You Know You're in the Friend Zone When...

1. You're a woman and the guy you like addresses you as "bro," "man," or "dude." (On the other hand, if you're unromantic like me, if the guy you liked addressed you as "the most beautiful woman who ever lived," you just might respond by throwing up.)

2. He reaches out to you, not to hold your hand, but to high-five you.

3. You compliment him on his appearance and he immediately changes the subject to something less flirtatious, like the national debt.

4. You mention that you're considering online dating, and rather than act jealous, he says he might join the same online dating site too.

5. He says that you remind him of his sister/mother/grandmother.

6. He talks about other women that he's interested in, while you resist the urge to run home and lie face-down on your bed while listening to angry girl singers from the nineties.

Unfortunately, it seems like as far as Small Town Guy is concerned, I am firmly in the Friend Zone. To most guys I've liked, I've always been the "funny" friend, the "smart" friend, or the "friend who thinks coffee is one of the food groups." I'm never "the one they can't stop thinking about." It's disappointing, but it's not like I can try and change their minds. You don't get to choose who you fall for.

With this guy, I tried not to get my hopes up too much, because even at the beginning of our friendship I had the feeling that it was not going to turn out the way I wanted it to. When you're still single at thirty-five, you tend to be more pessimistic than you might have been at fifteen.

Sometimes, the possibility that I'll be alone for the rest of my life is depressing. On the one hand, it makes things easier as far as my work is concerned. If I find a good job at another school somewhere across the country, I can just pack up and move.

But on the other hand, I do want to get married and have children, and now that I'm getting older, it feels like that fantasy is becoming more and more unattainable.

There is one silver lining in this whole situation. Like I mentioned before, Small Town Guy has been kind enough to include me in his circle of friends, who have all been very nice to me. Recently, they all took me out for dinner and drinks to celebrate my thirty-fifth birthday. Several of them brought gifts for me, which I hadn't been expecting. It made me feel glad that I moved here, met them, and finally stopped working long enough to let these friendships develop.

What about you? Have you ever been in the friend zone?

In honor of the theme of this today's post, here's Danielle Bradbery's song, "Friend Zone." (Yes, it's country. Blame it on the fact that apparently 90% of the restaurants and stores in this Small Town play nothing but country music, and CMT is their favorite channel, other than Fox News.)

A Life Without Writing

If I stopped writing...

1. I'd be much more likely to say what I really think of people to their faces, rather than just write it down, which means I'd probably get head-butted a lot more often.

2. I'd start posting pictures of my lunch or my outfits on Instagram, because everyone knows that those pictures are so fascinating (it's like, can we have MORE selfies, please?).

3. The fictional characters I already created would probably haunt my dreams and say stuff like, "You owe us endings to our stories. If you don't write one for us, we will give you nightmares filled with the things that freak you out the most, including clowns, knives, and one of the Kardashians as President (in that case, posting selfies would become mandatory, and anyone who broke that law would have to buy and read all 448 pages of Kim Kardashian's book of selfies)."

4. I'd stop going to book signings, because I'd feel jealous of the writers who never stopped pursuing their dreams like I did.

5. I'd read less, which would mean I'd have more time to "like" Instagram posts by reality show celebrities and read articles about their Twitter feuds, which would cause my brain cells to die, one by one.

6. I'd look at my journal longingly, similar to the way I look at cupcakes in a bakery or the muscular gay men dancing on floats in Chicago's Pride Parade.

7. I'd always feel like something was missing from my life.

8. I wouldn't communicate with all of you nice people in the blogosphere, who have been very kind and supportive to me through the years.

9. I wouldn't feel that same sense of pleasure I feel when I sit down to write, or when the story heads in a different direction that I wasn't expecting.

For a while now I've actually contemplated giving up writing. This past year has been really busy, what with my full-time job and my part-time job, which is why I haven't blogged as much in the past several months. To be honest, other than journal entries, blog posts, and Tweets, I haven't written anything (other than stuff for work) in months. It made me wonder if maybe I'd lost my writer's "mojo," and it also made me doubt that I had it at all.

I even thought about giving up my blog and my Twitter page. Some people get fifty responses (or hundreds) on their blog posts, whereas I'm lucky if a more than a few dozen actually read my blog posts one at a time, even though I've been blogging for six years now. I have more Twitter followers than blog followers, but more often than not, the people who follow my blog immediately send me DMs asking me to check out or promote their album/book/film/GoFundMe page, which tells me why they're really following me (I never respond to their DMs, nor do I do what they ask).

