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 25, 2011

Chapter 17: Can You Say, "Red Flag?"

So I was getting to know "Mickey" more each day. And I was really starting to worry about whether or not I wanted to get involved with him. Initially, his lifestyle seemed attractive to me. He had a stable job that gave me the impression that he was in a respectable income range, and he owned his own house in a pretty nice area. It wasn't a swanky place in the middle of midtown or anything, but it was nice. He dressed nice, kept a clean house, and liked to spoil himself with the little extras. On paper, he seemed to be a pretty good catch.

But the more I talked to him the more I found out that his lifestyle wasn't something I wanted to be involved in. He liked to... shall we say... self-medicate a lot. Almost every night he would drink to the point of getting drunk, which is usually about the time he would call me. I also listened to several stories about him obtaining prescriptions for pain killers, muscle relaxers, anti-depressants, and sleep-aids.

The clincher story was when he told me that his buddy would pass through town every once in a while and he liked to buy an 8-ball off of him for fun. I wondered how often this guy was actually sober. My ex-husband had a marijuana addiction, so I was perfectly aware of how destructive addictions can be. Was it worth it to put myself right back into that position?

But on the other hand, I wasn't planning on marrying him. We weren't even "exclusive" yet. And we had fun together. He was always so flattering to me, during phone calls, in emails, and being together. I liked the attention, and I was lonely. As long as it stayed casual, what was so wrong with spending a little time together?

Maybe give it another week....