Five New Year's Resolutions*

* that don't include the standard eat better, live better, be healthy, even though those are TOTALLY important and you should TOTALLY take better care of your health, but they're going to be broken in a couple of weeks anyway, so why bother, eh?

> I must not form irrational, overemotional attachments to electronic items, laptop, smartphone, Kindle etc and instead remind myself that the best things on earth are simple and involve nature and shit, and I can totally manage to go a couple of weeks without checking my email.*

(*okay, okay, Facebook. FINE. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?)

> I must do a complete closet purge and throw away all clothes that I haven't worn more than once (or ever) and resist the voice that says, "That would look pretty in three years if you grew taller!" Instead, live for the current sartorial moment, even if you will look back with regret at that awesome dress you gave away three months ago.

>  Totally stop using the word 'totally', even if it started out in an ironic fashion, is now irrevocably part of my vocabulary and must be removed. Similarly, the 'duck face' photo pose, once used to mock other girls who used the Duck Face, now part of an alarming amount of my pictures. Must. Go. Now.

> Take success with cooking as a jumping point from which to leap into ALL domesticity. Learn how to crochet, to make homemade thingummys, and centrepieces for your table and be the kind of effortless lovely all round housewife superstar career woman etc that makes everyone look to her with awe. Do this all very modestly and graciously.

> Focus on actually writing third novel instead of opening a Word document and then spending your day daydreaming about all the wonderful reviews you're going to get.

Dad Joke: "Why is thirty the dirtiest birthday?" Me: *groan* "WHY?" Dad: "Because it's XXX."

I turned thirty, you guys, and it's not so bad so far. It's been like, less than a week, now, and the only signs of incipient ageing is that last night I bunked a fun party to stay at home under a quilt and read on my couch. But there was wine, and company, and it was all very cozy and sociable. My thirtieth birthday party was so much fun, I think my birthdays get better each year, this time, I had a fancy pants party, with a Mad Men dress theme, for which I had an actual dress MADE. I drew it, and took the fabric to a boutique close to my house, and they made it into what I imagined. I wish I could sew. I imagine, like cooking, it would be awesome to see something you're thinking about turned into an actual THING, that is functional and pretty.

Everyone dressed according to theme as well, but since I decided to get drunk and replaced a camera around my neck with a bottle of wine in my arms, there are very few photos, and even those, taken by other friends are things I haven't seen yet. Good Things, as mentioned in the previous post, are currently happening in Delhi, and so most of the last week has been spent in lazy happiness. Also, got some very nice presents, including a Kindle I had hinted wildly at, and is now my new boyfriend. With all the travelling I've been doing, the biggest pain in the ass has been packing books--I read fast, so I usually pack about four books for each week long journey, some to read on the way, some to read while I'm there, and one "emergency" book, in case everything else finishes. This is LIGHT! and FITS IN MY BAG! and so easy to read on. I took it for a spin yesterday to Khan Market, and was that girl who drinks her cappucino with her book. (Tina Fey's Bossypants, in case you're interested) and I had a lovely time. I'm hoping this will mean I read more, well, already, I think I read more than a lot of people I know, simply because I have the time, but I'm not as dedicated as I used to be pre-streaming TV. As a result, I missed most of the "best books of 2011" list, and now I'm committing myself to reading EVERYTHING, a wild catch up, before the year ends and there's a whole new list.

Besides that, I only have one more week of spending my evenings in front of my heater, because on Christmas Day, I whisk off to Sri Lanka for the rest of the year. A week is not long enough to turn into a beach bum, but I plan to try. I'm going with people from all over the country, friends from Bombay, friend from Calcutta, friend from Delhi, and we'll be converging on Unawatuna beach, where I will sit back in my deck chair, with my Bloody Mary and become a coconut. So not looking forward to coming back to January's bitter charms, but a new thing I'm trying this year is not antipating ahead of what my present day is. Live in the moment, eM! (Which, this weekend, is a bunch of parties, so I'm not doing too badly.)


But, here we are, my darlings, in December, and likely, since I'm currently writing several other things, my last post of the year. A good year, unlike 2010, and I hope the lucky streak continues through 2012. (Isn't the world supposed to end next year? I hope not, it's just gotten interesting!) Have a marvelous New Year, and I'll see you all on the other side.

And, because my "About Me" can no longer read "twenty something" (DEEP SIGH) I've updated it, for the first time in years. We women of a certain age can no longer casually toss references in about the decade we belong to. It'll be our little secret.  

Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself

I have been obsessed about one thing and one thing only in the last month, and that is the impending end of my twenties. Good decade. I've gone on about it in other posts, but this is it, the last two weeks that I have to be young and restless. Not that thirty is old, but some things have changed, most notably, my desire to go out has been replaced by a desire to stay in, under my quilt and read. That could just be winter speaking though. I do get extremely lazy in the wintertime. Which is odd, because, in the summer when it's hot and horrible, and everyone wants to stay in with their ACs on, I want to go out and party and live the life.

But they say you change the most in your twenties, possibly growing at a rate even faster than your teens. (Not physically growing, that ship sailed for me at sixteen, and I have been the same height ever since) This decade, I have reinvented myself at least three times, and sometimes, I feel a flashback to an older me, a reaction I forgot I used to have, that just crops up in moments of vulnerability, and I'm taken aback, I'm all, "Oh, right, I used to feel like that." What happens to old personalities? Do we fold them up and put them away among mothballs? Where are the mes that used to be? Maybe, like an onion, if I kept peeling layer after layer of myself off, I'd find the original me, the me I began with. On the other hand, the me that lurks closer to the surface is who I am now, for better or for worse, my personality has formed, and it's hard to break yourself of it. Not bad habits, them I'm constantly trying to eradicate: obsessing and overthinking and needing to be in control of situations and the more obvious ones: smoking and not getting enough exercise and indulging myself too much in the finer things of life.

It's also been a year since I moved back to Delhi, and I can't say I regret that decision. I miss Bombay, I think some part of me will always miss Bombay (but I'm not saying goodbye forever, I'm just saying goodbye for now) but on the other hand, it's been a good move. I'm getting lots of work, I have a large-ish flat,  I like the weather and the people I now know, and reconnecting with old friends, having standing dates with some of them, like we haven't done in years. And, as for Bombay, I have, what we'll call, a Good Thing going on right now, which means I have an excuse to go there every month. Not that I need an excuse, but still. It's nice. Said Good Thing is also nice; and when it's not happening in Bombay/Delhi, it's happening in other parts of the country or the WORLD, and that is so awesome.

Another nice side effect about moving back to Delhi which I hadn't considered in my original pro/con list was that I travelled a LOT this year. Having family here, and resources, meant that I could take off when I liked and it was just a lot easier, having someone pop by and check on the cat and the house and see that everything was running smoothly in my absence. This could've technically happened in Bombay too, but everyone's so busy there that you hate to ask your friends to drop in and see if everything's okay, and while my maid was great, I don't know if she had the work ethic to visit every. single. day while I was gone, which made me stress wherever I was. A lot of my stopovers, especially to the far flung South, were at Bombay airport, so I'd sit in the glass lounge, gazing out wistfully at the tarmac, wishing I was getting off there instead of wherever it was I was off to. Except in the monsoon season, of course. Then I was just like, "HAHA, SUCKERS!"

And now, I will leave you with some pictures from around my house, since I've turned into a homebody and haven't gone anywhere in the last two days. Okay, okay, 24 hours. But it's still a LONG time!

Picture of my liquor cabinet, that tequila bottle is about four years old now, and has had the same four shots left in it since I carted it back from Bombay. The Tia Maria behind it has become one of the things I actually drink, having recently learnt how to make White Russians. (They're good cocktails too.)





Yearned after these flowers at Khan Market the other day and a very kind friend bought us both a bunch. I always think of Mrs Dalloway when I put out fresh flowers, but having flowers is like a fancy indulgence, it always makes me feel posh and rich and adult.




That is a blackboard I bought, full of good intentions (me, ie, not the blackboard, though I'm sure if blackboards had intentions, this one would have good ones) that I'd have a to-do list up and little motivational quotes or pretty poems to look at, and yeah. I haven't updated it since I bought it. Oddly though, the haiku on it now is about flowers, and that sort of went with the flower lights across it, so at least it serves some purpose.






My plants are doing well, thank you. I've only killed three and they're under the windowsill, dead stumps in pots, but otherwise, I think that's a pretty good success rate. I like dressing up this window too, when I'm writing I gaze off  to my right where all the plants are, and it helps me mull. It's one of TC's favourite spots AND I need some oxygen to fight all the cigarette smoke I put into the atmosphere. Win-win.

