If you haven’t read my previous post about my issues with mamahood, then go for it so you can get an idea of how serious I’ve been about not wanting kids. My sentiments are also echoed here and here [hat tip: Penelope Trunk; TwentySet]. Now, bear in my mind that the decision I’m scrutinizing is my own, and not the decision of whether or not to have kids in the empirical sense.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this lately, primarily because (of course) it is an issue in my fledgling relationship. Granted, we’ve both agreed that it’s not an immediate issue, but he would like to have at least one child with whomever he marries. It’s no secret that I’m crazy about the man, but I’m not willing to agree to children just because that’s what he wants.

We have had a lot of conversations about it though, and it’s got me thinking about it on my own. As I began to examine my issues with having kids, talking about it openly and honestly with friends of differing ages, marital and child status, and watching people with kids more closely, I started to realize how close-minded I’ve been.

I began to realize that my problem is not with actually having kids, but that they become an end in themselves and not a side effect of living the life I’d like.

A few things happened leading up to this realization. One, I’ve been talking with a mentor of mine who is 50 and has the coolest relationship with her daughter I’ve ever seen. I have no qualms being totally open and honest with her, even with the ugliest parts of myself. She pointblank told me one afternoon that I was being close-minded when it came to my thinking regarding family life. I realized that I was assigning arbitrary labels to people and making assumptions about their lives based upon that. Married, divorced, middle-aged, overweight, with or without kids, single, thin, etc. Does the label make the experience of the life?

Somewhere around that same time I was leaving Date #4’s house, and an early-thirties-ish couple walked by with a stroller and a grandparent in tow. They were just taking a Fourth of July stroll after a fresh rain, chatting and such. “That’s probably the best thing that could ever happen to me,” was the unwelcome thought that popped into my head. Whoa. Where’d that come from?

On my drive home, I rolled it around in my head and realized the truth of it. I’ve seen a lot of families that are happy, in which the parents continue to live dreams independent of their children. While their families greatly enhance their happiness, their kids are supplemental to the happiness that they already experience in life. They are not, and never did, expect children to be the main source of their happiness in life. They are simply one of the aspects of their life that they derive joy out of.

I have been watching a few families in my life since I began to seriously evaluate this issue. One is a young couple who have probably the cutest baby girl I’ve ever seen. I’ve said before that if I could insure that a child of mine would come out that cute, happy and well-mannered, I’d have kids without a doubt. The thing is that I watch the parents, too. They’re happy, and appear to be very much in love. I’m not close to them, and so they may have more problems than I’m aware, but they seem like fairly transparent people. I see them together, separate, and with their families. I won’t lie – there is a part of me that craves a normal family life because of the dysfunctional part of mine. They are always friendly and seem to possess a sense of peace about their lives.

I also watch my older female mentor and her family closely. She’s been a single mom for a long time, and her daughter is a well-adjusted, intelligent young woman. She has self-confidence at 13 that I still wish I had. The openness and frankness with which they deal with the little and big things in their lives is truly inspiring to me. It gives me goose bumps. That family probably has the most irreverent sense of humor I’ve been privy to and they have a lot of fun in their lives. It’s clear that they simply enjoy the ride.

Finally, I watch the families that make me not want kids. In doing so, I’ve come to realize that the thing that bothers me is not that they have children, but what their intentions or preconceived notions were in doing so. They all have a few things in common for the most part. One is that they had their children too young and/or too soon into a relationship/marriage. I’ve watched people have kids and treat them as accessories, and I’ve seen people have kids because they wanted something to love. They were trying to fill a hole that remains unfilled. And now they have kids to take care of when they didn’t know how to take care of themselves in the first place. (Side note: I was in the ER with my grandmother last night and a 17-year-old came in with impacted bowels, i.e. constipation. Her second birth and she didn’t realize that she should’ve been drinking lots of water, eating fiber, and probably shouldn’t have waited a week to tell the doctors she hadn’t had a bowel movement. If you can’t take care of yourself, how will you raise a child?)

I guess my point is that as Gen-Y women we’ve been told that “having it all” is a myth. That makes me feel like I have to choose between my career and having a child. It’s saying that I won’t be able to do both. While I know that to some extent one suffers at the hands of the other, I’ve been watching this young couple juggle a baby and a new business successfully. By successful, I mean that the baby is clearly happy and well cared for, the business is doing very well, and they both seem extremely happy and still in love, though at times admittedly tired.

