Valentine’s Day. It’s finally here.

As a person who’s been single most of my life, I’ve never been particularly bothered by Valentine’s Day. It is what it is, just another day.

I was never one to get worked up about what the day is supposed to be, supposed to mean, should be, what supposedly should happen on it.

Some people fall into a trap of reading messages into Valentine’s Day. They start thinking, “There’s something wrong with me if I’m not in a relationship.” Some people start believing, “If I’m not part of a couple, I’m a lesser being.”

I think that’s self-destructive foolishness. Other people can get upset and bothered when things aren’t the way they think they “should” be; I learned along ago that expectations are the road to disappointment and pain.

Nonetheless, this year’s run-up to Valentine’s has disturbed me.

Over the past couple years, I’ve had a growing disdain for all things romantic, in particular anything to do with weddings or marriage. I’ve grown to loath it, sneer at it, just plain hate it. I’m back to a place of bitterness and anger I haven’t visited in a very long time.

I positively hate watching TV and seeing loving couples, portrayals of loving marriage, new marriage, the lead up to marriage, the aftermath, the honeymoons and anniversaries and pregnancies — any of it. All of it. I hate it and the more I see it the more I hate it.

What is the approach to Valentine’s but one big portrayal of romantic bliss? “Look how happy they are, buy our product and you’ll be happy to.” Whether it’s a kiss beginning with Kay or the latest product from the sex-obsessed minds at K-Y, the propaganda is everywhere.

In normal times, when one of these messages stirs the cesspool in my heart where romance once lived, the sludge settles back to the bottom relatively quickly, leaving me the dirty-brown mire which has come to mark my existence. But at this time of year, the septic mélange is constantly stirred, the anger, bitterness, hate and all their negative kin constantly boil and churn like one big shit stew that never finishes cooking.

In my wildest imaginings, I never thought I could be this old and single, never thought I’d never know love…. And, frankly, at this point, I don’t think it’s worth knowing.

Valentine’s Day can neither come nor go soon enough. It’s a dark-chocolate, explosive-diarrhea smoothie I’m sick of having forced down my throat.

Drink up, young lovers.

And, oh yeah, Happy Valentine’s Day.

Posted: February 14th, 2010 under Blogging, Life Journals.
Comments: none

On last night’s CBS Evening News, Steve Hartman did a story on a 78-year-old blind man who lives in a small town (only 1 million people!) in India. This man lives in a house with four generations of his family. They share one bank account. Even when he goes to work grinding flour, some family member is always following and watching to make sure he is okay, even if he does not know it.

Toward the end of the story, Hartman suggested to the man that in another country he could well be alone and fending for himself. The old man replied:

And I would ask myself, “What’s the use of having a family if when I need help I get shooed away like flies from milk?” What kind of family would that be?

I have some supposedly “Super Christian” relatives who could well ask themselves that question.

Indeed, “What kind of family would that be?”

Posted: January 26th, 2010 under Blogging, Christianity, Current Events, Life Journals, Religion.
Comments: 1

Ah, another in my long sub-genre of “Why I am not writing” writings. Irony appreciated.

I wrote the original draft of this article in March of 2009 — nearly a year ago. The opening paragraphs read:

It’s not a matter of writing but not posting, which I sometimes fall into — I haven’t been writing at all. Period.

It’s not writer’s block. I think of plenty of things to write, I’ve simply let them flit away. And while it’s not unusual for me to stop writing for 2 or 3 months on occasion, this is something altogether different.

(As a free aside: anyone who tells you “there’s no such thing as writers’ block” is full of a bovine byproduct which prize-winning gardens find extremely nutritious.)

What happened to me? What drove me from the keyboard, the blank piece of paper, the written word? If the title of this blog article didn’t clue you in, allow my younger self from a year ago to do so:

I got my heart broken around the mid-point of (2008). Over the last two years or so I could have had no more graphic a demonstration of why I gave up on romance. I tried to “hang in there, baby,” tried to “soldier on,” even limped into September, but I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t go on-line at all for nearly 4 months. Didn’t even turn on the computer for nearly three months. It had become a source of pain I meant to avoid at all cost. Even now I am trepidatious at venturing into cyberspace. There’s no call for it. I assiduously avoid anywhere she might be. I know she has no intention of contacting me in any way. But still. That instinctive shying away, as if to avoid touching a deeply bruised area, remains.

