Afterthoughts

Thanks, everyone, for your comments and emails about my decision to retire snarkbutt. It is truly gratifying to know that my obsessive little thoughts have had an impact on people.

I know it came as a shock to many people, and I'm sorry for that. I did start having these feelings last November, which I wrote about here:

This blog is becoming a monster that that can't be stopped. It's good to have an outlet like this, but I feel that it's out of balance, too important, and I'm not sure that it ultimately is good for me. It's eating up more and more of my time every day. I overshare and then feel bad about it. I don't know who is reading and there's this weird tension between wanting to stay small & anonymous and wanting to be popular. Having all my naked thoughts out on the blogosphere is like posting anonymous videos of my wang on youtube.

I've had a few days to consider shutting down the blog, and it feels like the right move. For two days now my creative energy hasn't been held hostage by all the things I plan to write here. (This post is actually spontaneous-- I hadn't thought about it until this morning.) It's actually sort of liberating.

I would like to emphasize that this decision is not about one girl (who I haven't even met yet.) She might have been the catalyst, but this is something I've been debating for a while. I think in order to move on with my life, I need to say goodbye to this blog. It keeps me in a frame of mind that's not healthy or balanced. I need to concentrate more on my real life.

This is not an end, but a beginning. I can't express how grateful I've been over the past years for all the new diverse people I've "met" through this blog. Now that the blog is ending, I can take many of those connections to the next level, through Facebook and email and my public blog. I'm not disappearing, just changing my focus.

Some time in the next week I will shut this down. After that I will start contacting or friending or sending links to all of you who have requested it. (Email buttsnark@yahoo.com if you want to be in the loop.)

Thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks for reading. I can't say that enough.

Retirement

Yesterday I realized that I have a potentially supremely embarrassing security hole in this blog. The profile name I used on one of my online dating sites is an obscure word that, if Googled, could lead the person back to this very blog. I had chosen that word the last time I internet dated, about 1.5 years ago. Over the three years of the life of this blog, the word appears in exactly two comments (not even in the text of any posts), but that's enough to put it as the 6th or 7th search result on Google.

I realized with a sinking feeling that if any of my online potentials Googled my profile name, she could discover this blog. And that would just be... way too much information. I have already removed the two comments with that word, but Google has a memory, so it could take quite a while for the search results to change, if ever.

I could change my profile name on the dating site (and probably will), but my dilemma is this: If I change my profile name, it will look fishy to the women I'm currently corresponding with. Suddenly they're receiving messages from a name they don't recognize. It looks suspicious and might draw more attention than if I just let it be.

There's one person in particular I'm worried about. She's sent me two messages so far, and they are super clever and very funny. This one has more potential than any other woman I've pursued since K. So I don't want to blow it.

And there's really only one surefire way to guarantee she doesn't see this blog: shut it down.

*****

It's actually something that's been on my mind for a while. This blog is taking up too much of my life. About 70% of my social interactions take place through my snarkbutt identity. It feels way out of balance. I'm not getting work done (both professional and personal.) Maybe it's time for me to step back. Put my energies into a new project.

The other thing is that I'm tired of worrying about all the security risks involved in staying anonymous. I've always known that the security around this blog is not airtight. If Snarkbutt ever decided to run for president, people would figure out my real identity. There are enough clues. I even had a scare last summer that K could find it. (She did, but respected my privacy enough not to read it.)

This blog has been my best friend for 3 years. It's helped to get me through my divorce, countless post-divorced dates, and my first post-divorce heartbreak. I don't know what I would have done without it. But three years is a long time in the life of a blog. I've written 490 posts. Received 1,101 comments. Had 21,179 page hits since last July. (Thanks, Blogger stats!) I've made dozens of friends through this blog, and the prospect of leaving all that behind is sad and terrifying.

But I also know that this blog can't last forever. In some ways, it's holding me back from my ultimate goal, which is to find a mate. As someone pointed out when I was writing about the breakup with K, I shouldn't ever let my next girlfriend read this blog. It would be like reading my love letters to an ex. And I feel uncomfortable blogging about potential or future mates. It feels like I'm violating their privacy, even though I try to be careful not to reveal too much about them. Or I'm violating my own privacy. In order to really find the kind of love I want, I need to let this blog go.

*****

So I'm not sure what's next. I could continue to write, but just make it password-protected. But I'm not crazy about that idea. I think I'm ready to move on.

Maybe this will be an opportunity to concentrate more on my public blog. Create a name for myself in the blogging world where I don't have to hide who I am. The public blog won't be as personal or as revealing or soul-searching as this one. And I suspect many of my divorce/heartbreak blogfriends won't want to follow me there, since it's much more about politics and religion and books and stupid stuff (from a liberal atheistic Unitarian bent) than examining my own neuroses.

One big advantage is that I could finally Facebook friend many of my blogfriends without worrying about the security risks.

I'd like to give people the opportunity to read what's going on, but at some point in the next week or so I will probably close down this blog. I can't say what will happen after that, if I'll be able to make a clean break or if I'll need to wean myself away. I may continue to read and comment on other blogs, and I may not. If I do, I may do that as snarkbutt or with my public profile. I just don't know how this all will play out.

If you want to stay in touch or see my public blog or friend me on FB, send an email to buttsnark@yahoo.com ("snarkbutt" was already taken. WTF? Actually there are several others out there who aren't me.)

I thank all of you, from the bottom of my heart, for taking this journey with me. I will really miss snarkbutt and all his bloggy friends, but it's time to retire him.

Momentum

Sometimes it feels like I live a completely different life than everyone around me. Like I'm playing by different rules or observing different social norms. Like I'm a robot or alien or someone who just doesn't belong here.

This thought is brought to you by online dating, where all manner of behavior exists. Where you can greet someone and they just flat out ignore you. Or you're in the middle of a conversation and they just disappear.

Or the conversation is so random and stalled that it has the same rhythm as a Youtube video that keeps stopping because it has to load. You only get short snippets at a time. As you can imagine, it's hard to get any kind of momentum going in that environment.

I'm the type of person who needs momentum. All this starting and stopping, starting and stopping, is not good for me. It's not how I interact with people. Or it's not how I prefer to interact with people, anyway.

And it's not just with dating that I experience this lack of momentum. Even among my friendships, it's hard to build up a head of steam. I might go out with an acquaintance or new friend and we'll have a great time, but then due to schedules, lethargy, and lack of initiative, it will be a month before we have any contact again. By then whatever connection we had will have lost momentum.

This is why being single doesn't work for me. Why I need someone primary in my life. I need someone who I can gain some momentum with. This lifestyle doesn't meet my needs.

*****

Despite that, I had two attitude tweaks this weekend that might lead to a New and Improved Snark.

The first is this: much of my discomfort at being single stems from the fear that I'll never find another partner. My biggest fear is that I'll be alone the rest of my life. But. If I knew-- 100% knew for sure-- that this state is not permanent and that one day I will Find Love again, then, yeah, I might be able to just enjoy this time to myself. I might be able to embrace my singlehood.

So, why not just assume it? Whether or not it's true, if I can improve the quality of my life and attitude merely by believing something, why not just believe it? And it's not like I'm deluding myself by believing something that's ridiculous. Like, that I'll never die or that I have the largest penis in the world. It's something that, objectively speaking, probably will happen. So why not just assume it will, and make myself a whole lot more comfortable?

The second insight is this. I've been complaining a lot lately that I haven't made much progress on my writing projects. Well, if I were to start dating someone, those projects might really stall, especially my loveography in fairy tale form. It will be a whole lot harder to write about my Quest for Love once I'm in a happy relationship.

So maybe I'm single for a reason. This is supposed to be the period in my life when I'm creative and write.

*****

After a day and a half with this new attitude, online dating already threatens to interrupt my writing momentum. A new player has entered the scene. Someone local and cute and very, very funny. Even funnier than K was, based on the one message she sent me.

We'll see if we can get any momentum going.

On Tennis Shoes and Cookbooks

In the five years that I've been playing tennis, I've been on a quest to find the perfect pair of shoes. Because I run around the court so much, I put a lot of stress on my feet. I've tried dozens of shoes, but they never quite fit right. Each new pair will do something bad to my feet: cause blisters or callouses or turf toe, always in a different location. (And lest you think these are insignificant maladies, it was a case of blisters that caused my wife to leave me.) It always takes me a while of experimenting with different sock thicknesses to get used to a new pair of shoes. I own six different kinds of athletic socks!

So I was really happy last summer when I found the perfect pair of tennis shoes. They didn't give me any of the issues the other shoes did.

The problem is, tennis shoes wear out, and as the treads on my perfect shoes wore down, I needed to replace them. I went online, only to discover that that model isn't made anymore. There was only one pair left (in my size!) so I ordered it. But when they arrived, they looked like this:

Obviously, that was not the shoes I ordered.

I got in touch with the store I ordered them from, and they tried to correct the mistake, but it turned out that my perfect shoes were mistakenly sent out of the country, and it was impossible to get them back. They refunded my money. But I really wanted the shoes.

