14 minutes to go before I leave for the first “official” date I have had in 2 years. I don’t know if I should be nervous, scared or relieved. It’s been a while and I’m not sure that I remember the rules. The obvious ones stand out like, “Don’t stare at her boobs all night” and “Don’t mention your close relationship with a known serial killer” etc, but what about the small ones that used to be rules and now might not be.

Rules like, who pays, pulling out chairs for feminists, is it appropriate to ask if she has a hotter friend that might be into a threesome. I don’t know if they changed those rules while I was figuring out my life.

Expect an update over the weekend on the results of my foray back into the seedy underworld of dating. It could be a wild ride.

I’m tired, stressed and pissed off. I haven’t slept more than 4 hours a night in the last week and a half. I’m waking up every morning feeling like death warmed over.

Work isn’t helping. Every day I go in to deal with clients who can’t get their shit together enough to tell me everything that they need for their show. Or, they ring to make a meeting with me, and then don’t answer their phones or the messages that I leave when I try to return their calls.

The office staff still ring me at 8am on my days off. They apologise first, and then ask me questions that they should already know the answers to, leaving me wondering why I even bother.

I feel like I want to stand in the centre of the foyer at the theatre and scream obscenities. Not at anything specific, just a long list of expletives that could be applied to any of the issues that I have to deal with on any given day.

I took the day off today, because if I turned up to work I think I would have lost it completely. For the first time in 2 years, I couldn’t face going in to do my job today. I love my job, I really do. I love doing sound, I love making an event come together without a hitch. But I couldn’t face it.

All day I have been watching my Scrubs DVD’s. That show is almost always guaranteed to cheer me up. Today it just reminded me that I am alone. Ever heard the saying that you feel “alone in a crowd”? That’s me right now. Work isn’t enough to fill the gaps. It doesn’t matter how many people I see on a daily basis. I miss having true conversations about real subjects instead of mindless smalltalk or work.

I called a girl tonight. She didn’t answer, but that’s not the point of this post. The point is, that at thirty years old, I still get nervous when I’m calling the opposite sex.

I thought that these things were supposed to get easier the older you get. Surely age brings wisdom and maturity, gives clarity of thought, and settles the nagging insecurities that plagued our youth.

Well, I guess it doesn’t. I still fear rejection, worry that I won’t know what to say, or say the wrong thing, or just be boring and self centred. In the back of my mind there is a small voice that whispers, “You just aren’t that attractive/interesting/loveable”. I know that voice well. It’s the same voice that, as a child, made me shy and introverted around new people. As a teenager it convinced me that none of those intensely aloof, gorgeous women would ever talk to me, so why bother? When I was married, and unhappy, it whispered that this was as good as I could get and I should take the abuse and dramas.

That voice has held me back for 30 years. This girl is special. I think I’ll ignore the voice.