Sh*t, I’m Still Single!

Admit it … no matter how happy you are with your single status, every now and again the thought passes through your head …

Sh*t, I’m still single!

We’re an impatient generation. With every answer at our fingertips, and the ability to contact almost anyone in the world in 140 characters or less, waiting isn’t something we do well.  We talk in abbreviations.  We cut things as finely as possible and plan things to the exact minute.  Yes, the Brit in me will happily queue patiently, when I can see what I’m getting … but when the question isn’t simply when, but also who, suddenly we all get rather impatient!

It’s easy to understand why. No matter how much you enjoy being single, there will always be those moments when all you want is someone to snuggle up to on the sofa. Someone to share random musings, that you’d never otherwise say out loud, with … Most of us don’t plan on being single forever, and sometimes there are days when the grass really does look greener on the other side of the fence.

Rom-coms don’t help put the excited impatience to find the ‘One’ into proportion. Every self-respecting romantic comedy will present him to us within the first ten minutes of the two-hour tale, and from that moment we know the Hollywood stars will align to create a happy ending.

But in the same way I don’t wake up each day expecting to look like Katherine Heigl, I also don’t expect my ideal man to appear on a carefully timed conveyer belt!

Growing up with a fairy-tale story like my parents’, it’s hard not to believe somewhere out there is my ‘One’.

Yes, I appreciate there are probably at least a handful of potential candidates, and that luck, or timing, or Transport for London, will intervene to establish which of those candidates ends up becoming my significant other … But I also appreciate that if I’m searching for something particularly special, I might not find it within the first ten minutes.

One of the great things about writing this blog is how many new friends I’ve made in the last 15 months. I went from a 29 year-old, who felt like the only single one ‘left’ in her friendship circle, to very nearly 31, and surrounded by heaps of other singletons, all making the most of our single status.

The 30 Dates, One Year On feature has focused on some of the guys I went on blind dates with last year, and how much their lives have changed in the past 12 months. Some are still single, some are in relationships and one is even engaged. This weekend the Fake Pimpernel will return to the blog with a particularly romantic tale. But I know far more singles than just my 30 original blind dates, and the reality of being single is that a lot of my friends who were single when I first began the blog, are still single 15 months later.

Single and not panicking!

I love romantic comedies.  And I love the idea that no matter how it happens, one day my life will feel like a romantic comedy too.  How I Met Your Father.  I’ll meet someone, somehow, somewhere, and he’ll feel like ‘the One’, even if he really was just one of numerous possibilities.  When I look back on how we met, and all the decisions which we both made to get to that point, it will seem like fate.  And I know that feeling will be incredible.

But in a lot of ways, real life isn’t like the movies.  Something dramatic and life-changing doesn’t need to happen every five minutes.  Sometimes life just carries on … and then after months or years, when you least expect it, you’ll stumble across something, or someone, which changes your life forever.

I admit, I used to dread the idea of being single and 30.  It seemed so old.  And when I compared myself to my friends, I seemed so far behind them all.  But now, with less than 2 weeks until I turn 31, I’m not panicking.  I’m not beating myself up for having been single for over two years.  I’m inspired – by all the incredible single women in their 30s, 40s and 50s, who I’ve met thanks to this challenge.  I’m excited, by all the incredible opportunities I’ve had in the last 15 months.  Opportunities which might not make the perfect romantic comedy, but which make for a really rather cool life.

A few weeks ago, I bumped into an old uni friend.  He was a Rugby Blue back at University – an incredible accolade, and a title which essentially made him Cambridge royalty.  One of the ‘coolest’ men I knew, he had been a third year when I was a Fresher, and I hadn’t seen him for the best part of 10 years when we bumped into each other in Mayfair.  Without prompting, he turned to his friend, and said ‘Meet Charly … she has probably the coolest life out of anyone I know!’.

So yes … Shit! I AM single … but I also have a really rather cool life.  And I know I’m not going to be single forever, so for now, I’m just going to carry on enjoying that life as much as I can!

Miss Twenty-Nine xxx