Now I can't find that model anywhere online. They don't exist. They have been lost forever. I tried to find the next iteration of the shoe (They were called Passing Shot III, so maybe there would be a Passing Shot IV.) Nope, that only exists in the women's model. So then I went to the shoe company, Reebok, to see if they sold any tennis shoes (ie. shoes for playing tennis) at all. Nope, apparently they've stopped making those altogether.

So then I did a very stupid thing. I found a random pair of tennis shoes online and ordered them. They came this week, and last night I tried them out at the tennis workout. They looked good, but they felt like I was wearing boxes on my feet. Uncomfortable, painful, and just plain wrong. I had to leave the workout early, and when I got home I saw that the second-to-last toe on my right foot had been rubbed raw. The skin is coming off.

Sigh. So I found the perfect model of tennis shoe, but they stopped making it, the one pair that was left has been lost forever, and trying other shoes that I found online is a disaster.

Hmm. I wonder if that could be an analogy for anything else in my life?

Nope, can't think of anything.

*****

A year ago Christmas I got a new cookbook. It's an awesome cookbook. Two out of every three recipes I make from it are amazing. It is one of the main reasons that I've got so excited about cooking in the past year. The recipes are easy and don't require too much effort or too many complicated ingredients, but it does teach me new things. It's exactly my speed. It may not be the best cookbook for everyone, but it's perfect for me.

In the past year I've tried other cookbooks. But the recipes I make from them don't turn out great, or they're too advanced, or too simple, or just not very satisfying.

I think it's clear which is the cookbook for me.

Again, I wish I could apply that metaphor to something else in my life. Can anyone think of something?

Anyone? Anyone?

*****

ONLINE DATING UPDATE: This has been a rough week. I've gotten into a rhythm where I find a new profile, get really excited about it, craft and send a brilliant message, imagine all the ways it would be fun to date the person described, then slowly deflate as no response is forthcoming. Being ignored by several women at once makes the loneliness even worse.

Online dating combines the worst aspects of shopping and love. It's like going to a store with no price tags and seeing a bunch of things you like, but when you try to buy something you're told, "Sorry, you can't afford that."

Here are the current players:

#2: Divorced, 38, no kids, restaurant manager. Every time I think she's lost interest and dropped me, she resurfaces. She'll send a one-sentence message, not answer any of the questions I asked, and tell me how busy she is. Maybe so, but it's hard for me to shake the feeling that I'm not one of her first choices.

#4: Mystery Girl Sighting! Divorced single mother, 23, student at my college. Yesterday she walked past my desk for the first time in months. She was very friendly and smiley and made a comment about the weather, but didn't say anything about seeing me on Match.

She sat down in a chair across the room, facing my desk, and worked on her laptop. (Again, she hasn't done this in months.) I don't know if she expected me to come over and talk to her, but I didn't. Should I have? I still don't know if she's seen the message I sent to her on Match. According to the site, she still hasn't logged on in a month, but you also get an email when someone sends you a message, so she could have seen that. It seems like too much of a coincidence that she would come into the library just a few days after I sent her that message, but maybe it is just that. For now, Mystery Girl remains a mystery.

#5: On Monday I discovered a new candidate. 31, single, grad student. According to Match, we were a "100% match." I really liked what she wrote on her profile, it was clever and witty. Her pictures are also very cute. My only concern is that she may be a little too tall for me. I composed a message to her on Monday, but because it was that odious heart-shaped holiday I waited til Tuesday to send it. She responded, just to say she was really busy and would write more in a few days. Still waiting for that longer message.

In the meantime, I was telling a friend about this, and it turns out he knows her! He sublet her apartment over the summer. Huh. Small world. He said that she was indeed really friendly and cute. Hopefully I can meet her in person and tell her about our mutual connection.

There have been two others I've approached on OKCupid, but neither has responded. One lady approached me on OKCupid, and we've exchanged a couple of short messages, but I don't know if I should give her a number or not. She's not really my type, and her profile says something like "Sorry, guys, I'm spoken for." Then why are you online trolling for guys? Also, her profile pic shows her sticking her tongue out. I'm not a fan of "wacky" profile pics like that. Let me see what you look like, not how silly you can be.

Also, not sure where this fits into the number system, but I saw that FutureLibrarian (FL) is still on OKCupid. Remember her? She's the one I had an intense one-week online affair with, but when we met in person, she wasn't interested. But then K swept in to salve my wounded ego, and the rest was history. So, anyway, FL is still there, 15 months later, so this morning I sent her a message just to see if she'd like to hang out as friends. She's also divorced and single and around my age, and I could always use more local friends like that. She hasn't responded yet.

So that's it. More updates later.

Dating Geography

I thought I was going to take a day off from trying to contact new online prospects, but today I was absolutely compelled to write to a girl on OKCupid who seems like a great match on paper. She lives 100 miles away from me.

When I consider all the different women I've tried to contact on online dating sites, I realize I have created an huge geographic ring around Snarktown.

In driving time, there's one an hour South of Snarktown. One an hour West. Several about 2.5 hours North. A few 2 hours Northeast. One two hours East. And one 3 hours Southeast. That's six surrounding cities. And, of course, a few who actually live in Snarktown.

The nerd in me is fascinated by this dating ring.

Premature

I think one of the things that makes it so hard for me to get over K is that she ended things while we were still in love. Our relationship was cut down in its prime. It never got a chance to run its course.

There very well may be some significant dealbreakers between us. If we lived in the same town, maybe we would have got on each other's nerves or drove each other crazy. But we never got a chance to find out, because she got scared and ended it prematurely. So for the rest of my life she will exist as this ideal, the One Great Love that didn't get a chance to realize its potential.

There were so many things I wanted to do with K, but we never got to them. The moments we had together were amazing, but they were too few and too short. Ten months is not long enough for a long-distance relationship of such significance.

*****

SnarkEx did the same thing. We only had 2.5 years of marriage. That's a tiny little baby marriage. She hardly gave it a chance. When she left, I heard through the grapevine that she told people it was a "long time coming," but that was news to me. Maybe in 5 or 10 years I would have seen how wrong we were for each other. But I wasn't ready for it to end so soon. Here again, it felt like she was killing something good in its prime. (Although now I can see the advantage of our premature divorce, because it led me to K.)

*****

I suppose I could talk myself into the fact that K wasn't right for me, but that means accepting some really unpleasant truths. If K wasn't right for me, despite how madly, stupidly, wholly I adored her, then how could I ever expect to find the right one? I'm 39 years old and I've loved 5-6 women. If none of them were It, then maybe I have to give up the idea of One True Love. It's silly to be 39 and talking about the Love of My Life. My life is half over. The best I can hope for now is my Next Love, the Love of Right Now, the Love That Will Probably Die in a Few Years Because They All Do. Which doesn't quite have the same ring of destiny.

This is becoming my Year Of Panic. I'm terrified of turning 40 and being single. Which is not a very good strategy for finding a mate, I know. The thing is, if this story does have a happy ending (which so many of them do), then I'll feel really foolish for being so panicky and whiny the whole time I was single. I will look back at this time and regret that I couldn't enjoy it.

But.

That only counts if I actually do find someone. There are no guarantees. The older I get, the more my options shrink. And they were pretty limited to begin with.

*****

I'm not quite as pissy or downtrodden as I was on Monday. It seems that that was a 48-hour mood. I've gone back into diversion mode: NOT thinking about how the life I lead is not the one I want, and the only way to change that is to find a needle in a haystack.

Yesterday I stumbled on OKCupid, the last dating site I'd used before I met K. Although it wasn't my intention, I ended up reactivating my profile and playing around the site for hours, answering questions and viewing profiles. It's a good distraction, and once again I'm excited about possibilities. The fun thing about OKCupid is that they ask you all these questions and then compare the answers with potential mates. So you can see, mathematically, how you match up with other people. It's great for a numbers nerd like me.

The good and bad thing about the questions, though, is that a LOT of them revolve around sex-- sexual habits and sexual preferences. It's a topic I love dearly, except that it gets me all excited to see, for example, that a girl I'm interested in likes to be woken up in the middle of the night to get it on. Only, it's not necessarily ME that she wants to do that with. It's some hypothetical partner who is, overwhelmingly likely, NOT me. These questions put sex on my brain long before I'm to that point. Talk about being premature! I'm hyper-sexualized to begin with, I don't need a dating site to get me in the mood.

On the Match front, I decided it's time to resume my strategy of approaching one new woman a day until I get some more responses. All my active connections seem to have fizzled out. I did get a one-sentence message from #2 this morning, just saying how super busy she's been the past four days. She didn't answer any of my questions. I don't know what to do with that. I haven't heard from Mystery Girl, but her profile says she hasn't been on the site in a month, so I have no idea if she ever got my message, or ever will.

I sent a message to a new lady yesterday (#5?), and she responded, thanking me and saying she was really busy, but would write a longer response in a few days. I appreciate the note, but I don't think I'm going to put my online dating on hold while I wait. I worry about getting too many conversations going at once, because I don't want to get into a situation where I'm carrying on with multiple women at the same time. Somehow it almost feels like "cheating." Which is stupid, because I know that's how it works. It's just not how I work.

