Immediate Gratification

Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia in Star Wars and the wise-cracking best friend in When Harry Met Sally, wrote a book in the 80's, Postcards From the Edge, which was also made into the movie. The neurotic protagonist in the book once says the famous line, "Instant gratification takes too long."

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I'm not quite that neurotic, but that line has been in my head this weekend because my quota of instant gratification is not getting met. I ran around all day yesterday trying to run errands and accomplish things, and it felt like one thing after another was a FAIL.

I skipped the tennis workout Saturday morning because I wanted to get serious about my writing projects. I thought, naively, that if I just took one day and Got To It, I could knock out my minor writing project (an essay about my cruise) so that then I could start concentrating on my major writing project (my love-ography in fairy tale form.)

I got as far as opening up the cruise essay file on my computer. Then I didn't write a single word. Not one word.

This morning I'm going to a later "church" service so that I can sit at my computer and write, but as you can see, it's not my essay I'm working on, but this blog post. So why am I writing this instead of working on the other thing? It's about instant gratification.

I have no idea if anyone will read or care about my cruise essay. I don't know when I'll finish it, so anything I write now, it may be weeks or months before I get any gratification out of it. But for my blog, I know people will read it sooner. Also, there's not as much pressure on a blog post. This is mostly me just letting off steam. It doesn't have to be polished.

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I'm so tired of not having a primary audience in my life. There have been so many things that have happened to me this weekend that I want to talk about, but no one cares. My tennis shoe saga, shoveling frustrations, couch-buying adventures, the strange winter abdominal pains that have returned, gossip about someone I know. When I think about the last thing, I realize it would have been the perfect thing to tell K. And she would have had an interesting or insightful reply. She gave great conversation. Sigh.

I wish I had a BFF to call up to talk to tell these things to, or even better, someone who would go couch shopping with me. I'm so tired of being single. I'm glad I have this blog, but it doesn't provide the immediate gratification that a face-to-face conversation does.

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When I was in college, one of the many majors I cycled through was Journalism. I even won a scholarship for it, and I worked on the school paper as a reporter. I was pretty good at it and won an award for best new writer one summer. But I couldn't stand reporting, and here's why. Most of my time was spent calling people for interviews and waiting for them to call me back.

Ultimately, I decided that I spent too much of my personal life waiting for people to call me back, I didn't want to do that in my career, too.

The online dating thing is getting frustrating. So many women just never write back. Not even to say, "No thanks." Or if we do exchange a few messages, they just suddenly stop writing. So I'm left to agonize over what it was I said in my last message that turned them off. Every time I log into my email and see no new messages, it's another dagger in my confidence.

I don't have anything new to report since my last post. I did write Mystery Girl Friday morning, and as of Sunday morning, no word. Her profile did say she hadn't been on the site in 3 weeks, so maybe she's just not that active. But still, you'd think she'd receive an email notice and check it out.

Girl #2 still mails me sporadically. The messages themselves are encouraging, but the frequency makes me think she's not interested. I've been trying for two weeks to set up a coffee date, but she's being really coy. At some point I'm just going to lose interest.

Whatever. I hope all of this frustration and rejection is just setting up the scene for the perfect woman, my WorthIt.

In the meantime, I'm waiting impatiently for my immediate gratification.