It's that time - it's October, my favorite month, a chill is in the air, the holidays are right around the corner . . . oh, yeah, and I spent way too much time traveling and partying this summer, and collected a few extra pounds in the process. That means it's time to whip my ass into shape. I am committing to myself NOW, before my "old" birthday gets here and I feel just that: old. I refuse to enter my 30's feeling like crap. Instead, I want to get into the best shape of my life and show that birthday who's boss! So tomorrow, I'm starting bootcamp with my mom and bff, and am running a friggin' half marathon on November 13th! My crazy 51 year old mother wants me to run with her, and if she can do it, I should be able to do it, right? Ugh, what have I gotten myself into . . . Needless to say, I'm very excited and ready to make time for myself. I have to run to train (the other option is to be horribly pathetic and miserable at the half!), and have a full month of bootcamp to look forward to. In addition, I have 16 - count them, 16 - yoga sessions left to use, and I plan to use one a week until they are gone. It makes ME feel better when I do these things, and I need to make myself a priority now, because things are never going to get less busy or hectic. If I make myself a priority now, and get to the point where I crave the workouts and the yoga and such, I will be that much better for it in the long run. It's time to shock my body back into shape.
This posting is my pledge to start making myself a priority. What better month than October, my favorite? I have 4 months (and a week) until my 30th birthday. I can get in pretty good shape by then -- all I need is continued discipline and motivation.
Bring it on.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
from goldilocks to happily ever after?
wow. a lot can change in a few short months.
rewind back to my last post, right when I decided to get back in the online dating game. I bought a six month subscription to match.com and was planning to passively peruse it on occasion, and to see who reached out to me. Who would've thought that a mere two days later, I would have a "coffee date" (meaning a few beers at gordon biersch to watch march madness final four games) that turned into a live-in boyfriend whose 16 lb. cat also lives with us.
In addition to meeting my new man, who we will call "Big J," or simply, "J," for blog purposes, I am in the middle of a job transition, have seen no fewer than five couples get married this year, and in six short months or so, will be an auntie for the first time!!! Top that all off with turning the big 3-0 next February (T-5.5 months!), and there is a lot going on. While some of it -- ok, a lot of it--is stressful, much of it is fun and exciting as well. Instead of lamenting how I can't find a decent guy out there, I am dealing with integrating someone into my once independent life, as well as integrating him into my family and circle of friends (not an easy task, as it turns out). Rather than continuing in the rat race as I was doing, I took a leap and am looking for something different, and although I know it will turn out to be for the better, that doesn't make it any less challenging now.
The bottom line is that all the craziness that has been 2010 this year, including putting my dog down (sad), setting dating and relationship boundaries (challenging, yet necessary), taking a leap to a new career path (scary and exciting), will all be worth it because they are all steps toward my happily ever after. And while that is still a ways away, it is, of course, more about the journey than the destination -- or at least just as much about the journey as the destination. I'm happy to report that the journey is still intriguing, changing, and leading me toward happily ever after one day at a time.
rewind back to my last post, right when I decided to get back in the online dating game. I bought a six month subscription to match.com and was planning to passively peruse it on occasion, and to see who reached out to me. Who would've thought that a mere two days later, I would have a "coffee date" (meaning a few beers at gordon biersch to watch march madness final four games) that turned into a live-in boyfriend whose 16 lb. cat also lives with us.
In addition to meeting my new man, who we will call "Big J," or simply, "J," for blog purposes, I am in the middle of a job transition, have seen no fewer than five couples get married this year, and in six short months or so, will be an auntie for the first time!!! Top that all off with turning the big 3-0 next February (T-5.5 months!), and there is a lot going on. While some of it -- ok, a lot of it--is stressful, much of it is fun and exciting as well. Instead of lamenting how I can't find a decent guy out there, I am dealing with integrating someone into my once independent life, as well as integrating him into my family and circle of friends (not an easy task, as it turns out). Rather than continuing in the rat race as I was doing, I took a leap and am looking for something different, and although I know it will turn out to be for the better, that doesn't make it any less challenging now.