Now I know why I'm not making any progress on my writing projects. I'm too preoccupied with online dating sites. Especially now that I'm on two of them. It really is like a full-time job, looking for a date.

I'm not getting anything done and my brain is scattered all over the place. Is it possible to be overwhelmed and lonely at the same time?

February Frozen Tundra of Socialness

I just want to get through this friggin' day without hearing the V-word one more time.

If it's not people wishing me a happy one, or obnoxious lovers going all out to celebrate a manufactured Hallmark holiday, it's angry single people making fun of it. I can't go anywhere-- to Facebook, to blogs, to the radio, to TV, to work, to the Co-Op, to my favorite websites-- without having it rammed down my throat. (Although I have to admit, this is pretty funny.) And all I ever wanted was to boycott it, to ignore it, to pretend it doesn't exist. I wasn't going to give it any power by acknowledging it.

FAIL.

Even when I was in a relationship, I was never a fan of this day. Flower shops were sold out, restaurants were overbooked. It was impossible to make any plans. It's stupid to have one day when everybody celebrates something so personal. I don't like being told when I have to be romantic. When I'm in love, I want to be spontaneous and/or celebrate events of personal significance. Why let a stupid card company dictate that to me?

So while I'm failing miserably at my attempts to ignore it, I might as well say how I'm feeling: Go fuck yourself, V-day.

*****

You wanna know how I'm celebrating today? I'm getting angry. Angry at K for not appreciating how awesome we were together. For not getting how valuable "comfortable and easy" is in a relationship. For being yet another person to let me down. Then I get sad and terrified that she's found someone else. That I was wrong and she really has found someone better than me.

Today is sponsored by this memory: SnarkEx telling me point blank, "I don't love you." The most devastating words she could utter (after she routinely told how happy she was to be married to me.) I never said anything half as cruel to her. For that sentence alone, she deserves a lifetime of misery. But she won't get it. She can charge through her life leaving destruction in her wake, but it won't matter. She'll just go rut around blissfully with her disgusting troll of a boyfriend. (The person, mind you, we were talking about when she uttered those four famous words.)

This isn't really about V-day, I'm just using that as my lightning rod. Since yesterday I've taken a nosedive. I don't know what happened. I know February is the most depressing month, but it seemed like I was doing really well this year. I wasn't complaining about the weather nearly as much as everyone around me. I think I've just had too much alone time lately and it's making me crazy. I'm just so fucking tired of having to put myself out there again and again and again and again. If I don't fight like hell to be social, plan ahead and initiate, initiate, initiate, I drown in my own juices.

Although the weather is warming this week, when I look at my calendar, I see a frozen tundra of non-socialness stretched out before me. That is what I have to look forward to. A lifetime of fighting like hell just to maintain the status quo. It just gets so tiring. The only time I feel good is when I'm lost in fantasy. When I think about how things could be, rather than how things are. What kind of way is that to live?

It's not natural, the way I live. I'm a human being with social needs. We aren't meant to live as isolated individuals.

Only 7.5 more hours, then I can be done with this day.

Immediate Gratification

Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia in Star Wars and the wise-cracking best friend in When Harry Met Sally, wrote a book in the 80's, Postcards From the Edge, which was also made into the movie. The neurotic protagonist in the book once says the famous line, "Instant gratification takes too long."

*****

I'm not quite that neurotic, but that line has been in my head this weekend because my quota of instant gratification is not getting met. I ran around all day yesterday trying to run errands and accomplish things, and it felt like one thing after another was a FAIL.

I skipped the tennis workout Saturday morning because I wanted to get serious about my writing projects. I thought, naively, that if I just took one day and Got To It, I could knock out my minor writing project (an essay about my cruise) so that then I could start concentrating on my major writing project (my love-ography in fairy tale form.)

I got as far as opening up the cruise essay file on my computer. Then I didn't write a single word. Not one word.

This morning I'm going to a later "church" service so that I can sit at my computer and write, but as you can see, it's not my essay I'm working on, but this blog post. So why am I writing this instead of working on the other thing? It's about instant gratification.

I have no idea if anyone will read or care about my cruise essay. I don't know when I'll finish it, so anything I write now, it may be weeks or months before I get any gratification out of it. But for my blog, I know people will read it sooner. Also, there's not as much pressure on a blog post. This is mostly me just letting off steam. It doesn't have to be polished.

*****

I'm so tired of not having a primary audience in my life. There have been so many things that have happened to me this weekend that I want to talk about, but no one cares. My tennis shoe saga, shoveling frustrations, couch-buying adventures, the strange winter abdominal pains that have returned, gossip about someone I know. When I think about the last thing, I realize it would have been the perfect thing to tell K. And she would have had an interesting or insightful reply. She gave great conversation. Sigh.

I wish I had a BFF to call up to talk to tell these things to, or even better, someone who would go couch shopping with me. I'm so tired of being single. I'm glad I have this blog, but it doesn't provide the immediate gratification that a face-to-face conversation does.

*****

When I was in college, one of the many majors I cycled through was Journalism. I even won a scholarship for it, and I worked on the school paper as a reporter. I was pretty good at it and won an award for best new writer one summer. But I couldn't stand reporting, and here's why. Most of my time was spent calling people for interviews and waiting for them to call me back.

Ultimately, I decided that I spent too much of my personal life waiting for people to call me back, I didn't want to do that in my career, too.

The online dating thing is getting frustrating. So many women just never write back. Not even to say, "No thanks." Or if we do exchange a few messages, they just suddenly stop writing. So I'm left to agonize over what it was I said in my last message that turned them off. Every time I log into my email and see no new messages, it's another dagger in my confidence.

I don't have anything new to report since my last post. I did write Mystery Girl Friday morning, and as of Sunday morning, no word. Her profile did say she hadn't been on the site in 3 weeks, so maybe she's just not that active. But still, you'd think she'd receive an email notice and check it out.

Girl #2 still mails me sporadically. The messages themselves are encouraging, but the frequency makes me think she's not interested. I've been trying for two weeks to set up a coffee date, but she's being really coy. At some point I'm just going to lose interest.

Whatever. I hope all of this frustration and rejection is just setting up the scene for the perfect woman, my WorthIt.

In the meantime, I'm waiting impatiently for my immediate gratification.

Good for Chess, Bad for Dating

I don't play a whole lot of chess-- I've maybe played about 30 games in my life. But I know enough about the game to know that the best chess players anticipate how the game is going to play out. They have the ability to look four or five or seven moves into the future in order to trap their opponents and win the game.

So the ability to look ahead is a useful talent in chess.

In dating, not so much.

In fact, I think it is my penchant for looking ahead that makes me such a bad dater. I can't just get to know someone and enjoy their company for its own sake. I have to think about what my future with this person will look like.

Yesterday I found Mystery Girl on Match.com and I've been trying to figure out if I should contact her or not. Part of me was thrilled that I was able to find her at all. I spent much of last November/December trying to figure out how to get in contact with her, and here I've cracked the code. Of course I need to keep going!

But my mind races ahead to us dating, living together, sharing a life. What would that look like? I imagine her and her son moving in with me. Maybe my purpose is to support a young single mother as she raises her child. But is that what I want? Will that allow me to be the person I want to be? Maybe. I could think of much worse fates, like being single and lonely the rest of my life.

When I look into the blackness of my soul, I suspect that the main reason I want to contact her is that I want to prove to myself that this is an option. That I could have that life if I wanted it. Even if I'm not sure that I want it. But I might!

I got a lot of good comments from people about this predicament. (Thanks, everyone!) Some felt that it would be creepy for someone you know in real life (IRL) to contact you on a dating site. Others said, go for it! What have I got to lose? And that's true, especially since I hardly ever see her in the library anymore, so it's not like we'd be having lots of awkward interactions if it didn't work out.

To answer your questions, this is how I would approach it. I would definitely say, "Hey, I know you!" (We've had two three-minute conversations, and I had hoped to have more, but then she stopped coming into the library.) I would acknowledge that I know we might not match up, but I wanted to let her know that I think she's very cute and that I admire the fact that she's so dedicated to raising her son. If she had any interest or time, I'd like to take her out to coffee sometime. Would that make me sound like a creepy old dude? According to Match, we do actually share similar views on politics and religion, so that's something.

At the very least, all I want to do is let her know cute I think she is. I don't know if that's stupid or not, especially if I'm not sure what to do with that cuteness. I keep thinking ahead and wondering if I'm just wasting my time on something I suspect won't work out. Here is where my age comes in, because I feel like if I were 10 years younger, I'd have all the time in the world to "waste" and could take more chances. The problem is, it's by taking chances that we discover great things.

So that's where I'm at.

*****

I still haven't heard from my two fizzling online prospects, so I think I'm ready to put myself out there some more. Last week I had a long list of potentials that I wanted to approach, but now I'm feeling hesitant or uninspired. Like maybe I should take a short breather before I jump back in.

I was about ready to send a message to someone yesterday, a new one I hadn't noticed before, but then I saw a tiny thing at the very bottom of her profile, under "Smokes: daily." I could handle the pet hair from her three cats and one dog, but I don't know if I could stand to date someone who lives in a cloud of smoke. There I go again, looking three moves ahead.

