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!

Friday, May 27, 2011

Chapter 18: Isn't This Just The Way?

Didn't have to wait a week. He beat me to the punchline. I was Instant Messaging with him one night and expressed a desire for some quality cuddle time. This prompted "Mickey" to get serious awfully quickly and I wasn't sure why. Of course, he was drunk, too, so he was rambling in circles.

He said that he wasn't feeling the "sexual chemistry" between us. It was hard to believe considering the "sexual chemistry" we already had. And he had a difficult time explaining it. Being drunk wasn't helping, but he kept rambling about how beautiful I was (okay... thanks?), how much I have to offer a guy (well, I do try), but that he didn't think he could be with me (this makes sense?). He claimed he was a mess (tell me something I don't know...), a mess I didn't want to get involved with (okay, I was already thinking that), that he was shallow (did this mean he thought I was fat?) and that I would be better off without him (that line is older than me).

Whatever, I don't have time for those kinds of complications. He said he wanted to keep in touch, I said sure, and bade him good night. If he wanted to keep talking, he could call. I had better things to do with my time than to chase a lost cause, one I was unsure of from the start anyway.

The classiest part of this? Was this over dinner? On the phone? In a letter (even an email?) No, I actually got broken up with on IM... Welcome to the 21st Century.

Lesson Number Eleven: Listen to your instincts. They are usually right.

Status: Might need another lesson or two, but pretty much learned.