It gives me hope. Perhaps I can live life happily without any sacrifices.

When I met Date #4, I wasn’t looking for anything serious. I was simply mixing a little business with pleasure when my online dating research yielded a surprising result – a dateable, attractive man with whom I was compatible. My life was run at a hectic, but efficient and highly effective pace. There simply wasn’t a whole lot of room. I liked it that way.

Things started slowly. I told him I wasn’t looking for anything serious, that I was, ahem, very busy and important. No time for a relationship, not looking for that sort of thing. He said he understood, respected my priorities, etc.

Then I fell in love with him.

The “serious” thing needed revising, obviously. As two people are apt to do when they find they enjoy one another’s company, we spent a lot of time together. 

A lot.

I stopped running. I stopped blogging as regularly. I stopped doing laundry and grocery shopping. I was deep in Cloud Cuckoo Land, as I like to call it. That place where newly formed couples spend way too long looking into each other’s eyes, sleeping really late on weekends, and having lots and lots of hot monkey sex. 

As much as I knew this was going to happen, I couldn’t stop it. Perhaps I didn’t want to stop it. What the hell? Falling in love is fantastic. Why skip all the fun stuff and move straight into routine? 

Incorporating Date #4 into my life isn’t the same as making a new friend or having a relative move into town. This is someone that I hope to have a meaningful relationship with. Anyone who has been in a relationship for a period of time knows that it takes time to get to know someone. I liked Date #4 and I wanted to learn about him – that takes time. Granted, you can take your time getting to know someone, but I tend to be an extremist with a “good” button instead of an “easy” button. If it makes me feel good or happy, I’ll slam that damn button till it’s broke. Luckily, I didn’t do that here.

Armed with a little bit of knowledge of myself and my habits, I tried to resist Cloud Cuckoo Land, but it was simply too alluring. GIWS and I had managed to see each other only once a week, twice tops, throughout the few months we dated. I tried to do this again, but to no avail.

When I got sick (again), my frustration reared its head. I had gained 5 lbs. I was completely out of racing shape. I’d been eating entire meals out of the vending machines at work. Thanks to my fourth sinus infection this year, I was waylaid and unable to stay awake long enough to do anything other than go to work. I reached my breaking point when my libido disappeared. WTF?!

A week later, I got better and I got some perspective. Date #4 and I have been together for only two months. I realized that I could maintain my old schedule and kick him out of my life or I could find a new routine. That period of everything going to hell was just a slash-and-burn method of prepping the soil for a new life. One that involves the man that I love and all the activities I love.

What I ended up having to do was first explain to him what was going on in my head. He understood and didn’t take it personally at all, which was essential for me to feel comfortable moving forward. I explained to him that there are a lot of things I enjoy doing that I haven’t been doing lately, and that I need a routine or schedule in order to make it all fit into my life.

I looked at my schedule, needs and priorities. I looked at his schedule, needs and priorities. He has two dogs, so he can’t stay over too often. I live out of the way of my work and his house, so I have to bring all my stuff for work if I’m staying over. It made more sense to do all that if I were staying two nights in a row. For both of our sanity and respect of personal space, I decided two nights apart would be good for us. Thus, a schedule emerged. I would stay with him Wednesdays and Thursdays, and he would stay with me on Tuesdays and Fridays. Sundays and Mondays we had off, and Saturdays I left to whim (even I don’t try to plan everything).

I make sure to bring my running shoes to his place and try to take the dogs out with me. I also run on the evenings we’re not seeing each other. The beginning of the week can be overwhelming for me, so that’s why I picked those two days to spend apart. It gives me the time to work on my blog, get my clothes ready for the week, and to generally spend time with myself, which I think is important in any relationship.

Once I identified the problem and communicated that to him, I was able to then ask, what now? How can I have both – him and my old life? Planning the nights was a great first step. It allows me to plan what will need to happen and when. The other stuff is simply up to me. Once I finished the relay marathon I had spent months training for in May, I had a hard time staying motivated, so I signed up for a race on July 4 and started looking for more to keep me running.

Maybe this is easy for some people to figure out, but I was really happy being single. My life was happy and whole when I met Date #4, so much in fact that if it weren’t for my sister’s sage advice to not let opportunities pass me by, I probably wouldn’t have made the leap.