In another case, I got excited about a profile until I saw that she was "very" allergic to cats. There's always some little thing that trips me up like that.

I'm not sure how to respond to profiles who say that they're looking for someone who "loves kids." I don't have anything against kids. They can be entertaining and cute. Some of my favorite people used to be kids. But I would never call myself a kid enthusiast. They're not a hobby of mine or anything. At the same time, if a kid were to come into my life, either through natural means or by proxy, I could see getting into it. Especially since I dated K, the first person I ever thought I might want to make babies with.

But it still gives me pause when I see a profile of someone who "loves kids."

It's yet another thing that has me thinking seven moves ahead.

Matching Mystery Girl

Just for shits and giggles, I did a search on Match for the the demographic that I thought Mystery Girl would be. Only four profiles turned up. And one of them was her.

I found her! Holy shit! What do I do now?

She's 23, divorced, and has a son who appears to be her whole life. All the information from her profile matches perfectly with what I already knew about her, plus the picture is the obviously her.

On paper we don't match up at all. Although there are no active dealbreakers (for me), nothing she writes in her profile would have stood out to me if I hadn't met her in real life. But I just wrote about how maybe I need to take a chance with someone completely different. And she really is adorable.

Should I contact her? Or would it be inappropriate for the creepy old dude who works at her college to hit on her?

Who Do I Want To Be? Vol. 2

My experience with online dating is once again dredging up the question of who I want to be.

As I consider all the different potential mates, I think about how different my life could be with each of them. Every individual offers a unique experience that would affect my life in different ways.

In particular, I'm thinking about my "online dreamgirl," AKA Bachelorette #3, AKA the 28-year-old grad student from 3 hours away. Her profile is very similar to the profiles of previous girlfriends I've met online. She's short and cute and brainy and clever and lives the life of the mind. Her pictures even look like a cross between SnarkEx and GF #3.

I'm very attracted to that. But is is really what I want? GF #3 and SnarkEX were very much like her, and they were the 2nd and 3rd craziest women I dated. (That top honor goes to GF #2, the Crazy Swabian. And that's not just my opinion. My sister-in-law once spent an hour talking to her and afterward told me, "Snark, she's crazy." And she's a therapist, so she doesn't use that word lightly. Anyway.) We fought a lot and they were angry at me all the time.

It's been eight and seven years, respectively, since I met those exes online. Haven't I grown at all in that time? Why am I still looking for that same mold? Maybe it's time for me to look for a partner who's out of school, has a professional life and income, has figured out some of her issues, and knows what she wants. The only problem with that plan is that most women are already taken by that time. I date the less mature ones because they're the ones who are still single.

There are women on the dating sites who are more my age, and while their profiles don't excite me as much, they might give me a chance to be someone new. If they don't challenge me intellectually, maybe they will allow other aspects of my personality to bloom: the carnivore, the tennis jock, the goofball, the cat lover, the bad sitcom fan, the horndog.

Maybe it's time to step out of the mold.

*****

Of course, this is all a moot point if none of these women are interested in me. Attraction has to be mutual, and maybe I've only dated grad students up to now because they're the only ones who are attracted to a nerdy and brainy guy like me.

It feels like things are fizzling out with both of my online prospects. While I guess I'm still technically in contact with #2, it seems like we lost steam over the weekend. A message I sent her got lost in her spam folder, and even though we sorted it out, she's only sent me one short message since then and hasn't responded to my short response. She ignored all the questions I asked her before the mix-up. Last week she was being much more attentive.

As for dreamgirl, #3, I haven't heard from her in two and a half days. In my last message I gave her my email and asked her to write directly to that, so I don't know if that scared her off or if it's possibly another case of a message lost in cyberspace. (This has happened before.) I just went onto Match and saw that she was online at the same time, so I don't know if this is her way of blowing me off. It's strange though, because why bother to engage me in conversation at all, only to ignore me after three messages?

But, whatevs.

My original plan was to write to one new woman a day until I got some responses. There are a few more profiles I like, but I was waiting to see what happened with the current two before I continued with my plan. I don't want to get into a situation where I'm juggling too many women at once. (Yeah right, I should be so lucky.) So I wish the others would just be upfront with me if they've lost interest.

Names

In the ninth grade I had a crush on two girls at the same time who were both named Amanda.

In my early 20's there was a period of my life when I knew six Jenny/Jennifers. I had a crush on half of them, and dated one of them very briefly. This was before I met the Jenny who I would date for two years.

My clique in grad school included four Amy's. Three of them even had the same middle name, so we had to differentiate them by using their last names.

With that in mind, I've been pretty amazed by the diversity of women's names I've met, friended, corresponded with, dated, pursued, or blogged about since my divorce. With one small exception, none of these names have overlapped. That seems incredible to me.

The list includes Alison, Anita, Ashley, Beth, Breanne, Charize, Desiree, Emma, Emily, Heather, Jackie, Jenna, Jenny, Jolene, Julie, Karen, Kathleen, Kelly, Kim, Lane, Laura, Marisa, Margaret, Melissa, Miranda, Misty, Natalie, Nicki, Nikole, Rachel, Rebecca, Robin, Sabrina, Sarah, Tiffany, Tonya, Vika. That's 36 different names! *

Seriously, how many more names can one man encounter without having any overlap?

When I started this list, I thought there was just one small exception: a new blogfriend shares the name of the First Meeting Lady, who I went on two dates with 2.5 years ago. But since compiling the list I remembered that I think FutureLibrarian (FL) shared the same name as TennisGrrrl. I'm just going from a hazy memory, though, so I'm not 100% sure. And one of my blogfriends also shares a name with someone I've met on two occasions who I friended on Facebook.

So maybe it's not that remarkable after all. But it still feels weird to have all these different names swimming around my email folders, and with online dating I'm adding new ones every day.

*UPDATE: After sleeping on it, I remembered another name, which puts the list at 37. However, the whole "no overlaps" thing kind of falls apart the more I think about it. For some women, like some anonymous blogfriends and Mystery Girl, I don't even know their names. So there could be a lot of overlap that I don't know about. Also, I have cherry picked who I include on this list. I can think of two women I've met since my divorce who are named Samantha, one who I friended on FB, but I didn't put that name on the list. Not sure why. Oh well, it's a fun list, anyway.

A Tale of Four Dancing Nurses

Note: All names have been changed.

The first one I noticed was Sherri. She was the shortest of the dancing nurses on my cruise, the younger Filipino cousin. I spent three nights admiring her, watching her dance with her friends and trying to work up the courage to introduce myself. When I finally did talk to her, on the deck party Wednesday night, I was full of liquid courage (beer) and adrenaline from having just karaoke-ied "Cheeseburger In Paradise" at the top of my lungs in front of a lounge full of strangers.

Sherri told me that they were all nurses from the Bay Area. We talked for a short while, and then she introduced me to one of her friends, Lindsay. I remembered Lindsay because on Monday evening she had won a "single mingle" dance contest by grinding up against some lucky guy she didn't know. Tall and blond with long thick curly hair, she rocked it. I told her she had been "amazing" during the dance contest, and she said thanks, she hadn't even been drunk! We talked a little while longer and then Sherri and Lindsay went back to dancing.

Later that night, as I was walking through the casino bar back to my cabin, it was Lindsay who shouted my name, "Snark! Come hang out with us." She was in the middle of a group of about eight people, so Sherri was the one who stood at the edge of the group and introduced me to everyone else. They each waved and said hello, but I didn't register any of their names at that time.

As the group got ready to leave the bar, Lindsay asked me if I was going to Playa Mia the next day (when we docked in Cozumel.) Um, I hadn't thought about it. She told me they were going, but then her friend said only if they could get up in time to buy the tickets.

I slept in, so I didn't go to Playa Mia the next day. It was stupid, because instead of spending the day at the beach with dancing nurses, I walked into downtown Cozumel by myself and got bombarded by annoying vendors.

Thursday night I saw the nurses at the dance club again. Lindsay was there with two of her friends, but Sherri was nowhere to be seen. This was the night I finally got enough balls to join them on the dance floor. Afterward we went to see a midnight burlesque show. The two others went ahead to grab some seats, and I waited behind while Lindsay kept dancing, so I could go with her to the burlesque show. At that point Lindsay was my connection to the group.

Later that night I got to know the two others, Angela and Shantelle. Angela is the only one of the dancing nurses who's married, and she's here with her husband. She's also kind of like the ringleader of the group. A fun and fiery Texan who's not afraid to get "all Latina" on people who piss her off. I opened up to her and told her about K and she was sympathetic. I liked talking to her the best.

Shantelle was Sherri's older cousin. She was quiet, but she talked more when all four of us (me, Lindsay, Angela, Shantelle) got some pizza at 3:00 AM after the disco closed.

I spent all Friday walking around the boat hoping to see one of my new friends. It wasn't until late afternoon that I saw Lindsay sunning herself on deck with one of her other friends (whose name I didn't know.) We had a very awkward encounter, and when she walked off to get some coffee, I wasn't sure if I should follow her or not. I did for a little bit, but she took off so fast I started doubting myself. So I left. (Later, she asked me what had happened to me. I said, "You were walking really fast." Her friend said, "Yeah, she DOES walk fast.")

