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Every time I see a baby, I can’t help but think how much disappointment and pain this person is going to feel. She (let’s call her she for simplicity) has not experienced any of her life, and she is so happy. She just crawls around and laughs and eats and smiles and poops. She has yet to experience junior high school, rejection, illness, loss, depression, and, depending on the choices that she makes in life, poverty, hunger, and drug dependency.

I can’t just see a baby for her cute innocence. Her whole life flashes before my eyes, and I want to try to protect her, because I know how hard life can be. I want to keep douchebag men away from her in twenty years, and I want to tell her the dangers of texting and driving.

I don’t remember being a baby, and I know that that was the happiest moment of my life. I think it’s a cruel trick that we can’t remember that early period in our lives. When I’m upset, I try to think back on a happy memory. Just once, I want to remember rolling around in my own food and vomit and pooping my diapers and just screaming and drooling for hours. Granted, I do remember that, but I want to have those memories that didn’t occur four years ago. I want to remember the first time I did those things. Back when I didn’t do things like that due to a stress and anxiety-induced nervous breakdown. Back when I didn’t have the cognitive capacity to know that if I did all of these things, I would lose everyone I ever knew and loved.

Maybe I’m an exception, and my life so far has been more mentally straining than the average twenty-nine-year-old. That is, American twenty-nine-year-old. I’m sure that the majority of people my age around the world have had it much worse.

Babies are cute, and I should just focus on the cuteness. They will be in control of their own lives.

They say that the clothes make the man. I don’t know if this relates to that adage, but I love almost nothing more than wearing ties, aside from eating, sleeping, and wearing more than one tie at once.

I can’t remember if I’ve talked about this before, nor do I care, because you are not reading this, and I am not currently wearing a tie. If your workplace environment has a casual attire, try dressing up in a tie at least once. If you are female, try dressing up nice as well. It really makes the whole day so much better. Whenever I’m feeling down during the day, I look down and see that I’m in a tie and then I cannot be stopped. Try to wear a tie and not feel important and destined for greatness. Peeing in a urinal will never be so noble.

The first, and last, time I wore a tie on a first date, I managed to meet and hang on to the greatest woman of all time. I’m not necessarily saying that the clothes you wear will change the person you’re sitting across from. However, it may change the way that you present yourself to her, and thus change her perception of you and the trajectory of a relationship that may have been dead, had you worn your Polo shirt. I’ve worn a Polo shirt on several first dates, and never lived to see a second. Again, I was still in the process of losing weight and completely changing my lifestyle and the way that I presented myself.

A tie can be an impetus for a lifestyle change for yourself. If you want to lose some weight, wear a tie. You will still be fat, but you’ll feel better about yourself, and that may motivate you to do something. I actually have no idea what I’m talking about, and am really hungry right now. Wear a tie at the gym. Don’t even work out. Just stand there. You’ll burn some calories. Or you won’t. I’m no scientist.

I recently initiated Tie Tuesday at work. It’s pretty self-explanatory. If you don’t get it, I want people to wear a tie…on Tuesdays. Usually it’s just me that participates. It has also caused me to start going to the dry cleaners. I never went before on a regular basis. No story there. It’s just something I do now.

The world should all dress nice.

My four-month anniversary is coming up and it only took 28 years and 11 months to achieve. From the moment I was born, I was built to sabotage myself into being alone. In junior high, a girl literally told me I was cute, and I sarcastically said something about how fantastic that was and then ran away. Granted, that was junior high, but really Jeremy? Really?

In high school a girl asked me if I wanted to tan with her in her backyard. I responded by telling her I couldn’t because I had to do math homework and I didn’t even have any math homework. A few weeks later I volunteered to watch X-Men with her little brother. I don’t remember my thought process during this whole ordeal, but I imagine it’s similar to that of a crystal meth addict weaning himself off over the course of maybe one hour and suffering severe withdrawals. “Hey! I know you’re really cute and want to lay shirtless with me, but I’d rather watch a movie with your brother.” I wouldn’t have blamed her if she never spoke to me again. And she didn’t.

In college, a girl in my apartment told me I was the most attractive man she works with, and then I told her goodbye and she left.

I don’t know which one of these three scenarios is worse, but it doesn’t matter. If none of these had occurred, I wouldn’t have learned to not do stupid things, and wouldn’t have forced myself to rebuild my life. I would have settled down with one of these three women, remained fat and horrible, and she eventually would have divorced me. I do want to note that fat and horrible are two separate things, and your body size says nothing about you as a person. It was just another factor that made me feel miserable.

