{"id":36218,"date":"2013-06-10T21:25:14","date_gmt":"2013-06-11T01:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=36218"},"modified":"2020-07-06T21:25:29","modified_gmt":"2020-07-07T01:25:29","slug":"i-do-my-best-thinking-in-the-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=36218","title":{"rendered":"I do my best thinking in the car"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I really do. It\u2019s like I do my best typing when I\u2019ve got my feet kicked up on my desk, and I have the wireless keyboard in my lap. I don\u2019t know why that is, but I feel like my fingers fly along the keys when it\u2019s in this position. But back to the topic of thinking, I guess \u201cbest\u201d isn\u2019t necessarily the best word, but it\u2019s true that I do some of my deepest thinking while I\u2019m driving in my car.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lately, something that pops into my head a lot, which is probably obvious given my age and life\u2019s status, but I\u2019m kind of a lonely person. I\u2019m probably being more earnest than I really should be, given the fairly public status of my brog, but to put it out there, I\u2019m 31 years old, and I haven\u2019t been on a date in about two years now. Ultimately, there\u2019s nobody to blame for such circumstances except for myself, but to be perfectly honest, I kind of don\u2019t even know where to begin.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not like I can go to Publix and be all like \u201coh, you\u2019ve got one item? Please, go ahead\u201d in the checkout line, and strike up a scintillating conversation with a random stranger, culminating with the birth of a blossoming relationship. No, it would result in us holding up the checkout line, people behind us getting pissed, the cashier getting impatient with our inconsiderate behavior, and a girl, who capitalized on my generosity getting the fuck out of the place even sooner because I was being a mush.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve said it to myself in my car a thousand times, we live in a day and age where people are afraid of other people, resulting in a day and age where people don\u2019t really meet other people unless really kind of forced into it. It\u2019s not even romantic relationships either, all the time, we\u2019ll see the topic of \u201chow to make friends as grown-ups\u201d all over the internet from smarmy blogs, all the way to major media outlets like CNN, USA Today, and Time editorials. People simply put have kind of all in some way shape and form, become unapproachable, and don\u2019t know how to approach others as well. There\u2019s small talk and chit-chat in like a line or something, but so sparsely do these chance encounters ever turn into something more meaningful, platonic or romantic. It\u2019s like that scene in Fight Club<\/em>, where people on airplanes are nothing more than \u201csingle-serving friends,\u201d who will be your friend for the duration of a flight, but nothing more once we reach our destination. It\u2019s kind of like that rationale has gone beyond airplanes and into the world as a whole. Maybe I\u2019m using that thought process as an excuse to a degree, but even if I were currently in a relationship, I still believe I\u2019d be thinking that it\u2019s true.<\/span><\/p>\n

The thing is with me, is that I don\u2019t want to resort to the internet to get a date. I absolutely loathe the idea that people today are resorting to the internet to find relationships. It\u2019s like, something about the entire process seems so, lazy and unfulfilling. Let a website vet people for you, and anonymously provide you a list of people who some software thinks could be compatible with you? Where\u2019s the work involved with that? Where\u2019s the thrill of the chase to be had there?<\/span><\/p>\n

I know one of the appropriate rebuttals to my logic is why shouldn\u2019t<\/em> I take such a shortcut? If it\u2019s legal and available, why NOT<\/em> use a resource like that? I can understand that logic, but it\u2019s just simply something that I don\u2019t want to do. I don\u2019t want to be a number in a database, nor do I want to stealthily, anonymously select another number out of a database. I don\u2019t want software to provide me with a pool it thinks that is full of compatible people, I want to believe that the entire fucking world is still my pool, even if it means going down a difficult and tumultuous path.<\/span><\/p>\n

It sounds really lame, but I want my relationships to have stories behind them. I don\u2019t want the untold parts of the story to be that I knew what someone looked like, their interests and their age and their occupation, before I ever thought that I was interested in them. I want to be nervous, I want to have apprehension and fear of rejection driving my emotions and steering my actions. I want there to be a spark, and rejoice internally if I succeed at getting a \u201cyes\u201d from a girl, when I ask her out on a date. I want to be clumsy and nervous about the things I say around her when we speak, and not have a general idea of things that we could talk about because I know things about her from some online fucking profile.<\/span><\/p>\n

I want everything to happen, person to person, and most certainly not done through text or email messaging.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I don\u2019t do online dating. Unfortunately, that\u2019s probably also why I haven\u2019t had a date in two years. That, and the fact that I\u2019ve got as much actual game as a Sega Saturn, but it\u2019s not like I\u2019m afraid to talk to girls, I just have a hard time opening. I like to think that I can be charming, but I also sometimes think I feel like I must give off some aura of desperation or something, because I can\u2019t help but wonder if I\u2019m creeping girls out when if I speak with them. I don\u2019t necessarily think I\u2019m desperate, but in spite of me thinking that I\u2019ve got high standards, I think I\u2019d be easy to manipulate into at least getting a free meal out of for a girl with a little bit of cunning and charm.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes I think I\u2019m just missing the idea of being in a relationship, and it\u2019s so much whom it\u2019s with that necessarily matters. It\u2019s like I\u2019m tired of being the odd-numbered wheel at a social gathering, if I\u2019m even invited out at all, because people don\u2019t want to have that awkward single guy tagging along.<\/span><\/p>\n

But then I also feel that I simply miss being close with someone. It\u2019s not even the sexual aspect of things, I think I\u2019m just missing the idea of being close with another person. Someone to hug and hold occasionally, a person to rest my head on their shoulder if the weight of a day feels like too much. Someone to really speak minds with, occasionally hold hands with, or just the subtle little physical gestures that are synonymous with those in relationships. I feel like I\u2019m out of touch, in several different meanings. I\u2019m appreciative of a lot of the friends in my life, but these are the things that none of them can really alleviate, all joking aside.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m just a little lonely lately, that\u2019s all. So ronery. I think about something so many times, that it\u2019s eventually going to make its way into writing on the brog someday. It\u2019s also very likely to why I\u2019ve been extra crabby at the world at times, especially in the car. It\u2019s my place where I think best, and I hate being interrupted by the endless parade of shitty Atlanta drivers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Who knows what\u2019s going to happen in my future, nobody will ever really know. There was a time when I never wanted to join Facebook, but that\u2019s changed too. I like to think that my convictions towards online dating are a bit stronger, but if I end up hitting 35 without having been on any dates in five years, then something\u2019s gotta give.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I really do. It\u2019s like I do my best typing when I\u2019ve got my feet kicked up on my desk, and I have the wireless keyboard in my lap. I don\u2019t know why that is, but I feel like my fingers fly along the keys when it\u2019s in this position. But back to the topic … Continue reading I do my best thinking in the car<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,81,83,15,91,14,77],"class_list":["post-36218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-angst","tag-girls","tag-observations","tag-og","tag-pf","tag-romance","tag-ronery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36219,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36218\/revisions\/36219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}