Why you gotta be a hater, yo?

Delhi, my darling, at this time of the year, you look smug with loveliness. You're all like, "Hey, India, I got winter, I got pretty outdoor restaurants, I got places where you can buy boots AND places where you can wear boots. I'm pretty much the winner of everything." And justified. You are remarkably gorgeous, the weather is remarkably gorgeous, and it is that brief window, that happens only for a few precious weeks, where everyone's in a bloody good mood, crimes drop (a little) and if you steal someone's parking spot, they'll let you off with a chuckle, instead of pulling a knife on you.

But, man, you hate single women. From my limited observations, you're entirely different around single men, with them you adopt a cheek pulling, hair tousling, boys-will-be-boys attitude, invite them over for dinner, guard your teenage daughters, but still look out for them with a parental twinkling eye.  Bachelors have carte blanche in their flats, they can have women over, have noisy parties, and still be invited downstairs to the landlord's house for a meal, or something. You see pieces of writing about Delhi, where the single male writer is going on a rhapsody about their single male writer life. And while I'm not complaining (I got lucky enough to find one of the few flats in Delhi without an owner attached to the ground floor) I do think that as a single woman, I get a bit of a short shrift.

This blog post is triggered off by the fact that it is Sunday afternoon, and I just tried, very unsuccessfully, to order lunch. I called three places and was told my order was "too little". I am a small person, I eat small portions. They have a "single sized" serving on their menus, and all I wanted was to get one of those single sized things to my doorstep, rather than have leftovers lying in my fridge for weeks. Waste not, want not, isn't that the rule? I can't order a whole bunch of other things, and yes, I do think this is a girl-only problem, because I think a dude would be able to eat a lot more than just a single serving of something. (I'm generalising, but this is from watching a lot of boys eat a lot more than I would.) Finally, one restaurant took pity on me, and decided to send me lunch, but usually, it's a whole lot of, "Yeah, no, we can't send that, it's too little."

And then, this got me thinking about other ways being a single lady in a city not equipped for single ladies had gotten me down. I touched briefly upon it in this piece I did for the Sunday Guardian on moving, but allow me to quote some of the things potential landlords said to me as I was househunting:

"The door is locked after 11 pm, you can call if you want to be in later, but you won't be later."

"Here is the barsaati, here is the bathroom, our grandson comes to visit often, he's going to want to use your loo."

"I only rent to young women, but I'm concerned you'll be *ahem* lonely, all by yourself in that big flat."

And, of course, the classic, the what-we've-all-heard:

"Absolutely no male company." "But.. but.. I have male friends." "You have male friends! Harlot!" (Okay, slight exaggeration, but only slight.)

Then, of course, if one is having sex (which I'm not confirming or denying here, just sayin') then everyone hates you. PDA = Not Allowed, but this we already knew, being a conservative country and adopting the opposite of the motto "the whole world loves a lover" and turning it into "keep it in your pants, goddamnit, because we never think about sex, oh no, the reason we're overpopulated is because pretty fairies come in at night and bless us with children." The whole country, Bollywood included, loves a male lover, again the head shaking, eye twinkling, boys-will-be-boys thing, but as a woman, you keep your knees together and your protests loud. And even then, you must have done something in order to interest a boy in the first place. Harlot Part Two! Overnight male guests get tea in the morning, but I get the stink eye from everyone, including the help and random neighbours. Men have "male desires", but single women have to be either a) married or b) sad virgins. When I was younger (and this is a true story), and I happened to be in a car with a member of the opposite sex, within five minutes, there'd be cops surrounding us, threatening to call our parents if we didn't give them some money. TRUE STORY. Is it any wonder that the iPill, a morning after, emergency contraceptive only, is flying off the shelves? Another true story: in my entire life, I have only bought condoms ONCE, and even then, blushing with shame, mumbling a request, and keeping my eyes downcast the entire time, so the shopkeeper wouldn't think I was actually *gasp* having sexual relations. I imagine (I've never actually witnessed this) that when men buy condoms, there are balloons and high fives and woot! score!

And, that's the end of my Sunday afternoon rant, brought to you by my lack of lunch.

Lists I might have come up with weeks ago or made up right now to use as a writing device

Potential tattoos I could get to commemorate my twenties

'A Learning Experience'

'Drink More Water'

'Not A Good Idea'

'Yes, A Great Idea'

'Tattoos R Permanint'

Other names I came up with for my cat after the name TC already stuck and it was too late to change it but are so cool they make me want another kitten

Gingervitis

Bill E.

