Ask Kenneth ♥-Thur: Three days and you’re out? The problems with texting
May 21, 2013 § 1 Comment
The first submission in me giving… dating advice? (Really, me?!) Believe it or not, I’ll help you here I come!
“Three Days Grace Period” asks:
Anyways, one of the reoccurring problems I have with men, is I will meet one and we will text nonstop for on average about three days. He will be totally digging me, me reciprocating. And we just text all day for about three days.
Then the next morning he will never reply to me again.
Just done with me. Out of nowhere.
This happens consistently enough, that I have now begun to expect it when I start texting a guy I like.
I’ve even begun to suspect (not seriously) that there is some creepy stalker I have who after three days of contact with me, goes and threatens these men to stay away.
Or something like that!
What’s wrong Kenneth? Am I only interesting for three days? Do I start saying stupid things after three days?
And why does every guy lately do this?
What.
The.
Hell.
Dear 3 Days,
In the classic film The Room, Denny is caught with Chris-R on the roof in some sort of drug deal gone wrong. Lisa’s mother poses the question to Denny, “What are you doing with the drugs? Giving them, taking them?” One can not really comprehend why a person would “give away” drugs but I guess technically that’s a possibility. Though it seems rather wasteful to have all of these drugs and then just give them away. It’s bad business.
I read your question and then I pondered it for a couple days while I was prepping this first post. And then I read it for the second time and realized that I should now make sure to thoroughly read all the questions at first and then ponder because in about less than 20 words I was able to dissect at least one major part of the issue.
“one of the reoccurring problems I have with men, is I will meet one and we will text nonstop for on average about three days.”
Enhance
“one of the reoccurring problems I have with men, is I will meet one and we will text nonstop for on average about three days.”
Enhance
“I will meet one and we will text nonstop for on average about three days.”
CLOSER!!!
“we will text nonstop”
In a way, texting has become the best and worst thing to happen to relationships in at least the last 100 years. It’s very possible that after three days, you literally know more about a guy you met one time than what your grandmother and grandfather knew about each other by the time they were married. And most relationships of that era lasted 100000000x longer than ours do in the current generation.
It’s like how Unsolved Mysteries used to be this awesome show about things we couldn’t disprove and then we got better technology and gave everyone an HD camera on their phone and now it’s just: UnSolved Mysteries – Turns Out It Was A Guy In A Suit, What’s On TLC? Oh Hoarders I Haven’t Seen This One… Ew Gross.
Textual Harassment is one of the leading killers of possibly getting laid or even finding a potential significant other in the year 2013. Check out reddict.com/r/CreepyPMs and watch seemingly normal people dissolve into Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Some of the best/worst advice on texting comes from Tom Haverford on Parks and Recreation when he asks an interviewee about what to do when you get a girls number in the club. Text her the next day that it was nice to meet her?
“Wrong. I wait 8 weeks and then text ‘What’s crackin?’”
That’s an extreme version of it, but the principles still apply. Even in today’s world of constant interaction and the ability to literally be a tiny talking head inside someones front pocket, there’s plenty of room to leave for mystery. There’s plenty of time to sit back and say “If you want to get to know me, take the time and effort to actually get to know me.” Think of guys as T-Rex and this is you when you “text non-stop for three days”:
t-rex doesn’t want to be fed
Make a guy wonder, “Where the heck is this chick? She must be really popular with the fellas, damn it I’m gonna lose my chance!” Don’t be unavailable, but don’t hand yourself to him on a silver platter. Texting nonstop for three days in the very beginning used to always be my undoing too and it’s also not a bad practice to put in place even if you’ve been dating for a few weeks to show that you’ve got a life outside of just that persons every word, letter, and emoji.
Chat with the guy, but let it be known early on that you’re a girl that’s worth taking out on a proper date (or just coming over for a proper “movie” whatever floats your boat) but when you text nonstop in the very beginning, that’s like giving away free drugs. It makes no sense.
If you thought that was decent advice y’all, please send in more questions with the Contact button on the left!!
Ask Kenneth HEART-Thur: Long on distance, short on relationships part II
May 19, 2013 § 4 Comments
When we last left off, Sam was worried that Diane had become more distant since he announced he would be turning their long-distance friends with benefits ship into a short-distance “I-have-no-idea-what-this-is” ship by moving from Los Angeles to San Francisco. (Part I is here) I told him that in my opinion it was time just ask her what was up, despite this one supposed dating “rule”:
The #1 rule of fight club is that you don’t talk about fight club, but a little known fact is that actually the #2 rule of fight club is that you don’t ask the person you’re dating if something is wrong.
What was Sam to do….
Many men are raised to believe that having emotions is a “chick thing, man!” but the reality is that many guys grow up with plenty of emotion anyway. We’re raised one way but our bodies tell us something different. Sure, I know a bunch of guys that are able to have a disconnect between the physical and emotional relationships they have with women, but I know plenty more that fall in love. That lose sleep over someone. That spend the entire day thinking about what their future could be like with that special someone. And that go crazy wondering if “this distance that Diane is putting between us is the product of being “busy and sick” or if she’s starting to have second thoughts.”
“HOW DO I SEND A TEXT ON THIS?!”
We hurt too, ladies. We spin our hair in our fingers (well the ones of us that have sweet p-tails, do) just like you do with worry. And while we say we don’t want to play games, we still abide by a certain set of rules. In a way, we’re all playing some level of a game whether we like it or not, but just like Chess, some of us really suck at it!
I sunk your Rook!
When Sam was finally letting it all out, what was bothering him, I guess it was my outsiders perspective that allowed me to see the bigger picture and put two-and-two together. That it had been about two weeks since Sam had decided to move to San Francisco, and that was the same time that Diane started to turn into Kirstie Allie. (For the younger readers out there, sorry you don’t get the shit out of these references. They’re pretty good!) We started to talk about how Diane hated relation ships but that she was clearly feeling safe with the fact that they were separated by golden bridges and mountain ridges with lebowski’s so big you’d have to call Jeff Bridges. (That didn’t make sense but it felt wonderful to say.)
Sam was folding up the space-time continuum and would become an everyday part of Diane’s life. ”That’s probably freaking her out a little bit, dude. Ask her about it.” That really started the advice-giving and I think it’s the most simple piece of advice to follow and yet the most difficult for many of us to overcome. Think about the fact that we are scared to ask the people we care about if there’s anything different in the way they care about us.
“But what if I make it worse?”
