Online Dating and Taxidermy

Actually, this post has nothing whatsoever to do with taxidermy. I just thought it would make for an interesting title to a blog post. And I like the word.

I've been involved in the online dating scene for almost a decade now. That's a bit of a frightening thought, but it's true. Recently I joined Match.com to take advantage of their guarantee - they advertised on television and said that you're guaranteed to meet someone you actually want to date (not in those words, of course) within 6 months of joining. Of course, in order to get them to hold up their end of the bargain, you have to pay for those 6 months up front, and you have to remain an active Match.com member during the entirety of those 6 months - and, to them, remaining "active" means that you need to send messages to at least 5 unique Match.com users every month. Normally this would be easy. Piece of cake. But it was actually quite difficult for me to find 5 users each month worthy of contact in my eyes. They were all too beautiful or pretentious or religious. And for three months, I diligently contacted my required 5 people a month. How many messages did I receive in return? One. One stinking message. And it wasn't even someone who wanted to get to know me. No. It was a guy who had "winked" at me on the site, so I sent him a message. He returned the message to say to me "sorry, I clicked the wink button accidentally, I didn't mean to send that to you." RAGE.

Today I realized that the next month has passed and I haven't sent all 5 messages. But you know what? I don't care. I don't like the guys on Match.com. And their stupid guarantee doesn't give you your money back if you don't find someone. No, it just gives you another 6 months membership for free. Riddle me this, Batman - if I haven't found the man of my dreams on your website in the first 6 months, what makes you think that I'll find him in another 6 months? I highly doubt it would happen. So I don't care anymore.

Besides, I've become more active on another dating site. And this one is FREE. And fun. And guys there think I'm cute. And they send me long messages with complete sentences and everything. And no one sends me messages by mistake. OkCupid.com, you're the winner. You are now my preferred online dating website. And if I get bored trying to find Mr. Right, I can always take some dorky personality quizzes to pass the time. That's the magic of OkCupid. They're fun, and inviting, and free.

Throwing in the Towel

I haven't touched my novel in over 48 hours.

It's still November, it's still National Novel Writing Month. I should be worried about my word count, and I should be working on the novel right now. But I just don't care anymore. The craptastic opus I created has sucked every ounce of my will to write fiction and I can't do it anymore.

I've hit the "what's the point" wall. Why bother busting my butt over this novel thing when I'm going to ultimately get nothing out of it? It's just going to be a file saved on my computer for the rest of time that I'm never going to touch again because it's not worth editing. I went most of the month, and that's gotta count for something.

Follow-through? Yeah, that's not something I've ever been good at. I tried. I really wanted to finish this year to prove that I could actually finish something that I start, but I don't have the drive anymore. I did my walking goal - I walked the 5k on Thanksgiving morning. That was a success. So at least there's something in my life that I can be proud of.

I'm not a writer. Not a writer of fiction, anyway. This kind of writing, here, that I'm doing right now, this is the stuff I can crank out until the cows come home. I just don't think I'm the right kind of creative for fiction. Maybe for NaNo next year I'll try writing a memoir or something. That might come a lot easier than some piece of fabricated fluff that once floated around in my mind.

I'm going to enjoy my Saturday now. I have a coffee table to put together, a baby shower to attend, a video game to play, and a lot of episodes of The Office to watch on DVD. It's going to be a good weekend.

She's Writing a Novel

That song has been going through my head all month - mainly the opening lines:

She's writing, She's writing
She's writing a novel.
She's writing, she's weaving,
Conceiving a plot

Because that's what I'm doing. I'm writing a novel. I'm creating something out of nothing, and conceiving a plot. It's not a good plot. It's not a good novel. But it's something. If I finish, it'll be the third novel I've completed writing. Admittedly, I've never edited a novel. None of them are good enough to even consider editing.

This year, it's been a struggle. I really want to finish. This is my sixth year participating in National Novel Writing Month, and if I reach the required 50,000 word count before November 30, it will be my third time winning. But motivation has been lacking. On the weekends, I've been fantastic, cranking out 5,000, one time nearly 8,000 words. But during the week I've been slacking, telling myself that there's plenty of time to catch up.

