In this post St. Patrick’s Day haze of regained sobriety and regret, it’s time to take stock on our life decisions and decide whether or not we are doing a good job on love, life, and everything in between. As we all know, the best time to reevaluate your life is after a weekend of heavy drinking, eating unhealthily and spending an entire month’s rent on alcohol, Seamless and Uber.

This is the Irish person’s mecca, their iowaska tea trip, their later life baptism. It is the celebration during which we shed the skin of our most recent year of life, making way for new moral conundrums, social dramas and questionable uses of the Internet. A poisoning of the mind, liver and soul in order to purify, to break through a spiritual wall -- to rebirth.

Like grubby grubs who miraculously and inexplicably turn to butterflies (or in many cases, bumbling grey moths) we fly free from the suffocation of our caterpillar cocoons with a new lease on life, enlightened as to the errors of our ways. We have clarity, certainty, and closure. Like newly sprung shamrocks from the nourishing earth we spring forth, hungry for adventure.

We emerge from this unique state of inebriation with a blessing -- a lesson learned from deep within the cavernous hollows of the semi-conscious mind, the beyond, the upside-down. What lesson that may be will depend entirely on the geographical and emotional circumstances of your corporeal form as the aforementioned enlightenment comes to you.

It seems that the lesson that I was blessed with is something that I have been slowly learning over time, but had yet to appreciate as a skill that I have been subconsciously mastering. It’s something that, I suppose, if asked under duress, I could have seen to be true. However, it had become such an irrelevant part of my daily life, that it was, for the most part, going entirely unnoticed.

And yet, when I awoke on Monday morning with a unique headache that can only be attributed to rum consumed at a Tiki bar, my lesson came to me. It arrived as it always does, like a breath of fresh air, the sweet caress of daisy’s petals detaching from it’s body in the breeze, the soft song of a chick as it falls fatally from it’s nest. And of course, my lesson, like all the best ones, is one hard learned.

“How to not date anyone ever” is far more complex than it may seem, for it’s not quite as simple as just not going on actual dates. In order to be actively not dating anyone, there has to be someone/ones that you would want to date in the first place, and if there is no one that you want to date, then you have to prove that there is not something inherently wrong with you.

The first step is to eliminate all of the people you might actually want to date. In order to do that, you must compile a list of completely unattainable and utterly impossible candidates. Most popular choices include those with problematic geographical locations -- for me, this means anyone living anywhere outside Brooklyn or further than a maximum 20 minute commute from my house.

Other options are notorious players who will undoubtedly choose someone else over you by the time you decide whether you want to date them or not. Even better than that is to choose someone who has a girlfriend that they will only tell you about after you date them.

This was my most recent dating experience, and it was refreshingly infuriating. I honestly cannot more wholeheartedly encourage everyone to experience this particular brand of rage.

When asked post-date how I was feeling about our wonderful connection, I replied hilariously that I was traumatized because he was so very handsome and intelligent. When he sighed, despondent, and entirely unamused by my comic genius, I knew something had gone amiss.

Abandoning my usual callous wit, I gently asked the poor soul how he was feeling to which he replied that he had “mixed emotions” because, as it transpired, he had a girlfriend.

As a human whose last relationship fell apart because that’s the exact behavior that my significant other had been successfully executing without getting caught for almost a year, I couldn’t help but laugh! Oh, but how funny it is the patterns in humans. How simply delicious that we are drawn to the same thing over and over again. Better the devil you know, eh ladies!?

Once you have successfully destroyed all prospects of dating your line up of eligible yet unattainable (or in fact, literally taken) bachelors, you may commence the second part of this lesson plan. Quickly assemble some people you have no interest in whatsoever, and date them instead! Make sure there is zero chemistry, and you’re only doing it out of boredom, to fill a gap in your social calendar, or because a friend decided to set you up.

Last but not least is the final, magic ingredient, which is to date someone whose invitation you have declined several times, but who keeps persistently asking you. This person is definitely well balanced, with an interesting and busy life, and has no insecurities whatsoever -- because otherwise why would the be so confident in asking you out all the time!? They’re a safe bet.

Once these three elements have come together, the key will come to light - your desire to date anyone ever has been completely and utterly annihilated. Job well done! All that’s left to do is to come up with a brief, breezy story as to why you would rather eat glass than date anyone ever so as to deter yourself from veering back down the dark path of unattainable candidates, and effectively wasting your time.

Remarkably, the solution which came to me in this post-Irish Day epiphany was this. All you have to do is take a deep breath, clear your mind and concentrate on this simple message: “I am not dating anyone ever” and then, using your mouth and words, instead say aloud, “I am not dating right now” because the world understands that better.

And voila! A mantra by which to live, and simultaneously an excuse that neither offends nor discriminates! Namaste.