The number one reason people are scared to come out with the “is anything wrong?” bit is because they think it could drive a person away even further but I disagree with that sentiment. Any time that I’ve ever truly cared about a person, them asking me if something is wrong one time isn’t going to change my opinion about them. You wouldn’t drive a person away for asking something like that — but of course there are the people that ask that question every single day and then yes, something is obviously wrong. But if you’ve been with each other for awhile and one of the parties behavior starts to change you can ask them if something is wrong. There’s a two-pronged possibility:
- “Nothing is wrong. I’ve been busy and sick. Sorry I haven’t been able to talk as much because I’ve misssssed you 
” That’s good.
- “Nothing is wrong. GOD!” Something was wrong. And you didn’t make it any worse, because the fact of the matter is that there is no way in Hell that a three-word question would be the tipping point from a life of 50 years of wedded bliss to a broken heart and an empty tub of ice cream on your bathroom floor. That’s just not real life.
I told Sam that in my opinion, something was probably up with the fact that she was freaking out about his move to San Francisco and that he was breaking down the barrier between them. As the poet laureate Gavin Rossdale once said: “The chemicals between us. There is no lonelier place than lying in this bed. The chemicals displaced.” (You figure out the meaning.)
But Sam wanted to bring those chemicals together. If he was getting negative signals he should ask Diane if something was up, at least once. Because it wasn’t just killing him that she was all of a sudden starting to act differently towards him, it was also the unknown that starts to make a person unravel. Sometimes it is absolutely a misunderstanding, but on the other hand, it’s often a sign.
Don’t ignore signs.
(Unless it’s saying 25 MPH and it’s not a school zone, like yo, I can get around this neighborhood at 35!)
(Also don’t ignore Signs. It’s a really good movie.)
“Yeah, but what does Diane really mean by that smiley face?”
Sure there have been certain times in my life where I’ve been a paranoid annoyance but I also like to think that I have a pretty keen sense of when something is up. We should all be able to sense when something is wrong. When Larry David left Seinfeld, you could tell the difference. When Dan Harmon was fired from Community, you can tell the difference. People can sense the slightest differences from one thing to another, and you’d know that if you ever filled out a Highlights magazine at the dentist.
November – You’re texting me all the time. You’re anxious to hear from me. You reach out when it’s been awhile.
December – I have to be the one to initiate all the conversations. You don’t ask me questions, you seem less concerned about my life. You said “Fuck off” and changed your email?
A day? No worries. Three days? That’s curious. A week? You should seriously start considering whether or not this person is still interested in you unless they explicitly stated before the relation ship that they were in the CIA.
Sam knew what to do, I just had to be the one to push him off the plank. He finally asked Diane if something was wrong due to her behavior over the last couple of weeks. She responded first with the usual:
“No, I’ve just been busy lately like I said and dealing with this illness.”
Okay…. Wait for it.
“I suppose I also just don’t know what you’re expecting when you move here.”
It had seemed apparent to me, an almost complete outsider that has never met Diane, that Diane was fearful of certain expectations from Sam. The approach of Sam moving to San Francisco obviously has to be taken with careful measures because it’s a major decision. Not just for their ship but for his life, and possibly for hers.
But he may have never known that if he hadn’t overcome the fear of simply asking “What’s wrong?”
I might be a very difficult hurdle to overcome, to come off looking like an insecure little boy, but I think that there are many contexts in which it comes off more as the secure move of a man. To say “I am aware of the changes here and I feel like even if you were sick or busy, you would make time for me as you used to do. So if something has changed for you, please let me know because I’ve still got to take care of myself.”
I think that when you are simply “dating” someone, you have to tread very carefully with feelings. I have spent too many days and nights in confused anger and depression based on things that happened with people that I wasn’t even on the relation ship with.
Don’t waste tears on a person that wouldn’t spend tears on you.
Of course, the three intense, mostly non-physical months that Sam and Diane had spent talking, it would be near-impossible to not have feelings attached. Whether she likes it or not, even Diane has developed feelings for Sam. But Sam has to really evaluate whether or not her feelings and his feelings match up because if they don’t and he doesn’t ask some of the important questions that we’ve been conditioned not to ask, he’ll be the only one crying.
Sometimes if you don’t want to know the answer, you probably need to ask the question.
To be continued…
(Remember that I’m looking for more questions RE: the opposite sex so please use the CONTACT button also I’m lonely.)
The friend zone only exists in your head zone
May 18, 2013 § 2 Comments
I will get back to the story of Sam and Diane shortly, but I’m going to throw this up because I’ve already written most of it and I think it’s always a relevant topic: The “Friend Zone.”
I was on Reddit recently in the /r/relationships section and came across a despondent young girl that was worried about her friend. He used to be such a great guy to hang out with, but had fallen apart after his high school sweetheart left him for another guy. The full (and lengthy) post is here. The “too long; didn’t read” version is this:
“Longtime friend had a gradual devolution into being a Nice Guy, spurred by a horrible breakup. Refuses all help and surrounds himself with other Nice Guys who only makes things worse. What can I/we do to help or should we just give up?”
The slightly longer version is that “Calvin” is pushing away his best friends all through childhood (Hobbes, Susie, Tofukitties) because of his broken heart and complaining that all girls just want to be his friends and that they are terrible people. Calvin needs a kick in the pants. This was my response:
Calvin, Calvin, Calvin, Calvin, Calvin…. my man. My broseph. My buddy. My pal. Wait no– Your buddy and pal, I mean. But speaking as if I was speaking to Calvin…
The good news is that you’re 24. You shouldn’t be exactly the man you will become when you’re still just 24. Nor will you be the man you will become when you’re 30… or 40… or 60… We are ever-changing, or at least we should be, just in the way that you, Calvin, were not the man you used to be before you met the love of your life, who you were while you were with the love of your life, or who you were after she did you so wrong and so dirty. I feel for you, Calvin, I really do.
Relationships aren’t easy. Trusting another woman again, in the way that you entrusted your entire body and soul to one person and believed that one day you would be married and be the first and only people to sleep with one another, and to have that taken away from you — Nobody’s going to say that life is fair. Because it’s not. You had visions for your life, and they were destroyed by the girl you loved more than you’ve ever loved anyone including yourself. And because she never slept with you and only slept with the “rugged Army guy” who may have shot guns at people and been a tough guy, you believe that all women must want this and you’ll never be this, so therefore you will fail at every turn.
