When I started feeling a little feverish on Sunday night, I thought I might have been coming down with the flu. As Monday progressed, the fever subsided and I was left with a sore throat and runny nose--symptoms of a cold, not the flu. I woke up this morning soaked in sweat, which is always a pleasant way to start a day, but I am now starting to feel a little better. Chances are I will end up going back to work tomorrow morning--sucks!--but at least it is now a very short work week.
I have spent most of these last two sick days catching up on TV, but I'm now in a position where I can't watch any more TV without feeling like the biggest sack of useless couch-potato shit on the planet. Does that make sense?
So, I decided to do some blogging to take a break from TV. Like I wrote in this post, blogging about random shit somehow makes me feel productive. One of these days I'll sit down and finally crank out that "About Me - Homebrewer" post, but for now, I just have a few small topics to talk about.
Why so pessimistic?
This past weekend was an interesting one. My ex-wife was back in town to attend our last function as a couple: our friends' wedding. Normally a wedding like this would have been an opportunity to get wasted drunk, but I was already by this point feeling the sickness coming on, and so I ended up volunteering to be designated driver instead. Anyway, I digress, as none of that has anything to do with what I want to blog about here.
Over the course of the weekend, we had numerous interesting, difficult, challenging, revealing, and frustrating conversations--as you might expect. One of the topics that came up was how completely pessimistic I had become in the last couple of months.
In general, I have never considered myself to be an overly optimistic person. I don't think many people that know me would describe me as optimistic, either. It can vary from situation to situation (for example, on the topic of work, I have always been pessimistic), but I'm usually somewhere in the middle. What do you call that? Realistic?
Although there is a lot of startlingly honest material on this blog, I am always slightly filtering myself. I'm never lying, just maybe not always saying everything. There are people that read this blog that don't need to know everything. This is also a public forum. Hell, someone I am trying to get to know through online dating could easily stumble across this blog with a quick Google search; I'd like to think that wouldn't sabotage things, but who knows?
According to my ex-wife, this blog has, to date, presented a more upbeat and optimistic picture of how I am doing than I am actually doing. As I told her this weekend, I pretty much hate myself right now. I hate how not having someone by my side has made me feel so empty. I hate how my confidence in myself has been shattered and how I have no apparent tools to rebuild it. I hate that I can't concentrate on anything. I hate how worried I am that I may never meet another special someone. I hate how worried I am about turning into a certain boss that I may or may not work for. I hate how much of a whiny bitch I am being. I hate how much I hate myself right now.
With such positive energy running through me--yes, sarcasm!--is it any wonder that I am pessimistic about my future? Who would want to spend time with someone that is so down on themselves?
Now, having said all that, I am feeling strangely optimistic right now...
With a wink or a smile or a dumb email
One week ago yesterday, I posted my online dating profiles on Lavalife and Match.com. It was a hell of a boost to my ego when I received my first "wink" on Match.com on the second day. As I explained last week, "winks" (on Match.com) and "smiles" (on Lavalife) (and "eye contacts" on Cupid.com) are a free way to show interest in someone based on their profile.
I certainly hadn't planned on purchasing a membership this early on in the process, but the woman who had winked at me seemed like a nice enough person to be worthy of me spending $20 (actually $60 for 3 months, so ouch!) to initiate a conversation. We have now sent a few emails over the course of the last week, and it seems like we will soon be getting together to meet in person, which is always completely nerve-wracking. I don't really see us as perfect matches for each other, but I'm open-minded for sure. I'm also not sitting back and assuming this first contact will be the one.
On Thursday, I got my first "smile" on Lavalife. Unfortunately, the person who smiled at me has a completely terrible profile, and I have not been able to bring myself to email her.
On Sunday, I added my profile to Cupid.com. As I mentioned last week, there is a surprising lack of overlap between the different sites, and there are actually a couple of very interesting people on Cupid.com.
So, this morning, bored and sick, I moved to stage two of this online dating process. As a reminder, stage one was sitting back and waiting for others to show interest in me first. I'm tired of waiting; it is time to be pro-active. In stage two, I purchased 3-month memberships from both Lavalife and Cupid.com (yep, another $100 gone!), and I cold-emailed some women that had interesting profiles.
This is a grand total of two women per site so far, so I'm not settling for just anyone with a pretty face--although that doesn't hurt. It actually frustrates me when someone has an interesting profile but no picture. It's nice to know when emailing someone new that you are in fact attracted to them. Only one of the women I emailed today had no picture.
And now I'm back to waiting. And this waiting is more awkward than the stage one waiting, because there is the definite possibility of rejection now. And rejection in the online dating world typically comes in the form of complete silence.
Despite the pessimistic worry about rejection, I am definitely feeling more optimistic now about everything. Why? Because I am actually working really hard to put myself out there. And I have already succeeded in befriending at least one new person, which is nothing to scoff at, even if it just leads to one date and out. If none of the women I emailed today reply back, that will definitely hurt, but there are always others out there.
Now, there's that positive attitude I have been missing!
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9 months ago
Scott, Have you considered just not doing online dating for some time? I mean, you are on 3 dating sites, and maybe not worrying about whether or not girls are going to email you back is a good thing for you at this point. If I were you I'd stay away from it and just relax and cherish your alone time for at least several months. Just a suggestion.
ReplyDeleteHere I was just logging in to post a goofy comment to thank Andrew for spamming my blog--I feel like I've hit the big time now!--and I find that my brother has posted an excellent and reasonable comment that deserves a good response.
ReplyDeleteYes, Blaine, what you are suggesting makes sense, and would seem to follow logically from the self-hate rant in the first half of this post. Trust me, there are definitely times I think that I should just focus my attention on trying to be happy alone. But I tried that for a month; and it sucked. I'm sure it'll suck less and less as more and more months go by, but I don't feel there's any harm in trying to meet some people as I try to work on liking myself again.
Chances are I will still have many more months of alone time to cherish. It's not easy to meet the type of person that I am looking for. But, it's kind of fun to look. This post was supposed to show a progression from pessimism to optimism (almost), which can entirely be attributed to putting myself out there. The courage I needed to put myself out there has given me something to like about myself again, you see.
Plus, the ego boost from one girl showing interest in me (received an interesting and flattering email out of the blue today!--unfortunately from someone in North Dakota...) more than makes up for the rejection I feel due to the lack of responses so far to my emails yesterday...