Retrobruxist Friday 3/29/13, or On Being “Desperate” (Now with Norovirus!)

Ugh. Norovirus. Or food poisoning, or something. When I wasn’t exploding from both ends, I was curled up on my pull-out couch with the dogs, moaning. Moaning! I literally moaned for, like, 15-minute stretches. Then I would watch two episodes of How I Met Your Mother, and then I would turn it off so I could moan some more.

Seems to be gone now (knock wood). I’m vertical today, and I’ve eaten a banana and some Rice Chex.

In other news, my dad swung through town earlier this week. :)

Talking to my sister on the phone: “Amy picked me up in the middle of the melee at RDU. I was nervous because of the guy on the goddamn lawn mower going back and forth.” (It was a cop on a Segway.)

Amid bon mots, he said something about how I seem, here on the blog, “almost desperate for a relationship”. Isn’t that the worst word to hear about yourself? Desperate? Wasn’t that the ultimate high school take-down? “God, she’s so… desperate.”

But he’s right. I do seem, here on the blog, almost desperate for a relationship. I’d even take out the ‘almost’.

That’s for two reasons. First, both ends of the spectrum, the one that goes from “Victorious Is What Happened” to “Cyclone of Despair”, are compelling, but the middle? Not really, right? The “I Got a Solid Eight Hours So My Day Wasn’t Too Exhausting” and the “Grocery Store, PetSmart, and Home Depot in One Outing—High-five, Me” that make up most of my life, I mean, I’m pretty excited about them, but they make for vanilla reading. So, I’m going to write about the times when I’m either feeling a sense of hope or one of catastrophe. And granted, the latter happens more often and is usually funnier.

So that’s the main thing. You hear about my being desperate to be in a relationship because that’s what’s interesting.

The second thing is that I’m desperate to be in a relationship.

Not desperate. But yeah, kinda desperate. Two reasons, I like companionship, and I want kids. In the post I just linked to, I said I wasn’t an extrovert. But I am. I’m an extrovert. Being around people energizes extroverts (and saps the energy of introverts). I definitely get energy from being with people.

However, I’m shy. People say, “Isn’t that the same as introverted?” No. Shy means I’m scared of people I don’t know. Like, all of them.

I’m scared of people, but I need people—ain’t that the worst?

Anyhow, it’s got me thinking, that’s probably why pretty much all my dating in the last four years has been online. Because I don’t make eye contact with people I don’t know (because I’m scared of them) when I’m out in the real world, so it’s hard to connect. Maybe I should try that? Eye contact? With people I don’t know? My hands are sweating.

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Three years ago, I wrote a POWM! I write POWTRY!

Two years ago, 70,000 people heard me tell a story.

A year ago, I was trying to control the controllables. Maybe making eye contact with strangers is controlling a controllable? Or maybe I try a different website. A friend recently sent me this one, which takes a sort of different approach to the whole online dating thing… I’m gonna go lie back down and moan some more.

Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.