But that’s not true. Nothing can be further from the truth.
Some women like tough guys. Some women like smart guys. Some women like book guys. Some women like art guys. One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.
You’re a certain type of person. You care very deeply for people, you’re kind, you’re genuine, you believe in things to their very core, and you’re not bad looking either. Almost every type of person is a person’s type somewhere so you shouldn’t focus on thinking that no girls will be into you — not every girl is one girl. And you’re so worried about getting into the friend zone with a girl, that you have forgotten that within that actual friend zone is a girl that cares about you so much that she’s asked Reddit for help on how to help you, rather than abandon you. Even if she doesn’t love you in that way, she loves you. Forever Alone? Not when someone, anyone, loves you. Let’s remember that you’re good enough to be loved, and start to work on finding out how you can genuinely return that love of friendship towards Hobbes, Susie, and TofuKitty and remember that with a group of friends like that, you’ll have a support team for the rest of your life.
The only possible way to be forever alone at this point, is if you continue to ask for pity about your own life and put yourself in that position. Look at you right now– You’re not too far gone. Stop what you’re doing. Think. Assess. Evaluate. Think about all that you have and cherish it. Assess all the you want in your life. Evaluate how you’re going to man the fuck up and get it.
You’ve got a great group of friends, people that love you. A buddy that might not be around now, but will stand by your side as your best man if you get your life together.
You want to love a woman as much as you loved your ex, have her love you back just as much. How can you find her? How can you start to show that you believe in yourself, that you love yourself, and that you’ll provide value to her for the rest of her life? Because nobody wants to be with somebody that wouldn’t want to be with themselves.
Evaluate how you’ve treated the people around you that spent months (maybe years) of their own lives trying to pick you up because they loved you. Evaluate why you didn’t return that love and understanding when they started to question your motives and become upset with some of your behavior. Evaluate what you’re going to do to finally make amends with them.
And then put that shit into action because you’re 24. You’re young. You’ve had one serious girlfriend and you’ve proven to be a great friend and great boyfriend in the past, which puts you ahead of the game at 24.
You can either remain where you’re standing and distance yourself further and further from the only people that have ever truly been “home” to you or you can continue changing every day to be the best person you can be.
Start today.
—————————–
The sad truth is that I see a lot of myself in Calvin. I grew up thinking no girl would ever want to be anything more than a friend. I got angry and lashed out them when they wouldn’t instead accept me as a boyfriend. I was ripe for “forever alone” membership.
Then I grew up and realized that the only person that puts themselves in a “friend zone” is the one that is constantly complaining about it’s existence. There are plenty of ways to start relationships that are romantic and stay that way.
Dudes: If a girl says she just wants to be friends, then be just that. Be her friend. Be a hella good friend. Don’t ever try to make it more than that unless she is starting to make it explicitly clear that just being friends isn’t working for her anymore. Frankly you’ll show her your value best by being a friend and the worst case scenario is that you have a great friend. If you say “yeah lets be friends!” and then ask her to kiss you or send you naked pictures the next day, you’re fucking up.
Ladies: There’s a likely possibility that some of your guy friends could be into you or would totally date you. Just… know that.
As I was saying yesterday about Sam and Diane, think about the ships you embark on and establish early if it’s a relation or a friend kind of ship. Any confusion on that, and you’ll be sailing in the wrong direction.
Ask Kenneth HEART-Thur: Long on distance, short on commitment part 1
May 17, 2013 § 2 Comments
A friend recently came to me with a broken heart. I gave him some advice or at least tried to talk him through the difficult time. That’s what sparked this recent quest to see if I could give advice to anyone else or at least… help talk you through it. Before we get started, this is the story that started it all.
This all started recently with a co-worker who was telling me about a girl he was talking to on instant messenger. We have offices all over the world you see, and certain people have to communicate with other people in the company over instant messenger. It’s funny how we can meet strangers in this current era of humanity, people we would have otherwise never known existed; sometimes I wish it was still that way.
I’m certain that at this moment my co-worker, “Sam”, wishes the same thing.
I remember him telling me about her (over IM of course) right from the beginning. ”So there’s this girl “Diane” over in San Francisco and I can’t tell but I think she’s flirting with me.” (Yeah, I realize what I just did there with their aliases, what of it?) Of course, when me and Sam talk, it’s always something along the lines of “I think this person is flirting with me!” When in reality its more like “Kate asked me if she could borrow my pen and when she picked it up she said “Oh cool pen” so you think we’re like going out now?”
Yeah, I don’t think that my friends and I have matured past the fifth grade quite yet.
But in this case, there really was some serious flirting between Sam and Diane. What I thought was just another “Yeah okay sure you’re gonna hookup with the girl that lives a few hundred miles away by winning her over on work instant messenger” (why do I write “another” as if this happens all the time?) it was in fact instead another case of “Yeah… okay! You’re gonna hookup with the girl that lives a few hundred miles away by winner her over on work instant messenger!”
Of course I never thought that Romeo and Juliet (wait, mixing up my aliases) Sam and Diane would be able to develop a real relationship when they were separated from Los Angeles to San Francisco, especially doing so while they had to first talk about work, let alone being a Montague and a Capulet.
classic awkward high five
But mostly I can’t believe that two people would ever have romantic thoughts while they talked about the mundane bullshit we do at our company. (I can’t get into much more detail than that to protect the innocent, but I can tell you that this place doesn’t build flying microwaves that drop hot pockets into your mouth automatically.)
And so Sam and Diane built a ship together and sailed away on it. There are several different kinds of ships:
- Friend ships
- Relation ships
- Kin ships
- Partner ships
- Ghost ships
Definitely stay away from the last kind of ship, unless you wanna get got, but the other ones are always fun. Sometimes people will mix friend ships with a singles cruise, which can be fun too, but the most important thing to know is that when you go on a ship with someone that you’re both on the same ship. Otherwise you’ll risk being stranded in the middle of the ocean, and your best hope is a peaceful drowning.
Early on, they were both getting onto a friend ship and they both liked that because they had a lot in common and talking to one another was so easy and natural. It got to the point where they were even going to be the kind of long-distance friends that traveled many miles to see one another and Diane came to Los Angeles to visit and they kissed and junk. (Just like in the romantic movies!) And then Sam went to San Francisco to see Diane where they could drive across the Golden Gate Bridge in a red convertible with a baby in the backseat, roll down hills, and take Comet for a walk down the big hills.
okay, who invited this guy?