I’m glad that I did, but that period of transition can be tough. I think it’s important to be honest with yourself, to communicate your frustration without laying any blame, and to get into the solution. Dwelling in the problem while I was sick yielded nothing but a depressing blog post (sorry!). Once I decided to try a solution, I was already feeling like my old self and it didn’t take long to get back on track.

Oh, and my libido came back. Thank god.

[Photo credit: Evan Romine]

I’m staring back at my reflection wearily. I’ve just finished washing my face for bed when I realize why I’m so tired of looking at myself in the mirror every night. It smacks me it comes back so suddenly. This is what you looked like before you got a grip, I remember.

There’s a lack of color here. There’s been a lack of color since… since… when did it fade? Somewhere around falling in love and completing my relay marathon only a month ago. I used that week after the race to “reward myself.” I let myself eat poorly and slack off on my training… way off. As in, didn’t do it all.

That week has yawned into a month.

I can feel the little roll at tummy when I slump in my bad posture. It isn’t just that my face has lost color and that I have probably put on two or three pounds. I haven’t been sleeping enough, not what I call a healthful amount. I haven’t been going to enough meetings and I can feel that my spiritual well-being is affected. I’ve been eating entire meals out of the vending machine at work.

This isn’t the dark cloud of grief that rolled overhead back at the beginning of April. This is laziness. Knowing how to pick myself up and not being willing to do the work to bring that about. In my 12-step program, we say that when the pain is enough, we will act.

Luckily my threshold for pain has become amazingly low. Tonight, one glance in the mirror does the trick. I’m tired of being lazy, I assert to my innermost self. This sucks. Let’s quit this shit and get on with the rest of it.

I could go on and on as to why this has happened – work has been slow and uninspiring, a new relationship needs attention, there are things to do besides train for races that are months away. Excuses. Excuses I’ve been willing to make and accept because I am lazy and unmotivated. So here I am. Out of racing shape, pallid faced with an upset stomach and three pounds heavier. I’ve even been reduced to participating in pointless blog commenting, something I usually have enough serenity to not get involved in.

This one is all on me. I’ve written before about accountability partners and the wonders they can work for helping you to stay motivated. That’s fine and well, unless you stop calling them… especially when you want to avoid being, er… accountable.

In the past I could spend an entire blog post on how I’m going to pull my shit together, exactly what I’ll do and in what order to get things back on track, reassure you the reader that I am indeed doing it. And then promptly sit on my ass for two more weeks before I finally follow through. I won’t do that here. I’m not sure when my motivation will come back to me or when exactly I’ll decide that it’s been enough.

I think I just did though.

It’s been suggested that I’m wound a *little* tight. I’ll be the first to admit that I have problems relaxing. I tend to be sort of a black-or-white, stop-or-go kind of person, at least when it comes to my work and myself. For the past five months or so, I haven’t been able to let go of this tension. I’ve sort of had this feeling that I need it to keep going, that somehow relaxing would cause me to lose my momentum. 

On the other hand, I know that I need to relax every now and then; otherwise I won’t be as productive as I could be. And so it has been with this in mind – increased productivity – that I have set about trying to “relax.” Like any good workaholic, I schedule a break. I cordon off a largish chunk of the day and I say this is where I will relax. 

There’s something about magazines like Real Simple and TV shows like House Hunters that depresses me. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but every time I attempt a sit on the couch post-work I am irritated by things like Everybody Loves Raymond. There’s a part of me that is suspicious that these forms of entertainment have been created to make us believe that not only are you content with your life, but you are enthusiastic about it, a subtle (or not-so-subtle, in my opinion) brainwashing of home-improving, toddler-yogaing, exasperated-but-happy-at-the-end-of-the-day, we’re-the-same-kind-of-unique status quo. Welcome to the new yuppiedom.

Maybe I’m just feeling particularly fed up with the new American dream this evening, as I sit in my underwear, toenails unpainted and unmanicured, eating Oreos with orange juice, wondering why I’m throwing 5 months of perfectly good conditioning down the drain. Maybe it’s that I’ve recently fallen in love and have caught myself twice already daydreaming into that magical land I call Not A Chance in Hell.

That place involves a relationship that can survive my apparent two-year statute of limitations with a guy who looks like a J. Crew model, a baby as cute and happy as the one that couple at the café has that will magically disappear when it needs to be fed/changed/burped or cries inexplicably, a house that requires little-to-no maintenance which of course we obtained at a steal, a thriving business that I built and doesn’t require me to be around all the time, and a Holly who does not feel overwhelming pinned-down and caged by it all.

