topic that’s actually worthwhile. I have nothing bad to say about the women I talked to. The main reason is that it would be mean and they were very nice people, some of whom I’d even tick for “2nd date” or “friendship”.

I spent 8 minutes talking to 8 of them (the catch is that we don’t get to meet all 10 unless we take the initiative, I didn’t). One was, uh, drunk. One was kinda withdrawn. The others were very normal people and one was a brunette with kinda-geeky glasses and Ingrid Michaelson started playing whilst I was talking to her. (Yes, Diana now makes kissy faces whenever I mention Ingrid and it’s probably a good sign she’s mainstream now that I can hear her in sports bars.)

The night went really well. I had a lot of fun having 8 “first dates” with these women I’d probably never have met otherwise and I would recommend this to anyone that wants to do something a little different and doesn’t come in with too many preconceptions about who they might meet.

Some tips:

1. You will have the same conversation over and over. Don’t be afraid of repetition. It’s fair game to re-use an ice breaker.
2. Don’t ignore a woman because she’s unattractive. Be a decent human being and just talk to them, you might learn something, asshole.
3. You will be exhausted after 4-6 of these. Expect the last few “dates” to be kind of sloppy and half-assed.
4. I think you could actually survive this without a friend. Bond with someone on the same team early in the evening and share war stories afterwards.
5. Don’t be drunk unless you’re hoping to attract someone that likes drunk people.

UPDATE: Did I find Ms. Right? Find out in the aftermath of my speed dating. (No, I did not)