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, July 27, 2011

Chapter 35: Off to Chicago

So, I mentioned a few entries back that "Timon" was coming into the Atlanta airport about an hour before my flight to Chicago. We planned to rendezvous at the airport to see each other for a few minutes. It had been over a week since our interlude and he had been rather diligent in contacting me in some form or fashion almost everyday. With "Timon," I seemed to have escaped the "Sex on the First Date Curse." Hell, it wasn't even a date, it was more of a spontaneous booty-call, in reality.

So "Basil" showed up to take me to the train station, as promised. As I suspected he would be, he was wound up and short on time. He was ushering me out the door and shoving me and my luggage into his truck immediately. His phone went off several times and he seemed to thrive on taking his calls and sounding all important, giving orders to his subordinates. Maybe it was an act, maybe it wasn't. Either way, I sat in the passenger seat, quietly, thinking to myself, "What have I gotten myself into?" The whole situation made me feel like a HUGE inconvenience and very uncomfortable. But I reminded myself that I had given him every opportunity to back out. After all, I had only asked for a favor, and made it clear that he could have said "no."

He dropped me off at the train station, and suddenly seemed to remember that he needed to be sweet. He kissed me, and told me that I looked pretty. Then he wished me a good time in Chicago, and I thanked him for the ride, and bade him good-bye.

"Timon" and I missed each other at the airport. His flight got in early, and I got held up at security. His ride showed up early, too, so he couldn't hang out and wait for me, and, for some reason, neither one of our cell phones were allowing calls to go through.

"Kawena" called while I was waiting at my gate, though. Surprise, surprise! I truly had not expected to hear from him again, and certainly not before I left! On the flight up, I allowed my mind to engage OFF of AutoPilot and contemplate my current situation. This was getting out of hand. I needed to make a list of them all! Let's see:

Aladdin: Can't forget about him. He would be back in town soon.
Timon: Who was being attentive and charming
Basil: A bit high strung, but certainly still in the picture
Kawena: A surprising phone call that might put him back in the contest
Slim: Not really sure where he fell into things yet

Maybe a weekend away would do me some good. I think I needed to put some distance between myself, Atlanta, and all the boys!