They were also “doing it” on their friend ship, which can have a lot of benefits, but the easiest part about that perhaps was that it wasn’t complicated. ”I am here. You are there. That’s the way it is!” and Diane had made it clear that she wasn’t a relation ship type of person. Sam was okay with this.
And then all of a sudden, Sam’s best friend Woody got a job at Google and was moving to San Francisco. And now Sam saw an opportunity to move out of LA (which he was interested in doing) and going to the Bay Area with his best friend (which he thought would be fun) but also be closer to Diane (which seemed like a good idea at the time.) But then things started to change between Sam and Diane once she found out that he’d not only be moving to San Francisco, but transferring within the company. They’d go from long distance lovers to seeing each other a minimum of 40 hours per week plus weekends if it all works out okay. They’d possibly even hop off of the friend ship and onto the relation ship, a boat that Diane wasn’t very comfortable with.
Diane started to distance herself. Sam got worried that she had become more aloof and less talkative and cancelled her most recent plans to come to Los Angeles. The story of Sam and Diane… was starting to go from a fairy tale of “how easy love can be” to the realities of it all: That relation ships are the hardest ships to navigate.
Let’s face it.
Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got. Taking a break from all your worries sure would help a lot. Wouldn’t you like to get away? Sometimes you want to go:
- Where nobody knows your name
- And they’re indifferent as to whether or not you came
- You wanna be where you can see, that nothing in your life will change, you wanna go where nobody knows your name.
(doo doo doo doo do do)
Now what you’ve already read, all 1000 words of it (jesus christ I need to learn brevity), isn’t even getting to the point where I started to give advice or talk it out with Sam. You see, for a couple of weeks, Sam held all of this inside of him. The parts where Diane would go an entire day without talking to him for the first time in months. The parts where he’d wonder why she’s not quite being the same person she once was, causing him to stress out over if he had done something wrong or if the “ship” that he’d held so dearly was sinking and un-salvageable. The parts where the “Good morning” texts had disappeared.
(Side note on “Good Morning!” texts — In the year 2013, this appears to be the number one symptom or trigger(?) of a broken heart. I think what many people want, what I’ve always looked for and cherished in my 30 years, is that you’re a person’s first and last thought every day. Because you’re bookending their dreams, which might as well mean that you’re that person’s dream. You’re that person’s everyday and everynight. You now care about that person at least as much as you care about yourself or anyone else, and the balance in the universe is that they feel the same about you. But then when something goes wrong, the universe is out of balance. Because they’re not texting you “Good Morning!” anymore, or they’re not responding for three hours after you know they’ve woken up. You’re not their first thought anymore. You’re not the last thing they think of as they unknowingly make the shift from awake to asleep. And that kills you — because you still care about them at least as much as you care about yourself, but more importantly you don’t feel that anyone now cares about you either. You feel like an empty shell. All your love is with them. And all of their love is… with them. Or even worse, with someone else. The universe is out of whack. It kills you. And it all boils down to…
“Good Morning!”)
But then finally Sam broke down and typed to me over instant messenger that Diane was very distant lately. That he wasn’t sure if things were going wrong because she was “busy” or “sick” and he didn’t want to come off as being weak and vulnerable if he had flat-out asked her if there was something wrong.
(While I was in the middle of writing this story, I found out that what was once supposed to be a little intro has now become over 2,300 words and I’m not done yet. Y’all don’t wanna read a wall of text right now, so let me break it out a little bit. Coming up next:
The #1 rule of fight club is that you don’t talk about fight club, but a little known fact is that actually the #2 rule of fight club is that you don’t ask the person you’re dating if something is wrong.)
Stay tuned!
Please ask me questions about dating, relationships, and sex. Ask Kenneth HEART-Thur!
May 17, 2013 § 1 Comment
Forgive me for being so presumptuous, but I have a favor to ask you… Can you please send in questions about dating, relationships, and sex? Anything that involves boys and girls (or boys and boys or girls and girls, all just the same!) and questions in relation to two (or more?) people getting together — please ask me for advice on the matter.
For the record, I hate that I just said that. ”Please ask me for advice!” because I’m not the type of person to naturally assume that I’m the next Dear Abby or even Downton Abbey, so let me explain really quick.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been dealing with some of my own relationship issues, but I started to realize that after, oh, thirty years of failure, I had started to learn things. I was able to apply some of my own real world experiences in relationships and dating and sex to myself and make it all better. Then I came across a few other people who were having issues and could relay some of my own experiences and through the nature of storytelling and analogies (my two favorite natures!) get through some good talks.
And I’ve also been spending some time on internet websites where people talk about “what’s your beef?” in dating and been able to talk it out with others, both in giving and receiving.
You know I’ve never been shy about revealing my own experiences and shortcomings with women, but just because I’ve failed doesn’t mean I haven’t learned a few things and I think it would be fun to turn a few questions into some anecdotes, analogies, and references to “this is how DJ Tanner once got through this same predicament!”
So use the Contact button on the left side of the page and ask me a question in email.
Or put it in the comments. I don’t care! (But yes, I’ll keep it anonymous!)
WordPress.com claims that I have “Over 2,000 blog followers!” but I hardly believe that. I know who my loyal ten readers are (and I love you) but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there’s just enough people out there that I can get five questions and then have some fun with it. They can be jokey questions too, whatever I can do to have enough for a first time post on this matter. Thanks for humoring me, sorry for being a pompous ass and thinking that I can help someone but you never know…. I promise to at least make it fun!
rules of enragement: how dating ruins relationships
April 12, 2013 § 14 Comments
Let’s lay out some unwritten “rules” of dating:
1 – If you were the last person to send out a text, you are not allowed to send the next text.
1a - You may only break this rule if you “saw” or “read something” that would be of significant interest to the person that has not texted you back yet OR If it has now crossed over into the next business day OR If you have “concern” about this person’s well-being and whereabouts.
1b - You sought out that thing reminded you of that person, you’re only concerned that they haven’t responded to you, you won’t wait until the next business day because of the other two exceptions to breaking rule 1.
1c- Twitter and Facebook are an excellent reminder that the person who is not texting you back has full access to a computer or technological device such a phone, which you already knew anyway didn’t you.
2 - If you like a person, don’t let them know it* up until the very last possible moment when they are fed up and just about to give up on you. A good way to do this is to rigorously be on the other side of Rule 1: Ignoring a text message. (We all know you got that text message and that you are fully aware of Rule 1.)