But if I gave up writing, then I truly would be a workaholic, one hundred percent. I've finally realized that there has to be more to life than work, and writing fiction and creative nonfiction is the one thing that doesn't feel like work to me. Even when it does, it's still something that I want to do, not something that I have to do to pay the bills.

So for now, I'm not giving up writing, though I do have to accept that I may have to wait until summer to spend more time on it. I gave up or lost almost everything else that mattered because of my work. I'm not willing to let my work destroy the one thing I have left.

What about you? Have you ever felt tempted to give up writing?

The Gift That Keeps On Giving Me Heartburn

Now that I'm making friends and socializing more in Small Town, it's nice to interact with people and say something other than "Get OUT of my parking space, FREAK SHOW!" (to my neighbors) or "Put your cell phones DOWN!" (to my students).

One thing about socializing, though, is that it can be expensive. Recently I was invited to a birthday party at the only fancy restaurant in Small Town. The birthday girl said that we didn't have to get her anything, but I knew that several other people would bring gifts. I didn't want to be the only person who showed up without a birthday gift. Not to mention I didn't have enough money for a meal at a fancy restaurant, especially considering how most of my meals consist of pasta, peanut butter sandwiches, or toast and scrambled eggs.

Due to the debt I accumulated from my move to Small Town, as well as student loans, car payments, rent, and other expenses, I just don't have enough money for an active social life sometimes. I know that you can't put a price on friendship, but you can put a price on gifts for those friends, like gifts for birthdays, weddings, baby showers, housewarming parties, etc., etc.

I don't tell this to Small Town Guy and his friends, because they've all been so nice and welcoming to me. But they all make a lot more money than I do, so I think it might be harder for them to relate to the fact that I can't afford a ticket to a play in the nearby big city that they want to go to, or a shopping spree at a mall in one of the other big cities (the closest thing that Small Town has to a mall is Walmart).

I could try giving them homemade gifts. But although I've gotten a little better at cooking, it's still difficult for me to bake anything without cringing immediately after I taste it. I can't sew or knit without accidentally poking myself (usually in the eye) with the needle.

It reminds me of that episode of Sex and the City, where Carrie Bradshaw had to spend a bunch of money on gifts for her married friends, but lamented over the fact that single people like her rarely received gifts for their own special occasions (the fact that they were single apparently meant they had fewer occasions to celebrate).

But here are a few of MY ideas for special occasions that single people like me would like presents for (I know it'll never happen, but still, it'd be nice):

A gift for all the times my mother tells me about all the women younger than me who are already married with children, and then she calls me a spinster or an old maid (one of the times she did this was when she called me on my thirtieth birthday).

A gift for all the bad dates I've been on, like the one with the guy who waited a month to call me after our first (and only) date, and then he got mad and insulted me when I made it clear that I was no longer interested.

A gift for all the hours I spent poring over online dating profiles, only to dismiss more than half of them because the guys my age made it clear in their profiles that they only wanted to date women who were at least ten (or fifteen) years younger.

A gift for all the messages on online dating sites that I received from guys who were twenty (or thirty, or, in one case, forty) years older than me.

A gift for all the times I had to tell my parents' friends that yes, I'm still single; no, I don't have a boyfriend right now; NO, I'm not a lesbian. (I WISH I was making that last one up.)

A gift for the time I sat next to a couple in a coffee shop who kept making out and calling each other cutesy names, and I resisted the urge to eat the croissants they were neglecting and/or throw those croissants at them.

It would be nice if single people got their own special day to celebrate being single, similar to how couples have Valentine's Day and anniversaries to celebrate their relationships. But we're not supposed to celebrate our single status; we're supposed to keep looking for love, or else be accused of being old maids or lesbians (as if there's something wrong with being either, which there isn't).

Oh, well. Either way, I am grateful to the people who have extended their offers of friendship to me, even if I have to occasionally decline their invitations to hang out. It's just too bad that I can't give a peanut butter sandwich as a gift.

What about you? Are there any occasions in your life that you wish you could get presents for? How do you deal with the costs of socializing?

Socially Awkward

I will never be referred to as a "social butterfly." I'm much more likely to be described as an obsessive neurotic workaholic who will suddenly come down with an incurable case of I-don't-want-to-go-so-BACK-OFF whenever someone invites me to a party.