Puh-shaw.

That’s when I turn off the TV. And call Real Simple to remind them, once again, that I unsubscribed two months ago. I fight off the sneaking suspicion that somehow, somewhere my father has bribed a Starbucks barista to spike my lattes with hormones. I have been told repeatedly that one day I will want all of these things. When I get a case of the I-just-want-to-be-upper-middle-class blues, I daydream another life.

In this life I usually am married, or in a long-term committed relationship. Yes, I am happy and content being single, but like many, I would like to have a companion through life. I think a character in Shall We Dance? sums it up best when she says people get married so that in a world of billions, one person says they will be the witness to your life. I agree with this. 

At any rate, 90 percent of me says no to kids. This is mostly a financial decision in my mind. Yes, I know you can be financially well off and have kids also, but the majority of folks are not. Here are a few examples of childless couples who are financially better off than their peers (especially where it comes to retirement). And here’s an entire online community dedicated to couples who have chosen not to have kids for a variety of reasons. I take comfort knowing that I’m not the only one out there like me.

Mostly, though, this daydream life is about being able to do the things I am passionate about without any compromises or guilt feelings, such as diving tirelessly into my own businesses, having a partner who I still find sexually appealing, coming nowhere close to any variety of poop/snot/vomit, and traveling at will and on whim.

Guy I’ve Been Seeing and I hadn’t seen each other in probably two weeks. With the website taking off at the same time as my IT consultancy, I had become insanely busy. GIBS was almost equally busy with his career. When we were seeing each other, it was pretty much for, er, one thing.

During this particularly long stretch between sightings, I’d got to thinking about our relationship. Hold on a second. I just said relationship. That’s not what’s supposed to happen. GIBS is thus named for a reason. I had such a mortal fear of saying BF, GIBS was the shortest description I could come up with to describe our association to friends and family members. But here it was four or five months into it, and how long could you possibly just be “dating” someone?

With my career taking off in so many different directions, I knew time was going to be limited. I got to thinking about GIBS though. All of this really great stuff pretty much started because of him and that question he asked on our second date. He was always there for me – supporting me, holding me accountable, pushing me through the tough parts when I wanted to give up. He could pump me up when I needed it, and he could celebrate my successes. And he genuinely felt them. I could pretty much tell him anything. I respected his opinion and sought his advice on most things.

Holy crap, I thought. He’s one of my best friends.

I certainly didn’t want to ruin things with my best friend. At the same time, I knew that it wasn’t going to work as a couple. Neither one of us were cut off for coupledom, at least for the time being. We’d talked repeatedly about our relationship fears, our happiness in being single, etc. Every time I ended something with someone though, we never really stayed friends. We might talk, but it eventually tapered off or imploded when I realized they were holding onto the friend card thinking I would change my mind.

I talked it over with one of my mentors (people, if you haven’t already, find an older person you respect, admire and talk openly with on all matters). I decided honesty was the best policy. I sort of had this feeling that he might be feeling the same way I was anyhow.

So our schedules finally synced up and we went for sushi. We talked about the great and busy things in our lives – my new apartment, his new house, my IT consultancy taking off, his big trips coming up.

“Well, it sounds like we’ve both got really full lives right now,” I commented, looking down at the table. I raised my eyes and gave him a knowing look. He met my eyes and I could tell he was thinking the same thing.

“Look, with all this stuff going on, it just seems like maybe we don’t have time for a relationship,” I pushed through.

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking that lately, too,” GIBS agreed, looking relieved.

“Here’s the thing though,” I continued. “You’ve actually become really important to me.” I told him everything I’d realized about he and I as friends. I told him that he’d become one of my best friends and that friendship is a rung higher than a relationship in my book.

“So you don’t want me to just go away?” he asked.

“No!” I reassured. “Look, I need you as a friend.”

We continued talking and walked to our cars. I wondered, and hoped, that we would really stay friends. And we have. I think we’re actually closer than we were when we were dating. We talk on the phone regularly, text our triumphs and ‘how you doing’s to each other often. We hang out, and true friend that he is, he helped me move this past weekend. We’ve had dinner and great, interesting conversations. I feel like I’m more myself around him than ever, because just like any other friend, I figure he’ll figure my faults and flaws. I don’t fear judgment. I can roll over to his place sans make-up and not give a crap since we’re just friends anyways.

