Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. – Henry David Thoreau

1. When I was 16, I threw stones at a high flood light in my Dad’s yard until I smashed it. My Dad suspected my cousin of doing it, and I did nothing to convince him otherwise. Sorry Dad. Sorry Cuz.
2. A few weeks after moving to New Orleans in 2007, I awoke from a drunken blackout in a strange bedroom with a guy’s hand down my pants. I told him to stop and he did.
3. My first kiss came at age 17. I lost my virginity at age 22. Neither memory is romantic. Both are kinda funny though.
4. Back in 2008, I had a bout of what the TV calls erectile dysfunction. I’m pretty sure it was because I was pretending to be interested in a relationship with this one girl so I could keep having sex with her. That dishonesty apparently didn’t sit well with my subconscious, hence the floppiness. Thankfully, I was able to overcome that problem. All I had to do was be honest about my intentions with women.
5. If you think it’s totally fine to eat cows and chickens but not cats and dogs, I believe you’re suffering from what psychologists call compartmentalization.
6. I expect that someday, hopefully within my lifetime, mankind will look back on meat-eating the way we now look back on slavery.
7. I sometimes pee in the shower.
8. I sometimes think I have a drinking problem.
9. I don’t recycle as much as I should.
10. Several times when I worked at Dunnes Stores in Ireland, I made a bed for myself in a hidden corner of the stock room and took a nap. I also stole a few pairs of pants during my time there.
11. As an 11-year-old, I’d torture slugs to death in the garage with a can of deodorant and a naked flame.
12. I’ve long felt that I’m destined for great things. As such, I feel obligated to work towards being the best person I can be. I’m terrified of becoming one of those “most men” Thoreau described.
13. I have one big secret that I’ll reveal here in January. I’ve only ever told one person about it. I want to tell at least one more before announcing it to the world. (Subscribe here so you don’t miss it
14. I once peed on the front steps of the courthouse in Waterford. I was trying to impress my friends.
15. I often worry that I’m not thinking enough for myself.
16. One of my biggest fears is being a hypocrite.
17. I haven’t said “I love you” to any girl for the past six years. I’m terrified that those words will be interpreted as “I’ll love you forever,” and I’m really not comfortable making promises I can’t keep.
18. I believe I’m better than average in the looks department. I consider both my brothers to be better looking than me. I used to be bothered by that, but not so much anymore. I guess that’s because I’ve really learned to enjoy being me. Sometimes I envy others, but at the end of the day I wouldn’t want to swap places with anyone else in the world. I’d rather see my own life through.
19. I love Asian women. If there weren’t so many of them in Asia, I wouldn’t be so interested in going there.
20. I’m wondering if you’ll think I’m a pervert since so many of these points are about sex :-/
21. I don’t believe I am a pervert. I checked the definition and methinks it no fit.
22. Much of the inspiration for this post comes from Corbett Barr.
23. I believe veganism is a significant step towards world peace.
24. I began writing all this in September. I didn’t want to post it until after I quit 9-to-5. I tell myself that was because I was concerned about what my colleagues would think of me and I didn’t want that to be a distraction at work, but fear also played a part. It was easier to wait.
25. I’m sure many people consider me flaky. I can’t say they’re mistaken. I get bored easily, I like to try lots of new things, meet lots of new people and visit lots of new places. I don’t see this as something being wrong with me. It’s just who I am. I’ve chosen to embrace it rather than try neuter myself to fit other people’s expectations.

That was a peek inside my soul. Thanks for reading. I hope you’ll also choose to share a little more of the real you with the world. Because Oscar Wilde was right:

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

I grew up in the Irish countryside with no sisters and very few neighbors, and I went to all-boys schools all the way up until college. So by the age of eighteen, I was terrified at the thought of talking to women. To me, women were these exotic creatures that spoke a completely different language and you couldn’t look directly at one you found attractive for fear of bursting into flames.

But I liked women all the same, and I wanted to know more about them.

My final year in secondary school, there was one woman in particular that fascinated me. I’d see her every day as d’Mudder drove me to school. We’d pass her at some point as she was walking over the Rice Bridge and up the hill, on her way to the all-girls school at the top of it. She was maybe a year younger than me at the time, had dark hair and looked more cute than sexy.

I called her Bridget, because she walked over the bridge every day.

Day after day and week after week I’d see this girl walking to school. I’d always sneak a look at her out of the car window. I started imagining what I’d say to her if I ever had the opportunity. How would I start the conversation? How would I keep it going? In my imagination, I was fantastically suave and charming, but the reality was that I always made an awful fool of myself when I tried to talk to girls, struggling to utter even one coherent sentence.

But I really liked this Bridget girl (based solely on the way she looked and the way she walked) so one day I up and decided I would overcome the terror of actually approaching a female of the species. I promised myself that the very next morning, I would join Bridget on her walk across the bridge and up the hill. I’d somehow manage to engage her in the best conversation of all time and she’d fall madly in love with me.

So, that very next morning, I got up early and spent about two hours in the bathroom making myself look the loveliest I’d ever looked. My eyebrows were near groomed to perfection by the time I was finished. I hurried d’Mudder so we’d leave a few minutes early and I’d be able to intercept Bridget at the bridge.

But disaster struck: Bridget was already crossing the bridge as we drove over it. It was a minute before I could get out of the car, muttering something to my mother about it being a lovely day for a walk, and then I was off in hot pursuit! As I rushed back over the bridge, I could see Bridget already making her way up the hill. I figured I had about ten minutes before she reached the school and my opportunity would be lost forever. Luckily, there was an old shortcut up the side of the hill, and I knew that I could run up that way and catch up with her.

So I did. I sprinted up the side of this hill like a madman, a bag full of school books in tow.

Now imagine the scene: I get up to the road, only to find that I’d run too fast, and I now had to stand there sweating and heaving for about a minute as Bridget walked up towards me. In her mind, she must have been thinking, “Oh my God! I hope this sweaty weirdo doesn’t try and talk to me!”

But talk to her I did. I turned to her as she came close and asked, “Do you mind if I walk with you?” She was a little stunned, but said okay. Maybe she was just afraid to say no, or maybe she was dazzled by my amazing eyebrows, I’m not sure. Regardless, there I was, walking up the hill with Bridget.

Happiness… for all of five seconds, after which I remembered I had to make conversation. I knew we didn’t have much time, so I thought I’d better impress upon this girl just how deep and sensitive a guy I was. So, noting the people sitting in their cars in traffic on the road, I asked Bridget, real mystically, “Do you ever wonder about the people in the cars? You know, what they’re thinking about as they’re sitting there? I mean, we look at them and form some quick judgment based on their appearance, but do they do the same of us? Are they thinking about what we’re thinking about? Do they realize that we’re wondering if they’re thinking about what we’re thinking about? You ever think about that?”

I believe her response was, “Uh… not really.”

I tried throwing a few more questions at her, but she just seemed to look at me a little more strangely each time as she quickened her pace. Two minutes later, we were at the gate of the school. And despite having just treated this girl to perhaps the worst conversation of her entire life, I somehow found the courage to ask her for her phone number. To which she replied, “Uh… I don’t think so.” With that, she turned on her heels and disappeared into the school, never to be seen by me again.

But I didn’t feel bad after that experience. On the contrary, I felt great about myself. Yeah, I’d gotten rejected, but I’d overcome a big chunk of that strange fear I had of women.

And that’s the moral of this story. It doesn’t much matter what happens when you face your fear, whether you emerge looking like a fool or a champ. The important thing is that you faced that fear in the first place. You stepped out of your comfort zone, maybe suffered some embarrassments, but discovered that the world keeps on spinning just the same.