Last year, for the most part at least, was somewhat interesting. I somehow managed to not only graduate my master's degree, but I did so with distinction. If it weren't for 2 "A-" grades I would have had a perfect 4.0 GPA. Not bad for a chronic slacker like me. I also spent a month in my native homeland the Philippines. Although I didn’t spend nearly enough time over there on the beach or in the nightclubs as I would have liked, it was a beautiful trip nonetheless. I could totally see myself living there someday. It’s just a different life out there.

2008 wasn’t without its imperfections however. I was passed over not once but twice for a position in my company that opened up in Phoenix. Part of me is pissed off about the whole thing, but another part of me feels glad because I’ve been awakened to the possibility of just picking up and moving to a totally new place. Although I love Chicago and I’ve been here my whole life, somehow I feel that the next step of my evolution involved me stepping away from “the familiar” and all the baggage that comes with it, family, friends, work all of it. Once the economy gets a little better and companies start hiring I may start looking into a change in venue.

The past year has also proven to be fruitless in terms of the opposite sex. Yeah, so what else is new? I pretty much blame this entire past year (and the many years before that) on me being picky, perhaps much more picky than I deserve to be. I don’t know. Is it too much to ask for someone that’s both physically and mentally attractive? I suppose it might be just a little bit. What’s even more frustrating is that the women I’ve found most attractive wind up being the most unavailable. I suppose it makes some sense, because females who have stellar personalities and looks to match wind up being magnets to the opposite sex. They usually have no problem finding a partner because, for the most part at least, guys come to them.

It’s not like I’m attracted to taken women on purpose either, it more like me getting attracted to a female first then finding out later that she’s “taken” in some way. It’s frustrating to say the least. What’s beginning to disturb me however, is that I’m starting to entertain the notion of going for some of these women who I am both attracted to and are in current relationships.
What’s even stranger is that I’m starting to be swayed much more by intelligence than by looks. In the past the chick with a cute face and a nice rack would have sufficed. Who cares if she couldn’t hold an intelligent conversation? Now I’m finding that it’s the intelligent conversation that makes me cream in my pants. What the fuck? I suppose that makes things slightly more challenging for me because now I have to open up and converse more, you know to see if the chick I’m talking to also has brains. That kinda sucks because I like being the “strong, silent type” of guy. It’s sort of my trademark.

Fuck it all. I think it’s time I reassess my so called “code of honor”. Instead of asking whether or not she has a boyfriend and then retreating when she smiles and says the almost inevitable “yes, we’ve been dating for X amount of months/years/whatever”, I should just go for it. If there’s an attraction and she doesn’t have a ring on her left ring finger and she doesn’t have an obvious boyfriend standing next to her then its fair game. Who knows, maybe she’s looking to “trade up” because let’s face it, I’m the fucking hotness, or better yet, she may be actually single and interested.

The worst that can happen is that I get turned down buy hey, at least I could say that I tried, which is much more than that I’ve done for all of 2008 and all the years before that. That’s a hell of a long time to go without even trying, and I’m fucking insanely stupid for letting it go on for that long. All the lame excuses like me focusing on school and whatever silly excuses I’ve come up with in the past, I should just fucking leave them all in the past.

There are a few more things worth mentioning, but I’m hung over as fuck and my brain is not flowing as quickly as I would like, so I’ll just leave things at that last thought and save it for another blog entry. Until next time...