*The more witholding you are of affection, the more the other party will desire it. As soon as you give it, they no longer want it.
2a - If you find the person you are dating to be beautiful, the worst thing you can do is tell them that, especially if they really are beautiful**. Why would a person want to hear a compliment like that?
**A graph displaying “Beauty” to “Tell Them About Their Beauty” looks like an X. The more they are, the less you say so. The less they are (in the classical sense) the more they appreciate it.
2ab - Find a physical characteristic on your dating partner that you know makes them self-conscious, and bring it up. As much as you want.
2ac - You’re ugly.***
***Look, you’re not really ugly. But your perception of yourself tends to be more negative than other’s perceptions of you and this lack of self-esteem can cause others to take advantage of you. Not by complimenting you mind you, but by putting you down while spattering in words of encouragement here and there. A person that is constantly trying to tell you that you’re actually quite beautiful is obviously lying to you*^ so be suspicious of him*^^.
*^no he’s not
*^^don’t be
3. Looks are really important but do not ever list looks as the most important characteristic you’re looking for in a person, even if it probably is.
In relation to rule 2a, It’s important to note that the first thing people look for in a person, is looks on a person. From the time you are born, people are judging you based on your looks. ”That’s a cute baby” or when the parents aren’t around “That is one. ugly. baby.”
One can not always accurately assess your character, your personality, your traits, your sense of humor, or other things that make up who you are just by looking at you. But they can always judge your looks by looking at you because they are looking at you and so you are always judged by looks on some level. It’s important to you when finding a mate, very important. Do not say that it is important though because then you are shallow. Here are some handy tips for things you can say are more important than looks:
- Confidence
- Sense of humor
- Intelligence
- Maturity
- Ambition
- Honesty
- Creativity
- Masculinity
- Kindness
Most people will tell you that the most attractive thing is confidence.
3a. A good tip for gaining confidence is to become more attractive.
3b. Most people have some level of shallowness.^* The author of these rules is shallow, though most would probably rate him at “about a 4″ (see rule 2ac), but the author likes attractive people. He’s attracted to them. The more attractive they are, the more attracted he is. See: How attraction works. Acceptance of of this fact will help us absolve ourselves of the myth that confidence and sense of humor are greater than looking like Marion Cotillard or Ryan Gosling.
^* that’s meta
3bc. Even if we have our own personal preferences, attraction is what attracts people to people, not how many 1000-page books you’ve read or that you perform at the Laugh Shack on Thursdays open mic night.^^^
^^^Most would classify this as “cynicism from a bitter author” when in reality it is “reality from a bitter author”. The author enjoys an attractive female and also knows some very attractive people that he would never consider dating because of their terrible personalities. In rule 3bc, the author displays “honesty”, “creativity”, and “sense of humor” but still lacks “handsomeness” because the author had “a whole pizza last night”.
3d. Those traits, deeper explained:
- Confidence:
Typically confidence comes from a person that knows they “got it goin’ on.” The difference between “cocky” and “confident” is rather undefined by those that use it as an excuse.
- Sense of humor
Typically, attractive people never developed this. Jesse Kotsopolis was attractive and his humor was rooted in things he did with kids because “look at how fucking cute it is that this hunk loves kids” and not in actual joke-telling. Joey Gladstone was unattractive and had to develop a sense of humor to make friends and defend himself against attractive bullies.
- Intelligence
See above: Sense of humor.
- Maturity
See the case of Rebel vs Cause when the person looks like James Dean.
See the case of Dumb v Dumber when the person is Harry and Lloyd.
- Ambition
See above: Maturity. Men are typically most ambitious when it thinks it will land them a “hot babe”.
- Honesty
Honestly. This author might be an author for only that reason.
- Creativity
And then develop creativity. A lot of the world’s greatest visionaries became that way for the opposite sex. If all of a sudden tomorrow “chicks dig cricket” then it will become the most popular sport in America.
- Masculinity
The author does not know much about this. Watched a lot of TV as a kid.
- Kindness
There is a distinct difference between being a “nice guy” and being a “good man”:
3da. Don’t be a nice guy, be a good man. Even if you’re a complete douchebag asshole.
- A nice guy will be kind to you, tell you nice things, tell you what he thinks you want to hear. (See all of Rule 2 as to why this is a terrible idea.)
- A good man is not precluded from also doing this, but is not intrinsically tied to doing so. A “good man” might also be a complete asshole to his girlfriend or wife. A “good man” takes care of certain things in his life and therefore is seen as the protector and patriarch of the family as long as he provides. This even includes a “good man” that is abusive. Or it could literally be a “good man” that is kind, humble, generous, and giving, but it is not a requirement of being a “Good man”
- A nice guy is often characterized as being a “pussy” and “finishing last”. ”Girls want bad boys, but not women” is what some women or girls would say. Innately, the desire to simply be with someone that will swing a club over someone else’s head if the enemy gets near the cubs is still most important and nice guys aren’t deemed to do this.
- A good man is entrusted to do this.
*^*^*^* Author’s note
These are just some of the unwritten, now written rules that I am laying out today. The awful truth about why it is better to play games and lie to people while you’re dating them if you want to continue dating them. Why is it awful? Well, it sure would be nicer to live in a world where you could just tell a person how you feel and then they reciprocate and then you move on, wouldn’t it.
Here’s how the rule book looked 100 years ago and further back:
Rule 1. Is Mary-Ann ready to bear children?
If yes: See if the Anderson boy is single
If no: Wait until she’s had her first “visit”
It might seem primitive and unromantic to us now, but it sure was a lot easier.
how to catch a catfish: the guide to fake internet dating
April 2, 2013 § 5 Comments
Are you 30, lonely, and hoping that you will finally find that special someone that’s going to pick you up by your boot straps and get you back on the horse of life? Are you not concerned about whether or not that person on the other end is really a 24-year-old nursing student named Annie or actually a 46-year-old father of two? Then you’re in luck!
Thanks to a connection of roughly seven to sixty-five trillion wires stretching under the ground everywhere from Hollywood, California to Van Nuys, California called the “internet”, you can find people that are willing to pretend to be whatever you want them to be for the purposes of gaining their own power and sexual gratification! Who cares if it’s really “Annie” or “Andy” as long as you’re getting your emotional jollies. It’s Adam and Eve not adam_antium321 and h0tn_readyg1rl_eve!
