We all have moments (days, weeks) when we feel a little nonplussed with life.
Bored and perfect, or perfectly bored? (I think I've been watching too much Sherlock Holmes.)
You know that feeling, when the angel on your shoulder whispers, "Get over yourself, you egomaniacal silly fool" and the devil on the other shoulder jabs you with his pointy trident and hisses, "Mourn and moan you complacent and irrelevant person."
"Your life is a peach."
"Abandon all hope."
Okay. I'm being dramatic.
Online Dating and Exit Signs. It's a code my roommate and I have that roughly translates to, "these are things I have to put up with/dedicate time to/accomplish despite having no interest in them whatsoever."
Hang a left at the point of despair and keep going. Just keep going.
Exit Signs, because she's an architect and has been tasked, on her most recent job, with arranging/fixing/situating exit signs (a more complicated task than one would think), and she doesn't like doing it but she has to.
Online Dating, because we're single girls in the city with busy lives and lots to do and yet haven't benefited from the vast network of city friends in that we haven't bumped into/been introduced to/had the serendipitous park run-in with any eligible bachelors. (note: I don't mean we've been introduced to, but haven't liked any. I mean we live in a barren wasteland of what feels like no men and certainly not enough who have actually been interested enough to ask us out.
I know that's a silly thing to complain about, and I'm sure you doubt me on the veracity. But it's true. If girlfriend and I want to score a date, we have to Hinge, or Match, or Meet a Bagel, or say OK to Cupid or otherwise condense our realities into a measurable, algorithm-ical clever bite-sized snippets and throw ourselves into an Internet pond of subjectivity. Which I hate.
'Round and 'round we go. Where we stop, nobody knows.
Because come on. We've spent our lives trying to become complicated, multi-faceted gems of unutterable value. One-dimensionalizing ourselves is like a self-betrayal.
Also, gentlemen, just ask a girl out. Ask lots of girls out. Ask so many women out that you become inured to rejection. Because even independent and self-confident women like to be asked out. We were all raised on Disney. We all love Jane Austen. And doesn't it make sense that independent, self-confident women are looking for confident men who pursue what they feel is worth pursuing (read: US)? If you're waiting for me to make the first move, THIS IS WHY WE'RE BOTH STILL WAITING. Go out on a limb. I'll make it worth your while.
We will WAIT.
Okay - I'll stop ranting, because that's not really the point.
The point is: sometimes in life, you've just gotta get up and keep going. Sometimes, your life has little luster because you can't see past the exit signs and online dating. So you put your head down and you keep moving through it. You "like" a guy, and you bust out your computer on a Sunday to nail down points of egress and you try once more to write something worth writing about (fail, try again, fail better, try again).
Most of all, you have a little faith that, at some point, the luster of life will flash again.
If you're lucky, maybe sooner than expected.