It's OK to fail...

Kids, I'm really good at giving good advice. Friends listen to me, or they ignore me and later tell me they should have listened to me. But I do a pretty lousy job of listening to my own advice.

I recently was trying to convince a friend who has been looking for a job that it's OK to interview for a job that you might get offered, even if it's almost a certainty that you wouldn't take the job if you did get the offer. My rationale being that it's not at all expected that you'll take it, or that the job is a perfect fit, but that shouldn't stop you from finding out more about the job in the process.

Of course, being the philosophical muser that I am, I immediately apply this same line of reasoning to dating, and think it's complete and utter bullshit. Admittedly, the two situations are far from identical, and in the dating world you have a lot more personal feelings to be concerned about. But on the other hand, isn't that what dating is all about?

If you knew the person you were dating was the perfect person, there wouldn't be a point in dating... you could just skip right ahead to the rest of your life and happily ever after, knowing confidently that it would work out forever. Reality of course states that it's never that simple.

I think part of my problem is that I'm scarred from past relationships, and the overwhelmingly common situation of me having to be the heartbreaker rather than the heartbroken. It's so much easier to give up early on, before things get too serious, than later on when stronger feelings are at stake. But as a result, I almost have this innate fear of being put in that situation, so I shy away from relationships that could potentially work out really well.

I still wouldn't date someone knowing it wasn't going to work out... but I need to get over giving up just because I'm unsure... because who isn't?

This is the fun part...

Kids, they say the fun part of dating is that feeling you get when you meet someone new for the first time... the excitement of waiting for the next time you see her... and that constant nagging in the pit of your stomach. Is she really the right person for me? How does she feel about me? Could this possibly work out?

So I met her again today... outside of her day job she's an actress who does community theater, and we went to a play that some of her friends were performing in. It actually was really good, I would have enjoyed it whether she was there or not... but I enjoyed it more with her there, of course. Afterwards we went out to dinner and had a good time chatting about this, that and everything else under the sun.

I think the true test of how you feel about someone requires you to get over that initial excitement and see how your feelings are after that. It's so easy to be like "oh yeah, she's the one!" when you first meet, then you come down off your high and reality sets in and you go "what was I thinking? She's OK, but not all that." Fortunately, I didn't reach that dramatic low. I've definitely lost a little of that high I had after the first date, but that's to be expected, I think. She's still pretty impressive to me. I think things are going well at this point, but it's hard to tell just after two dates.

Of course, history being a good indicator for me, if I reach the third date with someone, there's definitely some quality there. I have almost always given up if I don't find any chemistry at all by the 2nd date, it's just not worth it.

No plans for a third date yet, but we preliminarily had discussed Thursday night. I think she's still interested, but haven't discussed again after today. I can't say I wouldn't be disappointed if I didn't see her again, nor that I can decrypt what I just said considering how many negatives were in it. Still hoping something good can come of this. If nothing else, I can say it's at least the most exciting my life's been in several months, and that's worth something.

This is the fun part? It really is, but the funny thing is you never really realize it until after it's over.

Fear of the unknown...

Kids, it's funny how much you want something to happen, then when it actually does happen you aren't quite sure what to do. I recently met somebody. Not sure if she's "the" somebody, but she's certainly "a" somebody.

Now, normally I don't write much here about the dates I go on, simply because they are either so unmemorable they aren't worth mentioning, or they just don't lead anywhere so they still aren't worth mentioning. But the other night I met someone for dinner, and she was charming. I met her online, and had gotten to know her a bit in the few days leading up to it, but then meeting her in person she was, dare I say, exactly like the person I thought she was.

Let me digress a bit to explain... I've had bad luck with meeting people online. In the vast majority of the cases, people don't turn out to be the same person in real life that they represented themselves to be online. I don't think a great many people intentionally mis-represent themselves, but I think a lot has to do with the fact that so few people are mature and know who they really are, rather than the person they think they are or want to be.

I've found that I'm most attracted to someone who is very comfortable with herself. I don't care if you're a supermodel, a genius, or a girl from the other side of the tracks... be who you are.

So back to the date... I wasn't certain at the time if the chemistry was really there. You never really know when you meet someone you originally met online for the first time. But for some reason this time was markedly different from all the other times. We really seemed to hit it off, and oddly enough, I didn't expect it. I thought it would be a nice evening, then we'd go our separate ways and figure it wasn't meant to be. And now ever since I haven't been able to get her out of my mind. I haven't felt quite this same way about someone in a very long time.

Yet I still doubt if it's right. We'll meet up again hopefully this weekend, and see how spending more time together goes. She's nice, cute, cares about other people, a UW grad (hey, never hurts), and is just fun to talk to and get to know. I can work with that.