Within minutes, or even months, you too will be able to chat with someone that really cares you exist, even if they don’t. Here is how!
1. Go onto the internet!
The first step in developing any fake online relationship of course involves getting onto the internet, or “world wide web.” Plug your 56k modem into the nearest phone jack:
2. Find new friends, and tell them about yourself with 3 easy letters
Sign into America Online and go to America On-Line (AOL) Instant Messenger (IM) programmer. Find a chatroom labeled something like “Cool Teens” or “Young Moms” and introduce yourself. Say something like “Hey, everybody. I’m gandalf_l0ver112″ and then give out these 3 key bits of information about yourself:
- Age
- Sex (gender)
- Location (where you at?)
Also known as “A/S/L”. This let’s people know how old you are, what gender you are, and where you are located. Now they have some sort of idea if you are in their same age range, if you are a boy or a girl, and if you are located near them. Or in some cases, it might be best if you’re not located near them! This will really heighten the ability to be a fake online boyfriend and girlfriend, because you couldn’t meetup without a train ticket or car.
3. Make yourself attractive to others
You’re trying to lure yourself a catfish, it doesn’t hurt to be a catfish. We aren’t trying to mate between species, after all. Have you ever seen a fish have sex with a duck? Of course not. Would you like to? Of course you would, but you aren’t that lucky. So tell some lies on the internet.
As the girl from Perverted Justice once said: “Come on in, I’ve made some lemonade. I just need to throw this into the dryer.”
It may be best to hang back for awhile and see which fake A/S/L best suits your needs. If you really want a 22-year-old female catfish in the Bay area, then try a chatroom like “SF hotteyz” and relax in the 33-person chatroom with 31 guys and 2 “girls” that are pretty much chatting to each other while 3 guys control the conversation and 28 “people” lurk in the background because they’re even afraid that they’ll be judged anonymously.
Eventually you will decide that you don’t care at all if the person is 22, just as long as they’re under 30 and you won’t mind where they live as long as it’s in the continental United States, so long as they claim to be female. By day three, you’re only rule is that they claim to be 18 (because Chris Hansen seems like kind of a jerk, which might have entirely to do with the fact that he almost exclusively interviews men who like boys and girls under 15) and that they live on this planet, and now you’re starting to lax on the whole ‘gender’ thing too. By day 45, you’ve won the Heisman trophy.
In conclusion:
Man and woman or man and man or woman and woman, whatever the parts will fit together if you try enough combinations. But on the internet, your parts don’t touch and nothing can be given a title if you’re not touching it’s all good you guys. Anything goes, so get on the web (short-hand for internet terms can help reduce keystrokes) and find yourself a mate. It’s like my mama always said: The net is like a box of chocolates that did not come with a reference guide to which chocolate contains which flavors, you never know what kind of treat is inside until you bite.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some fishin’ to do.
the settle: relationships are never how you want them to be
February 8, 2013 § 18 Comments
Take your relationship advice from me, I’ve been in one. ;) Literally, one.
Okay fine, I’m not a “relationship expert.” I haven’t had “a ton of girlfriends.” I’ve never “met” a “girl” that “liked” what “I” had to “offer” and maybe I’m not “handsome” or “smart” or “whatever” okay? Maybe in high school I never “went out” with any “girls” and didn’t ask anyone to “prom” and “homecoming”. BFD, amirite people?? But what I do have is my finger on the pulse of the American people. I am great at sensing feelings and understanding how others live. I am the human observer to the human experience, a meta-Zoo if you will. ”We Meta Zoo”
Sorry, once I said “Meta Zoo” I had to write that down. (Did you see We Bought a Zoo? It’s the literal worst.)
In all sincerity, I still think that I have valid opinions on relationships, even if my last serious one was a couple years ago. Okay, a few years ago. Okay, fine, four years ago exactly. Not like I was counting or anything. You do realize that most sports coaches were not good sports athletes right? If you can’t do — teach, right? Exactly. I’m an excellent teacher of the human experience. An excellent coach of sexual conquests. I’ll get you where you need to go, even if I can’t go with you. I am Sex Gandalf to your Sex Frodo.
One particular subject that I wanted to broach today was the concept of people who seem to have a hard time finding “the one.” People that might have been through a lot of partners, or people that find themselves single at a mature age. (Huh, maybe I do have experience on some relationship subjects.) It came up recently in the comments that older people that do find a partner seem to have an easier time making that relationship work. And it’s quite true. Statistically speaking you are much more likely to avoid divorce the older you get once you are married. It’s basically a statistical improbability by a certain age, and not just because you’re close to death. Why is that?
Well, there are a lot of easy answers that hold truth.
Experience, you wised up, you rushed into your first terrible marriage (terr-iage), you just don’t care anymore, the kids are out of the house, you’re more financially secure, you know what you want finally, you’re used to your lover farting in front of you now, and so on and so on. But I think the most important of those reasons is basically an amalgamation of all of those reasons; You just are not going to find “the one.”
Listen, I am a romantic moreso than the next guy. I own How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days, so I think I know a thing or two about romance. ;) I’ve seen Can’t Hardly Wait a dozen times, okay. The only thing that “Drives Me Crazy” about romance is the movie Drive Me Crazy with Melissa Joan Hart and Adrian Grenier. Do I know something about romance? Only if you count that I know a lot about Love, Actually. And so on and so forth. I’ve seen a lot of movies, is what I was getting at there.
But there’s a lot of truth in that. We idealize relationships and romance moreso than our parents, and they idealize it a bit more than their parents, and so on and so forth. Our forefathers didn’t divorce our foremothers not just because they had a lot of foreplay and because it was fore-bidden (nice job, me) but they also probably didn’t think it could get any better.
“This is marriage. Martha likes to do needlepoint while I’m trying to play the flute and it annoys me but oh well!” not “Martha, stop that! Elizabeth doesn’t do that to Henry on Real Housewives of Humboldt County!” That was just life and love back then. As a matter of fact, its still life and love. We’ve just forgotten that. We’ve taken that for granted. This is how I see so many young relationships fail: You just want too much.
I wouldn’t say that older people “settle” necessarily into relationships that make them sad or angry, but I think older people start to realize that a good relationship requires things like patience, acceptance, sacrifice, and compromise. It’s not always going to be perfect, in fact it rarely will be. It’s going to be hard some days but those days shouldn’t make you run away. There are going to be times when it might not seem ideal, but you don’t want to become the disaster known as “Liz & Dick” and in that case I am talking about the real life relationship of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and also the movie Liz & Dick.
