The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 14,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 3 fully loaded ships.

In 2010, there were 2 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 99 posts.

The busiest day of the year was December 22nd with 133 views. The most popular post that day was No, I don’t want kids. Problem?.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were onlinedatingmatches.com, blackwomendeservebetter.com, singletude.blogspot.com, en.wordpress.com, and torontospeeddate.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for christmas cat, fortune cookie, invisible cat, how to be ok with being single, and invisible cat pictures.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

No, I don’t want kids. Problem? October 2008
13 comments

Being OK with single makes relationships easier October 2007
11 comments

How to get over someone in a hurry… June 2008
7 comments

Does the average man think like Tom Leykis? February 2008
31 comments

eHarmony scam…ooops I mean spam! January 2008
14 comments

In the past this blog wasn’t a big place of spiritual conversation. And I’m not one to force my thoughts of the spiritual or even religious realm of ideas on people but I would be remiss if I didn’t share my view today of the non-secular single. I don’t mean the Christian view. You know, the promise rings? Or the vow of celibicay to God. No, I just mean piece of mind, balance and ridding sexual thought.

What drives a lot of singles dealing with, well, being single is sex. I’m sorry, was that too blunt? It’s true though. There’s always that “chance” that sex can turn into more. That’s one thought many people have but don’t want to admit. Then there is the primal feelings you have…the ones that say if I don’t have the cow at home, I can keep going out to get the milk. And you can get a lot more than you were shopping for in that scenario that you can’t put back on the shelf!

I would challenge that every single person who isn’t practicing truthfulness about this stop and take a moment to just be without. Experience it for a while and see how you feel afterward. A non-secular view of being single to me is one that doesn’t paint a picture of “having to have” in every sense of that phrase. The secular thought of relationships is that we “have to have” them. Society tells us that a man and a woman must be together (or man and man, woman and woman…I don’t judge)…whether married or not.  I’m not saying that it’s wrong, just that if you are currently single and looking, stop and decide why you are looking.

The worst part of dating sometimes is the labels society throws on you. The cougar. The older man. The skirt-chaser. The craddle-robber. The chubby-chaser. Ah and my favorite: just plain old desperate. You get put into a box. You end up like Courtney Cox and David Arquette. Erase the secular and look toward the spiritual of the union. Why it’s there. The heart of it and not the glam or the hole you think it feels.

And if you are happily single, view it with the eyes of non-secular ideas. Again, this doesn’t always mean to think about it religiously. It just means that hormones are not who you are completely. That need to feel like you belong with everyone else who is dating or married or in long-term relationships is not who you are completely either. There is a place inside of you that has an identity apart from all this noise. Focus on it and tune in.

The bar is the main locale for: engagement parties, birthdays, receptions, etc. It’s hard to avoid. But when you are me, (no longer drinking) these social scenes become hard. Seems like when I drank, everything seemed fun. Now if I spend an hour sober somewhere booze-infused, I’m pretty bored. In that hour I realize people aren’t talking about anything that interests me. And I notice that people do some pretty hilarious stuff they won’t remember the next day.

It’s like watching a mirror you don’t really own anymore. You know what you are looking at but now it’s like, I don’t know, no longer your view. This makes it tough to be youngish and single when even your married friends (when they can finally break free) want to hit a happy hour.

Also, if you are not looking to stay single, people who hit on you in these situations are kind of a drag. You are  left wondering: Hum, do they want my mind or are they wearing beer goggles or their heart in their pants? So you leave an hour later. And then you sit on your back porch or deck and ponder. Or maybe that’s just me.

When you work as much as I do, now almost five years at the same company while working to grow my photography biz, you don’t have time for the more meaningful connections as much as you would like. Happy hours and weekend gatherings surrounded by alcohol are pretty much your mainstay options if you want to stay in the loop.

So this is where I ask you the question: What do you do when you are single and sober?

A lot of things have happened since I started this blog and I’m not really sure where to start.

Just a few things that are of note:

1.) Rediscovered my spirituality. I recommend it.

2.) Got involved with a few non-profits, hosting a benefit.

3.) Decided to bury the hatchet and go ahead and accept the friend request my recent ex sent me on Facebook.

4.) Re-focused efforts on my photography and Web site.

