The No Romantics

Let's see, what have I talked about lately? Finances, check. Teeth, check. Finances, check. Concerts, check. Burglary, check. Finances, check. Cat, check. Condo, check. Finances... boy, I sure talk about that a lot. Well, that seems to cover all the usual topics then, I guess I have nothing to write about... oh wait, there's one continuing topic I haven't brought up in a while. Or rather, whined about in a while: romance. Or rather, lack of romance.

But really, if the details of my current financial struggles are getting tiresome - and they probably are, especially when you consider how well off and fortunate I actually am despite things currently being tight - then surely more complaining about my loneliness and (seeming) inability to (do anything to) find a companion must be reaching the point of driving off some of you, my readers. Certainly some of my friends have started declaring that they've given up, since I never try following any advice or do anything else to try meeting people, they're not going to offer any more help. And I don't blame them, even I get tired of myself on this subject.

Actually, I've been avoiding writing about it, partly from lack of anything new to say, and partly because I keep putting such posts off, thinking, "well, I have to write about this other topic first, so I'll save it for a later post." If you look back, you'll see that before my late January post about Friendster, prompted by spam messages there, the last time I wrote about this was over a year ago, when I did have a tiny bit of honest activity on my Salon Personals account. In fact, I think I never even wrote about how some time late last summer, I think, Salon changed to a different personals service that is much less useful than the Spring Street Networks service they had before - for example, without paying for a membership, I could not search any area smaller than the entire state of Washington. That prompted me to finally sign up for Yahoo Personals, which like Spring Street Networks does offer extensive search features for free and only charges for sending messages; Yahoo even emails me a weekly summary of likely matches. Of course, I still haven't tried contacting anyone, even though I've seen a few possibilities.

parkbenchzine will be pleased to know that my friends John and more particularly Elizabeth (John's girlfriend) have been urging me to go to a speed dating night. I'm still reluctant to do so, but it's hard to argue against the fact that I would meet and talk with a bunch of women new to me and outside my usual circles. My current excuse is that these events cost around $35 to attend, although that's a weak excuse as I could certainly manage that if I wanted to. Another semi-plausible out is that now I should wait until after my operation in June so that that stress and recovery is out of the way, although it's not like there's any real reason to avoid speed dating beforehand. Both this and making better use of my internet personals are matters to address with the advice about "living courageously" and avoiding procrastination that I mentioned recently, although as always it's easier to recognize bad behavior than to change it.

Finally, it occurred to me recently that I really ought to sign up to volunteer for KEXP, as a fairly obvious way to get out and meet people involved in two things I love, music and that particular radio station. That at least would be getting involved in an activity that I'm interested in for its own sake, not just to meet women, and that's also free to join, not to mention also helping out a cause I believe in. I'll have to fill out the volunteer form later this week; I'm only putting it off now because it's getting late (rather later than the time stamp on this post would indicate), and I'll want some time to think about "relevant experience and reasons for wanting to volunteer," just to get the phrasing right.