POINT-Counterpoint: I'm 34 and single! Woo hoo!

I am 34 and single. No husband. No kids. Definitely edging slowly toward society's margins.

On most days, I am psyched to be where I am in my life. On those days, I am single by choice, and it's the right one. On other days, I find it challenging, to say the least, to maintain a positive spin on my spinster-hood. It's an ongoing debate in my head, and the topic is, "When I am 80 years old and sitting in a rocking chair reflecting on life, will I be OK with never having married?"

POINT: Damn It Feels Good to Be a Spinsta!

When I was visiting Indiana this past weekend, I spent a bit of time with my friends and their children. One friend, a mother of three, asked me what I had done earlier in the day. I mentioned that I took a long, leisurely trip to Target, an exciting event since I don't have easy access to one in DC. She laughed at the idea of a trip to Target being fun, noting that she "probably spends way too much time in Target."

I am not so lame that I equate being single with the freedom to go to big box stores for pleasure rather than to buy toilet paper and diapers. But, it does point to the biggest reason being 34, single, unfettered and financially independent ROCKS: I can do what I want, when I want. Fuck yeah.

My nights are mine. If I want to go home and watch an X-Files marathon or Face-Eating Tumor on the Discovery Health Channel, I can. (And since I have given up roommates, I can do this without judgment. Mostly. I can feel society judging.) If I want to go to yoga class at 8pm, I can. If I want to hit a tranny bachelor party at a gay bar in Dupont Circle, I can do that too. And I have.

My weekends and vacations are mine as well. I play soccer rather than drive kids to and from soccer. No in-laws to visit and pretend to like over the holidays. No social obligation to attend the weddings of my husband's lame co-workers. I'm planning the vacations I want ... a rim-to-rim hike in the Grand Canyon and a trip to Chile in 2009. Last year, after I quit my job and took two months off to hike and camp around the west, a married friend with two kids lamented, "Man, I would kill to do that. But it's just not an option anymore." Another friend who is going through a divorce confided that, on a positive note, he now would be able to go on the type of vacations he preferred.

Sometimes I feel like I've passed a tipping point, where it would be really hard to get married and give up some of my independence. The idea makes me a little claustrophobic. I honestly can't even imagine it. I can't imagine me as part of a we.

Stay tuned for COUNTERPOINT: Fuck! I don't want to end up like Eleanor Rigby!