It is such a treat for me to read the writing at Happy Fun Cog. From what I can gather, the blog writer’s name is Jack and he’s about 8 years younger than me, but he articulates things that I’ve felt over an over, and could never give a voice to, in almost every introspective entry he makes.

I think the thing that makes his writing resonate in the sea of babble on the Blognet is that he is writing for himself, but yet putting himself out there not for attention but for another purpose. I can only guess at what the other purpose is, but it’s definitely not the attention whoring that many recent blogs seem to wallow in. Maybe it’s to learn, examine, validate, discuss, discard, and grow his own philosophies and methods of living. If we don’t stop to examine ourselves, we never know ourselves. Our daily lives is like being on the front row of a rock concert. You start to ignore everything but the noise and the show, forgetting that the mundane details of traffic, bosses, annoyances, chores and responsibility are just a distraction to the real world around us all.

OK, end tangent. I can’t put words in the poor guy’s mouth, or guess at his motives for writing. I’m just glad he does.

Here is an excerpt from his most recent entry.

I am familiar with the concept of needing to go out and meet more people in order to meet someone with whom I click.

However, I was forgetting … what it’s like to have an intuitive connection with someone built on the fact that you’re simply similar people. I knew I had to meet people, I just couldn’t remember what I was looking for. And because of that, I’ve been very angry at myself because I believed that my lack of any romantic relationship was entirely my fault, that it was my fault I wasn’t clicking with people. Now, I am responsible for not going out and meeting more people, which is a necessary precursor to meeting people with whom I click. But I was blaming myself for not clicking, which is fucking ridiculous. You can’t will or think yourself into clicking with people if you just don’t click; well, you could if you made changes to yourself or just fooled yourself and/or the other person into thinking there was a click.

The revelation about “clicking” reminds me of how I was treated back when my friends considered me attractive enough to set up with other people.

If me and the mystery man didn’t hit it off perfectly, my married/attached friends admonished me for being “too picky” and “narrow minded”.

Funny; if I didn’t want to see the guy again, I was griped out.  “I’ll never set you up with anyone else then.  You’re too picky!”  But if the guy didn’t want to see me again, I can only assume he wasn’t griped out or questioned.  All he’d have to say was, “Dude, she was ugly,” and that would be good enough.  Men are allowed to reject someone on sight alone.  Women are held to a higher standard of behavior, and are expected to look deeper.

I guess they thought that 1) single, plus 2) has a pulse, equals “marry this dude or quit trying because picky people don’t deserve love”. This from the same people who waited for their own “perfect match”. What a bunch of hypocrites.

I read this or saw this quote somewhere this week: “It’s better to eat soup with someone you love than eat steak with someone you can’t stand.” I’m sure that’s some warning not to be a gold-digger, but the bigger message to me is that a kindred spirit is worth waiting for. Even if you never find it, it’s better to live with the hope that you may find it, than to saddle yourself up with a person with whom you know you’ll never have it.

Connections with other people get harder as we grow older. When we’re young, we’re still being formed by our environment. I can even say that when I was 33, I was a very different person than I am now that I’m 39. When there are big chunks of you that are still a blank slate, 1) it’s easier to fit with someone else, and 2) you are almost never aware that you are a blank slate.

I consider myself more open-minded than ever before, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t become more hardened in who I am.

It’s no wonder it’s so hard for us older people to find someone whose company we can tolerate for more than 15 minutes at a time.

I don’t have a list of demands about money or social status or education or looks. I care about intelligence, a warped but respectful sense of humor, passion about what a person believes in, and enough similar interests to give us something to talk about. Don’t get me wrong; if someone smells bad or something, yeah that is a deal breaker. But aside from hygeine issues, “Is he a good kisser?” is about as superficial as I get.

The person also has to have my energy level. At work, I run around like a chipmunk on crack. But at home, I have about as much energy as my Saint Bernard (who is a throw rug with paws). I’m not going to try and date a Jack Russell terrier.

I don’t think trying to find someone who matches you in interests, humor and temperament is being too picky.

Search on, Jack. I will too. And screw anyone who implies we’re being “too picky”.

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