Deadline

Things my cellphone has said (or continues to say) in the middle of Serious Meetings making me wish I had changed the ringtone but which I never remember to change anyway leading to more awkward situations

"Would you go to bed with me?" (SIDE BAR: Actually a segue for the popular song at the time, viewed here, it's not so bad when you listen to the WHOLE SONG.)

"You have a message, Your Royal Sexiness"

"Hallelujah!"

"Oye message, message!"

This theme.

Some texts I got or sent that I liked and made into a draft post intended to post several, but could only find three so will make them a part of this post instead

"Creepy creep man next to me is very interested in your chesticles."

"There was once a Delhi where spontaneous plans were possible."

"Tulip? I can be a tulip."

"Have just had shower and he has friends visiting so I'm feeling too shy to emerge so sitting in closed bedroom texting you in attempt to look busy."

Ways not to react when someone tells you their dad plans on buying your book after having a nice civilised chat with you, unless you're aiming for strange looks from your companions

"Woot! Sale!"

Other things people will look at you strangely for

Changing into an outfit for a wedding in an airport bathroom and having to take your top off, standing in the middle of the bathroom with only your bra and jeans on as your sweaty fingers frantically try to unzip your party dress and pull it on BUT IT'S NOT HAPPENING GODDAMNIT and god knows how many people you flashed and HAS NO ONE EVER GONE TO A WEDDING FROM AN AIRPORT BEFORE?

Things you could potentially do in order to procrastinate some more

Buy new flat tall winter boots because you neeeeeeed them and it's coooooold and you have to be stylish OR ELSE.

Lie flat on your bed wondering if you perhaps use too many capital letters to make your point.

Tweet obsessively about something household related.

Go on Gchat and say "Hi!" to everyone with a green light near their names.

Do some spring cleaning.

Water your plants.

Follow links to more links to more links, convincing yourself it's all research in the end anyway.

Music And I OR How The Jodhpur Music Festival made me think about my relationship with music in general

1. Music, assorted memories

Music has always provided a narrative for my life. A "theme of the day", if you will. Some days, I'm all about the melancholy, and then there is a sad French voice echoing through my living room, singing about love and loss. Before I go out on nights, some weekends, I have a pep-yourself-up playlist, Ke$ha (my dirty little secret pleasure) thumps on the woofer, and I'm all about the gyrating, the hip movements, the mirror duck face as everything is exaggerated, from putting on mascara to perfume in every.single.pulse.point. I feel fabulous, I think, as I prance around, toothbrush in mouth, this night is going to be fabulous. And it usually is.

 My mother says that once, pregnant with me, she went to watch a Kerala drum performance. They're those huge drums that look like this:

And they make a helluva lot of noise. Something about the bass, the rythym, travelled through her and to me, and I kicked so hard, she finally had to leave. I like to think I was tapping my feet to the beat.

That being said, I didn't grow up in a particularly musical family. As I explained in an article I did for Open Magazine earlier this year, my musical awakening only happened some time in the 90s, and through my friends. But when it did happen, it happened hard. I fell in love with music as soon as I knew what it was, in a notoriously off-key family, I am the only one who can carry a tune, not well, mind you, but at least it  sounds like the song it's meant to sound like. When we were twelve, my friend and I discovered the 'Record' function on our tape decks, and spent hours creating our own radio shows, complete with singing and requests for more singing.  As we grew older, suddenly, it was all important to have musical 'taste', to like one genre and stick to it, I learned to be ashamed of my love for the Backstreet Boys, to treat pop with contempt, and embrace Pink Floyd (well, around my friends, back home I still turned on Alanis, it was like she was singing my life, dude.) Cheesy love songs, you listened to alone, around your friends and in your car, you were all about the edgy, the statements.

I remember the day my college boyfriend introduced me to Dave Matthews Band, just the one non-cheesy song, Dreaming Tree, I think it was, and Jewel, at the same time, and a couple of years later, in another boy's bedroom, after being gently mocked for not knowing the name of the lead singer of Pearl Jam, more Dave Matthews, and because I always thought of myself as uncultured when it came to music, I listened to him, and to the band, and I loved it. In my first flat on my own, my roommate pulled out Dashboard Confessional every night over sparkly blue drinks, on my last trip to the US (oh, more than ten years ago now) my cousin bought me a Matchbox 20 CD, saying he'd only stop calling me "pop girl" when I listened to real stuff. Good stuff. I made lists of qualities I'd like in a man, when I was 19, and one of the things, right below 'should read' was 'should have good taste in music'.  By which I meant, 'should have MY taste in music'. How were you supposed to love a boy who loved hip hop when all that did it for you were soulful ballads?