I needed to fall in order to get myself back up. I am now back up, but still limping. The most glaring difference in my life is my girlfriend. I know bragging about my girlfriend in a blog about online dating sounds pompous, but I think I’ve been self-conscious on here for long enough to merit that.

I know nothing about them.

Some think that James Franco will raise one to rise up against us. Others claim that that is just a film. Either way, ever since I first saw the original Planet of the Apes, I do not trust them.

Recently, while at the zoo, a woman among the crowd watching the chimpanzees was actually eating a banana. I am not making this up. At the exact same moment, two chimpanzees had to dig this dirty stick into this weird hole thing filled with dirty orange juice, and then pull it out and lick whatever juice remained on the stick. I now completely understand why the apes will rise up against us. Our greed has surpassed anything we ever could have imagined. We can eat a banana during any moment of any day for the rest of our lives, and this one lady decided to choose the moment she was staring at chimpanzees in an enclosed space.

I don’t know how much time we have left on this earth, but judging by human behavior such as this, it’s not long. Let’s just think about things before we do them. For example, if we’re going to stare at creatures in captivity whose favorite all-time food is bananas, let’s wait until we leave to eat a banana. Also, now that I think about it, there’s no way that the zoo even sells bananas. This woman must have brought her banana from home for the sole purpose of eating it in front of these chimps.

Also, the second troubling thing about this scenario is the fact that there were maybe 50 people staring at the chimps, yet nobody mentioned to this woman that she should stop eating her banana, including myself. However, at the time, I was too hungry to really care anyway. If I had a banana in my hand, I probably also would have eaten it.

Let’s just be nicer to each other. If you’re angry, let it out when you’re alone. I do that all the time. Also, I’m an a** in front of people sometimes. I’m not better than anyone else. I just write about it like I am.

Either my blog posts are getting worse, or people are getting angrier for some ulterior reason. I’m starting to get a handful of angry replies about my updates. Here is what I wrote in the latest post that irked one reader:

“If you live in the suburbs, which many of you reading this probably do, there is really nothing to be afraid of, short of death or serious illness of yourself or a loved one.”

And here is how the reader responded in a comment:

“What?!? Do you even know what you’re talking about?”

In context, they were referring to a post I wrote where I discussed how fear can drive you to do great things, but can also consume you. I think this reader took my writing a bit literally. For example, the preceding sentence of my post read, “You can’t live with constant fear (unless you’re that woman who was trapped in that dungeon in the Netherlands… or somebody is chasing you with a buzz saw).” By his logic, it is perfectly normal and commonplace in today’s society for someone to be chased around with a buzz saw, but completely unacceptable that a person’s two biggest concerns should be death or serious illness of a loved one.

Of course there are countless other valid concerns that suburbanites should have, and of course, not all of our readers live in the suburbs. I use hyperbole to make broader points. If it offends you that I made a generalization that you live in the suburbs, maybe you should leave your moderately-sized house just outside the city and go volunteer somewhere.

Again, I don’t know you at all, and I’m sure you’re a great person, and you probably volunteer more than I do anyway. But let’s face it, you do live in the suburbs, and if it angers you that I think you should concern yourself with the health and well-being of yourself and your loved ones, I’m sorry to suggest something so terrible.

Let me be your scapegoat. If you’ve had a long day, and come on here for some dating advice, and read one of my posts that doesn’t always have to do with dating, go ahead and yell at me. You’re right. I don’t always talk about dating. Dating is important. 100hookup is important. If it wasn’t for either, I never would have found the greatest woman I have ever met. However, there is more to life, and I write about that as well.

If you spend all day worrying about dating and finding the perfect person for you, you’re probably not going to find someone for a while. Take a step back. Put up some nice profile pictures, be honest in your profile, occasionally browse the site to find someone good for you, and something will eventually happen. It took me five years to realize this. 100hookup is a tool. A great tool. However, it is not life. Life is too complex, and if you spend all of your time on here, it will show. 100hookup can’t make you somebody you’re not. It can only show the world the great person that you are.

If you are still angry at me, leave a comment on this post. In order to do so, click on the title of this post and then leave a reply at the bottom. Also, if you like my writing, you can leave a reply too. I don’t really get a lot of feedback on this outside of my friends and family, and after over 200 posts, I want to make sure that I’m helping (or at least entertaining) people.

Emotional wounds do not heal, they are simply treated. There is nothing that will happen in your life that will have no effect on you whatsoever. Everything has repercussions, even if you are not aware of it at the time. Your past will always catch up with you.

