{"id":4240,"date":"2011-02-14T23:59:20","date_gmt":"2011-02-15T06:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=4240"},"modified":"2011-02-23T01:47:48","modified_gmt":"2011-02-23T08:47:48","slug":"the-obligatory-valentines-day-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/the-obligatory-valentines-day-post\/","title":{"rendered":"The Obligatory Valentine’s Day Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I was going to write a long post on why I hated Valentine’s Day, but then I realized it hasn’t been so bad.<\/p>\n

Of course, that’s mostly because I’ve been in my apartment most of the day, writing.\u00a0 I did go to Macey’s at one point, and was mildly annoyed by the crowd of people buying flowers at the front, but other than that, it’s been like any other day in February.<\/p>\n

I’ve always been single on Valentine’s Day, and while I’ve never really resented that, I have resented the pressure in the LDS church to go on dates and find a wife.\u00a0 But here in Utah Valley, that’s a constant year round, not just on Valentine’s Day.\u00a0 And it’s pretty bad.\u00a0 Listening to some church leaders speak,\u00a0 you’d think that it’s a sin to be single–as if the free agency of others doesn’t even factor into the equation.\u00a0 And worse, they always put the blame on the guys, never the girls, so the girls keep on acting immature which leads to all sorts of ridiculous problems.<\/p>\n

A couple weeks ago during Stake Conference, I got in a pretty dark mood after one too many talks on the subject.\u00a0 This poetry is what came out of it:<\/p>\n

Find a wife,
\nDate a week;
\nMarry young–
\nA life so bleak.<\/p>\n

Where singlehood is selfishness,
\nAnd loneliness is sinful, too,
\nRejection is a kiss of death;
\nUnwantedness a fate too cruel.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s about as far as I got.\u00a0 I wrote some other stuff, but I’m not about to share it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Truth is, I’ve kind of given up on the dating scene here in Happy Valley.\u00a0 The hordes of pretty yet immature twenty year olds just don’t interest me, and while I do have a few old friends in the area who I might look up, I don’t expect much to come of it.<\/p>\n

Part of it is the fact that I’m twenty six, which in Happy Valley is the equivalent of thirty five or forty anywhere else. I’m just old.<\/em><\/p>\n

Part of it is the steady accumulation of bad dating experiences over the course of the past five years, which has a lot to do with immaturity, both my own (which I hope has changed) and that of the general population of available females here in Utah.<\/p>\n

Part of it has to do with the fact that just about every girl I’ve actively pursued ends up marrying someone else in less than a year.<\/p>\n

But mostly, I think it has to do with the fact that I’m just not really interested in anybody.\u00a0 And honestly, that’s kind of liberating.\u00a0 It’s part of the reason why I decided to grow out my beard (pictures coming soon).\u00a0 Most of the girls around here say they hate beards–but who cares?\u00a0 Screw ’em!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>But yeah.\u00a0 I’m sure I’m going to get a ton of concerned emails from my family after I post this, but at least I’m being honest.<\/p>\n

And yes, I’m sure I’ll find someone someday (or, more likely, she’ll find me), and we’ll settle down to a life of passion and bliss and whatever, but that doesn’t have to be right now.<\/p>\n

So happy Valentine’s Day.<\/p>\n

(Images taken from postsecret <\/a>and Kencraft Candy<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was going to write a long post on why I hated Valentine’s Day, but then I realized it hasn’t been so bad. Of course, that’s mostly because I’ve been in my apartment most of the day, writing.\u00a0 I did go to Macey’s at one point, and was mildly annoyed by the crowd of people… Continue reading The Obligatory Valentine’s Day Post<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[42,33,182,30,496,146,599,189],"class_list":["post-4240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-frustrations","tag-girls-and-dating","tag-humor","tag-life-decisions","tag-poetry","tag-provo","tag-thoughts-reflections","tag-utah","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-16o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4240"}],"version-history":[{"count":40,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4369,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4240\/revisions\/4369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}