Valentine's Day

For all that we can all be cynical about today as a day to celebrate - it's all about the card companies/chocolate manufacturers/florists, ya da ya da - the fact of the matter is that this is still a day to celebrate. You may choose not to dive in to the over-hyped side of it and just not buy anything in order not to give those pesky financially-minded bastards any of your well-earned cash. But, honestly, I kind of think that it's a good thing that there is a day on which we celebrate romantic love. We can mark it how we choose. But don't shout about it if you went to M&S for an "Eat in for £20", at least not if Kathryn knows where you live.

I'm marking it, currently, by sitting on the sofa in my PJs. I don't have anything particularly pressing to be doing (except getting in the shower but it's okay, Lorraine's out and the cats don't seem too offended so I'm good for the minute) so I took a moment to read a Guardian guide to Love and Relationships that my Mum gave me as a response to my last post about how I'm struggling to be pro-active in terms of love and such-like. I'm a bit embarrassed to say how brilliant it is. It also means that I'm considering therapy a little bit. I do have real problems with being too afraid to do anything for fear of embarrassment. For all that I really like myself, there are things in my life that I just can't do because I'm too scared to do them. And these are the things, love, a career, planning ahead, that I'm really going to have to face up to before I'm too old and I wonder where my life went.

I've thought about therapy before. It's been mentioned as a way to get me to address certain things that I can't deal with by myself. I don't have a stigma about it and actually really respect people for going to therapy. The reason I've avoided it is because I'm scared (that word again) to lose myself. So much of who I am is defined by these little idiosyncrasies and patches of crazy that if I were to sort them out, I wouldn't be me any more. Again, this goes back to what I was talking about before, that I think people only like me because they think I'm interesting and unusual and that if they find out that I'm just a very normal and boring person hiding behind a twitching mass of imperfections nobody will like me any more.

I'm marking St Valentine's Day today by making some resolutions. I know that there are things about me that I kind of want to make better before diving headlong into a relationship. But that doesn't mean that I should wait endlessly for me to make my life better before I even start to look. So, my plan is to just be more open to possibilities. And maybe engage that guy I like in a conversation about something other than photocopying and post-its.