The best analogy I can think of is a horror movie where the protagonist thinks he’s done with the nightmare scenario until the walls come down and he finds out that he’s deeper into the nightmare than he could have imagined. If you try to ignore your past, it will come back to haunt you in a big way. However, if you learn to live with your past, it will still bother you at times, but it will be manageable.

Accept who you are. If you are in a bad place and make a conscious decision to change yourself, don’t forget that bad place you came from. I have suffered from severe anxiety. Though I am now a much more well-adjusted person, I can’t hide the fact that this anxiety is a part of who I am. I can’t push all of my needless worry aside or pretend that it does not exist or else it will flare up and be worse than it has been in years. I just have to let the anxiety exist in the back of my brain but not let it bubble up to the surface.

This past week, I consciously forced myself to stop worrying. I was physically and emotionally tired of all of the extra time, effort, and stress that it causes, so I literally pressured myself to change the subject when I found myself obsessing over something. But for some reason, my mind could not handle, or was not used to this, and eventually it pushed my anxiety into overdrive until I almost could not function. I guess this is my mind’s way of telling me to not forget where I came from or who I am. I have been defined by this anxiety, and to deny it, even to myself, would be to deny who I am.

You can’t cure anything mentally related. The mind is too powerful to forget or pretend that experiences did not happen. The best you can do is live with and contain them.

People that deny who they are don’t seem to be happy, at least from what I’ve seen on television. Right now, I am watching Spanish-language infomercials because I have to hit ‘3’ in order to turn my television on and this is the Spanish channel. The remote control is at least two feet away so I’m not changing it anytime soon. Though I have no idea what they are saying, I think I can draw the incredibly ignorant, culturally insensitive conclusion that Spanish language personalities do not hide anything about themselves. This one guy has been non-ironically wearing a donkey costume for the past twenty minutes and could not at all give a s**t.

My donkey suit is less tangible, but just as real. I can’t run around all the time in my donkey suit, but I still have to keep it in my closet, because I love my donkey suit, and if I lose all of my other clothes, I will have to wear something.

I’m scared of everything. I’m scared I will fail. I’m scared I won’t wake up on time tomorrow. I’m scared that even though I got an oil change last week, the mechanic only pretended to change my oil because I told him I didn’t want the extra $50 thing that he explained I “needed.” but didn’t get because it wasn’t oil.

Fear is what drives people to do great things. It is also what leads people to self-destruct. It has caused me to do both. You can’t live with constant fear (unless you’re that woman who was trapped in that dungeon in the Netherlands… or somebody is chasing you with a buzz saw). If you live in the suburbs, which many of you reading this probably do, there is really nothing to be afraid of, short of death or serious illness of yourself or a loved one. Of course, that is a lot easier said than done. If you lose your job, you will recover. If your car gets stolen, you will recover. If your NFL team loses, there’s always beer. Relationships are somewhat different. I think losing a significant other can really affect your life in the long term.

This is why, outside of maintaining the health of yourself and your loved ones, you should focus a great deal of energy and concern on y0ur partner. If you don’t have one, she/he will come. Okay, I realize this is a completely different topic now… However, I’ve been pretty consistently single for most of my life. For the past ten years, my life has been completely out of control, and everyone always told me that ‘she will come’ very much in the style of Field of Dreams. She did not come until I got my s*** together. You don’t have to actively seek someone out. You just have to get your s*** together.

I realized very recently you don’t increase your odds of meeting someone great by going out on as many dates as possible. You do so by going on a few dates, but putting your all into each one. Don’t make it seem that you go out on one a week, even if you don’t. Get in a mindset where this thing is the only thing you’ve been thinking about for like a week. My dad always told me to get the girl a gift on the first. I never really did that, as it can seem a little much, but the sentiment is certainly there. If you are not sure whether or not you should wear a tie, then you should definitely wear a tie. Let this fear somewhat guide you. If you’re not a little scared, then it’s not going to work out well. If you half-a** it, she will know. And if that happens,you will go home alone — as I almost always did.

Have you ever tried to stop and think during the day just to collect your thoughts? I found myself staring at a wall clock today, thinking how slowly that minute hand was moving. The next thing I knew, it was two hours later and the lights were off.

The phrase ‘there’s not enough hours in the day’ is, in my opinion, stupid. I mean, poeople created the parameters of the hour, right? So they can change the definition of ‘hour’ to mean that hour can be however long or short they want it to be. For instance, they could make that hour fifteen minutes long; then the average person would be able to get around 28 hours of sleep a night! Do you have any idea how refreshed and productive our society would be after 28 hours of sleep every night? I would be so happy.

