Loneliness Potato

You know how sometimes you have a problem and you need to say it out loud, but not because you need someone to solve it? You just want to be heard?  Well, I have one of those problems.  

I'm lonely.

Ew! You're not supposed to say that out loud.  It means you're a loser, right?  Well, I'm not so sure. 

Obviously, it would be nice if it were solved.  I mean, nobody wants to be lonely. But I don't want it to be solved by anyone's penis or anyone's empty promises.  I've been there and done that. I even have the t-shirt.  Literally.

But before I go racing off to some social media site to fill this need, or even worse, a dating app, let's come to some kind of consensus first:  Is lonely even a problem?

My answer is: not yet.  Like most other situations, something only achieves "problem" status when it reaches a certain mass.  Hunger isn't a problem, unless it goes on too long.  Not doing your dishes isn't a problem, unless it goes on too long, etc.  So, no.  Loneliness isn't a problem.  Yet.

If you are trying to decide if you have a problem, whether it's loneliness or hunger, you have to ask the question: can you end it?  That's really the defining factor of problemhood.  Is there a solution and can you implement it?  If the answer is yes, then you don't have a problem.  You have a situation.  You have an opportunity.  You are basically, alive.  

So now that we've cleared that up, I guess I really don't have a loneliness problem.  Because I can easily end it.  It's more like I have a loneliness...potato.  There's so much I can do with it, and it's completely up to me!  Fry it, mash it, bake it. Or I can do nothing at all and just wait for those little sprouty things to pop up. 

For now, I feel okay with just letting it be.   It's amazing how one deep breath and one step back can de-fang so many a monster.  

Thank you, Sarah Silverman, for helping with this particular fang extraction.  On a recent podcast she addressed a listener's break-up angst with this advice: 

"I think you should work on being alone. Being your own best friend. You can't be alone for a week?  Then you are not ready for a healthy relationship right now.  You gotta become your own best friend. Get comfortable with that. You're talking to a woman who went from relationship to relationship to relationship, but this last time I was single for maybe two years and it was a real gift because I really fell in love with being alone and realized about myself that I need to be alone for long periods of time every day and that I like myself and I, ya know, I would come home and be like "whatta ya' wanna do tonight, me?" And I did it; exactly what I wanted to do. Pretty uh...it's kind of a revelation.  So maybe work on that.  That's what I say.  Work on your shit first, be happy being alone.  Put yourself together first, and then have a relationship."   

Listen for yourself!  Go to time marker 27:32 and see what you think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4etbUMD9R8   

What We Need to Know

We need to know that no matter how big of a mess we make, there will be at least one person in our life who won't just "be there", but who will actually FEEL there.

What I Learned from Goo-Goo Dolls

The best concert that I ever attended has got to be the Novell Brainshare 2007 concert in Salt Lake City, Utah.  It featured the Goo Goo Dolls.  But if the Goo Goo Dolls ever heard me say this, I bet they would have to pause for at least a moment.  During that pause they would be debating if they even played Salt Lake in '07.  Not because they were too stoned to remember or anything like that, but because for performers...I imagine it had to be the most boring audience ever assembled.  At Brainshare '07 they played to an arena full of 20,000 mega-geeks, half of which I think spoke math better than they did English.

It was surreal to sit there while Rzeznik and the boys busted out their amazing repertoire on stage just to look around and see a room full of people idly watching as if a quartet were playing Mozart.  It was such an un-rock concertish way to respond to what was happening.  I really thought the band would lose their energy and the show would die.  BUT...

Rzeznik kept playing and singing like the house was hoppin' and all of his best friends were there pumping their fists.  I was in awe.   I was also in heaven, because with me were my oldest children.
This was their first rock concert.  I thrive on getting to watch their firsts.  They've been GGD fans ever since. 

Parenthetically, John Rzeznik, the lead singer of the band, originally was not the lead singer.  He was too shy.  This fact makes his energy in the face of such hardened party-poopers that night, even more respectable. 

So what did I learn from Goo Goo Dolls?  

Don't let the audience dictate your performance.