I know better now. Or do I? My last relationship was full of mistakes and arguments, and one of them was how often he put down the music I listened to. He was a drum and bass kinda guy, and when we hosted parties, it was his music we  mostly listened to. "This is good music," he'd say, "Not like your shit." To be fair, he also said the same thing about the movies I watched. (Not so much books, although we differed there also.) So perhaps not the most shining example of music incompatibility working out in the end.

But I still strongly believe the best part about meeting new people, any people, romantic, friendly, work-y, whatever, is being introduced to a whole bunch of new ideas. Through a new friend, I learn to love bits of Florence + The Machine, sitting at BB's house in Bandra, her playlist was almost always low jazz, one man I dallied with briefly, made me an actual mixed CD. People love to share their music, more than books or anything else, it's like "Here! I love this and if you love this then you sorta, kinda almost love me." Which is why, as teenage girls we tried to so hard to listen to everything our boyfriends listened to, anything to give us an insight into the mysterious marsh that is the male mind.


2.Live music and my relationship with it

I love it. I love being somewhere and a band playing. It has to be complete and utter crap for me not to love it, and thankfully, it rarely is. I love watching the musicians working, like art almost, they're doing something I'd never be able to do. Almost always, when I'm standing in a bar watching a live gig, my eyes are shining, my foot is tapping, I want to grab hold of people and say, "OH MY GOD, ISN'T THIS AWESOME? AND IT'S LIVE!"

But. A caveat. I love live music when there's a place for me to sit down if I need to. A drink close enough. Not so loud that I can't have a conversation. Assorted set list, if possible. Which is why I rarely go to actual concerts. That means being too involved, the kind of person who screams when the band comes on stage, maybe who buys a t-shirt, whose entire evening is just watching them play. I like my live music background-y, a foil to the rest of my night. I'd watch some bands, sure, but I'm not a die-hard rock music fan like some of my friends. I'll go if you're going. I'll go if we sneak in drinks and we sit on a blanket at the back and when the only song I know all the words to comes on, I'll go if I can get up and start singing along.

Here is a list of the bands I have seen:
1) Deep Purple (We were 13, my friend wanted to make out with her older boyfriend, I stood around awkwardly.)
2) Ricky Martin (He was very popular at one point. So popular that I couldn't even see the stage and had to be hoisted upon a friend's shoulders.) (Nice ass, too.)
3) Def Leppard (at the Channel [V] music awards, with a whole bunch of other people including Sting and Gwen Stefani, I think.)
4) Shaggy (there was a boy and WHAT? I had a weird, weird night. I should really blog about that some time.)
5) Some major band in Bombay that everyone got really excited about but whose name I can't even remember. And it was pretty major. Led Zepplin or someone like that. I only went because I had a free pass.


3. Jodhpur RIFF and the reason for this post

Everything I love about live music. I sat back on 500 year old stones, watched the full moon blaze and people dance and the stage was lit up, and I was with people I like, and red wine coursed through my veins.

People keep asking me how it was, and I say variants of "wonderful!" or "fantastic!" and really, even in writing this, I'm having a hard time coming up with more words. I feel like just wonderful should cover it, because see, it was about everything, the music that was all fusion-y and perfect in that setting, the setting itself, absolutely fucking gorgeous, and the people I was with. It was everything, you see?

But let me try and be a bit more descriptive. Performances went on all day, but I was all return-RIFFer and knew that the things happening at night would be more up my alley. Pure folk music is totally awesome, don't get me wrong, but I like fusion music a lot. It makes me want to dance, even when I was as tired as I was (I really need to start getting more sleep on holidays, I feel like each vacation is marked with sleep deprivation and that surreal, weird high you get from only having rested for a couple of hours. It didn't help also that my hotel--which in every other way was picturesque and lovely, with a bathtub even--had a daily power cut at 9 am which went on till 11 am. Like an alarm clock, no matter what time I went to sleep the night before, I'd be up and about by at least 9.30. Next time I go somewhere, I'm pencilling in 'naps'.)

