So now what?

This is my third blog.

I have one that is seasonal, so it sits dormant most of the year. I have another that I retired earlier this year. And for now I have this one.

My name is not attached to any of my blogs, although the seasonal blog is quasi-public, and I have shared some of my writing with friends and co-workers. It's no secret that it's my blog, but my name is not tied to it.

My anonymous blog was not entirely secret, either. I shared the link with a precious few people, people who either tired of my writing or just didn't care enough to keep up with it. The blog was random and allowed me to experiment with my writing. I also used it for therapeutic value on occasion. When there was danger of it becoming too therapeutic earlier this year, I decided it was time to end it. The blog still exists, I do go back and read things from it occasionally, but I no longer provide fresh content.

I have thought about starting a new anonymous blog, but haven't had the urge to do so. The challenge in doing so is that I'll want to refer back to things I wrote in my previous online life, but I won't want the old and new blog to be connected. It's a sticky wicket.

Prior to ending my anonymous blog I started penning columns for inboxcupid.com. My contributions were intermingled with the writings of others, and although it was labeled a blog, I considered what I was writing to be more like columns you'd see periodically in a newspaper.

When I was granted the privilege of penning columns for Inbox Cupid I didn't know how the site would evolve, or if my columns would garner a following. As detailed previously, my career as an online dating site columnist was over in short order. Perhaps I'll get a second chance at online stardom, but I'm not expecting it.

When I launched my column I decided I would write anonymously. Part of the reason I chose to do so is that I'm nobody special, so it doesn't matter if my name is attached to the columns. There seemed to be no reason to attach a name to the column, so I opted not to.

Now that I have moved my columns to a blog site, I have to ask myself a few questions.

How long are you going to continue this blog?
The idea behind my columns was to interact with my readership. As noted previously, I don't have a readership to interact with at this point, and I'm not promoting this blog, in part because I don't know how to effectively do so. And my experience with blogs, as both a writer and a reader, is that most people have a passing interest in what you're doing. Without a major push by an established entity, the blog will never take off. Therefore I intend to pen a few thoughts during the remainder of 2011. That's the extent of my commitment to the brilliance I have demonstrated thus far.

Are you going to remain anonymous? 
Yeah, pretty much. I'm certainly not going to promote my writing to anyone I know. I did share my columns with a co-worker, who provided the inspiration for the last column Inbox Cupid published. But I had no interest in promoting my efforts to my Facebook universe, and that's not going to change now.

What will I or won't I write about, given that this blog site is anonymous?
Part of me would love to share my thoughts and feelings about life and my place in this world. It might be cathartic to cut open a vein and write about how I ended up where I am today. But I'm not interested in doing that right now.

So now what?
For the next month I have a platform to share my observations about relationships and the world around me. How many blog entries that results in, I don't know, nor do I know what the topics will be. If for some reason I am inspired to continue in 2012, so be it. If not, the world will survive without me. In that I have no doubt.

Heavy lifting

Is it safe to assume that most people reading an online blog about dating have been through the experience of moving to a new home or apartment?

Think back to the last time you moved. Did you move by yourself? Did you load that U-Haul truck on your own? Did you carry that couch out of the old second-floor apartment by yourself? Probably not.

When it's time to move you recruit the help of your friends or relatives. Why? Because it's too difficult to move all your crap on your own.

That's the way I look at life.

Sure, you can accomplish most of life's challenges without the help of others, but periodically you need somebody else's help to meet the challenges of day-to-day life.

I see/hear it periodically: people who are in a long-term relationship envy those of us who are free to sit up late at night eating saltines and watching mindless television without having to answer to another person. The grass is always greener, they say.

Some people really don't want to share their life with anyone else. I think they're in the minority. I don't know that for a fact, it's just my theory.

The longer you go through life as a single person, the more challenging it gets to break the cycle, I believe. Eventually you get to a point where you assume all hope is lost, and stop trying.

You still want somebody there to help you with the heavy lifting, but you start to believe you're going to have to do it all yourself.

