Oh, Boy(s).

It’s interesting being a single gal these days. Seriously. I’m in a very peculiar place.

It would be very easy for a girl like me to get discouraged about my relationship status. After all, I’m 28. Not getting any younger. The biological clock is ticking and all that. And there are times when it is a struggle not to feel lonely, overlooked, or impatient. Like at weddings. Or on Valentine’s Day. When someone has a baby. Or when you find yourself surrounded by couples. After a Chick Flick binge.

But the truth is, I’m in no hurry. You know how at the beginning of the movie “Hitch,” the dating guru tells us that no woman wakes up in the morning hoping to NOT get swept off her feet? That’s true. But some of us have a lot of other things going on in our lives. Some of us don’t want to try eHarmony or be fixed up on blind dates. We want to find Love, sure. But in the meantime, until it finds us, we’re going to keep getting on with our lives.

One fun distraction I’ve given in to from time to time is TV crushes. My first love was MacGyver—seriously. Ever since then, I’ve had a slew of TV characters whom I’ve made regular dates with. More recently, I was digging Peter Petrelli of Heroes. But oohh, I just liked him so much better with the emo-bangs. Then I also fell surprisingly hard for Chuck. That’s the nerd-love side of me, I guess. Right now, I’m logging a lot of hours watching reruns of Psych. That Shawn Spencer is hilarious.

The thing is, real guys are sooooo much more complicated. Although I am blessed to have some good guys in my life again. It’s nice, because all of my guy friends from college either got married and/or live ridiculously far away. So, now I’ve developed a new circle of friends out here, which includes guys. Several of them are married or otherwise taken, but a few are single. And there’s just a different dynamic in a friendship when both parties are single. Usually. Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to be a little more guarded around “taken” guys, though it helps if I’m close to both halves of the couple. Anyway you split it, friendships with guys are complicated—but I wouldn’t give them up.

What’s nice about it is, it satisfies what I believe is a fundamental human need for interaction with the opposite sex. I was talking about this with one friend, whom I’ll call Clive. (I’m changing the names of the guys so that if by some chance they read this, they won’t feel so exposed. Or something.) Anyway, I was telling Clive that as important as I think it is for guys to have guy time, and girls to have girl time, it’s also really important to have that guy-girl time, too. It doesn’t have to be romantic. It’s just good to get that other perspective. Both man and woman were made in God’s image—both of them representing something different about the nature of God (as John Eldredge discusses in Wild at Heart and Captivating). I’ve learned to appreciate this other element, this masculine component, in ways I never used to. Of Course, I still get baffled and sometimes frustrated with the way guys think and act.

Like my one friend, Theophilus. Theo is this great guy—intelligent, funny in a snarky way, a real servant. Easy going, low key, multifaceted. But he’s got this way of keeping things to himself, not offering anything deep. And then he masks things with sarcasm, and a self-effacing humor. It’s perplexing. What’s he really thinking? I haven’t a clue—and I can tell he wants it that way. Unlike Clive, who has been remarkably open and honest about his struggles and his “walk.”

Not that I have a problem with quiet guys. My first (real, live) crush was on a very shy guy. And right now, I’m also friends with Duncan. It took me a long time to really start to get to know him because he’s just a very unobtrusive person. He’s polite and an all-around Nice Guy. And then, out of nowhere, he’ll say something that makes you laugh. It took me by surprise at first.

I love a good laugh, and I have such a broad sense of humor that it doesn’t take a whole lot to get me going. But my one friend Jason just has this knack for saying the funniest things. I wish things like that rubbed off on people. He is seriously one of the funniest people I’ve ever met, and he makes it look just effortless. I wish I could think that fast and that witty, but I’m left just laughing hysterically in his wake.

And it’s a blessing to have developed such an interesting circle of friends. Like I said, it can sometimes be daunting to a Single Woman to look at her life. The New Year makes us reflect on the past and look ahead to the future, and I find myself still in that process. This past week has really made me reflect on my guy friends, as I’ve spent time with them each in different ways and settings.

While I might sometimes wish for romance to be closer around the corner than it is, I appreciate the fact that I once again have guy friends that I can be myself around, talk to, grab a drink with, and laugh with. (It’s nice when I feel appreciated, too!) So here’s to all the pub nights, jam sessions, Bible study, TV shows, games, inside jokes, wii sports, guitar hero challenges, worship times, and impromptu, spontaneous hanging out in this coming year. Yay for guys! The world would be a much less interesting place without them.

Music is My Mood

So, just about ten minutes ago, I was browsing my myspace, and discovered that my [former] favorite band is releasing a new "Greatest Hits" album this month. I (a) cannot believe it is time for another one of those already, and (b) already like the two new songs that will be on this album (courtesy of their myspace).

I've been thinking about music a lot lately. It's funny, I never really considered myself as an overly musical person, even though I play guitar. Even so, I don't think of myself as a "musician." that's reserved for people who can actually read music--or write it, for that mater. People who know how to play multiple instruments or sing or can speak in musical terminology. BUT I have always loved music. And I did want to be a singer when I was about nine.

For most of my life though, I've been fairly sheltered in my selection of music. It's not entirely all my own doing; my parents got rid of all their secular albums (y'know, vinyls) when I was a baby. They didn't want it to have a negative impact on me. It was okay, though, because Christian music was just starting to come into its own at that time. So I grew up on Maranatha, Michael W. Smith, Amy Grant, Twila Paris, etc.

It wasn't until my senior year of high school that I voluntarily listened to the radio. True story. That's perhaps why I love 90's music so much. Anyway, in college I went through another Christian music relapse...but as it helped shape my understanding of worship, I don't consider that such a bad thing.

But lately, I've been branching out again. It's due to a lot of things. The Indie stuff is because of Brianne. The techno/alternative-type stuff is because of Kyle. The Obscure stuff is because of "Chuck" (on NBC before Heroes)...and the Classic/Rock stuff is because of Guitar Hero. You can't listen to those songs as many times as it takes to get them right and not start to jam to it just a little. (Do I like them all? No. But more than I ever expected to, once again scandalizing the 16-year-old-me.) I'm surprised to find, for example, that I kind of like the Foo Fighters. At least a couple of their songs. And I'm really digging a song by the Eels that was on Chuck this week.

So I've been building my digital library lately, in hopes that soon I will be able to get a Zune (I'll save my anti-itunes rant for another time). Because CDs just aren't cutting it anymore. And music is useful for so many things: expressing feelings, keeping me on track when I'm doing mundane tasks, shaping moods, and helping me visualize a scene. I use playlists a lot in my writing. I kind of do this thing when I'm listening to music--I picture what is going on. Maybe it's due partly to growing up in the Mtv generation, and all the music videos. But a good song can often help me picture a specific scene in one of my stories. Sometimes it even changes or enhances the direction I was going.

But most off all, music just makes me feel good. Doesn't it? I love blasting a song in my car, singing at the top of my lungs, the bass thumping loudly, people in cars around me laughing at me. It's great. Music: What would we do without it?