Dating - could I be arsed?

I wonder should we get fussier about who we date as we get older or simply throw caution to the wind and grant a meetup to anyone who has the conviction to go ahead and ask for our number?

This afternoon fell into column B for me. Knowing I wasn't attracted to my date, I had nevertheless given him my number last week because, well, he asked for it. I then very quickly found myself in a situation where I had a date pending that for most of the week, I was less than enthused about and after waking up with a hangover this morning, these mediocre enthusiasm levels had dropped to record lows. In fairness to my date, he was perfectly nice and normal and we had a fine time. Decent chats and the like and no awkwardness. But 2 hours of my life was enough and home I went after lunch.

So the afternoon went pretty much as I expected it to. No great surprises. No thunderbolt moment where I felt that my initial opinion of the guy was way off and that actually, he could be the love of my life. And at this point, after 33 years on this planet and lets face it, all 33 of them spent sussing out men, my initial evaluation of them tends not to change very much. Give me less than half an hour with a guy and I will have formed an opinion that, rightly or wrongly, 99% of the time is likely to stick.

So hence my question. Should I just put myself out there and go on all sorts of dates with randomers when my gut tells me that after an hour I'll be looking at my watch and fabricating an excuse to leave? Or should I just be a little more discerning in my quest for Mr. Right and not waste my time with a man that can't even stir a modicum of excitement in me at the prospect of meeting up?

Any experts out there care to share a thought or 2? Because I honestly just don't know the answer.

Here we go...

So, it seems I'm back to the world of blogging. Evidently, having a presence on Facebook, Twitter and Fatbook (times 2) is not sufficient internet exposure for me, so here I am.

Since I can't afford to pay for therapy, and lets face it, who'd want to listen to my very average and banal problems over and over again anyway, I thought perhaps I'd send them out into the ether and see if "putting pen to paper" or whatever they call the click click of online soul bearing these days could somehow

1. Furnish me with a degree of mental stability - just a little bit of sanity - please...
2. Trigger me into actually doing some work on my Phd or ultimately, even finishing the damn thing
3. Motivate me to get that last stone off my belly...ooh how it wobbles...
4. Figure out the love life - or lack thereof. No doubt I've made some ill judged choices in my time but surely karma can't have it in for me that much.
5. Think through life in general and try to determine what's next

Essentially, this is the place where I will be coming to sort myself out. How often I turn up and how much I have to say has obviously yet to be determined.

Yogi Berra once said "when you come to a fork in the road, take it". I feel I'm approaching that fork again and it's time to plough on through but there's a huge part of me that wants to turn around and run back. I'm 33 and have no idea where my life is going and that scares the bejaysus out of me. All I know is, one day I'll wake up and I'll be old, like proper "needs a nappie" old and I want to be able to look back and know that I achieved things, that I took chances, that I should be proud of who I am.

Don't get me wrong, I've done things I'm proud of. I just feel like I'm floundering at the moment. At a time when some friends are making life changing decisions, getting married, having babies, jetting off out of this bankrupt country, I wonder what's my destiny? What should I be doing?

The getting married and having babies option, is (unfortunately?) closed to me at the moment. Perhaps I've closed that option off to myself through some of the choices I've made. Perhaps it's not the most important thing in the world to me anyway. When I imagine my future, for some reason, husbands and kids don't really feature. My little bungalow with its fabulous kitchen is what stands out. Who knows, maybe I've been alone and cooking for one for so long that that's all my limited brain can conjour up. Where that little bungalow will be is also a mystery. Do I really have the balls (or the financial freedom) to just hop on a plane and move my life to some other country or am simply all talk?

So basically, heaps of decisions to be made. I'll try to get to them one at a time but I feel that this could be more like a big old cauldron of thoughts, musings and wonderings. As long as it doesn't boil over I should be fine.

I may even get inspiration for that book I seem to believe I have in me....