However, the hell spawns that decided to make an hour 60 minutes long have really limited the abilities of humanity. No matter what you do during the day, you are restricted to 24 hours — 7 of which are spent sleeping, .75 in the restroom, 1 in the car, 1 watching television, .25 walking somewhere, 2 surfing the internet, 1 reading, 2 eating, 1.5 talking on the phone, 2 texting, 3 worrying, and the final 3 are spent thinking about things you’d rather be doing. This leaves you with only a half hour of time to actually do anything that at all matters (or maybe that’s just me).

A highlight reel of my day would be about three seconds long and would include a clip of me laughing, eating, and then sleeping. That is, during the work week. During the weekend, it would be much longer and show me sleeping for half of the day and then hopefully seeing my lady friend during the second half. This highlight would happen in real time. There’s nothing on the weekend I would want to skip over. Except for the shaving. I hate shaving. So much.

I know that I have mentioned this before, but of all of the things that Oprah has said, one line has stuck with me the most, mostly because it is the only thing I remember Oprah ever saying. She said something about how there is a thin line between a nice person and a pushover. She actually may not have said that at all, because this was while watching Oprah about fifteen years ago while half asleep. It may not have even been Oprah who said it. It could have just as easily been Dr. Phil yelling at some drug-addicted mother or something.

However, up until that point, I had thought I was a nice person. On that day, I realized there’s an equal chance that I’m just an asshole that’s too scared to stand up to anybody. If you meet a guy and think he’s super nice, there’s a very real possibility that he’s a terrible person. Do I hold the door for you because I’m genuinely nice or because I’m scared of the slim possibility that you are the daughter of Warren Buffett? Neither. I don’t hold the door for you because you’re sixty feet behind me and are also a 75-year-old man.

Seriously, if you’re going to be nice to a woman, make sure that you are aware of to whom you are supposed to be nice. You can’t just be polite to every person you meet in life. That takes too much effort and energy. 75-year-old men can open doors themselves just fine, but 27-year-old women need help. Your help.

Chances are, genuine kindness is a combination of both. You can’t be purely friendly without also putting some of your ego aside. You also can’t be a complete pushover without maintaining some amount of kindness.

I now know that I am also a combination of both. I’m not completely nice, and I’m also not a complete bumhole. I’m just a regular guy. I’m okay with regular, so long as I never accidentally hold a door for a perfectly capable elderly gentleman again.

I had just finished my new post and then saw that someone left a comment on an older post of mine. Here it is:

‘“Most writers?” I have a sense of humor. You’re just not funny. You’re not even witty. Not a good writer either. You spend 20 minutes on these things? 100hookup : see what happens when you don’t pay your bloggers — or even read their posts? You get this.’

This review/comment was attached to a post I wrote titled, Real World, and it was admittedly a terrible post. I reread the post, and it is indeed awful. I apologize. I have written for this site for over two years, twice a week. For most of this time I have been overweight, single, and struggling with several anxiety-related disorders. Though I do like to think I am a decent writer, and occasionally funny, it has often been difficult to be consistent two times a week while dealing with my actual life.

So, Shannon November, while some of my posts are bad, and most aren’t at all about dating, and I certainly do not dole out advice, I apologize again. No, 100hookup does not pay me, and writing is not a full-time thing for me. However, writing here twice a week has been the only consistent thing in my life over the past two years or so. I actually didn’t think that anybody reads my posts, so at least I’m glad that somebody does. I know this sounds strange, but the opportunity that 100hookup has given me has honestly helped me point my life in the right direction, as every post of mine here, starting with the very first, chronicles this gradual change from who I was to what I am slowly becoming.

I do not know if you have read any of my other posts, but if you haven’t, you are more than welcome to. Chances are, you have, and you dislike them as well. In that case, there are two other wonderful bloggers on this site as well. If that isn’t good enough, there are millions of other free blogs on the internet to choose from, covering pretty much any topic you can imagine.

Really, my posts are just as much for me, maybe even more so, than they are for the readers. They force me to write. They give me a sort of structure that I desperately needed a few years ago. My life is completely structured now, thanks in part to this thing. So much so that I am completely rewriting this post after having read your comment, even though it is killing me that it is 10 pm, and that is the time that I need to be in the shower.

However, after reading that horrible past post of mine and leaving that comment, you’re probably never visiting my blog again, and are thus not reading this. If you do happen to catch this, leave a comment. If anyone else has read any of my posts, or are reading this one, please let me know how I’m doing. At least I’ll know I have a semi-consistent reader, because all I want is to be liked, and if not liked, noticed.