It wasn’t just poor social skills. At one point, I tried to interject with a silly little anecdote about being SEVERELY hungover on a ferry to Morocco, courtesy of some mad scientist sangria the night before. He began watching the TV at the bar across the room.

Fine, fine. We’re not a match.

But what was wild was that, at the end of the night, he mentioned getting . . . → Read More: snack]]> Last night, I went on a date with a man who did not ask me a single question all night. By the end of the date, I could tell you all about his parents’ divorce, the death of his first dog, and a bar fight in his early twenties that injured his rotator cuff. He could not tell you what I do for a living. How many kids I have. There’s not a basic fact about me he’d be able to answer a trivia question on.

It wasn’t just poor social skills. At one point, I tried to interject with a silly little anecdote about being SEVERELY hungover on a ferry to Morocco, courtesy of some mad scientist sangria the night before. He began watching the TV at the bar across the room.

Fine, fine. We’re not a match.

But what was wild was that, at the end of the night, he mentioned getting together again. WHAT. And then texted later about cuddling on the sofa watching shows. Needless to say, that won’t be happening. I cannot imagine a lonelier scenario than spending even more time with someone who has no interest in knowing me.

I’m not chasing being chosen. I mean, I made that mistake in my younger days and look where it got me. I know myself, and what’s on offer, and I’m not like, OH PLEASE LET ME LOVE YOU.

The last entanglement I had was with a man I met at a funeral. And y’all, if that says anything about the doomed nature of that romance. I’m laughing as I type this because it was, in many aspects, a satisfying sort of love. Until it wasn’t. There were inherent challenges (like distance), but at least that guy knew what he had. He just chose otherwise. We’ll talk about him later.

The other day, a man I met online asked me what I was looking for. I said, “Magic.”

I’m pretty great. You don’t even have to agree! Because I’m not looking for you to affirm it! I’m intelligent, I’m funny, really truly kind, supportive. Considerate. Professionally accomplished and annoyingly good at most things I try. I’m conventionally attractive and I take really good care of my body. I am so in tune with the energy of people around me that I know what they need before they even think to ask for it. I can know that your mood has shifted from eight hundred miles away (whether you or I like it or not). I’m ACTUAL magic. And I don’t want anyone who isn’t fucking dazzled by it. In turn, I want to be obsessed. Bordering on unhealthily so. I mean, life is short. Living in the halfways are not for me.

And it definitely shortcuts these rocky starts. It’s difficult to breadcrumb a girl who knows she’s a snack.

I was speaking off the cuff, because I am not a creator in the true sense. Just a blogger with a camera.

“I could not care less what a man does for a living. I only care if he likes himself. Because a man with shame is a liar. He can’t help it because he’s always trying to cover something up that he’s deeply embarrassed by.”

Some of y’all will remember when the blog was at the height popularity, I was what, 25? All I can say is thank you for sticking with me. I look back at pictures (especially in the press!) from that time and I look…dead-eyed and deeply uncomfortable. I had no . . . → Read More: men of a certain age]]> The other day, I posted a reel on my public Instagram about men and shame, and it got a lot of private feedback from women who found that it resonated. That it mirrored their own experience and their frustrations.

I was speaking off the cuff, because I am not a creator in the true sense. Just a blogger with a camera.

“I could not care less what a man does for a living. I only care if he likes himself. Because a man with shame is a liar. He can’t help it because he’s always trying to cover something up that he’s deeply embarrassed by.”

Some of y’all will remember when the blog was at the height popularity, I was what, 25? All I can say is thank you for sticking with me. I look back at pictures (especially in the press!) from that time and I look…dead-eyed and deeply uncomfortable. I had no idea how to handle the public attention, the public scrutiny. But it came anyway.

I also had no idea of my own power. Just a platform and a voice and a huge desire to make other people like me.

Once I outed myself in the Times, I got what I thought of back then as hate mail from a renowned political columnist. But now I see it as a hard truth wrapped in exasperation. I remember she told me to get some self respect, which I was immediately defensive about. But honestly, I believe she was begging me to know myself. She was trying to do me a favor.

I think that’s what we’re asking from men my age. To have known themselves. To have done the work.

