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.