FIND ANY?

(dedicated to my bestfriend, Christine)

Looking for a lover is tiring. It's exhausting! It wears you out! Everywhere you go you're looking, sizing people up, searching, hoping. In the gym, at the mall, at the juice bar, on the tennis court. It's enough to send you right over the edge. You're looking, but pretending that you're not looking.

It's perfectly normal to want a special someone, but frequently, n the quest to find that person, we may suffer from Looking-for-a-Lover Burnout syndrome. Burnout happens when we've been looking and looking and going to all the right places (for months or even years), but even after all that effort, all that doing, nothing truly satisfying has happened. We bravely go to bar after bar, we go to hear this lecture and that lecture, and though we may have had zillions of dates, we're practically right where we started. We've talked to probable candidates and heard their life stories. We've memorized countless names, and written down oh so many phone numbers.

It happens to all of us. We grow weary, heartsick and tired of looking. When that happens, the quickest, easiest cure is simply to stop for a while. Creativity heals your broken heart, and takes you to a place inside your soul that you may have forgotten. Just because we don't have a lover right now, that doesn't mean we never will again. Lovers are luxuries, but creativity---well, that's an absolute necessity. It keeps the juices flowing. Such playful acts keep us carefree until our next admirers show up. (Single, Judy Ford)