So after that awkward encounter I decided to get drunk on my last afternoon on the ship. Then I ran into Angela, who was happy to see me and we talked for several minutes. She told me to come by their table at dinner so we could all hang out afterward. So now it appeared that Angela was my connection to the group.

The last night on the boat was spent at the casino bar with my new friends. Sherri (remember Sherri, the original one?) sat next to me on a stool and we talked for quite a while. I bought her a drink. But then she was the first to turn in for the night. After that I went and sat next to Shantelle, Sherri's cousin and the only one of the four nurses who I hadn't had a one-on-one conversation with yet.

That was when I got smitten for the first time all week. I really enjoyed getting to know Shantelle, and just when the conversation started getting interesting-- about online dating-- the rest of the group decided it was time to go. (It was 2:00 AM and we had to leave the ship in about five hours.)

At the elevator I hugged Shantelle and Angela, told Angela to look me up on Facebook, and waved goodbye to Lindsay (it might have pissed her off that I didn't hug her too, but since we'd been having awkward interactions all day, I didn't know what to do.)

Since the cruise I have Facebook-friended Angela and Lindsay. Lindsay accepted my friend request, but doesn't really seem interested in FB communicating with me. (Furthering my paranoia that I pissed her off.) Angela is a good FB friend, commenting on pics I posted from the cruise and stuff. Shantelle appears not to be on FB at all, or if she is, her security is set so high that I can't see any evidence of her.

I asked Angela to forward some pics on to Shantelle, and have her send me an email if she wants to say hi, but I never heard from her. I guess the drunken crush I had on her was not reciprocated.

*****

This story has a point. If you walk into a room, say a dance club on a cruise ship sailing through the Gulf of Mexico, and you see a group of people, you can hardly ever tell which one(s) will end up being significant to you. And sometimes each one will wax and wane in importance as you get to know them in turn.

My first connection to the group was Sherri. She handed me off to Lindsay. Then through Lindsay I met Angela. And on the final night I got to know Shantelle and I got a big crush on her. When I came home I was convinced that Shantelle would be my big cruise connection.

Post-cruise, Angela has become my best cruise buddy.

You just never know.

*****

The same is true of online dating. When I first "walked in" to Match.com, there were a lot of women who caught my eye. Odds are, they will be the duds. It's impossible to know which one will be significant and which one, if any, will be the female lead in the story of Snarkbutt's Quest For Love VII. Some of them will be bit players, some will be supporting characters, some will be main characters and one lucky lady will be the female lead. I just don't know which is which yet.

So, trying to tease all of that out, I'm currently in touch with two lovely ladies. I should probably start to give each of them identifying numbers, like my blogfriend Jolene did when she was online dating. [didn't you get up to 14, J?]

Here are the three I've had mutual contact with:

#1: Coffee date lady. Met for coffee, didn't match, and I was relieved about it.

#2: Restaurant manager. Lives an hour away. Same age, marital status, kids-wanting status ("Not sure".) She seems to be interested, but setting up an in-person meeting may be difficult. Haven't heard from her for two days though. Don't know if that means anything.

#3: Going for a half-court shot, I sent a message to my online dreamgirl, a 28-year-old grad student who lives in my old college town, about 3 hours away from Snarktown. I'm five years old than what she's looking for (11 years older total) and 100 miles further away (150 miles total.) She also wants a never-been-married. But her pictures are adorable and her profile is smart, clever, and witty. It was the kind of profile that the last three girlfriends I've met online had. (And strangely, her pictures looked like a cross between SnarkEx and GF #3.) So without much hope I sent her a clever and witty message anyway. She didn't respond, so like all the others who don't respond to my clever and witty come-ons, I assumed she wasn't interested. It happens.

Then Sunday morning I'm checking my Match mail to see if #2 had written. Instead, there's a message from #3! She's sorry she didn't write sooner, but she was recovering from surgery last week. I scan the message for the polite rejection. Oh, here it is: she admits that I'm a bit too old for her, but she likes the joke I made about only reading at a 34-year-old level.

But.

Then she goes on to ask me a bunch of questions. If I'm too old for her, why is she trying to keep up the conversation? I think she might be receptive to a geezer like me.

So, since then we've exhanged a few messages. Even if it doesn't go anywhere, I'm enjoying the conversation.

Shower Equilibrium

You ever get in a shower, maybe a shower you're not familiar with, and the water comes out way too hot? And so, in order to avoid scalding, you turn it quickly, and then it becomes way too cold? And it's a sensitive knob, so every little turn makes a huge difference in the temperature. You spend several uncomfortable minutes trying to get the temperature just right.

That's what my social life is like. It's either too much or too little. Too hot or too cold. I'm constantly trying to adjust the knob to get it just right.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I got a third snow day yesterday. Because I wasn't able to enjoy the first two properly, the Universe was generous and closed my college for a third day.

I was able to relax and enjoy my third snow day. At first. In the morning I got some writing done, shoveled my driveway (for the third time in two days), did some online correspondence.

But soon cabin fever crept in. After lunch I should have gone out and Done Something. Instead I took a nap. Over 72 hours I only left the house once, and that was to go on a coffee date with someone from Match. And I couldn't wait to get home from that. I was relieved to be home again and out of that entanglement, but my relief only lasted about half a day. Then it was back to my lonely miserable existence.

Now I'm back at work, and I suppose it's good to have my daily routine back. But I've only worked half a day and I'm already dreaming about being back home on my couch. Turning the shower knob...

*****

Online Dating Update: So I just sent a short "thanks, no thanks, good luck in your search" note to the lady from Wednesday. Thanks for all your input, everyone. I agree that it is the right thing to do, but I'm still annoyed that somehow this was MY responsibility. In general, I resent the fact that, as a man, or just a relatively assertive and open person, it always falls on me to initiate these kinds of things. Passivity is NOT a turn-on for me.

In talking with lots of women who have done online dating, I'm beginning to think that it's a completely different experience for women than for men. Or, at least, for a short nerdy man in a smallish Midwestern city. I hear of stories on illiterate idiots, of multiple dating opportunities every weekend, of inboxes filling up with dozens of messages. I don't get any of that. In the 10 years that I've been (off and on) online dating, only one woman has ever sent me an unsolicited message. That was AG, who I ended up dating for four months.

So far, I've sent five initial messages out. Only two have responded. Granted, for the other three I didn't match their geographic or age requirements, but you never know how strict people are with that. There was one that was absolutely perfect for me (adorable pics, intellectual, funny, smart clever writing, common interests) but I don't think I was her match (too old, too far away, possibly too short?)

Here's an interesting specimen: twice in her profile she used the phrase "open minded" to describe the man she's looking for, but in her About My Date section she wants a man who's between 5'8" - 6'2" (she's only 5'0"), was never married, doesn't have kids, but wants kids. (She's 40.) Maybe this is just her ideal and she's not that strict on these things, but it's just funny to me that someone who wants an "open minded" partner can be so particular herself. (As a short guy, it drives me absolutely batshit when very short women won't date someone only a few inches taller than them.) Despite all that, she's still in my favorites because she says some really interesting things, and I'm trying to stay "open-minded."

I've decided I'll write one new message a day until I get some more responses. Or until I exhaust my pool of favorites.

Currently I only have one active correspondent, a 38-year-old divorced childless restaurant manager who lives an hour away. She had a lot of interesting things on her profile that I was excited to respond to. The email rapport is definitely better than with the first lady from Wednesday. On paper we match up pretty well, but there are some things that give me pause. But I'm trying to stay open-minded til we meet in person. I asked her to a coffee date, but our schedules are such that it will be at least next weekend til we can meet, maybe later. But she's been consistent about emailing me, even just to say she doesn't have time now and will write more later. So I think she must be interested.

As I was writing this, I got a response from Wednesday coffee lady: an even shorter "thanks, good luck to you" response.

So I can close that file with a clear concience.

Who's next?

Relief

So I just had my first coffee date from Match.com.

It was a huge success, but not for the reason one might think.

My blogfriend Jolene once wrote about an online date meeting where she knew in the first 15 seconds there wasn't going to be a second date. Well, I met my Ms. 15 Seconds.

I could list all the reasons why I think she wasn't right for me-- some superficial, some significant-- but there's no need to do an autopsy on this one. She was a very nice person, and I wish her the best. I just didn't feel it. At all.

And to be honest, that's a huge relief. Ever since we set up the (sudden) coffee date today (because we both had a snow day), I'd been seriously stressing out. I didn't WANT to like her. I wasn't ready yet to give up on the other prospects I had. Something about her profile and our written rapport just didn't feel right, but I didn't want to be shallow and blow her off without giving her a chance.

But after meeting her, I can now honestly say that there was just no attraction there. And I came home in a great mood, happy to be returning to my regular life. Happy to be coming home single. Huh. How about that?

The only question that remains is how I should finish this. Do I owe her a message to say I don't think we had a connection? Or should I just let it die and let my silence speak? It could be that she felt the same way as me, in which case my rejection note would come across as presumptuous.

Anyway, I didn't realize how stressed this whole thing was making me until I met her. And now I'm so happy I did.