Mostly the movie. Jesus what a disaster.
I’ve been prepared for a long time to know that my next serious relationship will have rocky roads that must be traversed rather than turning away or going another route just because it gets difficult. You don’t settle, but you do settle in.
did i blackout and change my okcupid profile?
December 12, 2012 § 5 Comments
Yes. Or at least I think so. That or some weird genius has hacked my OkCupid and made my profile 100x better. Let’s start from the beginning…
I was not much of a drinker as a teenager. I wouldn’t say it’s because I was a “good” kid but I wasn’t really a bad kid either. Sure, I wound up in the principal’s office about once a week, but for a person that thrives off of making people laugh with witty interruptions, Sex Ed class is basically entrapment. Other than that, my weekends basically consisted of trips to Hollywood Video with friends, popcorn and snacks, me eating most of the snacks, very tame stuff really.
This was not always the case though and at one particular party I had shown up late and decided to “catch up” with a bottle of whiskey. (I can’t pinpoint the exact age I was when this occurred, but I believe it would have actually been around 18 or 19, after graduation. I don’t know why I am adding this tidbit, except that my mom will probably read this and she worries. Even about things that happened years ago. She probably believes that I will still get an MIP ticket in the mail for even writing it now, ten years later. #Moms.) Moral of the story: Don’t play catch up with a bottle of Black Label whiskey if you aren’t a qualified drinker, or ever really.
Next and last thing I know, I’m running around the backyard with my shirt off and spinning it around over my head like I’m Petey Pablo. I raise up the following day, sitting in a lawn chair the next day, a total mess, and I’m hungover but fine. Until the psychological mind-fuck of being told that I did things that I do not remember doing. ”What is this concept of ‘blacking out’? You mean that alcohol erases memories???” It’s a pretty scary situation to think that you can do things and not remember, but I honestly had no idea that I had fallen down that chasm of having too much to drink. It scared me to the point of never wanting to drink again.
And then I went to a school notorious for over-consumption of alcohol and blacking out became activity du jour. I don’t want to sound like an alcoholic that anybody should be concerned about, I gave up drinking for 3 years without even having a necessary intention to do so but only because I was in a relationship with someone that rarely drank. It was not hard. What is hard is ‘H.A.M.’ and that’s how I drink. I’m not ashamed of this and I won’t sugarcoat it.
Flash-forward to this week when I check in on my OkCupid profile and realize that everything has been changed. I have a vague recollection of going onto the site a few weeks ago and perhaps thinking that I would “mix it up” but that is all I remember. The words that I read though were not ones that I recognized. I don’t remember writing any of this, really, but holy shit do I love it. Either some very funny person has written over my profile and hacked into my account (for what purpose, I could not even fathom) or when I black out I become some weird genius.
Let me begin by saying that I no longer associate OkCupid with finding a girlfriend. The site is a joke if you are looking for an honest relationship. It is a free site aimed at under-30s (of which I am dangerously close to not qualifying for anymore anyway) and as I’ve written here before, it is mostly for people looking to sex one another. Not being the most attractive guy, needless to say that my success rate wasn’t that high and therefore I run ramshod on my answers. There is no need to be genuine on that site about who you are, what your desires are, and what you’re looking for in a girl or guy. In recent months I’ve changed it from normal into one that I purposefully designed to be “the worst profile on OkCupid” (a la ‘I love pooping my pants, etc’) to a site that said “I want to meet girls that absolutely hate my fucking guts only” and the like. Guess which two of those three profile themes were the most successful?
The site is a joke.
Thankfully my profile is the best joke I’ve ever read and if I really wrote this when I was drunk, I should only be writing when I’m drunk. Be forewarned that weird, nonsensical, anti-humor is my favorite kind of humor right now. Maybe you do not find it funny.
But I think I’m drunk-fucking-hilarious and if I really did this, I can’t believe how clever and coherent most of the writing is. I really think I must have been hacked by Odd Future or something.
I do not know who Jerry Osguando is, but he actually seems pretty insightful. A modern day Yogi Berra.
A couple of typos help support my blackout theory, as does any Pauly Shore reference, but were the typos intentional?
Let’s just get this out of the way: That last line is better than anything I’ve ever written sober. Which makes me question if I did write it.
Not the best but weird as shit.
Some of the following though is amazing:
Tonto: More like Pronto is definitely my style. I’m actually working on Sky Scrapers 6. We Make It Hot: Best Hot Mixes is in my CD player.
Two suspicions here: I absolutely love this song by Brian McKnight. Not kidding. 2. ‘Buck’ is actually a term my friends use for drinking. ”Getting buck” aka “Get buck wild.” Did my friends screw with me? Not likely, they don’t know that Brian McKnight song. I possibly used the term buck here and I could understand why. My case for me writing this is getting very strong.
Again, the thing about NASA going on a team building trip and trampolines is also better than anything I’ve ever written. That’s next-level weird shit.
That thing about babies is just weird, but also kind of sweet because it implies perhaps that I am a cancer doctor for babies. Then I continue to talk about doctors here, this time a dumb doctor that believed my theory on the world, but then improperly use the word “hear” instead of “here.”
And here is the grand finale:
No, I don’t REALLY want someone that is into beastiality. But that joke is fucking great.
I am going to go ahead and take credit for this profile unless someone dares to stop me and say that they did it instead. If you did, great, please step forward because I’d like to meet you. Most of these jokes are right up my alley though, I just didn’t know what I was capable of until I turned into a blacked out monster. As far as getting any responses from it?
No. But if any girl found this to be as hilarious as I do, I need to put a ring on her dazzlefinger.
The Imbalance of Success; Sacrificing Finding Love for Love of Writing
September 4, 2012 § 8 Comments
I try to set goals in every area of my life. Goals give us motivation, drive, a bar to set, things to strive for, and best of all is that when you accomplish one you can scream out:
“GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
I’ve set goals for myself in writing that I can see progress towards every day. Maybe at times you take a step back but when you take steps back, you get another chance to survey the field and come back better the next time. It’s like playing Super Mario Bros. 3 and replaying a level for the third time, you’re going to kill that level because you know what to expect.
You need to step back sometimes before you can step forward.
Must have taken a wrong turn at Albequerque
I can see that in my writing and I’ve progressed towards a financial benefit that gets me much closer to being a professional writer than I was a year ago. It’s crazy to believe that I could make progress towards accomplishing a lifelong goal or that I could actually say that I’m a professional writer, but I now have confidence that I’m on that path.
