The Truth is Stranger Than Fiction - An Introduction

Truth is Stranger Than Fiction - An Introduction

My first foray into the Social Networking world was some years ago, in 2005 I believe, with Yahoo. They had a site called Yahoo 360° that was their own attempt at MySpace, which, at the time, was all the rage. I hadn't been bitten by the MySpace bug yet, but I was already an active member of Yahoo, so to get my feet wet, I set up a Yahoo 360° profile.

Blogging was an extremely attractive prospect to me. I love to write, I love to give myself that type of "outlet" to my problems, fears, joys, and experiences. I've kept diaries and journals off and on over the years and they've always been therapeutic when I took the time to keep them up. But this... a public diary? How do I approach such a thing? How much do I divulge? And what, praytel, do I write about that would actually entice people to read it?

Browsing thru existing blogs, one thing was an absolute MUST: I could not, would not, write about mundane things that no one but myself would care about. I needed an angle-- Something that I could write passionately about. Something that people, in general, have an interest in. Something that would grab the attention of the public. And something that had a "theme." I found that, to me personally, a blog that jumped around all over the place was difficult to read. A theme would keep me in check, and allow me to focus, rather than a stream of conscious that I was sure would bore to death anyone who came across my page.

The idea came to me fairly quickly. I was newly divorced and discovering the delights and annoyances of being single and dating in my 30's. It was perfect! Love, sex, relationships, dating... The overall general interaction between men and women has always been a fascination and a sure-fire hit to our society, if not our entire species! I had my topic, I was ready to roll...

Yahoo has since shut down their 360° forum, and the experience I had there was both rewarding and therapeutic. So I am going to retell my adventures in a retro-active tale here, and see if I can gather the same, if not bigger, audience I did there. Maybe I can even get inspired enough to bring the whole thing up to date and wrap it all up into a happy ending? We shall see...

So, here we go! Hello, my name is Jennifer. I am 37 years old and I've been divorced just over 6 years now. Fasten your seat belts, boys and girls, it's gonna be one hell of a ride!

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Chapter 12: Full Disclosure?

So I was starting to get a lot more attention on Match.com. I failed to mention earlier, also, that a friend of mine convinced me to sign up with Yahoo personals, too. She was apparently having a lot of luck there, but so far, I can say that I haven't been too thrilled with it. I've sent out my share of messages, and I've received my share of messages, but it's a very rare occasion where someone I'm interested in responds to me, or I am interested in someone who contacts me. But Match was proving to be a lot of fun. I was exchanging emails with quite a few people, and I could see how it might be an excellent way to meet a lot of people. I was starting to wonder how people actually met before the Internet was invented? How else could I possibly meet so many different types of people from so many different backgrounds? This was proving to be quite interesting!

So I was contacted by "Manny", who seemed really outgoing, fun-loving, and a bit of a redneck, but he sparked my interest. So I gave him my phone number so he could call me. And call me, he did. Now, normally I would not dedicate an entire entry to someone I didn't even meet in person, but this was just too good not to share.

We were on the phone for about 20 minutes. And I do believe I said all of 7 words in that entire time. For 20 some-odd minutes I listened to a stream of consciousness from "Manny", a seemingly well-rehearsed speech of: this is who I am, this is what I do, this is what my business is like, this is how I treat my employees, this is how much money I make, this is how I handle my money, this is what I like to do for fun, these are my hobbies, this is what my last girlfriend was like, this is why we broke up, this is what my experience on Match has been like, this is what my ROOMMATE'S experience on Match has been like, this is what my dog is like, this is the kind of girl I like, and this is what I like to do on a date.....

By the time I hung up, I was cross-eyed... Did I want to meet? I THINK NOT!

Lesson Number Eight: Not going well? Cut it loose sooner rather than later!

Status: Done well... Maybe not totally learned, but achieved.
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