Straight up

I've been racking my brains this week, trying to identify something new that I might have done and I just kept coming up short. I also realised just how routine things had become in my life, and how actually doing something new every week would take a lot of energy, which at the moment goes to sustaining my trusty routine.Sure, I watched a film I hadn't seen before, and even finished reading a book, but these aren't really things to write home about. However, as this is the last post in January, I thought I would use it to do something I haven't done in a long time rather than something new, and get straight up honest/ confessional with you guys.Soon and very soon I will hit the big 30, and in the lead up I have of course been considering my last 29 years and thinking about the years ahead. Actually, none of that is true. I am still thinking week by week, day by day, and I only have random memories surfacing from my last 29 years, in no particular order, with very little consequence. Why did I lie you ask? Because when you get to my age, you think there is an expectation (despite telling yourself that you know better) that you should in fact have all the answers by now. Which obviously, I don't.Instead one of the key things that arises from all that reminiscing is thinking about all the boyfriends from the past, and feeling happy about the regrets I don't have over not ending up with any of them. And looking back, they were kind of like a line up of potential suspects in an as yet unidentified crime: There was the Muslim who converted to Christianity, the poet with the personality complex, the immigrant sent back to his country of origin, the visitor from another land with questionable sex practices, the nice guys (so many "nice guys"), the depressed, the emotionally and mentally broken, and the commitment phobic projector.What a back catalogue of nonsense, huh? About five years ago, I would have still been pining after them, trying to pick out the good bits from them and leave the rest, so that they became an amalgamation of one man who had never existed but still retained all the qualities I had liked in them. I am smarter now, but also almost completely hopeless. My faith in online dating has been publicly declared as nonexistent, and I have discovered that people really don't meet in real life anymore. Last week that thought made me sad, but this week I just feel prepared for whatever is in store.By that I simply mean, that the future is in fact (pretty obviously) completely unpredictable. Last year a few friends broke up with long term partners sporadically, and somehow rejoined me in the single game, which at the beginning of 2015 I think I lamented about as the only contestant in said game amongst friends. But now that they had returned to my planet of singledom, nothing went back to the way it was, because things were already different. Our perspectives had changed, as they often do with age and experience. I was not the Sex and the City singleton I had seemed from the other side of the fence, and they were obviously not in blissful coupledom as it had appeared to me.All the relationships beginning and ending around me just fuelled the whole unknowable reality of it all, and it's left me a bit...listless I guess? Perhaps that's not the right word, but it's close. I'm just not as enthusiastic as I was; not as Disney optimistic about love as I once was, back in the good old, wide eyed innocent days. And maybe that's just my experience of being around one too many broken hearts or broken people, and having my own heart broken. Things seem a lot more real and serious, but I'm hoping they don't lose their fun.I mean really, what is the point in the possibility of new experiences, if they don't seem fun? This question is directed to all of those in relationships where 90% of the time they find they are unhappy. I have been there and I'll let you in on a little secret; it wasn't worth remaining in.So where I'm at at the moment is probably where I've always been, which is working on myself and trying to live my best life (topic for the month of February by the way), and if that happens to involve a Michael Fassbender and Idris Elba mashup of a human, then I will welcome that fate with open arms and a Cheshire Cat grin.For now though, I'll keep following the fear by keeping up with this blog, which remains scary and makes me feel naked, but usually in a good way.