I am grateful to the people I've met for making an effort to include me in their social circle. I've done more socializing in the past few weeks than I did in the previous months, when I was still getting settled in Small Town. It has been a pleasure to get to know some nice people and spend time with them.

But on the other hand, I've always been an introvert and a loner, and I don't like to socialize THAT often. For example, one thing that Small Town Guy and his friends like to do on a regular basis is go out for drinks to a local bar. Since I'm a teetotaler, I like bars as much as I like trying on swimsuits within earshot of girls who are a size zero and complain that they look "fat". (I have a head-butting reflex for girls like that.)

But I go and drink soda at the bar with them, because I've finally realized that it's not good to let my life revolve around work all the time. Sometimes I feel shy and nervous around that many people; big social situations like that have always made me feel anxious and prone to saying things that make me want to slap my face so that I'll stop talking.

I've declined more than one social invitation, partly because I can't afford to go out as often as the others do, and partly because most of the time, I'd rather go off and do my own thing. Although I enjoy their company, sometimes my mind wanders when I'm with them.

I find myself thinking about the books I'm reading, and all of a sudden I'm not at a bar or out to dinner with the others. I'm sitting on the fire escape of a Brooklyn tenement with Francie Nolan from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, or I'm writing in a Paris cafe with Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast, or I'm camping out in Taos, New Mexico with the main characters in Natalie Goldberg's Banana Rose.

Other times I think about my own writing, which I've sadly been neglecting due to my full-time job and part-time job. I think about which guy my main character should end up with, and I think of scenes that I want to rewrite or take out altogether. It makes me wish I could take out my journal and jot a few notes down, but then the others would either think I'm rude or want me to read my writing out loud to them, which is about as appealing as wearing a swimsuit in front of them.

When I was younger, I tried to be more social. On the rare occasions I wasn't at one of my three (or four) jobs,  I went to bars, clubs, or parties with my friends. But more often than not, I'd make up an excuse and leave early, because I felt uncomfortable or bored. Once I went to a party where I only knew one other person. All the guests spent the whole time gossiping about people that I didn't know, so finally I stood up and announced that I was going home. One of them said, "Oh, I hope we weren't boring you with all of our talk!"

I replied, "Actually, you totally were. See ya!" (I also have a thing about being a little too direct sometimes.)

I remember going to a nightclub with some friends, where they danced, drank, and flirted. All I could think was how much I'd rather be watching one of my favorite crime dramas or browsing in a bookstore. I felt that as someone in her twenties, I should enjoy myself in situations like that, as so many other twentysomethings did. But I never really did.

Now that I'm older, I do try to adapt to social situations more often. But I still feel awkward and out of place sometimes, and I feel bad for being so antisocial. I think it's something that just comes with the territory of being an introvert, and it's not something I'll ever be able to change.

What about you? Do you consider yourself to be an extrovert or an introvert?

What It's Like to Have a Crush...When You're a Neurotic Workaholic Like Me

1. You spend more time on your physical appearance, because you want to avoid what happened the first time you ran into him: you neither brushed your hair nor your teeth that day. You start wearing makeup, even though you always hated wearing it, and you style your hair and choose outfits more carefully. Then you look in the mirror and think, "Wow, I look good!" And that makes you feel good.

2. The day you are supposed to go out for dinner with him and his friends, a ginormous zit will suddenly appear on your nose or your chin. When you sit next to him at dinner, you feel as if your zit is growing larger by the second, to the point that it might jump off your face and attack Small Town Guy or his friends.

3. You do something you rarely did for anyone else before: you give up time that you normally spend working in order to hang out with him and his friends, who socialize regularly.

4. When you come home from hanging out with him and his friends, the stack of work on your desk will make other zits pop out on your face in response.

5. You find yourself thinking more about him than about your work. You like that he's been kind enough to include you in his circle of friends, which really helps after moving to a town where you did not know anyone.

6. You find yourself obsessing over small things, like the time you texted him and he didn't text you back. When he apologizes a couple days later for forgetting to text you because he was busy with work, you resist the urge to say, "That's okay. It's not like I was waiting by the phone, picking out the names of my future cats."

7. You start to feel hope again, which is something that you haven't felt for anyone since your Grad School Crush last year, who liked you back but also liked playing with your heart as if it was a yo-yo.

