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 18, 2011

Chapter 14: Next?

Another day, another contact on Match.com. Tall (always a plus), cute (with a boyish charm) and quite down-to-Earth (quite attractive quality). By this point, the whole email/IM dance was becoming old and time consuming to me. The quicker I could ascertain whether I wanted to get to know a guy better, or put him on the cut list, the better off I'd be. So we graduated to the phone rather quickly. He asked me out to dinner right off the bat, and I accepted. Then we talked for a bit.

"Sleepy" had a less than animated personality, and I found myself wondering if I should regret accepting a date so quickly. I tried asking questions to draw him out, but his answers were short and there were a lot of awkward silences. Grrrreat. Let's not jump to conclusions - some people are just not phone people. Maybe he'd be better in person?

We met at a Mexican restaurant, and my fears were confirmed. Conversation was not his strong point. My inquires accelerated into his past, hoping to draw him out some, and the next thing I know, I'm listening to his monochromatic voice telling me a tale of woe about his whole family, his estranged father, and the death of an uncle that was about to cause some major estate disputes amongst him and his kin. How was I supposed to react to this? I listened, tried to be understanding, asking for clarification about things when it didn't make sense, but in all, it was more drama than I was willing to handle on a first date.

I excused myself right after dinner, claiming some other responsibility that needed taking care of that night, and he was gracious about it. Here's a hint: Weekday dates give you an opportunity to leave early, as work or other errands are perfectly understandable for an early night.

Lesson Number Ten: The email/IM/phone dance is annoying and you may feel at times you'd rather have a root canal than start over ONE MORE TIME, but it has its purpose.

Status: Learned.

Follow-up: "Sleepy" did call for a second date, but I was so frustrated by it all that I told him that I wanted to take a break from dating for a while. (There was some other drama happening in my life too, but I shant go there....) I did take my profile down off Match for a few days, but it was becoming an addiction, and I had it back up within a week.