I have never been a tough guy. I learned years ago I didn't want to do all the heavy lifting on my own, but most days I have nobody to help me with it. And now my back hurts.

New world order

The preceding columns of this blog were written specifically with inboxcupid.com in mind.

I spent four years chronicling my thoughts and observations for a blog I discontinued in the summer of 2011. I have maintained a separate blog with a more specific purpose since 2006.

The ability to write a blog for a website with a built-in audience had great appeal to me. I didn't have the best dating stories to share with the masses at Inbox Cupid, but the ability to interact with readers and share thoughts and opinions with an audience appealed to me.

That dream didn't last long. Like many good online ideas, the lifespan of Inbox Cupid appears to be short. It might be reborn, and it might be huge, but for now it's comatose, and my columns for its blog are water under a troubled bridge. It was always my intent to maintain a blog with copies of my columns for Inbox Cupid, and I finally published them all this fall. And here I am today, a guy with a blog and no readership.

I'm a guy who tells stories for a living ... other people's stories, most often. Without other people, I don't have that much to say.

So let's assess my life as you know it. I have no audience for this blog, no social experiment to market via this blog and little hope that my holiday season will be anything but lonely. It doesn't sound like this blog has much of a future, does it?

Being a loner at Thanksgiving and Christmas isn't terrible, as you never have to worry about how to divide your time between two family gatherings. For Thanksgiving my only question was, "What time is mom serving dinner?" My brother, on the other hand, had to split his time between his family's gathering and that of the in-laws.

Christmas presents similar circumstances. New Year's Eve, however, sucks when you are single.

People in a relationship will often say that New Year's Eve is no big deal. Yeah, easy for them to say. Try being the single guy with no party invitations on a night when half the population gathers in some form of communal celebration. Suddenly working on New Year's Eve at a bar, restaurant or parking garage doesn't seem so bad.

Staying at home and watching TV with a loved one seems like a nice way to ring in the new year when you have a significant other. I don't care if New Year's Eve is a contrived celebration, not having a party to go to is depressing. Any single person who tells you "It's just another night" is lying.

It sucks being at a New Year's Eve party where everybody seems to have a significant other and you don't, but it sucks more to be without anybody to share the evening with. I'm not sure what Dec. 31 has in store for me, but I'm not looking forward to it.

Suddenly I don't loathe Christmas nearly as much.

Is the old cliché no longer valid?

It has been said that love happens when you least expect it.

Looking for love? You’re looking in all the wrong places.

If the old cliché is true, then why the hell are millions of people looking for love in too many faces?

What do most of us do when it’s time to consider buying a new car? Twenty years ago we would have bought a Sunday newspaper, poured through the classified ads and searched for a great deal on a Pontiac Grand Am. In 2011 I bet most of us peruse online listings to get an idea of what we’re looking for and where we can go test drive it.

I don’t need to tell you the Internet has changed the way we do our day-to-day business. So why not use the Internet to meet new people we’d otherwise never find in our day-to-day lives?

You’ve heard the statistics, I’m sure. I don’t know them offhand, so I’ll make them up:

• More than 100 million Americans are using online dating sites, every day.

• Nine out of every 17 relationships is a result of online dating.

• More than 34.7 percent of all marriages this year are a result of online dating.

• More than 88 percent of JDate users meet their life partner through the site.

• Nobody has ever gotten married as a result of his or her Craig’s List ad.

The problem I have with online dating is that it’s no different than shopping for that Grand Am. You will spend less time test-driving cars you have no interest in, but it makes finding true love less organic.

On the other hand the world of dating has always been filled with contrived activities and resources for single people. Singles dances, telephone date lines, speed dating and matchmaking services have long been subsidizing the organic way of meeting your soul mate. None of them, however, have had the power to connect us with so many, so quickly.

These days shopping online for a life partner is as common as shopping online for airfare. So why is it some of us remain reluctant to get on board?

Have you been unwilling to book a ticket aboard the online dating express?