Excuse Me, Where Can I Find Myself?

In just 3 days I will be turning 34.  It's not really a significant number.  You don't get any new benefits like a super special drivers license, nothing magical happens, your penis doesn't grow an extra 3 inches (unless maybe it does, I'll let you know) and it should be an all around forgettable birthday in the timeline of a human being unless they died when they were 33.  As far as I can recollect, I've never tripped out about a birthday before but dammit this was not how I envisioned myself approaching this completely random age.  If one would've asked me at 32 approaching 33 what I would've expected to find at 34 I probably would've answered, "I don't know.  Probably something really damn close to what I'm doing now.  What kind of stupid question is that?"  I would've been wrong of course and naive.  Life changes quicker than Katy Perry changes costumes at the Halftime Show and much like her changes, it isn't always pretty.

I cannot change all that has happened here recently.  There is no magical DeLorean to take me back,

Just in case you didn't
get the reference

Bill and Ted's Phone Booth is non-existent, and I'm sure if we had time travel anyway that we would quickly fuck it up.  So what's left to do?  Well, at 33 years old I can honestly say that I have no clue of who I am.  How's that for an admission?  No idea!!  I know of things that I like and that I'm into, sure, but as a conscious human being breathing air and inhabiting this planet and using resources?  Nope.  So I'm going to make 2015 and the year celebrating my 34 year residency to try to find myself.  I know that sounds so hippie dippie, blah, blah, new age, cliche bullshit but it's what I'm going to do.  I'm not even sure where to start and that's kind of why I'm writing this.  I'm hoping that my friends and readers can give me some suggestions.  I've certainly had plenty of people telling me lately that I need to and that I'm not the same person that I used to be.  So I want to find either the person that I was that a lot of people seemed to like or find the person that I am.  Perhaps they are the same or maybe they're vastly different, I don't know.  Remember, I'm lost?  

I've heard exes and friends say that they "need to find themselves" for years but I had never really

Could these be the answer?  

given it much thought.  I just agreed because I thought it sounded good.  Now I find myself in this predicament and I don't have an idea of what it is that I'm supposed to be doing.  Am I supposed to explore different religions?  Do I go to a psychiatrist and get put on mood altering drugs and anti-depressants?  Am I supposed to take a heroic dose of psilocybin magical mushrooms?  Am I supposed to walk around with a ponderous look upon my face and occasionally scratch my chin in wonderment?  I don't know.  Those all sound like plausible ideas but I'm really not sure.  My problem has always been that (and yes, I'm bragging a little here) I'm awesome at giving solid advice to others but I'm shit in my own life.  Seriously, I've never steered anyone wrong when they've asked me for advice.  I always think through their problem analytically and logically and tell them what I truly believe is best.  It's one of the aforementioned things that I know that I love to do.  But perhaps I've been too proud in the past to ask people for advice or maybe (definitely) too blind to see my own problems.  So here I am friends, I'm asking for help.  How have you dealt with personal tragedy?  How did you find yourself?  What did you do to get to your own level of accepted happiness?

Seriously I want to know because here's another admission that some people already know, but I do not love myself at all.  I kind of hate me.  I like life and seeing all the cool things going on but I just kind of wish that I was another person.  I've heard this statement repeatedly too, "You've got to love yourself".  Okay, duly noted now explain how that happens.  I guess loving yourself and finding yourself are kind of the same thing, right?  I'm not sure because I've heard both so much lately.  But what if you find yourself and you turn out to be a huge asshole?  I'm a huge fan of psychology and have casually studied it for years, which makes me really inquisitive and generally over-analyze things.  Maybe that's what I'm doing now, but anyway if you want to be a good soul you can either comment below with suggestions, or you can comment on the Facebook page, or you can message me.  I don't care, if nothing else, this can at least be a neat little social experiment where I get all kinds of useful stuff.  

Is There Really Someone Out There For Everyone?

A favorite quote by Chuck Palahniuk 

I've always sort of believed that there is someone out there for everyone.  We've all heard that, right?  Every time a person goes through a shitty breakup, we tell them this sad, worn-out cliche.  Whether it be, "Oh, you and that chick you've been seeing for a week didn't work out?  Don't worry, there's someone out there for everyone" or "Damn, you're going through a divorce after 8 years of marriage?  Don't worry, there's someone out there for everyone."  It's all the same either way.  But one wonders, "Is there really?"  Well, recently I've found myself pondering over this conundrum because I belong in the latter category above.  When you get married, you kind of figure that "Yep, this is the one.  I can mark that shit off my list." You can put your new significant other in a nice neat compartmentalized box checked "The One".  You don't really worry about it from that point on...until you have to.  When everything falls apart and you've found yourself going to two different therapists, resisting the urge to dull your pain with a bottle of pills, going back and forth with your wife, trying not to drive your car over a bridge, not seeing your kids and living with your grandparents in their basement, you tend to do some self and external evaluations.

