Lighthouse and I are taking a vacation from the blog for two weeks. We will resume posting on Monday and Thursday starting January 7th, 2008.
We are also going to start sometime in the near future a section for “Guest Posts”.
We hope you are having many lovely year end gatherings.
Know, first, who you are; and then adorn yourself accordingly.
-Epictetus Roman (Greek-born) slave & Stoic philosopher (55 AD – 135 AD)
If you want a date, who is more than just a friend, for a Holiday party or any other time, skip this post. This post is not for you. This post is for the person who wants to ensure their datelessness, without the conflict of saying ”No”.
Here is a list of some of the ways you can avoid getting a date.
1. Stay at home, all the time.
When you leave the house, you run the risk of meeting people. People who might like you. If you carefully avoid places where other people might be, you will be sure not to meet any of them. Avoid coffee shops, bookstores, any museums, clubs, bars, the theatre, hiking trails, airports, anywhere that other people might be.
Work from home, order in.
2. Neglect the internet, in particular: social networking sites, blogs or dating sites.
Social Networking sites like MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, Multiply, Tribe, Orkut and Linked In are designed to keep in touch with your current friends, and help create a feeling of community. They make the world seem like a smaller place. Especially if you scroll through your friends of friends and talk to them. Stop that.
If they like you, they might ask to meet in “meat space.”
You have the same problem with web logs. Word press, deadjournal, typepad, or your own personal page that people can comment on, you may talk to people. In a weak moment, that online relationship may go to *gasp* the real world.
Dating sites are particularly pesky. You could Join Match.com, Chemistry
, OkCupid, TypeTango, or It’s Just Coffee. If you’re currently signed up for one of these, I don’t believe that you really want to remain dateless. So stop reading!
4. No Smiling
If you are trying to avoid eye contact with strangers, also avoid smiling at them. Especially the big, slow smile. You know the one. You see a person, you make eye contact with each other. A second or two passes, and then slowly you see the corners of their mouth reach for their ears as they beam to you the most glorious smile that was certainly meant for only you. It’s the smile Leil Lowndes
This is most certainly interpreted as a friendly and inviting gesture. Avoid it at all costs. It could open a really big can of dates.
5. Definitely Don’t Talk To Strangers
Your mother was right. Don’t talk to strangers. Chances are, they might talk back, they might have something interesting to say. They might never stop talking, and then where will you be? You might get a date. Totally contrary to your goal of being dateless. Especially avoid any of the advice in my friend David Wygant’s book “Always Talk to Strangers
6. Be Oblivious
If, for some reason you’ve run into someone that violates guildelines 1-5, pretend not to notice. Dodge that eye contact, return that smile with a blank stare. When they talk to you, turn, and walk away, or reply with something that is unrelated to whatever they just said. Negate any compliments.
Other ways to be oblivious: bump into people, repeatedly, and keep walking like you never noticed; knock someone’s drink over because you didn’t see it, and then walk away like nothing happened; use out of context conversational openers- nothing says “not all there” like a guy calling you a stalker because your shoes are similar, or you’re walking out of the women’s bathroom while he’s walking into the men’s bathroom; ignore opportunities to talk to people, such as in line, on a train, a bus, at the laundromat, in an elevator, on an escalator in a store . . . the list goes on and on and on . . .
7. Groom Poorly
My father says “There is no such thing as an ugly woman, only a poor one.” I would say this goes for men too. What he means, is that, even if a person did not win the phenotype lottery like Brangelina, Penelope Cruz, Lucy Lui or Halle Berry, they can still make themselves attractive by how they groom themselves. With money, they can groom really well, because they can have trained professionals do it for them.
My father was wrong about needing money to be well groomed. Without money, you need to be rich in imagination . . . but really, if you want to avoid getting a date, stop grooming.
Let your dandruff fall like a snowy morning in Poland. Let your breath be the bain of the existence of anyone within your orbit. Let your natural musk cling to your body, free from the fear of soap and water, while able to permeate the nostrils of those close to you. For extra measure, cover it up with a cheap yet heavy perfume. Don’t style your hair, but if you do, be sure it is a style from at least two decades ago. Let your unibrow reign supreme. And forbid yourself from trying to highlight your best features in any way. Don’t excercise.
vs. 
8. Wear Nothing but Burlap Sacks
People judge us on how we look. The clothes we wear may tell a person more about ourselves than the color of our skin. One of the factors that attract people to each other is other people that look good in clothing that is appropriate to their body type. Avoid this at all costs.
No matter what your personal style, goth kid, steam punk, business tycoon, club sophisticate, trendy surfer . . . be sure your clothing is ill-fitted, stained and torn. Get some of that muffin top and buddha belly action, at least one of which is totally avoidable with a proper fit.
The following outfit only helps you avoid dates, if you’re a guy, and maybe not even then. To remain on the dateless side of the style life, just wear a burlap sack.