There was this awesome, awesome party on Friday night, a combination of beatboxing and a shaadi brass band and then this DJ, who had also been there last year and by the time I crawled into bed it was 5 am, and the party had still been going strong when I left. That was my favourite night at RIFF the year before too, the mad party they had in a sunken courtyard. This time the setting was different, but still a moonlight party in a fort is the kind of thing you talk about to your friends who didn't go, all blase, "Yeah, I was at a moonlight party in a fort. No biggie."

I was expecting Saturday to be even crazier, thanks to the night before, but it wrapped up at a civilised hour, with the beatboxer collaborating with everyone who had performed. The RIFF Rustle, they call it.

Other highlights? This fantastic band from the Reunion Islands, a Dutch jazz band, and a Bollywood playback singer who sang Sufi music. If you've been on the fence about attending, you have to go next year. Have. To. You'll probably see me there.

  

Thinking about tomorrow

Typing this out on the new Blogger, which is very sleek and pomo, but also a bit scary in its zen like buttons. Yes, I've returned from the hills, last week was spent just  catching up with all that I've missed, and it was quite a lot. The last week of September heralds in the beginning of what I call Busy Busy Time, and on my little desk calender, it seems like already all the dates are circled with squiggly little notes about what I'm meant to be doing, which in my case, is more who I'm meant to be seeing. Most of these little squiggles say Wedding! in as cheerful a tone as squiggles can say, but there's also drinks and coffee and various projects, and I'm just glad I got all that work done in Ramgarh before I left.

After all that detoxing, I'm retoxing, and it has totally taken a toll on my skin. I'm trying not to obsess or touch my face too much, but it IS rather ridiculous at 29, to still get a zit. I should be over this by now! What doesn't help is remembering that at sixteen or whatever age you are when you get all pimply, my skin was as clear as.. er, a  baby's bottom? Is that a thing? But my body should get used to all the pollution in the air and the fresh poisons being poured into it, sooner or later, and I have high hopes from this October. Not least because I'm going off to the Jodhpur RIFF once more this year, last year I went to nurse a broken heart, and such is the wonder and magic of the place, I returned (almost) healed. This year, I'm looking forward to being a bit less broken hearted, and much more cheerful. No More Tears, like a Johnson and Johnson baby shampoo tagline. Plus, there's jazz and dancing and all sorts of fun things. I didn't get to go to Goa this month, like I had planned on, so Rajasthan it is. And live music is so much more superior to any other kind of music.   

You know what else October means? This is the month when I can stop being all cool and casual about it and be all like Birthday! Birthday! Birthday! I know, I know, it's two whole months away, but I feel like the festive season kicks off with Diwali and ends with my birthday. Yes, yes, Christmas, New Year's, blargh, but they're all just foils. Really, this winter is all about me turning 30. A big birthday means a big celebration too, and now I can start planning. Two months too soon? Oh, who cares? I'm actually looking forward to turning thirty, in an odd way. I feel like 29 is like a year of WAITING, and it'll be nice to have 30 here and over with. I remember turning 20, my friend and I had a joint birthday party, and there was lots of drinking, and I basically only remember it because of the photographs, one of which had another friend dipping me backwards, so my hair touched the floor. Twenty was the year I discovered both death and sex, which is like a plotline of a bad literary novel, but it's true. It happened to me. I promise you, though, that it won't be my bad literary novel. But a learning year. And now a new decade, what a very long time to have been alive. I'm not displeased with my lot though. Sure, at twenty, my visions of thirty included marriage, babies, etc. But they also included books, which I have done, and friends, which I have. I'm beginning to rethink my stance on marriage, as more and more friends get hitched, it's inevitable that you wonder what that aspect of your life is going to look like. But here's what I learnt in this year of waiting (which means they're useful after all) that I'd ultimately rather be happy than with someone and unhappy. Does this sound like a very single cheer-yourself-up kinda thing to say? I don't understand why we have to be so rah-rah about the singleness. Some days it does suck, and you're lonely and sad. And some days, it's pretty awesome. Much like any other relationship. But, see, we're brought up to believe that marriage is like one of the tasks we have to check off on our Life Goals list, and here's the thing about being alone , it makes you rethink your Life Goals list. Simple as that.

The one sad thing about turning thirty? I'm finally going to have to change the "About Me" of this blog to thirtysomething instead of twentysomething. Sigh.