She broke my heart, she broke my blog. (She broke a lot more, but that sounded like a pithy title to me….) I don’t blame her. It’s all on me — as usual. If I was any good at this stuff, I wouldn’t be 40 and single. My mistake was answering when hope knocked. The biggest mistake of all was loving to begin with. (I’d like to think if there’d not been history between us, I wouldn’t have fallen for it… but I know what a fool I am.)

Looking back, it seems ridiculous that “I couldn’t take it anymore,” ridiculous to have feared the computer, to have not even turned it on for months… but there it is. And here I am… still thinking of things to write but doing nothing… still dreaming futilely… still wondering what I can ever do to be all right.

As I concluded a year ago:

Though I have started turning on the computer again, and even dipping my cyber toe into the bit streams, writing is something I have completely fallen out of. If only love were so easy to leave.

Posted: January 25th, 2010 under Blogging, Life Journals.
Comments: 1

My first article after moving this blog from JoeUser to here proclaimed, “Welcome to the new blog, same as the old blog,” but it’s not the same blog, is it? The articles are shorter, more facetious, less often updated, and (almost counter-intuitively) far less personal.

I believe it all comes down to the difference between being out here on my own versus the community atmosphere of the hosted blog. As part of the community, I knew whatever I wrote would be read and commented on. While intellectually I know I get more page views here on my website, it lacks that feel and knowing. Here, I’m more likely to blog something shorter, which I’d have felt self-conscious about over there. By the same token, perhaps I put more effort into creating longer form works, expecting greater scrutiny over there.

The same goes for updating. A blog community almost guarantees a level of readership. Knowing absolutely that a readership was regularly looking in, compelled me to update more often, to put mental energy into looking for and creating article topics to keep up the flow that sustained the readership. Without that tangible feel of a dedicated readership, the pressure to maintain my performance is missing.

I call the less personal nature of this version of my blog counter-intuitive because I’d imagine that having a sense of being adrift, being out here alone, without people looking at me, would cause me to loosen up and say things I might not if I knew certain people were watching. That hasn’t been the case. I think perhaps the community gives a false feeling that you know who is looking, as if that blog weren’t as open to the whole world as this one is. You focus down onto the group you see and forget the greater mass that you don’t. Here, there is no-one to focus on, so the greater unknown surges to the forefront of perception and consequently brings inhibition. “Hmmm, I wonder just who might read this?” In the small community, you get the false sense you know who will be reading.

Along with the community inspired delusion you know who will be reading comes the delusion you know what they will be thinking. If you know your friends (and nemeses), you have a pretty good idea how they will react to certain things. You can fool yourself into mentally gauging their reactions, thinking you know how far you can go and when to pull back. With having a stand-alone blog, with absolutely no idea who your readers are or how they might react, comes the realization you don’t know what is out of line, no idea when someone might become hurt or outraged by what you write, no imagining you know how far is just far enough or way over the line.

What it all amounts to is, no, this isn’t the same blog. In some ways it is like starting from scratch. I have to feel my way around, and master this beastie all over again.

Posted: May 25th, 2008 under Blogging.
Comments: 5

More MySpace “friend” nonsense.

This afternoon, the following subject line graced my email summary:

MySpace Friend Request Trista would like to be added as one of your friends!

Hi Gene,

Trista would like to be added to your MySpace friends list.

Et cetera.

So, I logged into my MySpace account to check this “Trista” out. The control panel blinked happily “New Friend Request!” I clicked on it. The friend request page was blank. Nothing. “No friend requests pending.”

Huh. Now what was that about?

MySpace sends out an email when someone supposedly wants to be your friend, but nothing if they take it back. I think they should send a second email in such cases, something like:

MySpace Friend Request The biatch changed her mind

Hi Gene,

Um, forget we said anything.

Posted: April 16th, 2008 under Life Journals, The Funny Side of Life, Websites.
Comments: none