I keep telling myself that V-Day (or VD as some folks refer to it for some Freudian reason) is a commercial holiday, that the red plastic, foil and cardboard hearts which I see everywhere have no more significance than the plastic mistletoe and the strings of colored lights I see every December. I see the heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, the weekend getaway packages offered by local hotels and the dinner-for-two specials from upscale area restaurants as exercises in target-marketing, not romance.

But that approach only works part of the time. Thing is, it's been a good, long while since my last relationship. Being single and dateless is not much fun. Yes, I know there are people who've gone without for much, much longer than I have. I know that 40-year-old virgins do actually exist in real life. That doesn't make me feel any better. Schadenfreude has never been my thing.

Anyway, I have figured out that much of the angst over being dateless occurs because a lot of dateless folks tend to think there's something wrong with them. Something about them isn't good enough. Now, there's a lot to be said for improving one's looks or bettering oneself in other ways, but hating on oneself just corrodes one's self-esteem and makes life suck way more than it needs to. With that in mind. I've made myself a late New Year's resolution:

I'm not going to beat myself up anymore for being single and alone.

Here it is, only a month and change into the new year, and I've already made my most important decision. When I stick to my resolution, I feel light instead of weighted down. I look forward to doing things on my own instead of bemoaning the fact that Ms. Right isn't there alongside me. I can enjoy my own company. I can read a book, watch a DVD, surf the web, post on Open Salon...the list goes on. If I'm making all this sound easy, well, trust me, it isn't. Doing a 180-degree turnaround never is, but the rewards are so worth it. It's pretty common to forget oneself and slide back into old behaviors. When it happens, I catch myself and without beating up on myself (do you see a pattern developing here?), I re-set my thought patterns and carry on. It takes a lot of practice and a lot of patience. Having allies like sympathetic friends and therapists can help a lot.

But wait, doesn't it get lonely and frustrating sometimes, being single and alone? Will hating on myself for “being a loser” change that? I don't think so, I really don't. Aren't I going to do something about my situation? Yes, and I'm going to do it my way, without the amphetamine-rush of desperation driving me on. I want to look at dating as a chance to make new acquaintances, not as a job or an ordeal (as the saying goes, if you think it's a pain in the butt, you're doing it wrong!). If things happen, great, super! If they don't, then they'll happen another time.

I'm going to go off on a brief tangent here. Years ago I read an underground cartoon (I guess today we'd call them graphic stories) by a talented female cartoonist named Roberta Gregory. It was called “First Love”. In it, a young woman makes herself a terrific meal while listening to her favorite music. She eats it at her candle-lit dining room table. She's then shown in a bathrobe, sitting comfortably in an overstuffed chair reading a book as her cat looks over her shoulder. The next tastefully-drawn panel shows her making passionate love to herself. The final panel shows our smiling heroine saying “Who deserves it more than me?”

Just sayin'!