I listen to NPR in the morning.  All week they’ve had their pledge drive (which has creepily crept into my dreams), and they are offering a New Yorker subscription as a thank you gift for a $120 pledge.  Since I do, in fact, read the New Yorker, I thought to myself, wow, what a convenient thank you gift for those of us who listen to NPR and read the New Yorker.  Later that morning as I tucked my New Yorker into my bag and turned off NPR, to which I had been listening all morning, I thought, wow, I’ve turned into my Dad (NPR listener, New Yorker reader) without even thinking about it.

I’ve noticed a theme lately.  Most of my female friends are in their 30’s, like me.  I’ve noticed that, more and more, when they date someone for a while (good, bad, or other), and then it ends, the thing they are often the most upset about is not the guy himself, but the thought of getting back out into the New York dating pool, which often seems like a hopeless, annoying pool of dread.  I understand this completely.  By the time you hit your 30’s, you know yourself pretty well, and this often means that you’re more set in your ways.  Dating, in the beginning phases, particularly if you’re not meeting anyone you really like, can seem more like a chore than anything else.  At least, after Saturday, I learned that being in the New York dating pool might be a bit better than the Minneapolis dating pool, where there isn’t much real dating, but rather more "happy hours" and such where people just mingle.  If you’re lucky, you find someone you like there (thanks to Katie’s sister Jenny, our Minneapolis correspondent).

What are your thoughts?  Do you find the breakup worse than getting back into dating or vice versa?

How is it that I can have grey hairs and zits at the same time?  Horrifying.

Somehow I managed not to see this for a few days, even though he gave me a shout-out.  True, I was recovering from Vegas, but still.  For the record, the bartender is ancient history.

And yes, I know I need to spill the details, but Gothamist comes first these days when time is limited. . .

First off, this goes out to the Lovely Miss Katie, who complained that I haven’t been writing as much lately (sad, but true).

I had dinner with two friends Monday night. Both are women, but one difference between the two is that one is single and the other is engaged. The engaged friend was sharing with us some of the stress she’s finding herself facing — not with wedding plans, as one might imagine, but with the reality of the cost of having a family in Manhattan. She grew up here, and wants her (at this point still future) kids to have the same sort of lifestyle she had, but of course costs have skyrocketed since we grew up. She is slowly coming to the realization that raising a family in Manhattan,or even in the Westchester suburbs (where I spent my junior high and high school years) is a daunting if not impossible prospect if neither spouse is a doctor or laywer, or works at a hedge fund.

I worry about these things too, although it’s certainly not a pressing issue. I’m still more focused on dating someone who’s not a jackass, not becoming the kind of person who fades off into coupledom once they find the non-jackass, and dealing with the ever-increasing number of situations where I find that I am the only unmarried, childless person present.

We also had an interesting discussion about “chapters” in one’s life. Our engaged friend was describing how she was in the process of moving to a new chapter of her life, and how she has seen the warning signs for a while — she described how she dressed differently when she was single and stayed out until 2 am much more often than she does now. In some ways I hope that my chapters are not as clearly delineated. I always want to have a mix of people in my life; I don’t want to be the kind of person who, because I’m dating someone or someday married, ends up only doing stuff with couples, and I still want to stay out until dawn every now and again, whether with friends or with this hypothetical husband person.

I can think about this stuff forever, but given my current life situation, for me, it’s just a matter of keeping a balance that feels right for me now, and adjusting that balance as I move forward.