And while the FB card is definitely on the table, I’ve filed it away for a rainy day. Today I’m totally cool being good friends.

Note: Hereto forward, GIBS will be known as GIWS (Guy I Was Seeing).

I made a big move this weekend, in the physical sense, as well as less literally. I moved to a new apartment in a new part of town, and it’s as if I’ve officially started a new phase in my life.

I don’t know if it’s my age, or the situation I found myself in, but I never really could find an apartment that I liked and that I could also afford. Plus, I was living with someone, so compromises had to be made (this place was closer to his work, that place was cheap enough for our budget, etc.). When we split, I had to find a place quick. The place I took was too expensive for my budget, so I downgraded severely as I tried to reign in my spending and get back on my feet financially after losing my job, my car, my dual income living situation and getting sober.

It took me a year. Soon after I celebrated my one-year anniversary last month, I signed a one-year lease on a condo on North Padre Island (the beach!). The past two weeks have been downright unbearable as I waited and waited for moving day to come. And tonight, going back to the old apartment I had come to disdain so much to do the final cleaning, time crept so slowly I thought it would stand still. Finally, I drove off, and immediately called a friend to announce I was leaving the old apartment for the last time. Hallelujah!

I guess the point I’m trying to make in a roundabout way is how our surroundings affect us. I took my previous apartment because it was cheap. That was the only reason. I figured for the price I could stand just about anything. Not so. I grew to dislike it so much that I never wanted to be there. Even when I needed to do work or read, I would go somewhere else to do it. I’m not sure exactly what it was – it could’ve been the grey carpet, or the circa-1978 fixtures, or the unrespectable neighbors. It could’ve been merely what it represented to me – a time in my life where frugality was the biggest necessity, an era of character-building hardship.

Even only half-way unpacked, I love spending time in my new home so much, I look forward to returning to it all day, unlike my previous apartment, which I dreaded going home to. For the first time in my life, everything seems like it belongs. The furniture belongs, the paintings belong, and the towels match. I belong. I guess it feels like my space, my own home. It’s a wonderful feeling.

As I move my company into a new area – office optimization – how your space affects you is something that I will be focusing on. Certain colors soothe (blue), while others energize (orange). There is an optimal set-up to achieve maximum productivity in every space. As I move into my new apartment, I’m trying to achieve this with my own space.

It’s about more than just achieving maximum productivity though. It’s about being able to enjoy the space that you’re working in. One of the coolest office set-ups I’ve ever seen is at Pixar, and Microsoft Research has some pretty cool ones too. My offices at work are painted in two shades of green – bright grass green and cool pastel green. It’s energizing and somehow always makes it feel fresh in there.

The best offices, in my opinion, are wireless and paperless. Why not set up Wi-Fi and give everybody laptops? Make spaces that go beyond traditional cubicles and desks. I had the opportunity to redesign a previous company’s space, and that was exactly what I lobbied for. Instead of desks, there were tables and comfortable sofa chairs. Instead of a separate office for every employee, the rooms were separated by function. There was a meeting room, a brainstorming room, a library/”quiet” room, a multimedia room, and a break room. Each one had a different tone to match its function. The brainstorming room was looser, had brighter colors and rearrangable furniture. The library had bean bags and sofas and dimmer lights to suggest quiet; the multimedia room had large glass tables for projects and plenty of direct light.

When your environment is inviting, it will be hard to get people to leave it, kind of like my new apartment and me. When the environment is functional, things will get done. When the environment is optimized, things will get done faster. Faster, productive employees who want to be at the office? Sounds good to me.

Check out real people’s cool home offices [hat tip: Lifehacker.com].

There has been some major backsliding going on in my life the past three or four weeks. Let’s just say some slacking has occurred… it’s like cancer. It started in one area of my life and spread quickly to the others. Part of this can be blamed on tragedy and illness, but that crutch has gotten old. It’s time to throw out the excuses and get things back on track now.