Considering the previous sentence that I wrote, I probably shouldn't even be pondering the trivial question of "Is there really someone for everyone?"perhaps I should be asking myself, "What the fuck is wrong with you?" or saying something like, "Dude, you should get it together," (rest assured that I am pondering those ideas as well but I'm just not writing about that at this moment).  So after much thought, I've concocted a theory.  It's not very comforting but I'm like 99% sure that it's true.  Here it is:  There are several somebodies for everybody, it's just a matter of timing.  Mind blown?  Probably not, but allow me to expound on this idea.  On a planet that has a population of around 7 billion and counting, it's ludicrous to think that there is one single person out there for you.  Do you have any idea how amazingly hard that would be to find that person?  And what would be the chances that they are in your proximal location?  Let's just say that you don't want to go worldwide, that you just want to find a mate in the good ol' U.S.of A.  Well, good luck on that one too.  We've got 324,109,897 people on our patch of dirt right at this moment.  If there is only one person out there for you, it seems like you'd spend your entire life searching for them and would die before it actually happened.  My theory is sounding better already, huh?  So lets just throw out a completely unscientific number of 100 possible people for every person.  Your chances just got a lot better, didn't they?  (It still statistically sucks but I don't want to do math)  Surely you can run into a few of these people as you stumble through life but here is where my theory sucks an entire bag of syphilis infected genitals...it's all about timing.

I have seen numerous couples and friends through the years who seemed perfect for each other crash violently into a fiery pit of break-ups and divorce.  I'm sure a few of you who are reading this now have went through this.  Here is a truly hypothetical example:  You meet a beautiful girl who has every quality you want.  She's attentive, she's funny but not funnier than you, she likes to cook, she's independent, she seems like a manageable level of crazy, and she smells pretty.  Everything checks off on your internal list that we all keep secretly locked in our brain.  One little thing though, she's right in her second year of law school.  You start dating anyway.  Things start out well, because you two are a new couple and all new couples are sexed up and gross but as time progresses she has less and less time for you.  She's having to cram for exams, she's bitchy from lack of sleep, she can't see you because of the big mock trial final.  You start to grow resentful that she has no time for you, you start bitching at her, she resents you for bitching at her, and before you know it...BAM, you're done.  You've broken up and hate each other and you think that you've lost your "One".  You wallow in self doubt and loathing and question yourself for a month but in reality, perhaps it's neither of your faults.  What if you would've met after she graduated?  Or what if you already had an established, healthy relationship before she went off to law school?  Who knows?  She very well could've been the one for you, but your timing was just for shit.  You missed out on a great thing but you can't fully blame yourself.  Sure you can blame yourself for being a petty little bitch when she was busy but you can equally blame her for being bitchy in the first place.  (If you can't tell, I'm trying to be really fair here because I realize that a lot of women read my blog.)  It's all about timing, man!!!

Timing is completely unscientific as well.  How are you supposed to know when it's right?  I could lie to you and say, "You just feel it, and it feels right, man."  But that would be bullshit.  Every time that we fall in love of course it feels right or we wouldn't fall in love in the first place.  The truth is that there is no way to know if the time is right until it's hindsight.  I would love to be able to say that men, who are known for our knowledge and infinite wisdom, should know but the truth is we are just as dumb as women when it comes to knowing.  Both sexes are equally blinded when in love.  You both overlook all the glaring faults in timing and just rush into it.  You don't see it until it's either too late or far too often when it's over.  That's where I'm finding myself right now.  I truly believed in my life that two different women were my one, one being my estranged wife.  I really do, despite all the fuckery that has occurred in the last 6 months which I will not discuss.  We were made for each other in so many places and she met almost all of my secret internal check points but upon examination we met at the wrong time.  Perhaps one day I'll discuss it on here why it was the wrong time but as of right now some time needs to pass first.  The point is our timing was off.  I can't fully blame myself and I can't fully blame her.  I admit and accept my faults and wrongs and I assume she does too.  Okay, so that was a bit of a drag.  Let's get back to it and summarize this bitch.

I could sit here and list a bunch of possible warning signs that your timing might be off with a person but that would be far too general.  What is bad timing for one couple could be perfect for another.  Some guys would look at a woman who had just got out of an abusive relationship as a warning sign but others might thrive in the same situation.  Some women may look at a single guy with kids as a big no-no, but others might think it's great.  We never know.  I'm sorry that I can't offer you comfort in knowing the exact time but you should know yourself well enough to look at a situation rationally.  However, I can offer to all the other fellow sad sacks right now that you shouldn't give up hope because statistically speaking there are a ton of other perfect people for you out there.