Stuck

I’ve been feeling as if my life has got stuck for the past couple of days. It’s something that hits me every now and then and when I woke up on Thursday I recognised the feeling immediately and have not been able to shake it since. There are all sorts of aspects of my life that I wish were different, and that I want to change, but I seem unable to, hence the feeling “stuck”.

I have a job that which I don’t really enjoy and which doesn’t especially motivate me. I don’t dread coming to work each day, but I want to do something that I find more fulfilling and more of a challenge. The trouble is I am not entirely sure what that might be. I do have a “dream job” but it is one which is only recruited to once a year and which has quite a tough recruitment process. I have applied in the past and will do so again, but I don’t want to rest all my hopes on it, and would like to have an alternative in mind in case it doesn’t come to anything. So unless I am lucky in the dream job application and until I work out what else I might like to do, I am stuck.

I am in a similar situation in my home. I don’t hate where I live but would like to have a place of my own or at least to share with just one other person. Currently I share a rented flat with several other people and it often seems as if some of my flatmates change every few months. Unfortunately I can’t afford a place of my own and don’t really have anyone to share a smaller place with. So again I am stuck.

And then there’s my love life, or rather lack of. This is where I feel particularly stuck. I have had other jobs and lived in other places and can imagine changing both for something better eventually, even though it seems a distant prospect at the moment. The lack of a relationship though, I’m really not sure I can imagine that changing. Five years ago I thought, and hoped, that by now I might have met someone. As each year goes by however, and nothing happens, it feels more and more as if nothing ever will.

It’s as if I am treading water and going nowhere, while everyone else is swimming on past making progress in their lives.

It’s when I’m feeling like this that the optimism I usually take from my friendship with my sociable guy friend turns to pessimism. The theory that if he finds me interesting enough to want to be friends with me, then surely there’s someone out there who will find me interesting and attractive enough to want to date me, turns on its head. All I have is the thought that if all I need is for someone to find me attractive as well as interesting, why the hell hasn’t it happened yet? I’ve known a fair few men over the years, some of whom have become friends even if only for a short time. Did none of them find me attractive? Were they attracted to me and I missed the signs? I am extremely bad at reading signs, plus I often get too caught up with my own nervousness to even look for signs, so it is possible. I’m not sure I want to go any further with analysing why; I think I’d just make myself feel worse.

I was supposed to be meeting up with Sociable Guy this weekend. We haven’t made any concrete plans and I’m not really in the mood for trying to socialise, but I think I might contact him and try to arrange something. If I don’t I’ll just end up being miserable at home alone, and I’m definitely not going to unstuck myself doing that.