Sleep
I used to be the Queen of Good Rest. I always slept well and for the optimal time. I guarded my sleep schedule like it was Fort Knox. I defended it and nurtured it. It’s as if I’ve spent the past month beating the shit out of it and calling it a Bad Kid. It hates me now and acts like an angry toddler. When I do give myself the time to get a good night’s rest, I have problems either falling asleep or staying asleep. When I wake up, I don’t feel refreshed. I feel more tired. Last night I slept for 9 hours to make up for the 5 ½ hour sleep cycles I’ve been doing. I feel less awake. People even say I look tired. I need to get back on a schedule. I’m sure it has to do with the fact that it’s been erratic.

Diet
I’ve lost three more pounds. Most women would be excited by this. I am not. This has nothing to do with healthy weight loss – I’m not eating right. And I’m running distance. As a distance runner, weight loss is your enemy (after a certain point anyways). I am usually vigilant about my diet – 6 or 7 small, regimented meals per day. I make sure I eat enough protein, iron, dairy and good carbs. Lately, I’ve been skipping meals, not really eating anything healthy, etc. I can feel how awful it is for me. Eating well takes time. You need to get to the grocery regularly for fresh produce and plan your meals ahead if you have a jam-packed day like I do.

Running/exercise
I run four days a week like it’s my religion. Since everything happened last month, I have seriously slacked. It’s Thursday and I haven’t run at all this week. Now, this is serious business. I have a 5K and a relay marathon to run in May. I’m not where I need to be. Aside from that, running is my release. I feel energized and empowered when I’m done with a good run. I particularly enjoy the time I spend outside doing it. It’s relaxing. Skimping on this area of my life does exponential harm to me; it kills my relaxation and my health.

Budget
Ugh. To be fair, I’ve lost 18 pounds since I got sober. The first five came off right away (I was a beer drinker – muy fattening). The rest I lost in the past 5 months or so through the combination of a healthy diet and running. So, I’m down a few sizes in almost everything, especially work clothes. That’s where I’m blowing my money. I’m close to overdrafting my bank account, and that is a place I really hate to be.

General cleanliness
Please step away from the apartment, miss. Really, things are pretty messy on the home front. I’m never in my apartment and since I am moving next weekend, I decided not to worry about doing much until then. Really, all I’ve done is create more work for myself when I start packing. The car is in pretty bad shape too – a cleaning inside and out is definitely in order.

Tardiness
Running around at break-neck speed has caused me to forget just about everything. (Hello? I brought my running clothes, but left my sneakers. Is anyone home?) I am sleeping as late as I can, and thus making it to work perpetually 15 minutes late, which causes me to leave 15 minutes late, throwing my entire schedule into chaos. That does not look good to the boss either. And, let’s face it, tardiness is tacky.

The Solution
The best people in my life always tell me to get out of the problem and into the solution. Having defined the problem, I know how to tackle it. One of my major problems has been budgeting time for preparation. Most of the things above can be eliminated if I will simply slow down and take the time to prepare for them.

I need to prepare my food for the next day. I need to get my bag of running gear together the night before. I have to take the time to sit down with monthly bills twice a month and look at how much I can afford to spend on clothes, etc. I need to spend just 10 little minutes cleaning up when I get home instead of falling onto the couch with the laptop for an hour. And finally, I need to guard my sleep schedule like it was the Most Precious and Dear Thing on the Earth again.

An article caught my eye earlier this week on MSN about the (apparent) amplitude of single, successful women who (gasp) may never find a man.

The article sites the following as the major obstacles these women are facing:
1. They want someone as successful as they are
2. Little time leftover for dating after work and other priorities

But there is one that stands out as the bigger issue:
3. They simply intimidate their male counterparts

I recently had a conversation with Guy I’ve Been Seeing about this very thing. I’m not exactly your prototypical hard-as-nails businesswoman. I don’t think they’ve existed since the ‘80s and the days of mandatory hosiery in the office, so let’s just kill that stereotype now. I am, however, very driven and motivated, like so many of my fellow successful Gen Y females.

Since high school, my intelligence and my inability to hide behind a pretty, artificially dumbed-down exterior has gotten in the way of my love life. I began to notice the trend in college, when one of my friends pointed out to me that guys were probably just intimidated by me. Me? I asked. I’m 5’ 3”, a buck-nothing. How is that intimidating? A boyfriend confirmed the theory. “You’ve always intimidated me,” he said. “You’re smart, but in a business way that I’m not.”