At yoga this morning, I jokingly asked how I was supposed to tell men I date that I’m….spooky. Which is really just code for deeeeeeply intuitive. I know way too much without being told. It’s a trait that, in the yoga space, is recognized and respected but in dating, it’s super tricky. I don’t have to remind y’all what happened in Vail. Oof.

Anyway, when it’s not freaking people out, or driving me batty, it’s pretty great. I anticipate needs before they’re even a conscious thought, which makes me really good at…stuff (she says with a wink), but also makes it really uncomfortable being with men who are performing. And I think a lot of men my age are still performing. Performing their roles, their masculinity, their relationships with power. And they don’t like themselves because of it. And that tension ripples outward.

Surprisingly, to me at least, I test very well with the 30-year-old crowd in online dating. And while I’m not quite ready to entertain cougar status just yet (it’s probably a whole lot of fun, tbh),  there’s something really appealing about that demographic. They know, and are able to articulate who they are, what they want. They’re refreshingly self aware. Are they all going to therapy? All signs point to yes. If I decide to go that route, I’ll let y’all know.

In the meantime, here’s a little thought. If a woman you’re around brings you peace, that’s not an accident, baby. It means she’s done the work. And inevitably, you’re going to get very uncomfortable if you haven’t done yours.

I needed to be free, I think.

The older I get, the more I’m inclined to shrug and . . . → Read More: delulu til it’s trulu]]> There was a span of nearly 20 years where, if you had broached the topic of spiritualism with me, I’d have checked out immediately. Not because my own personal belief system didn’t have room for it. But having been raised in a stifling and controlling religion, spirituality, my spirituality was a thing that was policed by others (as was my body, my sexuality, my speech). Emerging from half a lifetime of experience in an organization that sought to weigh women down with responsibility while simultaneously separating them from power, I took a hard pivot in the opposite direction and kept anything but science-driven fact at arm’s length. Clearly, I had healing to do. Trust had to be restored between me and anything I couldn’t see with my own eyes or touch with my own hands.

I needed to be free, I think.

The older I get, the more I’m inclined to shrug and say, “it’s possible!” to all kinds of hard-to-understand things. And I don’t mean virgin birth or angry old men in the sky whose existence centers around creating and then punishing. But in the sense that I don’t require proof of any kind to tell me that I am connected to you and you are connected to me by invisible forces that are not measurable. I don’t need science to tell me that the earth isn’t simply a collection of living things (trees, bears, bugs, moss), it is a living thing. It simply is, because the truth of it echos around inside of me.

Other truths simply are.

And where I used to find so much comfort (and paradoxically, anxiety) in absolutes, I now take a certain amount of joy in the unknown. It’s full of possibility! Where my faith used to be directed at a bearded figure in a robe, it’s now directed at the idea of things simply working out. So long as my heart is pointed in the right direction, so long as I exercise self-awareness and do the work of repair (I can be a bit fiery and impulsive, so mistakes are part of the territory, I’m afraid), I don’t have to know what happens next. It’s gonna be okay.

The idea of manifestation might have gotten a few eye rolls from me in the past. But the power of words has always been one of those truths that I just felt. It is a certainty lodged in there, anchored permanently somewhere in my ribcage. It’s why I write. My soul, I think, is made up of words, a vocabulary I’m still and always learning.

“What we say, we bring into being.”

I was reading a book by Lyanda Haupt recently and the truth of that statement made me feel… buoyed. She was talking about our relationship with nature, but it had other meanings for me at that moment.

There are only a handful of people who would get my honest, or even complete, answer to the question, “What do you want?” I wouldn’t trust that many people with seeing me in that way. But just yesterday, when I was battling internally over what kind of future I needed for myself, and whether it was even practical or doable (this is what makes me roll my eyes now. Doable. Ha! Nothing is doable until you do it, Hunter), I told a friend, “this is what I want.” I didn’t worry if it sounded selfish. Or silly. Or And I didn’t describe a tangible things. Though, immediately, in my mind’s eye I could clearly see those things. A room. The weight and dimension of my body. The light.

Did I speak it into being? Who knows. But now it doesn’t have to live inside my head, undefined and trapped. And that, in itself, is a sort of freedom.