Snow Day Musings

So I got my precious snow day. Two of them, in fact. What's weird is that I don't feel any less stressed about getting stuff done. I feel like I need to take advantage of the days off and get to all my writing projects. And my leisure projects. And being social. I can't decide what to do when. I feel pulled in six different directions. Why can't I just relax and enjoy the day off?

I'm in contact with one Match lady. We've been sending short emails to each other, and I suppose it's time for me to ask her out to coffee. There are some promising things in her profile, but the emails don't really excite me, as it seems like she's playing it very close to the vest and not revealing much, nor does she seem curious about me. Not really my style. Maybe she'll be different in person, and I'm keeping an open mind. But I consider online communication an important part of my life. K was great at it.

There I go again, comparing someone to K. It's hard for me to express how uniquely special K was. I could make a list, and I'm sure it would go into the hundreds, of all the individual things I loved about her. I still think of new things to add to that hypothetical list every day. I won't write out the list, though, because it would be a stupid, masochistic exercise. At least half the list would be things I couldn't post here, because they're too private and personal.

It's uncanny how many people who have seen pictures of her or met her in person agree with me when I say how special she was. Everyone loves K! It makes me wonder if maybe she really was out of my league.

She had one fatal flaw. And many people have pointed that out. She didn't want me. But she did! I never would have fallen for her so hard if she hadn't returned my feelings. She went against her orientation, her whole identity, in order to be with me. That was part of the appeal. In the end I don't think it was about that, though. She just didn't have enough experience. I might have made the same decision in her place. How can you know if someone is The One if they're the only one you've ever known? There's no basis for comparison. How can you know if ice cream is your favorite dessert if you've never had chocolate or pie or cupcakes? How can you know what blue is if it's the only color you've ever seen? Blue only has meaning when it's contrasted with red and green and yellow.

I think part of me is still holding out hope that she'll realize how great we were together. She has no idea what she threw away. The weekend we split up, she told me stories of people she knew who broke up with their significant other, but then a few months or a year later they got back together for good. It's a common story, and in fact two of my blogfriends have gone through it. Sometimes people need that separation to appreciate what they had.

I'm not expecting her to want me back, and I'm certainly not waiting around for it. It's just a possibility in the back of my head. In the meantime, I'm trying to move on. But it's hard to deny how high she's raised the bar. It's going to take one hell of a special woman to follow her. There are a few things I could get excited about, like dating someone locally or discovering new relationship models I didn't know were possible. I'm not completely morose about the prospect of having a new girlfriend, and I'm not looking for someone exactly like K. I know how unique she was.

A lot of people have suggested to me that I have fun with the online dating thing. Let me explain something about me: Dating is not fun. It's not a hobby or an activity I'm doing just to pass the time. Some people love the thrill of the hunt. Not me. Dating is an ordeal I have to go through in order to get what I want. It's like finding a job. Do you tell people who are applying for a job that they should just have fun out there?

So of course I'm stressed out. I'm always stressed out when I date. If being stressed out is an indication that I'm not ready to date, then I've never been ready.

UPDATE: Okay, sorry for the snarky end to this post. I just checked my mail and got a response to one of my messages on Match. That was a little exciting. So now I guess I'm in contact with two women. I still wouldn't call it fun, and it will just add to my stress of what to do today, but it's something.

On Paper

I've had a pretty miserable day.

I didn't sleep well last night because I'm obsessing about online dating. I keep thinking about my profile and how I should change it-- take away some things, add some others. I think about something I wrote and suddenly I'm completely embarrassed by it, like noticing a booger on your cheek during a date. I'm constantly struggling to present the perfect mix of sincere and goofy, fun and serious, happy and thoughtful, hot and horny. (Thanks for the advice, Sarah!) There are so many sides to me, how do I show them all in 1,500 words?

I'm also obsessing about all the different women I've seen. Images of profile pics flash through my head like a row of dancing chorus girls. But I'm mostly thinking about the one lady I've made contact with. (She'll need a nickname if this continues.) I keep imagining all the scenarios of us dating, getting together, sharing a life. I haven't even met her yet and I'm already thinking about A Relationship. And it scares the shit out of me.

Huh? Haven't I been whining nonstop since K dumped me that I just want a relationship? That my life is incomplete without one? So why am I so afraid to get into one now? Because, as much as I know this is my life's goal, I also know that it has to be the right person. I don't want to settle. Like baking a cake, all the ingredients have to be there in the right amount, and timing is everything. It feels like right now the stakes are higher than ever, probably because I'm older than I've ever been. I don't know how many more chances at love I'll get.

*****

Some commenters focused on a sentence from my previous post that I'd like to respond to. I was talking about the profiles of the women on Match, and I said,

On paper they're no K, or SnarkEx or even AG.

Everyone agrees that it's a bad idea to compare. It reminds me of something a friend of mine told me many years ago, after I complained to him that "on paper" someone had been perfect for me. He said, "You need to throw that paper away."

So, yes, I've heard this before. Here's the thing. I'm not going to stop comparing relationships. It's what I do. I'm an academic: analyzing, comparing and contrasting is woven into my being. Since my first girlfriend and I broke up, I've always compared the next one to the last one(s). It's usually a favorable comparison, because each new relationship offers new and exciting things I hadn't experienced before. If thinking about my past relationships means I'm not ready to date, then I've never been ready to date.

Perhaps I've mentioned this before, but K seriously raised the bar. It's hard for me to imagine that I'll ever find someone as awesome as her. Does that mean I don't deserve to love again? To at least try? And just because I can't imagine it, that doesn't mean it can't happen. I never imagined I could get K, and I did. Sometimes life surprises me.

Let me put my above statement in context. On paper K and I fit together better than anyone I've ever been with. When I first saw SnarkEx's online profile seven years ago, we matched so well I was beside myself with excitement. My first nickname for AG was TGTBT, Too Good To Be True, because it seemed like her profile had been written just for me. On paper all these women did it for me. We know what happened in real life: AG wasn't too good to be true, she just wasn't right for me. SnarkEx left me. And K remains, on paper, in my heart, in my loins, the one that got away.

None of the profiles I viewed this weekend gave me the same initial feeling of destiny I had with the others. That doesn't mean none of these women could turn out to be the next love of my life. (Or that they can't be the one to get me over K.) It just means the initial on paper excitement isn't there. I don't know why. Maybe because K raised the bar too high. Maybe because I'm still heartbroken. Maybe I'm not ready to date yet. Maybe none of these women are right for me. Time will tell.

*****

So I was exhausted this morning from the lack of sleep. Then I had to hit the ground running at work this morning. I'm still feeling overwhelmed lately with tasks, both at home and at work. I spent three hours at our satellite campus today, giving two classes a library presentation. The campus is a half hour drive away, and while I was there I developed a headache. I couldn't take anything for it because all my painkillers were back at my desk at the main campus. So by the time I drove back to my desk, half an hour through an ice storm, the headache was so bad I was nauseous and dizzy. I took my painkillers but they did nothing. I felt awful and couldn't concentrate. I left work an hour early, only to drive another hour through the ice storm, my head pounding and my stomach churning.

When I got home I immediately took a nap, which was sorely needed, and felt much better after I woke up.

Everyone's talking about a snow day tomorrow, and I sure could use one. But I'm not holding my breath, because every time people talk about it, it never happens. We've gotten tons of snow this year, but never at the right time for them to cancel class.

So, in case I have to drive through an ice storm to get to work tomorrow, I'm gonna go check my Match account now.

Match-eration

It's official: I'm on Match.com.

I found myself with some leisure time yesterday afternoon, and although I had a lot of projects to work on, I made the mistake of clicking on the Dating link on Yahoo. In the 1.5 years since I've online dated, I guess Yahoo! Personals has merged with Match, because that's where they took me.

Of course, they wouldn't let me view any of the ladies' profiles until I created one of my own, so I spent a frustrating hour or so just throwing shit up there so they would let me in. I had a really hard time coming up with a handle and a headline and a description of myself, because I wasn't prepared to be creative yet, I just wanted to browse some profiles. I threw up a placeholder that said, "I'm not ready to write this yet but Match is forcing me to so I can view profiles. Minimum 200 characters. Minimum 200 characters. Minimum 200 characters. Minimum 200 characters." Once I was able to lurk on the site, I found enough ads to make it worth my while, so then I went back and updated my profile.

At first I was stymied as to what to write, but then this here blog came to the rescue. I remembered a post I wrote about my talents and used that as the basis for my personal description. (Abridged and edited, of course.) I've spent entirely too much time editing and re-writing my profile over the past two days. I haven't even made contact with a woman yet, and online dating is already taking up too much of my time.

So, what have I found? There's about five local profiles that I "favorited", but none of them jump out as the love of my life. On paper they're no K, or SnarkEx or even AG. So I expanded my search geographically to include a few big cities within a three-hour drive. That search was much more promising. I added about 10 more profiles to my Favorites. The ad that appealed to me the most is-- surprise!-- a 28-year-old grad student from a college town about 2.5 hours away from Snarktown. There's also a 31-year-old "Jew-rican" (her word) from Big City, and a 40-year-old therapist from Other Big City. So I'm kinda all over the place. It is kind of exciting to look through profiles and collect them in my Favorites, like putting good-looking treats in your shopping cart. "Oh, she's really cute, and she said something clever! In the Favorites you go!"

