The joys of being a thirty something, single, British female loving life in New York

Blogging is my passion, but unfortunately no-ones paying me to do it yet. I spend my days as a wage slave for a Manhattan advertising agency, nose pressed firmly to the grindstone tending to my clients’ every whim. It pays the bills, puts clothes on my back and food on the table, but writing feeds my soul.

I love to write and friends would often complement me on the writing style of my emails. I was also inspired by all the non New Yorkers who are forever asking me, as a 30something single woman in Manhattan, “so, are you living the ‘Sex and the City’ lifestyle then?”

The popularity of the TV series has given many people the impression that single women in New York are always dating. People seem to think that as a 30something single New Yorker I must have hot and cold running men through my apartment day and night. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, going by the women I know I’d say there’s a near epidemic lack of dating going on among many of the thirty something single women in New York. Dating is not easy in this city, especially as single women outnumber single men by something like 185,000 according to some study published in the National Geographic

The title of my blog is from the Gloria Steinem quote “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” There are so many women obsessed with dating in NYC and I don’t want to be one of them. That’s not to say that this particular fish doesn’t want a bicycle. On the contrary, it would be nice to meet someone, but I’m not going to make the search for him the be all and end all of my existence. I don’t want to look back on my life in years to come and think I wasted opportunities to be happy because I was too wrapped up in looking for a boyfriend. Life is for living!

I started posting in February 2007, but I’ve kept a journal on and off for years and I often reference my journals for post inspiration

Anywhere between 15 and 40 visitors a day. I tagged my blog with Google Analytics in July and some of the Search terms that bring people to my blog cause me no end of amusement

I haven’t tried to monetize my blog. It would be nice to be able to earn a living from writing, but I’m not comfortable with a lot of the options available to me to make money from the blog such as PayPerPost. I don’t the blog to be a sales pitch for something.

I’d say it probably most appeals to single women like myself and those interested to know what it’s really like to live in Manhattan. New York is a city that people are very familiar with through TV and movies, but those shows/films lead people to falsely believe that New Yorkers are wealthy and live in huge apartments and buy designer clothes. In truth most of us in Manhattan live in homes the size of your average shoebox, but it’s a great place to live, a playground for adults.

I don’t have time to blog every day, nor do I have the imagination to come up with something but I probably spend about 4-6hours a week actually writing posts, but inspiration strikes at random times so I carry a notebook to capture observations I want to share via the blog.

About a year ago I gained the confidence to revel in being myself, to not worry so much about what other people think of me and I’ve been all the happier for it. I think that comes through on the blog. Life is for living, even when things don’t work out as planned.

Just do it because you love it and the rest will (hopefully) fall into place.

This blog can be visited at http://fishwithoutbicycle.blogspot.com