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Some Like It Single: Singlutionary April 3, 2009

Welcome to the latest installment in our new series, Some Like It Single, where we profile (relatively) small, independent blogs dedicated to exploring what it means to be “single” in American culture and, we hope, around the world.

This week, we’re happy to feature Singlutionary, who has only been blogging since the beginning of the year, but who has already made quite a mark on the pro-single blog-o-sphere. Not only is she a regular contributor to Onely’s enlivening comment forums (she’s even made our Quote Board!), but she updates her blog frequently and entertains us with deep thoughts about the merits of dating, her search for a BFF-with-benefits on Craigslist, her remarkable house-maintanence skills, and her commitment to what she calls a “secular sabbath,” a day she thinks all singles should observe.

One thing we know for sure is that Singlutionary is an expert on being single:

I’ve always wanted to write and I’ve written a lot of journals and poems and essays, etc which are now collecting dust in boxes in my garage. I wanted to write something that would be useful, not just in taking up storage space, but to other folks in the world. Driving home from work one night I realized that in order to write something useful, I’d need to be an expert (in one way or another) at something. Except, I didn’t think I was an expert at anything. I can crochet but I only know three stitches. I can play the piano like a 7th grader. I know a little about biodiesel, real estate, northern California and eating honey with a spoon but I don’t know a whole lot about anything. Except being single. At the time I had one divorced friend and one virgin friend calling me constantly for advice. I had been single for almost all of my post-puberty life and for most of that time I had thought there was something very very wrong with me that I couldn’t just have a boyfriend like everyone else. But I had recently realized that being single is the natural state for someone as independent as me and that even at 28 years old, I could still afford to take some time and get to know myself better. In other words: I had finally realized that I wasn’t a freak. And I wanted to spread the word. I had felt so alone and isolated as a single and I knew there must be other singles out there who felt the same way. When I started my blog, I wanted to be the friend I had been looking for all these years and to be an example of satisfied single life.

But the expertise doesn’t come easy; Singlutionary describes the “main challenge” of the single life as

listening to my own voice from within and not all the societal constructs from all around me. I love everything about my life and I am so grateful that I am not afraid to move forward on my own and to pursue my dreams and be satisfied and single at the same time.  I am grateful because I didn’t always feel this way.

She’s experienced difficulty maintaining an offline community of single people, which she hopes to remedy by beginning a Meetup group for Satisfied Singles (check out the blog for updates!)

Why did Singlutionary begin the blog?

I grew up on the west coast and pined away for the same guy for pretty much all of high school. He was an actor and pretty much every girl at the school pined away for him also. I was annoyed at how unoriginal I felt as one of his pining masses. 11 years later, after my most serious relationship ended after a record-breaking four months, I suddenly realized that I had pined away for one actor or another for most of my adult life. And I slept with some of them, waited for others to try and sleep with me and had, in desperation, dated two 19-year-olds long after the thrill of buying my boyfriend beer had become, well, boring. I knew I couldn’t be the ONLY one who had finally mastered the joys of singleness but I also knew it had been a long painful road to realizing that I was (at least for the time) meant to be single. So I began to blog about it.

Singlutionary continues blogging for many of the same reasons we at Onely do:

In the three months that I’ve been writing Singlutionary, I’ve found the community I’ve always wanted! There are so many great people thinking and blogging about single life, single issues and celebrating singleness. I might be the last single girl standing in my personal circle of childhood friends but I am not the last single girl in the blog-o-sphere! I am amazed and inspired by the breadth and depth of single experience represented through blogs like Onely and the blogs they’re profiling. Sometimes we commiserate, sometimes we inspire but mainly we feel sane. The entire world around us tends to intimate (sometimes in not so subtle ways) that we are somehow lacking, we can’t commit, we aren’t worthy, we’re too ugly, not good enough in bed or SOMETHING has got to be wrong with us. There are all these things I’ve wanted to say for so long but I haven’t had anyone to say them to. It is so refreshing to enjoy these positive dialogues about single life with other smart, happy single people. And I hope that my experiences and stories about my life, pre and post Singlution, will inspire and comfort others too.

Yup, we’re into the Singlution. Are you?

— L & CC