8. After all the bad dates and failed relationships, you half-convince yourself that there is no reason to feel hopeful. Small Town Guy hasn't asked you out; he's just friendly to newcomers like you. You think, If it was going to happen for me, it would've happened by now. A great guy like him could have his pick of any other woman in town, like a thinner, more attractive woman whose mind is not like an eternal Seinfeld marathon. 

9. You think that maybe eventually, your life won't revolve around work and that maybe it could be about much more than that.

10. You also think that if by some miracle Small Town Guy ever feels the same way about you, it could interfere with your professional goals. He is established in his career in this town, but you plan to eventually move on to a more secure teaching position at another school who knows where. Your work has always been the most important thing to you, and you're not sure you'd be willing to give up everything you've worked for (and everything you're still working for), even for someone like him.

What about you? When you had a crush on someone, what were the positive/negative aspects for you?

There's No Place Like Home

Spring break at the school where I teach is still more than a month away, but I've already started planning what to do during my time off. I think I might be able to afford a few days off to travel, and I've been thinking of making a brief trip back to Chicago.

I've grown (somewhat) accustomed to living in Small Town now. There are only a couple coffee shops in town, but I've already picked out my favorite cafe and often go there to write. When I feel particularly claustrophobic, I drive to one of the larger towns or cities to go shopping or try a new restaurant. Despite my usual "leave me alone unless you have food, in which case just give me the food and THEN leave" attitude, I have started socializing more with people my age who live here.

But I'd like to visit Chicago again, even just for a few days, especially because I may never live there again. The job I have in Small Town is not a tenure-track position, which means that eventually I will have to move on to another school, either in this state or maybe in some other town halfway across the country (such is the life of the untenured college teacher).

There are some things about Chicago that I miss a lot, and some things that I'm happy to be free of:

I miss the Chicago-style stuffed pizza, and the way that Chicagoans often insisted that their favorite pizza place was the best and would even get into arguments with each other about it.

I don't miss the prices at many Chicago restaurants, which apparently have the motto, "Why make things affordable when we can overcharge you weaklings who cannot resist our food? HAHAHAHAHA!"

I miss walking around Greektown, where old men sat on chairs outside the restaurants and called out to each other in Greek. I also miss the fact that I could walk down almost any street in Chicago and hear at least four or five different languages being spoken.

I don't miss random creeps who called out to me when I was walking down almost any street in Chicago, because apparently they go by the following motto: If I yell out as many offensive things as possible and/or try to grope women that I think are attractive, surely ONE of them will want to hook up with me, and I have NO IDEA why this hasn't worked yet.

I miss the neighborhood festivals, like the Chinese New Year's festival in Chinatown, where I used to watch the dragon dancers, the Taste of Chicago in Grant Park, where I ate toasted ravioli and other delicious food from local restaurants, or Northalsted Market Days in Boystown, where I looked wistfully at all the good-looking, muscular guys dancing in colorful briefs and think, "And they're all gay, darn it!"

I don't miss the crowds at those festivals (or any popular event or place in the city), where there was sometimes the risk that I might get robbed/knocked down/thrown up on (and yes, all three things happened to me at some point or other during some of these festivals).

I miss riding the CTA trains and buses, because I dislike driving in Small Town; I dislike parking, and I dislike all the drivers who apparently don't know how to drive or park.

I don't miss the weird, annoying, or scary people on the CTA trains and buses, like the guy who took off his pants just because I glanced in his direction, or the people who would delay the trains by holding the doors open for their friends, or the people whose solution to crowded trains and buses would be to make them even MORE crowded by squeezing themselves onboard.

I miss riding rented bikes by the lake, window shopping on Michigan Avenue, and the free admissions' days at the museums.

I don't miss the aggressive bicyclists by the lake, the protestors who yelled at anyone who didn't protest with them on Michigan Avenue (and there are a LOT of them in Chicago right now), and the mob of tourists at the museums who walked so slowly (because they were appreciating the scenery) that I always had to mutter to myself, "Don't yell at the tourists don't yell at the tourists don't -"

On the other hand, part of me is thinking that maybe I should just save my money and not go to Chicago at all, or maybe I should go somewhere else for my spring break (I am considering a road trip to explore more of the surrounding area this summer).

What about you? What do you like best/least about your hometown, or what would you miss most about it?