9. Walk, Sit or Stand like you hate yourself.
Posture is another tell that indicates to others how you may feel about yourself. Whether or not you actually feel that way, posture is something people interpret that way. Everything we do is information– it is communication to other people, whether we are conscious of it or not, and people use that information, consciously or not, to decide if they want to hang out with you. So, if you want to avoid people thinking you may be interesting or confident at all, slouch, shuffle, walk sit and stand like you are being crush by the world.
Seriously, think about the difference between George Clooney (bad) and Napoleon Dynamite (good). The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (bad) and Steve Erkle (good).
10. Always See the Negative Side of Life
There is nothing that helps a person have bad posture like a negative attitude. Think “woe is me“. Avoid figuring out how you can make your own situation better. Take everything personally. If you say hi to someone in a loud area, and they don’t say hi back, attribute it to them hating you, rather than not being able to hear you. Daily, ask yourself “Why me!”
Imagine there is a rain cloud over your head following you everywhere. If someone compliments you, despite all of your efforts to be repellant, pause for a moment, look at them and negate their compliment. Better yet, don’t even respond. That is sure to keep you dateless, and it may even keep people from inviting you to their pesky parties anyway!
11. Be Boring or Really Weird, as long as others cannot relate to you
If, for some reason, after you’ve tried everything else, someone should insist on talking with you . . . be boring or weird. Whatever it is, make sure that others cannot relate to you.
Some tips for weird: Whatever a person is talking about, change the topic abruptly, if they seem interested, change it again. Don’t listen. Be nice one minute, and rude the next. Being passive agressive works too. Stand too close in an imposing and invasive way . . . this is different than establishing rapport and moving closer. Wear too much perfume or cologne. If you’re a girl wear too much make-up. Think Mimi from the Drew Carrey show.
12. For the extra oomph trail off . . . and walk away
If after all this you’ve managed to capture someones attention, trail off mid sentence and walk away. It will really . . .
“To keep the body in good health is a duty… Otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.” – Buddha
We all know that exercise is good for the body… but it is also crucial for ones emotional health.
To me, walking is the easiest and most obvious exercise one can do. We are built for it. It’s easy, requires no special equipment, and can be done almost anywhere – even in LA (as I have proven)! Just put on some comfortable shoes and head out the door. After a walk, I feel more calm, more able to focus, and less overwhelmed. I just let thoughts run on in the background and listen to what my body is telling me while I take in my surroundings and breathe deeply.
I became a walking enthusiast when I lived in San Francisco. I lived in a neighborhood called Bernal Heights, which is basically a hill with a walking path around the top. So every day, I would come home from work and walk around the hill a few times… I had really high anxiety at the time… the walking helped quell the anxiety and it also allowed me decompress from the day. I also loved taking in the beautiful views of San Francisco. I ended up moving to a neighborhood where it was impossible to park – so I sold my car and just started walking everywhere. If it was less than 3 miles, I didn’t even consider another form of transportation. I became addicted to the walking lifestyle and began to love exploring and being a part of the city’s underbelly, which one is usually blind to when driving.
“We hardly realize how weak and futile is our mental work when unaccompanied by hard physical exercise. Walking gives movement to every portion of the body, and ensures vigorous circulation of the blood; for when we walk fast, fresh air is inhaled into the lungs. Then there is the inestimable joy that natural objects give us, the joy that comes from a contemplation of the beauties of Nature.” – Ghandi’s Health Guide
One of the main reasons that I didn’t want to move to LA was because I didn’t want to own a car again… One of the many lovely things that PaulCreature did for me was to create a map and mark all the places I would ever want to go (clubs, stores, yoga studios, etc). He then drew a box and said “If we live within this area, you can walk to everything you need”. I was sold! And yes, three and a half years after moving to LA, I am still carless and walking nearly everywhere I need to go. I walk anywhere between 3-10 miles every day.
“Many people who are depressed have low levels of serotonin and exercise can help boost these levels. Brief periods of intense training or moderate aerobic workouts can raise the levels of chemicals such as endorphins, adrenaline, serotonin, and dopamine in the brain” – WeightAwareness.com – Emotional Benefits of Exercising
“Some evidence suggests that exercise postively affects the levels of certain mood-enhancing neurotransmitters in the brain. Exercise may also boost feel-good endorphins, release tension in muscles, help you sleep better and reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol. It also increases body temperature, which may have calming effects. All of these changes in your mind and body can improve such symptoms as sadness, anxiety, irritability, stress, fatigue, anger, self-doubt and hopelessness.” – CNN.com – Depression and anxiety: Exercise eases symptoms
Regular exercise has been shown to:
* Reduce anxiety
* Reduce depression
* Enhance creativity and imagination
* Help the regeneration of damaged brain circuits – HDLighthouse.org
* Prompt nerve cells to multiply, strengthen their connections, and protect them from harm. – HDLighthouse.org
* Relieve insomnia
I realize walking may not be everyone’s favorite exercise… so just choose any exercise you *do* like. There are many reasons to exercise and very few not to. Stop making excuses!
