Not So Resolute

As today is almost over, I'm just getting this posted in time. No, it's nothing insightful or deep, just an attempt to start the year on a positive note and keep to my resolution to write more regularly. Day two and, even though it was a bit of a struggle to sit down in front of the keyboard, so far so good.

I've just come back from dinner with a couple of friends. These particular friends are two of my as-good-as-married friends, a term that applies to almost all of my close friends. As I said in my last post, I am somewhat the odd one out in that respect. I've been single for a long time. While I'm never made to feel like a third wheel by any of my attached friends, the thought is often there in the back of my mind. I'll often joke about it myself and my lack of success with women has become something of a running gag between my friends. We all playfully joke about it. What I don't know is whether I have learned to see myself in this way, as some kind of lovable loser who approaches social situations geared towards failing and living down to the low expectations I seem to have developed. Does that sound like I'm overanalysing?

I spend a lot of time - far too much - by myself thinking about things. This is not good. Thinking, at least to the degree I do it, is not constructive. It's what prevents me from actually doing things. I spend so much time trying to figure things out, playing moments back in my head and trying to extract meaning from them, meaning I can use to work out how I should act or what I should do in the future. But this kind of analysis is pointless. It gets me nowhere. It's just an excuse not to do things. It produces the kind of logic that says, "this situation isn't going to work out like you want it to so don't get involved." Sounds reasonable enough. If you know you're only going to get hurt then why not save yourself the trouble? Except that I really don't know how anything is going to go. I can't predict the future, how have I convinced myself I can? I'm probably better off living my life based solely on my horoscope. Aside from that, is avoiding pain any way to live your life? What's wrong with throwing caution to the wind and having the outcome be at the mercy of the universe? Surely that's better than just passing the time, risking nothing and achieving nothing. The choice appears easy so why is it so difficult for me to take a risk?

I've come to the point now where I even predict the outcome of my own self-examination and don't even bother doing that. I already know what I'm going to berate myself about and what I'm going to blame myself for. It's easier just to watch TV instead.

I often think about the old saying comparing the unlived life to the unexamined one. You know, while the unexamined life is not worth living, the unlived life is not worth examining. All I know is that right now I've got my priorities way wrong. I need to do a lot less examining and a lot more living.