More to come... maybe... :)

It's not easy being green...

Kids, sometimes I feel like Kermit the Frog at the beginning of The Muppet Movie, sitting on a log, strumming my banjo, alone in the swamp wondering where life will take me next. As a side note, it's hard to believe that The Muppet Movie came out the year I was born... perhaps that's why I have such a strong connection with it.

As another year goes by, I feel stuck in a rut. I can't really think of much in the past year that was dramatically new or different than the year before. Though despite that all, I'm happy. I live a good life, have all that I need, but that's part of the problem. Nothing's motivating me to change things up.

I'm meeting some people, but obviously not finding the right people, or not looking in the right places. Unfortunately, it's not easy to figure out where the whole train is getting derailed. If I weren't so happy here, I've had fleeting thoughts of just picking up and moving and starting a new life somewhere else. Not that I would actually do it, but sometimes it's fun to think about doing something dramatic to make my life new and different again.

But in the meantime, a measured response would be simply make a stronger effort to mix things up and find something new. One of these days I'll get around to that. :)

The Price of Being the Nice Guy

Kids, being a nice guy is hard. It's easy to be a jerk. All you have to do is not care about the people you don't like, and cast them aside just like recycling a plastic milk bottle. But when it comes to being the nice guy, it's not so easy.

As wrong as it sounds, the generally accepted let down in the dating world these days is to do nothing. No call, no e-mail, just be done with it all. I have to admit, I've taken this route before several times, but it feels wrong. I feel as if I should at least say something to them.

The hardest part of dating is when one person is interested and the other isn't. Being the nice guy means breaking a lot of hearts... sometimes it's mutual incompatibility and honestly that's the best case scenario. But then the other times you have to be the one to say "hey, you're a great girl, but it just isn't going to work out."

It's so cliche, yet I've found it to be so true too, to say "it's not you, it's me." Because it really is. It's me! What the hell's wrong with me?! I swear I'm just not able to make anything work. Not because I can't, but because I won't make it work. I don't believe in it.

When is the perfect girl going to walk into my life? Maybe it's when I stop looking. Maybe...

The Shoebox

Kids, everyone has a shoebox. It is the shoebox that contains the memories -- pictures, notes, trinkets -- of past relationships. As much as you try to hide it from yourself, every so often you stumble onto it again and have to ask yourself the same question yet again, "what do I do with this stuff?" Well, today while I was cleaning a room, I found the shoebox.

I can hear you asking now, "why do people keep a shoebox in the first place?" I could chalk it up to human nature, but that's not much of an answer. Some people may keep the shoebox in hopes that someday the relationship will come back together, as a way of holding on to what once was. Others may keep them as memories of a positive time in their life they might want to remember. Still others may just be packrats or not really know what else to do with it. As for myself, I don't really know why I keep it, but I also just don't know what else to do with it.

Sure, the easy solution is just to throw it all away, never to be heard of again. But somehow I can't bring myself to do it. Don't get me wrong, I'm well over the past, but similarly I don't harbor any ill feelings towards it either. It almost seems wrong to throw it all away and pretend like it didn't happen, because it was such an important part of my life and has shaped who I am today, for better or worse.

What I've heard is a common approach to the old pictures is simply to cut out the "other half" of the memories. Does that really solve much? For me it's not the picture itself, but the memory that the picture triggers. You can't cut a memory apart, it's all or none. Yet still, I also am in no way interested in looking through the shoebox either. My first reaction when finding it was "oh, that's what's in there..." and promptly I closed the box back up. I don't think I'd have any problem doing so, but it's almost as if I don't have any desire to remember it all.

So what do I do with the shoebox? Nothing. I put it back on the shelf until the next time I stumble into it. At some point, I'll probably go through it and throw most of it away. But not today.

The One(s) Who Got Away

Kids, they say it's better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all. That's probably true, but it's an incredibly bogus way of looking at it. I've met a lot of people, dated some of them, and obviously none of those have worked out. But that doesn't mean they haven't been worth my time.

In fact, I'm probably one of the few people in the world who really don't have anything bad to say about any of my past relationships. Sure, they've had their down moments, but what relationship hasn't? Certainly they all haven't ended on my own account, but that doesn't change the fact that they just haven't worked out. And that's OK. Though, my hope is that they don't think I'm the scum of the Earth at least.

But whether they work out well or not, the highest praise I can give to any of them is not what I learned from the experience, but that they gave me renewed hope that good people still exist, and that my perfect somebody is still out there somewhere.

Now I just have to find her...