“I will tell you what I have learned myself. For me, a long five or six mile walk helps. And one must go alone and every day.” – Brenda Ueland
*~Lighthouse~*
If you really do put a small value upon yourself,
rest assured that the world will not raise your price.
~Anonymous
When I was seventeen, I baby sat for two girls 8 and 10. I’d say they were blond little angels, but that was hardly the case, and not really the problem. I’d say the problem was their mother, who would call me, with only a moment’s notice, and require my “emergency” babysitter abilities. I’d tell her I’d like advance notice for babysitting, and it would happen a few times and back to the emergency short notice babysitting gig. There went my plans.
It happened several times a week for several years. It wasn’t just their mother that was asking me to do things on short notice, or worse, other people would just not show up for our plans! I would blame it on them. Why! Why couldn’t she plan in advance? Why were they so unreliable? Why did this keep happening?
I was reminded of the past version of myself, when this weekend I got a call from a promoter friend in San Diego. He had girl problems.
His problem was this: There was a hot girl that he keeps getting into the VIP clubs for free. She has promised that she will help him promote and do other promoter related work for him. However, every time he asks her to help, she says yes and cancels at the last minute, she doesn’t show up, or she can’t. He kept asking why Flakey Girl was like that. Was she spoiled? Were her parents over indulgent? Maybe.
Maybe the first two times were legit. Regardless, if she were an independent contractor at a law firm, if she didn’t work, she didn’t get paid. If she worked, she got paid, in this case compesation was clubs perks.
I asked him how many people would love the perks Flakey Girl gets? Lots.
Why are you spending your time teaching her that she can flake out on you and still get these perks?
The issue my 17 year old self had was the same one that my promoter friend had. It wasn’t that other people were inconsiderate. What happened was:
We taught them to treat us this way by repeatedly allowing it.
For me, it felt like I was being mean to say to the woman who wanted me to babysit on short notice “I’m very sorry, I need three-days advance notice for any baby sitting I do for you. I cannot sit for you tonight.”
In order for this to work, I had to be consistent, including the times when she called, and I did not have plans. I had to be this consistent for a long time because I had consistently let her needs trump mine.
The problem was never her, it was me.
I had shown her that it was okay for her to rely on me on short notice to sit for her kids. The first few times may have been genuine emergencies. It started out as my choice to drop whatever I was doing to help her out, and later became something I didn’t want to do and kept doing it!
I started to rationalize not taking my needs into account with: it was because she was a single parent, and her kids really needed consistency. Other rationalizations: that by doing her these favors I was a ‘good’ person, and that especially because I would cancel my plans to babysit I had a good work ethic. Not to mention I was making money. It took a long time for me to realize how it was I want to be treated on that issue.
As it turns out, there were ways people treated me that I realized I didn’t like. Often times, they continued to treat me this way, because I continued to permit it. Sometimes, just a simple conversation about how I felt about what was happening changed things. Sometimes a conversation and a change in my behavior was what was needed to change things.
The hardest lesson for me was learning that I would rather be alone than miserable in a relationship.
This lesson was a gift from my second serious relationship, with DJ when I was 18. I use the term gift in all seriousness, because of the immense growth that came from walking down that path. Could I have learned the same lesson another way? Maybe, but that’s not how it happened.
The short version is, when he treated me in ways that were abusive, I stayed. It was a lot more complicated than that, but this is the short version.
There were a lot of irrational reasons for staying. I also allowed him to set the precedent that yelling at me when another man looked at me was okay. Or slapping me because he felt like it was okay. I didn’t leave. I thought it was a fluke, a mistake, it wouldn’t happen again. There were complicating factors, as with most abusive relationships.
What brought the end of our relationship was that I had to make a choice about how I would allow myself to be treated, regardless of the consequences. I last saw him the day I made that choice.
It took a lot of work to own my part in that relationship, both in how I stayed in it, and what it was about me that was attracted to that kind of man. I’m not responsible for his actions, I’m only responsible for mine. That is all material for another post.
With the woman I babysat for, because of a change in communication and because she was willing to learn how to interact with me differently, we continued to have a relationship. With DJ, despite his promises, he did not change how he treated me, so we ended the relationship. I don’t know yet how my promoter friend’s relationship will play out yet with Flakey girl, one can hope for the best.
At the end of the day, we cannot change how other people treat us, we can only communicate through our words and behavior what we are and are not willing to tolerate. In looking for similar articles on the internet, I came across Christine Kane’s blog who succinctly outlines the process for figuring out how we want to be treated. She says:
I am still learning what I will and will not tolerate. Every situation I am in that I find unpleasant is a gift. It helps me become more clear in what I want for myself. I’m curious to try Christine’s suggestion of writing a user’s manual for myself in order to refine and internalize my value of my self. This is a process.