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!

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Chapter 20: Adult Much?

So I got winked at by this Freddie Prinze Jr. look-a-like on Match.com. We'll call him "Simba". I don't usually respond to winks on Match, but who wouldn't want to meet someone that looks like Freddie Prinze?

We played e-mail tag for a while, and couldn't seem to sync up. But we finally got to the "exchange phone numbers" phase. Now, "Simba" certainly was no "Manny" on this first phone call, but he certainly had no qualms about laying it all on the line.

He was 33 years old, and still lived with his parents. Now, there are many instances when I can see where living with your parents might be warranted:

Had he just moved to town and was staying there while he diligently looked for a place to live? No.

Had he just been through a divorce and let his ex-wife keep the residence? No.

Had he lost a job and was having trouble getting back on his feet? No.

Did he have a couple of kids he was paying an astronomical amount of child support for? No.

The fact was that he was 33 years old and in college. Was he in graduate school getting a higher education? Wrong again, honey. He was living with his parents because he spent the majority of his 20's partying. Never went to college like the rest of us did, and when he hit 30 he decided that the party lifestyle was over and it was time to get his life on track and go to college and think about a career. And what easier way to do that than to continue living at home until it was "safe" to venture out on his own?

Now, I will say that his decision to put his life on track was an excellent decision. And a responsible one. But for me, at 31 years old, with an ex-husband and a stable career, I was really looking for someone who ALREADY had their life on track. Not someone who was still searching for the right track to follow. I realize that this is a rather snobby position to take. Who was I to pass judgement on someone who had made the conscious decision to better their own life? So what if he didn't come to that decision at the same time I did? My ex-husband had this problem, not really had ever grown up, or decided where he wanted his life to go, and it was a huge obstacle in our marriage. So, as you can imagine, there were LOTS of foghorns going off in my head. And yeah, this was my baggage, not his, but I just wasn't going there. Not again.

Well, we talked a couple of times, and he never asked me out. Just as well, I didn't really WANT to have to turn him down. But damn, he was cute. Oh, well, onward and upward, matey!

Lesson Number Twelve: Don't fall for a pretty face.

Status: I think I learned this one while I was still married... He had a VERY pretty face!