All These Places

I had a hot date on Monday night.  Now, don’t go getting too excited.  I plan on detailing my reintroduction into the single life in my mid-thirties in a future bestselling book.  But until then, it will not be discussed too much on this blog.  Besides, I have lots more research to do.  So this hot date to which I am referring means that I spent the night on my own.  Sad to say, it was the first evening in quite a while in which I had done so.  I work most evenings and on the evenings in which I don’t work, I have amazing friends that I want to be around.  I’m a bit of a social butterfly so if you give me the option of hanging out, I will most likely take that option.  Life is short; you can sleep when you’re dead, etc, etc.

                But there was a conversation that occurred last week that made me step back a little bit.  I was bartending at the wine bar and I was talking to one of the regulars about opening the bar on Thanksgiving.  I told him that I didn’t really like to take nights off of work.

                “Why is that?” he asked me.

                It was a simple enough question with a simple enough answer.  I work a lot because I need the money.  I just spent a month in Costa Rica and so now I need to make hay while the sun shines.  So if someone asks me to pick up a shift, I do it without a second thought.  But it was something in the way that this man looked at me when he asked me this question that made me step back a bit.  I started to think about when I had last had an evening on my own and it seemed like it was sometime when the muggy air of summer still hung heavy in the sky.  Now it’s December.

                I planned on having this evening on Saturday night.  And then, of course, I got called in desperation to bartend at the restaurant before a country concert.  It was the exact opposite of relaxation.  We went through a keg of Bud Light in under two hours.  In my second-ever bartending shift, I had a full bar and the printer kept spitting out tickets that said “Watermelon Martini” or “Frozen Wildberry Margarita” or “Blackberry Peach Sangria Pitcher.”  I literally almost cried and left the bar.  So long story short…hot date rescheduled for Monday night.

                My plan was to make myself a nice dinner using the recipe book that’s been gathering dust.  Maybe a nice bottle of wine, some slow tunes to which I would sing along to.  And definitely a chick flick.  It didn’t really go as planned—because Sunday night was the holiday party for the wine bar.  And you might be able to guess this but there was a lot of really good wine served at this party.  And there was a karaoke machine which required drinking more of this wine in order to sing in front of a small crowd of people.  So instead of cooking, I went for fast food.  So sue me.

                But for the first time in a very long time, I spent the entire evening by myself.  I resisted the urge to run over to a friend’s house or my parent’s house.  It’s not that I can’t spend time on my own.  I’m an only child so I’m a bit wired towards solidarity and due to my wacky schedule, I have most days on my own for writing, yoga, etc and I relish those days.  But it’s something about the evenings that stretch long with people making plans for dinner—I want to be included and invited.  I want to share laughter and deep conversation.  And I feel so fortunate that I am surrounded by so many great people who make those moments happen when I have a night off.

                My mom often asks me if I’m lonely.  And it’s a strange question.  Being single is still relatively new to me.  Do I miss having someone who I can share every part of my life with?  Maybe…Do most women feel like they have that in their relationships?  Maybe not.  What I do have now is a very full life and wonderful friends and jobs that give me all the social interaction I can handle in a given evening. 

                So maybe dating in the entire sense of the word is not something that I am ready for yet.  I am embracing this new single life of mine.  After all, it took me months to just find time for a dinner/movie date with myself.  And I couldn’t even do the cooking.  Bottom line: you’re just going to have to wait a while for that book to come out.  But not to worry….I am taking notes.