After quite a while of contemplation, I have come to the realization that my “ideal woman” simply does not exist. I know, shocker of the century, right there.

The problem is, I don’t quite understand why she would not exist out there, somewhere. I just haven’t the foggiest clue how to begin the search for her.

My ideal woman would be willing to spend a Friday night at home, watching scary movies until passing out on the couch. We could even spend an entire Saturday or Sunday beating each other at video games. She would be content with a “date” of getting ice cream and then talking about Math, Politics, Science, Philosophy, or any other intellectual topic and have it be considered great fun. She would willingly come along to (and possibly even participate in) Magic the Gathering drafts with me. We would spend hours at home, bonding over some television show, like The Office, Avatar: TLA, or Breaking Bad, just enjoying each other’s company.

Maybe I’m the crazy one, here, thinking that someone like that must exist somewhere. Someone who would not be offended if I allowed her to pay for her own ice cream cone. Someone who would legitimately appreciate me simply listening to things she said and remembering them weeks later when they become relevant again. But, well, I guess those kinds of girls only exist in Romantic Comedies.

That won’t stop me from looking, though, of course.

The story of {my life} \ {Mathematics}u{Writing}.

It seems that, whenever I do anything outside of my comfort zone, all I can do is mess it up. I’m incapable of doing things correctly or appropriately if it is not directly related in some way to mathematics or creative writing. The problem is I seem not to ever learn from these mistakes, and that’s a problem. There’s no text book to study, no lectures to attend, no workshops with other students, no study groups, no homework. There’s nothing that helps me fix my shortcomings.

It’s frustrating. Maybe I should attempt to develop a sort of mathematical relationship (utilizing the basic concepts of Algebraic structures and operations) to describe the idea of life, in general. Maybe then I could wrap my mind around what it means to not make terrible mistakes every day of my life.

And so, my first serious post.

This semester I am enrolled in a class called “Elementary Partial Differential Equations” (PDE). While the title may seem daunting, the class is far more difficult than you could imagine, at least while I don’t have access to the text. Anyway, the class is fun, the professor is almost too enthusiastic, and it acted as the gateway to me meeting a rather interesting woman, let’s call her Alura. (If you get this reference, you are my best friend already, just saying.)

First day of class, I noticed her, if only because she stood (and stands) as a beacon of blonde Econ Major amidst the sea of dark-haired, generally non-white (just a statement of fact) Math, Physics, Engineering, and other, similar Majors. She and I officially met before class one Tuesday, the class after one she had missed, when she decided to start a study group. It consisted of her, another guy (call him Joshua), and myself.

The first few times our “group” met to do homework, Joshua didn’t show, so it was simply Alura and I procrastinating as much as possible by simply, well, talking about whatever was going on in our lives at the time. Classes, pets, work, etc. We both enjoyed the random tangents and, three hours after we began, we would finish the homework and split off until the next day at class.

Literally every time I learned something new about her, I grew to like her more. She is funny, smart, independent, and just a general joy to hang around with. We share many interests including, surprisingly, video games (though she’s quite stuck fifteen years in the past). We even are both taking Linear Optimization this semester, and we’re in the same Introduction to Complex Analysis class.

Eventually, I came to realize that I couldn’t just sit around on these feelings that have been growing inside of me for all of this time. I simply logically decided that the best course of action would be to simply tell her this. Tell her how I feel. I learned the hard way that that is much easier said than done. Last Thursday, I tried to tell her. Twice. Once after PDE, and again after Complex. The key word there, is “tried.” I choked. Shot myself in the foot.

I could not understand it. I was pissed with myself. I had the perfect opportunity twice in one day and squandered it both times. As if that were not bad enough, I further went and embarrassed myself by essentially asking her out through text message shortly after we split off the second time.

I can honestly say I have never felt this way before. I have never been at a loss for words when talking to someone before. I have an extensive vocabulary filled with hundreds of words and yet none of them seem to really capture what it is I need and want to tell her. The anxiety of failing again only gets worse and worse as the time to try once again comes closer and closer. Even writing this now, I am unsure what tomorrow will bring, and I am losing confidence with each passing second that the third time will be the charm, as the saying goes.

Beyond even just the idea of acceptance or rejection, I am afraid of losing the friendship we have. I’m worried of stupid, inconsequential things that, according to all logic should not happen. What are the odds of things going as hoped? Don’t ask me, I got a C in Probability.