To be honest, a long distance relationship about 2-3 hours away really appeals to me. It would be nice to date someone who's not in my town, so I could maintain my independence and it would force us to go slow, but also not 700 miles away like K was. For me, finding the right person is way more important than having them be in my town.

Probably the best prospect from Snarktown is a 44-year-old divorced mother. Her profile doesn't excite me as much as some of the out of town ones, and I worry that she might turn into another AG: someone I would date for four months, then breakup with because it just doesn't feel right, which would then inspire me to just be single for a while. If it's not me getting rejected, it's me doing the rejecting. Why is it so hard for two people to ever want the same thing?

I'm getting way ahead of myself, but this is why I suck at dating. I can't just get to know someone as a human being, I have to think way into the future to figure out if I want to be locked in with them for the rest of my life. And then there's the issue of whether I should approach all these women one at a time, or multiple ones at the same time. That could exhaust me. I'm not a multitasker.

This is all moot. Ninety percent of the women I've "favorited" probably aren't even interested in me.

*****

So this afternoon I got my first "wink." It was the local 44-year-old divorced mother. So maybe the initial interest is mutual. I guess I should send her a message. I described her to a friend, and we figured out that he knows her-- they work out together. Huh. Small world. Or small Snarktown, anyway.

Meanwhile, my busy pace has continued. I've gone out four nights in a row. I've been horribly neglectful of my two writing projects (one long-term and one short-term), which bothers me. My TiVo shows have been piling up. And here I am starting online dating, which takes as much energy as applying for a job.

I haven't even subscribed to the site yet so that I can send messages. That's something I'll do. Just as soon as I finish blogging about it.

Possible Singles Dates

I got an email last week with the subject heading, "Possible Singles Dates." You'll never guess what it was about.

It was a call for people interested in a tennis league, and the possible dates they could play singles (as opposed to doubles.)

I'm not interested in this particular league, so instead the email mocked me with possibilities, singles and dates-- three words that are on my mind a lot lately.

*****

I'm still reluctant to venture into any of the online dating sites yet. For one thing, I've just been super busy and exhausted. Today is the first day all week I don't have any class visits-- the most stressful and important part of my job-- so it's nice to relax a little. But now I'm faced with all the other stuff that's been piling up on my desk all week.

I haven't visited many of my favorite websites in forever. I'm way behind on The Onion and Dealbreaker and the Oatmeal, and my advice columns, Savage Love and Dear Prudence. And LOLcats? Fuggedaboutit! I haven't canhazcheeseburgered in months.

Part of the issue is that my blogging community is growing. Which is great. For the first two years of this blog I hardly had any blogfriends, but in the past few months I've added more and more blogs to my daily reading. I now have 14 blogs on my blogroll. I love having this sense of community-- following the lives of a diverse group of people from around the world, and having people follow mine-- but it's eating up more and more of my work and free time. I love my bloglife, but I want to have a real life too. Not sure how to reconcile that.

(Blogfriends: Even if I don't respond, I do appreciate every comment I get, and I do read all of your own blog posts, even if I'm not always inspired to post a comment. And I know from Blogger's stats that lots of people are reading this, even if you don't comment. Welcome, lurkers!)

*****

It feels a little odd to be without any dating prospects whatsoever. It's one thing to be single again, but it's a whole different level of singleness to not even have someone I'm thinking about or scheming on.

But I'm still plugging away, making plans and keeping my eyes open. I will try the online thing, eventually, when I get bored and desperate enough. Hey, February is just around the corner, and nothing inspires boredom and desperation like the last full month of winter.

I'm wrestling with some social opportunities this week. Tonight is an event sponsored by the Co-Op that I'm only mildly interested in, but I feel like I should get more involved in their events. It gets me out of the house and around people. But I've already asked three people if they want to go with me, and they either can't go or aren't interested. Sigh. I could go by myself (and probably will), but what if I run into Co-Op Girl and once again look like the desperate guy with no friends? Or more importantly, will I feel that way?

Friday night another local organization is sponsoring a documentary on a cause that K was really into. I'm trying to decide if I should go to it. It's not really a cause that I care that much about (although K did a good job of opening my mind on it), but again, it's a way to get out of the house and maybe meet new people. Maybe if K was into it, I could meet someone else like her. On the other hand, is it pathetic to attend an event only because my ex was really into it? It seems like I'm still letting her influence my choices.

*****

Anyway, it's good to have a little time to breathe and contemplate these things.

Cycles

Today I am 39 1/3 years old; thirty-nine and four months.

Four months ago today I woke up next to the woman I love. We had a busy but fun day. For the first time since the divorce I was happy to celebrate my birthday, and it was all because of her. A little more than a month later she dumped me.

But that's in the past. And looking to the future, I only have eight months left til the dreaded Four-Oh. I'm one third of the way there from birthday to birthday. Ugh. Talk about dread. Part of the reason why I'm feeling such panic to find a mate since K dumped me is that I'm terrified of hitting 40 and being single.

My biggest fear about being 40 is that it will put me in a completely new dating demographic. I can forget about dating grad students in their mid to late 20's. Which happens to be the largest source of single women in my town. No, once I hit 40--officially Middle Age-- I will have to change my expectations. Divorced women in their 40's with teenage kids will be my new dating pool. Not that there's anything wrong with them. Some of my favorite people are in that group. But it's not a demographic that I'm used to dating, and I don't identify with them as much.

Most of the new friends I've made since my divorce have been in their early 30's. It's uncanny how I meet someone and then find out they're 30 or 31. Those are the people whose lives most resemble my own. I keep thinking of myself as a young professional in his late 20's/early 30's. But once I hit 40, that attitude will be untenable. I need to start acting my age.

*****

I went through the same thing when I was 29. I hated being 29, mostly because, like now, I was afraid of my odometer turning over. I didn't mind being 29 per se, what I minded was feeling like I was not where I thought I should be at that age. When I imagined myself five years younger, as a 24-year-old, I was perfectly happy with my life. So then I just decided to be 24. Problem solved.

So now I guess I'd like to be 32. That would still put me within dating distance of all those older grad students and young professionals, and wouldn't make me feel like I'm too old to still be looking for the great love of my life.

Twenty-nine was also a tough year because I finished a useless master's degree, broke up with my live-in girlfriend (the only other girlfriend I've lived with besides SnarkEx), and moved to a new town for a job that didn't pan out. It was a year of transitions.

*****

But 29 wasn't nearly as bad as 19. The year I turned 19 was probably the worst of my life. (At least in the top two, along with the year I got divorced.) I lived on my own for the first time in a dingy little downtown apartment with a slanted floor. I was horribly lonely and depressed. A stripper/prostitute lived above me and a biker couple lived in the apartment behind me. They would get in screaming fights and the guy would storm out, screaming, "I'll see you in hell, bitch!!!"

I like to call that time in my life my Great Depression.

*****

Aside from the year when I was 9-- which I imagine was a pretty good year because at that point I still had a happy childhood-- I'm noticing a pattern here. My last year of a decade is usually a difficult time for me.

But I have to admit that, compared to 19 and 29, 39 hasn't been too bad. Yes, I'm going through heartbreak, but I have so many more tools to deal with it than I did before. And looking back, my 30's were pretty great. Probably my best decade so far. (My first decade was also great-- but since I didn't have sex, tennis, or blogging back then, the 30's wins out.)

I dated four different women in my 30's. Married one of them. Finally finished all my degrees. Got a full time professional job, which made me feel like I'd won the lottery. Bought my first new car, then bought my first house. Spent eight years with the Greatest Cat Ever. Fell in love with tennis. Expanded my knowledge of the world. Had a lot of great sex. And although I've had my share of health problems in my 30's, I appear to be in great shape and cultivating healthy habits as the decades comes to an end.

So why am I afraid of my 40's? If the trend continues, my 40's should be even better than my 30's, which were better than my 20's, which were better than my teens.

*****

I'm getting older, my body is breaking down, the bald spot on the back of my head is getting bigger, and I have to start acting my age.

But at least I'm not 49. I'm sure when I'm 49, I will look at my body and then back at my 39-year-old self and think, "Man, he had no idea how good he had it."

So today I'll look to my 49-year-old self and say, "At least I'm not YOU."

Closing the File

I'll never forget the sentence a friend of mine uttered to me in high school when he wanted to tell me (gently) to stop pursuing a cute blue-eyed blond soccer player named Erica.

"Snark, It's time to close the Erica file."

(This was after she read the love note I'd written her, looked me up in the yearbook-- because she didn't know who I was-- and then laughed at my picture.)

*****

Over the years I've closed dozens of files on women I've pursued. I know how this works.

And it's time to close the file on Co-Op Girl.

She wasn't at the store yesterday when I did my weekly shopping, and since it's been a week since our last awkward conversation, where she said she'd email me but has been really busy, it's time for me to accept the only possible conclusion. She's just not into me.

