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Only as Good as Your Worst Effort

A friend of mine wrote at some length, once upon a time, of the 'curse' that he felt he suffered from: having the ability to do anything he put his mind to. He felt that since he was able to accomplish things so easily, he was somehow deprived of the feeling of accomplishment that results from overcoming strong obstacles, and there's some truth in that. He felt that he didn't have enough challenges. As a result, so he says, he would drift from activity to activity, learning quickly, and quickly becoming bored.
That resonated with me more strongly than anything else he'd ever said or written, because there was a time that I felt the same way. To be fair to my friend, he knows better, now... if for no other reason than he HAS an incredible challenge to overcome, one that plays less to his strengths than so many others that have come and gone. He also knows that no matter how good you are in any field, there is always someone better. Unless you happen to be, or find, the one who is the very best. No one I know, no one he knows, is the best at anything in this world.
My situation is similar, in that I've enjoyed success in many things so far in life, at what seemed to me to be the expense of little effort. And for a time, I thought in my youthful arrogance that I was better than the people around me, simply because I did things so well, so easily. I was the best...or so I thought.
I never liked losing, and I never will. Like most people, my stake in a contest varies in direct proportion to the element of competition. For the most part, I stay away from highly competitive situations. Competition can bring out the very best in me, as it has in the past and it surely will in the future. Losing, however, can bring out the very worst. It's not so bad any more...I can generally take each victory, defeat, draw, or stalemate, as an isolated incident and move forward to the next one. The other activities of life, where winning and losing are less well-defined, where the journey is important more so than the destination, take precedence over strictly competitive affairs.
Any kind of social interaction always seems to put me at a disadvantage, or at least I always feel that way, and no form more so than interacting with the opposite sex. If there's one area in my life where I will acknowledge insecurity, it's dealing with women. I feel out of touch with the conventional mindset of my age group (20-somethings), to the extent that most women will say 'you scare me', before they realize that I'm actually not very scary at all. Sometimes I play the role of the eccentric to keep people at a distance, where I can observe them and learn about them on my terms. Usually, by the time I act more like myself, most people accept the fact that I'm a reserved, kooky, but otherwise remarkable individual; however, the distance remains between myself and most other people.
In most of my dealings with women outside of family and those related directly to professional matters, there's always an element of attraction, otherwise, unless there are family ties or professional obligations, I have no reason to approach anyone. I can't explain what attracts me to anyone, initially. It probably has something to do with eye contact...which is evidence that two people are looking at each other at exactly the same time, which usually has a concomitant factor of mutual interest. Other than that, I have no type (unless you count kind, smart, funny, and pretty smile), and I'm liable to be indifferent to most women and indeed most people except to the extent that I observe them constantly.
I'm not really sure about what some women see in me...to what extent I may be attractive to them, and why, except that all of the ones I've dated for any length of time invariably say that they've never met anyone quite like me. What the hell does that mean?! It's important to me to find out if there's something in particular that's unique, although if it's so unique, is there any way to describe it other than 'that quality that Zen has which makes him unlike everyone else'. Or, to put the question into more relevant terms: am I looking for someone to love?
Any time I've ever gone out looking for that sort of person, I've only succeeded in breaking hearts, not in finding love (although by the hand of god himself I was hoping hoping hoping). The sort of person that I love just isn't there to be plucked from the trees, but she could just be there...across the street, or two aisles away in a supermarket, or stuck in traffic, or at church, or in a bar, or, with my luck, in jail for political reasons. But with the majority of women, my usual aplomb is submerged in layers of quiet self-doubt, and very little occurs between such like and myself. I know the reasons for this, and I've made strides in overcoming my programmed responses to such stimuli (which usually have to do with hiding), but there is a long way to go. And in the game of courtship, you're only as good as your worst effort.