This year's birthday picture, outside of Sweetness 7 -
Me, this evening, at Bidwell Park -
I hope you haven't forgotten what I look like! Hahaha.
Anyway, I've had at times an annoying past few months, with many thoughts coursing through my brain that I'm not going to bore you with. Suffice it to say that life sometimes sucks and sometimes regardless of how you act or what you say, someone is going to be unfair to you. I have a hard time dealing with that. The thing I like the least about myself is at times I'm too sensitive for my own good. I wish I had it in me to change that, but on the balance things are cool and I've got countless more people looking out for me than not... and that is a damn good feeling.
Let's talk about love for a minute - lacking it, maybe having it but never knowing it... via getting gawked at. Really for the first time in my life I've been noticing people noticing... and I don't know how to handle it or react. I do not think I am an object of attraction and never really have... when it happens I tend to think, "wow, someone is checking ME out?" I guess you can say that it is the opposite mentality to your stereotypical alpha male standard operating procedure. So yeah, when I walk into a coffee shop and see that the girls at a table right next to me are checking me out, I tend to be skeptical of what I'm seeing and do not look back.
I had a barista in front of me once who I knew for absolute sure wanted to know my name and have a little introduction. I did nothing - a couple months later she was standing in line with me at another place, very out of the blue and very random. It was like the hand of fate was trying to teach me a lesson about taking a leap of faith - and now I've met her.
One of my bosses is like a mother to me. God knows she's looked out for me and she says things to me like, "what's wrong with you Josh, why don't you have a girlfriend? You're a good looking guy, this is your prime years, you're freaking crazy not to step forward and take what's yours." Anyway, parts of the answer lie in this entry.
I like the freedom that bachelorhood provides but you cannot hide from the fact that it's an ultimately lonely existence. I really only think of it at night, when it is actually quiet enough for this stuff to bubble up to the surface. Freedom is NOT free, is it? Getting smiles here and there has added both joy and confusion to my life. Yeah, you are damn right that I love my freedom, but I love the thought of giving up some freedom if it means that I don't die alone. I don't want to be everybody's cup of tea, I just want to be one girl's cup of tea. Eventually...
It is strange how these thoughts can all come swirling about just as a reaction to being checked out more often. I push and pull my own thoughts on this stuff all the time. In the end I have an irrational belief in myself that things will be fine.
Aw Josh, it'll happen. You just can't rush it. not that you don't know that.
But yes, you're a good looking, but more importantly, good-hearted guy- and someday the right girl will figure that out. And all the ones that don't- it's their loss. I know that's little consolation, but it's true.
And I know what you mean about getting looks... I don't know if it's a lack of self-confidence (on my end) or what- but whenever I see someone looking in my direction, I assume they are looking at someone behind me. I mean, they couldn't be looking at me. Sometime last year on Chippewa some guy winked at me and called me 'hot'- and my gut reaction was to be hurt, because I thought he was being sarcastic and making fun of me. sigh.
But I'd rather be that way than some super-cocky douchebag.
So, keep being yourself.
When I was awkward and unpopular and lonely in high school, my mom reminded me "to thine own self be true" and then this Jimmy Buffett quote that has always stuck with me-
Be good, and you will be lonesome.
Be lonesome, and you will be free.
Live a lie, and you will live to regret it.
That's what living means to me.
I'm not saying you need to get married, I think this also applies to healthy relationships in general ;) Since you spoke about 'freedom'....
"If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation…It takes a lifetime to learn another person…When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected". Madeleine L'Engle
Be Glad you are being checked out!
If I have been I have never noticed it!
I have seen the smile before, but I all ways read it as like saying hi with out saying anything. Or maybe it is here comes this scary looking dude better smile so I don't get tied up in the basement (in the bad way not the good).
I like being single my self but I have to ask you a question, though after I say this. One part that is tough about being single is Facebook(seems everyone has kids, and or wife or some type of thing) and places where a lot of couples are.
Here is my question (Happens to me all the time, does it happen to you at all) I'm on a bus or out and about some place and I see some chick and think something like cute, sexy, tasty or something that trailing her is the guy who (at least looks like she is with), then I get a feeling of regret, not like for finding her hot or what ever and not like I want to say date her and not really cause the guy is going to see and kick my ass. But some type of feeling like around those types of line.