GIBS couldn’t believe this. “You? Intimidating? How?” he said. I explained to him about how most guys (I’m speaking from experience now) would rather have someone who is a little less complicated, a little easier, with a little more time on their hands… in essence, they would rather be the alpha. I don’t work well with that. I don’t like being the alpha either, though.

That’s where the real problems start to happen. It’s a difficult balance to find – a guy that challenges you would have to be at your level in some sense, pursuing his own goals, career, and success, who is also supportive of your success, and who is looking for that type of woman. Not to mention all the other little stuff people like in relationships, like compatibility, shared values and common interests, etc.

That’s not to say I haven’t had boyfriends. Up until the past year, I was in a string of long-term relationships since high school. The problem was that the guys I ended up with simply didn’t have the cojones to challenge me the way I needed to be back then. I’ve finally learned how to challenge myself, but I think I’d still like someone who is working on achieving his own big dreams and goals.

So, now here I am at 26, single for the first time since college and I’m being given a fairly bleak outlook. The more successful I become, the harder it’s going to be to connect.

But see, I don’t think these women are sitting around at home, crying into their Chardonnay about it. I think the article totally misses the point. These women aren’t willing to settle for anything less than what they want because the lesson their success has taught them is that they can achieve great things in spite of the odds. They are Whole People who aren’t okay with accepting anything less than another Whole Person.

Speaking for myself, I have accepted the idea that I could possibly never be married. Some people might say that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don’t think it is. Fifty percent of all marriages in divorce, remember? A very small fraction of married folk believe their marriage could in divorce. Who’s fooling whom here? If I can be okay with being single for potentially the rest of my life, then I am not going to wait around to do things. I’m going to charge full force. And somewhere out there, there is a guy who thinks that’s hot. He’s the guy for me.

I recently got a question from a reader and responded to it. It clarifies some of my thoughts related to relationships, ambition and organization, so I thought I would share it here.

Question:
“Just curious, are you secretly one day hoping for some man of your dreams character to come along and throw you off your schedule and change your life? Or do you ever feel like maybe you’re organizing your life too much? I’m not saying you are, but a lot of the blog is organizing your life, and though you’re not there now, it seems like you might progressively become a schedule book. Sometimes I want to become a schedule book, but just so I can break out of it.”

Answer:
“Hmm… No, I don’t secretly want a man to throw me off my path. As a matter of fact, the past few months I’ve become rather relationship phobic. I would say that I’m afraid someone will throw me off, but I’m not afraid of it because I know I wouldn’t let it happen.

I schedule my time, but I schedule it so that I can fit in all the things that I love doing. When I was doing it without a schedule, I felt crazed and time-starved constantly. The fun things were falling to the wayside because I was running around distracted.

I leave big gaps in my schedule. Sunday, for example, has just a few items: run, write blogs, post blog. None of them have set times, it’s more a loose to-do list. I fully intend to spend most of that day on the beach with my iPod, some Jack Johnson and a book (which will probably be used more as a pillow than for reading). And I shall eat strawberries and wonder what the poor people are doing (i.e. people in snow, not near water, etc.).

I understand what you mean though. I used to come up with schedules in college just so I could rebel against them – it made me feel spontaneous to be at Wal-Mart buying hula hoops at 1 am when I should have been writing my Vonnegut paper.

That you would consider someone to be rescuing you from your scheduled self makes me think that you don’t enjoy schedules in the first place. Some people work well with highly-organized agendas, like me. I’m a terribly disorganized person in reality (you should see my apartment), so people marvel when they see my color-coded planner with my entire week neatly arranged. 

Why? Because I couldn’t freakin’ remember to do ANY of it if I didn’t do this. If I were naturally organized and prompt, I wouldn’t need multiple alarm clocks, a color-coded organization system, and e-mail reminders. If I were a naturally focused person, I wouldn’t need productivity methods. I am simply a person who knows 1. her weaknesses, and 2. what she needs to do to accomplish her goals.

Do I want someone to rescue me? No. Do I want someone to share my beach blanket and smile back when I wonder what the poor people are doing? Sure. Do I want someone to sympathize with me when I get done with an 18-hour day? Absolutely. But I want someone who respects me enough to know that what I do is important to me and who supports me in it, who believes that I can do it – not someone who wants to ‘take me away from it all.’ 

I enjoy my life, so immensely. It’s full, it’s productive; readers (some friends, but mostly strangers) e-mail me and say what I’m writing is making a difference. That’s why I do this. This is worth it to me. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”