Oh, I could continue to rationalize and do mental gymnastics to figure out how it's possible she's still interested but really has been busy. But it's been four weeks. There's a principle in science that says the simplest explanation is the most likely. She's not interested.

I still don't know what happened that last time we talked. Why she bothered to approach me at all, just to tell me that she would email me, and then didn't. Maybe I just seemed too aloof and she figured I'd lost interest. Maybe she expected me to ask her out in person and was giving me that opportunity and I blew it. Whatever. She's a decent human being and wanted to acknowledge the card and chocolate I gave her, but otherwise doesn't know how to reject me. It's fine. I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable.

I actually had planned to push the issue one last time when I went shopping yesterday. Only she wasn't there. Whenever I'm prepared so act, she's not there. Whenever I'm unprepared, she is.

As I drove away from the Co-Op yesterday, I decided it's time. Time to do the online dating thing. Since I also closed the file on Mystery Girl last month, for the moment my "organic" dating possibilities are no more.

*****

If I can ever find the time to put up a profile, I'll start online dating.

I've been super busy the past week, and this week will be the same. I had a busy social weekend. It seems that all my friends who I hadn't seen much the past six months wanted to see me last week. Then I hosted an impromptu NFL playoffs party at my house Sunday afternoon. Those were the good times.

But between all of that I had some down moments and crappy moods. I found myself with a few unexpected hours of downtime Saturday and tried to work on my book, but I was uninspired. At times I felt that special kind of loneliness you get when you miss sex with your ex. Hornliness?

This week I'm overwhelmed with work. I'm hitting the "busy season", spending 12-hour days doing the thing I like least about my job.

*****

So I don't know when I'll have time to craft my online dating profile. I'm afraid to start online dating, anyway, because just like real life, there will be much rejection. I'll have to respond to five profiles to get one response, and that won't go anywhere.

And most of the profiles will be boring, anyway. I thought they were boring before I met K, and she just raised the bar even higher. It's hard for me to imagine how I'm going to describe what I'm looking for. Do I just list all the qualities that made K so great?

I doubt I'll ever meet someone like her on a dating site.

Pretend Conversations

For some reason I've been itching for a fight this week. Maybe it's the weather. Maybe I've caught the case of the Winter blahs that seems to be going around. Everyone is feeling grumpy or agitated. When I got up this morning it was -4 outside my house. On the drive to work it got down to -8. The high today is supposed to be 11.

I think about conversations I have had, or future conversations I might have, and I get angry. Like trying to explain to a happily married couple what it's like to be single. Them not getting the profound difference between their relationship to each other and every other person in the world. So I script future conversations in my head.

I'm having lots of angry moments toward K. Since the detox started, I've hidden her posts from my Facebook page, and I haven't visited her profile once. But this week Facebook tried to show me some pictures from her albums (in the photo column to the right.) I didn't want to see even these small thumbnails. I don't want to know what's going on in her life. I'm afraid of it.

I'm not looking forward to getting back in contact with her. When we started the detox, she suggested that we pick a day, like tax day (April 15), to get back in touch. I told her I'd let her pick the day and let her do the contacting, since I couldn't focus on that. But now that date seems too soon. I'm afraid to hear she's been happy and single this whole time. I'm afraid that she won't have missed me or what we had together. I'm afraid she won't want me back. I'm afraid she'll be dating someone else. Having sex with someone else. Falling in love with someone else. What if I was just the practice relationship?

As my imagination runs wild with likely and unlikely scenarios, I script out angry conversations in my head. (Which is ironic, because we never had angry conversations when we dated. We hardly ever fought. It was one of the most peaceful relationships I've ever had. ) And I get all worked up. I'm clearly not ready to be friends with her yet.

Which is one of the things I get angry about. Does she want to be friends? Why? Doesn't she miss the intimacy? Doesn't she realize that most of our "friendship" was based on affection? I'm not going to pay her the same kind of attention if she's just a friend. And she won't have any right to get jealous of the women I date. (Like she did before we started dating.) In fact, that will make me angry, too. She could have had me. She DID have me. She could have me again. Her jealousy would just piss me off.

Which brings up another pretend conversation I plan to have with her. I fantasize about her wanting me back. It's in the back of my mind so much it's almost become an expectation, which I know is very dangerous. I won't take her back. At least not "back" in the sense of going back to the way things were. I'm not going to be in a relationship with her again where she has one foot out the door and I'm always nervous she's about to leave. But if she wants to take things forward and commit to me in good faith that I'm the person she wants indefinitely, I have all the love in the world for her.

It's a pretty stupid exercise. Even if we were to get back together, it's not going to go according to some script. And it won't happen while I'm sitting here fixating on it. I need to go out and find a replacement. Get her out of my head.

I need to stop having all these angry pretend conversations. I need to stop fixating on what she's doing. She has no business controlling my emotions anymore. We're broken up. Besides, it's not even her who's doing it, but my imagination of her.

So we're almost halfway through our detox, and it's not looking likely that I'll have her out of my system by the time it ends. Five months isn't nearly enough time. Maybe five years is more like it. She needs to go off and have lots of adventures, gain more experience and realize how great we really were together. I need to have lots of adventures too, so maybe I can find someone who matches me even better than her. I can't do that if I'm having pretend arguments with her in my head.

Image Issues

It's amazing how quickly I can go from feeling like the world's hottest studmuffin to thinking, "I'm an ugly little troll."

Over the holidays my brother got out a bunch of old home movies. Most of them were of his kids when they were little, but I would make brief appearances now and then. And I cringed every time I saw myself. I'd have a stupid haircut or an ugly crop of facial hair or be wearing dorky unflattering clothes.

And that was before I did something obnoxious like talk. I absolutely hate hearing my voice on video. I know-- everyone hates the sound of their own voice. It's because our voice sounds different inside our heads than it really sounds to the outside world. But I have objective reasons to hate my voice: people call me ma'am on the phone all the time. (When I tell people this in person, they don't believe me, because they don't think I sound like a woman at all. Go figure.)

So watching those videos made me feel as sexy as a toad. And I wonder if that's why K was not in love with me.

*****

SnarkEx used to call me "my sexy man." She usually said it when I was in my underwear. I don't know how sincere she was about that, though. She said it in the same tone I use to call my cat a "fierce and mighty hunter." Still, it was nice to be called sexy.

I remember one of my ex-girlfriends, on the first occasion that we got hot and heavy, telling me that she didn't want to go any further that night. "But I'm very attracted to you," she wanted to assure me. That was also nice to hear.

K used to say that I was "fine." It wasn't "fiiiiiine" as in, "Girl, that's a damn fine ass." It was more like "you'll do." Which was absolutely fine with me. Remember, she wasn't attracted to men, so "fine" was about the best I could hope for. It didn't seem to affect her enjoyment of me.

K also thought it was "cute" that she only weighed a little bit less than me. I was four inches taller than her, but only weighed about 10-15 pounds more. I'm not sure why she thought this was cute, but I'll take it.

*****

After I broke my clavicle a year and a half ago, I started doing push-ups to hide the fact that I'm permanently disfigured. A few months later I added sit-ups to the routine, and then leg thrusts, and then in the fall I started with exercises to strengthen my ankles. These exercises have become a welcome part of my daily routine, and I've noticed a difference. Add to that the 7-10 pounds that I lost after K dumped me, and my body looks better than it has in years.

So I was feeling pretty good about my body when I went on the cruise. I'd get in my bathing suit, stand in front of the mirror in my cabin, and admire myself. Then I went out among the people, to the hot tub, and felt like a troll again. Because other men were there, and although I looked great for me, I was still me.

I went back to my room alone and depressed. My body looks better than it has in years, and I don't have anyone to share it with. Harumph.

*****

When I got back from the cruise, I was eager to see all the pictures I'd taken. But the first time I opened them up on my computer, it was depressing. The first four days of pictures were just scenery, with the odd closeup of me trying to take a picture of myself in front of something. Since my divorce I've had lots of occasions to take those kinds of pictures. They reek of pathetic loneliness. I don't have any friends, so here's me taking my own picture. I'm usually concentrating so hard on getting the right picture that I have a furrowed brow. I look constipated.

The last night of the cruise I took my camera with me to the bar to get shots of all my new friends. I'm in a lot of those photos, but they're depressing for another reason. I was drunk, so either I have a stupid look on my face or I was groping one of the ladies, or I'm standing next to a normal sized man and look like... again... a troll. Seriously, seeing pictures of me next to men not in my family makes me feel like a miniature person.

*****

After my cruise I posted a picture on Facebook of me standing in front of some Mayan ruins. (I had asked one of my busmates to take my picture.) The shirt I'm wearing is a little tight, and my sister commented that I looked "burly." "Have you been working out?" She asked.

What a wonderful question. She had no idea how timely that comment was, considering how trollish I'd been feeling.

*****

The reality is somewhere between the troll and the studmuffin. No stranger ever looked at me and said, "I wanna piece of THAT!" But I don't think women recoil at me, either. About the best I get is "cute." Like a LOLcat. But with better captions.

Women don't fall in love with me because of my looks. I have lots of other great qualities, and that's why they love me. But sometimes it gets tiring always having to use my sparkling personality to get dates.