5.) Work, work, work…

If you are ever sitting there and find yourself afraid of being alone…

If you ever feel like you can’t live a full life without another person in it…

Figure out what makes you shine. And do it.

Maryann James

I think I ran into Maryann James’ “BaltAmour” blog over at the Baltimore Sun about a year ago. She was refreshing to read. And at times she actually gave me a few shout-outs and mentioned a few of my posts. Some of my readers  even read her stuff. In fact I remember Greg over at Dissonance saying Maryann had a great name for her blog — BaltAmour. Quite clever.

But I’m sad to say that I read today that Maryann is leaving her blog and in fact no one will be replacing her.  Having a lot more to do these days at the Sun ( in these crazy media times of uncertainty, I bet she does), Maryann has left the building. And having found love herself, I can only imagine that this exit is a little bittersweet.

Read her farewell here. I hope it stays up a while longer.

I wish her all the best…

I wanted to be there for her. But I couldn’t. She lives a few states away and our schedules are impossible. It’s weird considering her a wife now. It was also weird at first seeing her as a mother but when she had her son I saw she was born to be one. Now that she has added wife to her title, that’s one that will take some adjusting. I remember all our talks about marriage, dating…how men “just didn’t get it.”

Now she’s wed. And she is the last of my close friends to take this leap. I wish her well but wonder how long it will take before it might just bother me — being the last. Maybe it already does? Maybe it doesn’t matter. I can keep up the most brave face I can possibly muster, and convince myself that I’m still OK with being single. But I waver. I am also just human.

No matter how hard I try to fight it, I’m approaching 31 as of 49 days from now, give or take some hours. And the fact remains, to be over 30 and not ever married makes you a marked woman. When men approach this age and are never married, we tend to just shrug it off as a guy who is still “sewing his oats” or got so career-minded he seemed to have forgot to find a great gal and marry her. When women get to this point, we tend to shake our head, label her and decide she must be damaged goods. You may be sitting there  in absolute disagreement but don’t deny it. Women in there 30s still single, never married, seems to be an oddity in concept but surely increasing in numbers.

Being a photographer, I know find myself always surrounded in weddings. I love to shoot them. They are beautiful and the girly-girl in me gets kind of goofy in all the flutter and tulle. But for some reason, while I’m shooting, I don’t really get emotional about the vows and the rings and the words…words…words…That’s all they are until you get home and spend about seven years with the person. Then I wonder do people remember those words they said in front of family, friends, random plus ones and our God of many names.

So far I’m pretty much the last of my old-school friends who isn’t married, engaged or practically married and I will admit it feels kind of weird. I’m not sure what I really see in a marriage other than the fact that two people can coexist with each other, support each other and keep a 50/50 playing field. I always imagined a marriage for myself as one where the two of us play hard, work hard and if we go to bed angry, we wake up having the makeup. That’s probably very unrealistic because it’s so simple and nothing is simple.

Self-discovery isn’t overrated. I feel we all need time alone to even know what the hell we want or even who in the world we are. Sometimes that takes a while. And sometimes when you find all of that, your life can hit a reset button and you start all over again. The question is, do we do alone?

That said, I can’t help but feel a little bit hopeful (pun intended) about my dating options with president-elect Barack Obama in office. I mean, if we finally became “brave” enough and open enough to get a black man in the White House, can’t we say the same of our old ideas of dating? This may be kind of a stretch, but humor me a little: What we thought we would never see, now is and as voters, everyone seemed to set aside racial issues (for the most part) and voted their conscious. Why was that so hard? Honestly, this isn’t a post about my political views. In fact, I didn’t really know WHO I wanted to vote for until the very day I pushed the red button to send my choice (early voter…).

Even though Obama is a reflection of how two people can see pass race and/or religion, I’ve always felt being here in the South, that the general standard of acceptance are couples who are only white with white, black with black, Asian with Asian. You get the point. I will always remember in college when one of my exes broke up with me basically because his very Southern, closed-minded parents would have never accepted me. No matter my future or education.

Will that all change now? Will we finally officially take down the barriers we so often put up when it comes to our dating pool? I for one have noticed a slight difference. Of course, some of that could be because I just went shopping and hired a personal trainer. But you never know.
Change may be about more than just our political history. It may be about our bedrooms too…

Or maybe not…Proposition 8, anyone?