You probably also think it’s crazy that I could be a professional writer since my second paragraph of this article was just the word “Goal!” stretched out. People will pay for anything these days!
The idea of a “dream job” is a rather broad spectrum of opinion and generalization but I’d say that if you’re getting paid to do something that you’d do every day for free, you’re living the dream. Not quite like in this Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers question:
How Many People Do Get Their Dream Job?
Not chosen answer: Peoples dream jobs is not working in McDonald’s, it’s becoming writers, marine biologists, singers, actors, sports players, etc. Imo, 1/10 get to do their dream job. The other 9/10 are teaching, coaching, or just not doing their dream job. It’s really depressing.
Yeah, I would say that the off-chance someone would take your advice is rather depressing since you said that people that teach or coach aren’t doing their dream jobs. I’d wager that many teachers are doing exactly that since many of them are doing it for free. Or the immeasurable amount of people that volunteer to coach.
I <3 you
A dream job is whatever you want it to be and nobody can tell you that it’s better to be a writer than it is to work at McDonald’s. If that’s your dream job, who am I to judge? It’s a much more attainable dream than become a “sports player.”
Everybody has something. Many of us don’t know what that thing is, we can’t recognize our talent as a talent, but inside each of us is a quality that can be trained and honed into a quality that will service at least a tiny piece of the world. It would be easy to say that Michael Phelps has a talent for moving his arms around in the water, a natural gift that allowed him to grow his back to the size of a Smart car, but it’s not going to be so simple for all of us.
The International Business Times took some testimonials on what a dream job actually is. Here is one:
“A dream job is just a job that you look forward to going to. A job that makes you happy, it doesn’t have to be something outlandish or farfetched. And as for dreams go, once those die then we’re going to have issues” - Dexter
I think from that quote we can learn that even being a serial killer is perhaps something we are naturally inclined to be great at.
I didn’t wake up one day and think, “If I am a writer, I will have all the riches in the world!” I did however wake up one day and think, “I gotta write somethin’!” and then after that eventually clean up my vocabulary to not include “gotta” or “somethin.” It’s just what I had to do. Then it transformed into being a more specific form of writing, though still working on it over ten years later to try and find out what kind of writing I am best at and maybe try new things too.
“a butt made a fart. I’m 7. The end.”
For others, they’re going to be successful at anything they do because they’re naturally inclined to just obsess over and work hard at whatever comes to them. Was Bobby Fisher born to play chess or was he just a savant that attached himself to chess at age four and obsess over it for years until he was the best in the world by the time he was a teen? Would he not have been the best at backgammon, checkers, or Hungry Hungry Hippos if one of those was the game he chose instead?
We also adapt and change as we grow as people.
A survey of 1,100 people by Salary.com found that only 16% of people are living the dream jobs that they had when they were children. Actually seems like somewhat of a positive number considering how many people want to be Princesses or Hulk Hogans. Yet 60% also said that they still wish they could fulfill their dream jobs.
I also have changed as I have grown. I didn’t always want to be a writer. For a time I had actually switched away from writing to video editing and then back to writing, but no longer as a screenwriter but now a sportswriter. It’s not even what I would have imagined two years ago, but it’s worked out so far and it’s only just beginning.
We have to adapt to the opportunities presented to us and then find ourselves as we go.
That survey also found that less and less people were working their dream job as they got older (until going back up as people near retirement and have nothing left to lose but to pursue their dreams, or after the kids have finished college) and that’s not what I want. I want to find myself working closer and closer with my dream as I grow up because I could die today or I could die a long time from now, but I hope I died doing what I loved.
Many people are just looking for the job that pays the most, but I feel confident in saying that money will come easiest to you if you’re doing what you love to do. Money is a reward for hard work and you’re going to work a lot harder if you love what you do rather than forcing yourself to do something even though you hate it.
A Wall Street investor that despises greed isn’t going to cut it for long.
A writer that only wants to write might not make money for a long time, but then you write Harry Potter because you refused to give up and now you own England.
Family can also get in the way of pursuing those dreams. I don’t want to say that getting married and having kids ruins your dream, because for many people that is part of the dream, but responsibilities can mount and force people into a situation where they do have to put money in front of making your dreams come true. I guess lucky for me that it’s still not a problem.
The imbalance of success seems to be that you can’t always have everything. Here I am at 29, finally making headway into a career that I want so badly, and yet I can’t make a relationship happen nor do I have the desire to put any energy into it. Today I’m sacrificing a social life or a girlfriend for my dreams, and not the other way around.
It’s funny to read this article on mynippon.com about finding true love. Funny because they compare it to… finding a dream job. You shouldn’t just expect a dream job to fall into your lap just like a dream girl (or boy) won’t do the same. Now, I don’t think that the comparison is quite that apt because you could absolutely just meet someone at the right place and right time and who knows, but it certainly has some weight.
wait, is she giving or receiving?
Before I was working two jobs, I had plenty of time to browse OkCupid and then go out on dates and see what happens. I am hardly afforded the luxury of coming to my own blog and writing anymore with most of my time spent writing over a dozen articles a week on other sites and then trying to get my brain together again, let alone seeing the same 150 girls on OkCupid that have been signed up for as long as I have.
(There’s that fun thing called cynicism!)
But it’s true. You have to work on it a little bit. I expected 2012 to be a banner year in the dating department for yours truly and quickly had three interests in the first month of the year. Three incredible disappointments later, I had all but given up. I have hardly even dabbled since and we’re practically weeks away from the Mayan apocalypse.
Working on it is the last thing I’m doing. I’d love to say that can success can come in many areas of once as easily as failure can, but that seems to rarely be the case. We have to choose something and then we have to work on it. Hard. We have to fight for it and claw at it and not give up until we’ve won.
I’m working on my dream job right now. Maybe for others they’ll get married and then get an unexpected phone call saying, “We’d like you to come work for us and we are your dream job!” but for me it’s going to be the opposite. Maybe while I’m working endless hours on the writing, a dream girl will fall in my lap.
Maybe she’ll hit the contact button on my blog and say, “Hello!”
We can’t predict the future. We can only control what we’re going to do right now. Now that I’m done writing this article, I’m going to go write. Not find love. Maybe it will find me, otherwise, it’s going to have to be on hold.
(Sorry for the Michael Bolton hold music.)
