30 Days of Truth: Day 2

Something I love about myself…..

Well obviously it’s not going to be my ability to focus on a task since I grandly announced that I would be blogging everyday for 30 days on Friday…and promptly failed.

But that’s what the last post was about; this one focuses on something I love about myself.

I love my ability to make friends. Despite my periodical proclomations that I have none, I really do tend to collect peopler. I’m not one of those people on Facebook who has topped 1,000 friends; I’m only in the mid-300′s. I’m not someone who seems to know everyone when they go out to a bar; in fact, I rarely run into people I know unless I have planned to meet up with them. But I have an amazing and eccelctic group of friends put together over various stages of my life.

Part of my ability to maintain this group of friends (which includes people I’ve known for 15+ years), is the drive, instilled in me by my mother, to always keep in touch. I don’t mind, mostly, being the one that usually reaches out. It doesn’t feel like a burden to me. I love to plan get togethers; I love to travel; and I love to talk to other people. With all of those things going for me, how could I not keep in touch with the people that mean the most to me?

The Great Experiment Begins aka 30 Days of Truth: Day 1

Here’s the deal. I miss blogging. A lot. But recent history has shown me that my ability to focus and follow through on things is currently at an all time low. So to avoid adding yet another thing I fail at following through on (read: working out, cooking more, actually doing my work “to do” list), I found through the wonder that is Twitter a blog series called “30 Days of Truth.” And since it takes approximately 30 days to establish a new habit, maybe I’ll be a regular blogger at the end of all this!

So here we go. Day 1: Something You Hate About Yourself. (Really? This is what we’re starting with? How depressing. Ok, here we go.)

I hate my very strange brand of narcissism. See, normally, I am the last person to give myself any sort of congratulations for something good I’ve done. I chalk it up to something anyone would do, just doing my job, or being there for a friend. Either that or I downplay the significance of whatever it was someone wants to congratulate me for. But, when the event in question is negative, all of a sudden it’s is no one’s fault but my own and the significance of it is ENORMOUS.

Waking up at 4 AM after serving as someone’s Maid of Honor and grabbing a 6 AM flight to DC to drive another 2 hours to Richmond for someone else’s wedding? No big deal! Anyone would do that for a friend.

Spending someone’s birthday weekend jet lagged, PMSing, and missing my boyfriend so not being as social as normal? Well that requires 2 whole days of feeling guilty along with an apology e-mail to the birthday girl. And I still feel bad.

This though process of mine leads to me to experience crippling moments of self-doubt. Not recognizing that, yes, I do go above and beyond for my friends on a regular basis and that this is what makes me such a good friend leads me to think that at any second my friends will realize I’m not worth the “drama” I cause.

This self-doubt and belief that my friends are one small misstep away from abandoning ship then leads me to never say no and go out of my way to always be there for people. Which, not surprisingly, leads to utter exhaustion.

The utter exhaustion leads to an inability to realize that I am not being rational when I feel like my friends are about to abandon ship, which deepens the need I feel to please people.

It’s like the Sneaky Hate Spiral, but without the hate.

So I’m working on this. I’m working on the saying no and the recognizing that some of my friends have been friends with me for going on 16 years and are probably not going anywhere so I must be doing something right.

Jumping on the Bandwagon…Sort Of

It seems to me that there has been a glut of articles and opinion pieces lately looking for reasons why women in their late 20′s and early 30′s are still single.

Some blame the guys. The argument goes that men in their late 20′s have created a sort of new adolescence period where they are not focused on “growing up,” as it were, and only on extending their college years. Women, being the super advanced and mature creatures that we are, don’t want this new man-boy type of guy and refuse to settle for them.

Some blame the women. This argument goes that women are now being too picky. That the abundance of choices we are now faced with thanks to more doors being opened to us than ever before has fooled us into thinking there is such a thing as a “perfect man” and that what we would view as “settling” isn’t really settling; it’s being realistic.

I have seen more articles and reactions to articles on this topic than I have ever before. And, as someone who until very recently fell into the category of believing I would never find someone for whatever reason, I am a little bothered by these articles.

Leaving aside the merits of each argument, and I believe there are very few merits to either, why do we care? Who are these authors to make these broad stroke generalizations about what could very well be just a natural demographic shift? There are more women in the workforce now than at any other time in history; Gen Y is currently rewriting the rules of the workplace; we are in the middle of the worst economic recession in decades; and, last but not least, 50% of marriages still end in divorce. Who’s to say that these are not all factors in the choice people are making to stay single longer?

I will not deny that being single in my late 20′s and watching many of those around me get married is a very hard thing to do. It’s easy to think that there’s something wrong with me or there’s something wrong with the guys I’ve dated. (And look! I wrote that paragraph without a single generalization to a group larger than myself.)

But then I realized something. I realized that the friends of mine whose careers looked like mine were 2-3 years older than me and that the friends of mine who are my age have careers that look completely different than mine or who are stay at home moms, which is, personally, not a choice I could see myself making (although they are excellent at it).

This is not a phenomenon where there is blame to be laid. It’s ridiculous to think you could! And, really, what does blaming one sex get you in this situation? Absolutely nothing other than something else to either a) feel bitter about (as in “Ha! I knew it all along! All {guys/girls} are really {immature/super picky}.” or b) beat yourself up over (as in “Oh man. Am I really too {immature/picky}? Do I need to reasses my {life outlook/standards for the person I want to spend the rest of my life with}?).

So please, let’s put away the blame and realize we are all where we are in life…because that’s where we’re supposed to be.