My current word count is around 32,700. We're supposed to hit 40,000 today or tomorrow (I don't have my tracking spreadsheet with me, and I'm too lazy to do the mat right now) to stay on track. I'm behind. I'm falling farther and farther behind every day I don't write at least the average pace of 1,667 words a day. I've been steadily writing 10,000 words a week, but that doesn't get me across the finish line on time.

But why am I obsessing so much about averages and pace and word counts? Shouldn't I be doing this for the writing? For the joy of telling my story? That's why I'm struggling. I hate my story. I like bits and pieces of it, but I had no idea a month ago that a story about 5 coworkers who win the lottery together would be so freaking BORING.

Also, it's mostly dialogue. Boring, mundane dialogue.

But that doesn't matter. It's still a novel. Hopefully the story will wrap itself up when I get to 50k. Maybe I'll like it better on a read-through. I've got almost the entire Thanksgiving weekend to get caught up - it's like two weekends in one! I can do this.

She's writing, she's writing,
She's writing a novel...

Am I... ?

There's a new TV show on this fall that I've really been enjoying watching. The show is NBC's Mercy, a hospital drama that focuses on the nurses who work in the ICU ward of a hospital (the "Mercy" of the title). At least, I think it's the ICU. It's hard to tell - it's not a very realistic hospital, now that I think about it. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that every single episode of this show has made me cry. Every. Single. Episode. I was just watching an episode that had been on last week (I had it saved on the DVR), and I thought I was going to get through it without a tear, but then, right at the end... BAM. And I was crying.

So this got me thinking. If something as simple as a TV show can make me cry week after week, is that a sign of something more?

Am I depressed?

My doctor asked me that question the last time I saw him, and I wasn't sure how to answer it. I go through a lot of moods throughout any given day, but I don't know if I'm actually depressed. And the last thing I need is another pill to take every day. But maybe some therapy might be good?

The last time I tried therapy, it didn't go well. I went into it not really prepared - I didn't know what I wanted to get out of it, and the therapist ended up fixated on one area of my life that I wasn't really sure needed to be repaired. I quit going without getting out of it, and I'm not sure that if I went back (even with a new therapist) that it would be any better. I think I'm too stubborn to get anything out of therapy at all.

Of course, there's still the question of whether I even need it or not.

But as I've been writing this post, I've also been watching the movie "Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay," and now, at the end, it's making me tear up a bit.

There's gotta be something wrong with me.

The First Post: Already More Than You Were Expecting

I haven't updated my bus blog or my reviews blog in a really long time. So, instead of updating one of those, I'm going to start a NEW blog!

Hooray!

Right.

I think a lot of things. Most of them I probably shouldn't share with people, but lately I've been severely lacking in a sense of privacy, and a large number of my filters seem to have mysteriously disappeared. Maybe it's the recent burst of noveling, I don't know. I do know that I recently published a post on Facebook about sexy bras. Completely inappropriate, especially considering my parents (all 4 of them) are on my Facebook friends list. They'll probably all get a link to this blog when I post it on Facebook. (Hi Mom!)

But this time, I'll be taking it a step farther. (Dad, you might want to stop reading now.) Yeah.

Remember those bras? They arrived in the mail yesterday. One of them wasn't nearly as sexy as I was led to believe. It's really not very different from my normal bras, except for some nice lacy trim. But it's quite pretty, and it fits me well. The other bra, now, that one is SEXY. Seriously. I'm wearing it right now. It has no padding, unlike my usual bras (they have little air bubbles in them), but the shape of it is really quite nice. And the actual bra material only covers a little bit... then there's strategically placed black lace that leaves NOTHING to the imagination. It's awesome. I feel sexy, I LOOK sexy (what I can see in the bathroom mirror, at least), and I'm even turned on by my own boobs a little bit. Which is a little weird.

See? TMI, right? But I'm not going to delete that. I'm putting it out there in cyberspace (do people still say that anymore?) for everyone to read. That's what this blog is about. Saying whatever I want to say whether or not anyone wants to read it.

You've been warned.