The bottom line is that all the craziness that has been 2010 this year, including putting my dog down (sad), setting dating and relationship boundaries (challenging, yet necessary), taking a leap to a new career path (scary and exciting), will all be worth it because they are all steps toward my happily ever after. And while that is still a ways away, it is, of course, more about the journey than the destination -- or at least just as much about the journey as the destination. I'm happy to report that the journey is still intriguing, changing, and leading me toward happily ever after one day at a time.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
call me the goldilocks of dating
So, with some reluctance, I have reentered the online dating world. I am doing so with the previous online dating experience and a certain idea of do's and don'ts in my back pocket so we'll see how it goes. It wasn't until after I had already signed up that I looked into that whole "active singles" thing, where you go do fun activities like kayaking and paint-balling and pub crawls with other single people in order to meet and mingle, rather than have awkward email and telephone exchanges leading up to an awkward date. I think that would be fun to do at some point, too.
For now, match.com is relatively easy because I just go to work all day, and come home to winks and emails in my inbox, and can pick and choose. Over the last two and a half weeks that I've been back on, however, I noticed that I don't pick and choose - I mostly say "no thanks" to people because there's something "off" with a lot of the guys who decide to contact me. Feeling a little badly about this (but not too badly), I wondered what this was about.
Online dating poses an interesting issue that in-person dating does not. First, there is a virtual limitless supply of people you can connect with, and people that you would never meet in real life, because you have nothing in common (or because the cyber-geek actually never leaves his home). You basically peruse dating "resumes" of candidates, browsing through the pictures and "likes" of people until one catches your eye. My problem? Not many catch mine.
In real life, you strike up conversation and get butterflies in your stomach when there is chemistry--you can tell if there is nothing there, or if something is off. And if you meet someone you have great chemistry with, say at a concert, you're going to pay attention to the chemistry first, and the person's specific characteristics later. Online, however, you consider the separate characteristics (interests - the ones they choose to list, that is - appearance, etc.) before you even know whether there is chemistry! Because of this, I have decided that when dating online, I am allowed to be incredibly picky - it's like shopping, or hiring an employee. I can only judge based on the two-dimensional information I am presented with online. This means that I can be shallow and say "no thanks" to someone who has no picture, or who appears completely un-photogenic, or took a shirtless self-photograph of themselves in the bathroom. I can also say "no thanks" if he's too fat, or too skinny, if he's too ugly, or too pretty, if he's too dorky and shy, or too macho and egotistical. Basically, if there is something I don't consider "just right," I have permission to immediately reject the guy.
Go ahead, call me Goldilocks. That's the privilege of online dating.
For now, match.com is relatively easy because I just go to work all day, and come home to winks and emails in my inbox, and can pick and choose. Over the last two and a half weeks that I've been back on, however, I noticed that I don't pick and choose - I mostly say "no thanks" to people because there's something "off" with a lot of the guys who decide to contact me. Feeling a little badly about this (but not too badly), I wondered what this was about.
Online dating poses an interesting issue that in-person dating does not. First, there is a virtual limitless supply of people you can connect with, and people that you would never meet in real life, because you have nothing in common (or because the cyber-geek actually never leaves his home). You basically peruse dating "resumes" of candidates, browsing through the pictures and "likes" of people until one catches your eye. My problem? Not many catch mine.
In real life, you strike up conversation and get butterflies in your stomach when there is chemistry--you can tell if there is nothing there, or if something is off. And if you meet someone you have great chemistry with, say at a concert, you're going to pay attention to the chemistry first, and the person's specific characteristics later. Online, however, you consider the separate characteristics (interests - the ones they choose to list, that is - appearance, etc.) before you even know whether there is chemistry! Because of this, I have decided that when dating online, I am allowed to be incredibly picky - it's like shopping, or hiring an employee. I can only judge based on the two-dimensional information I am presented with online. This means that I can be shallow and say "no thanks" to someone who has no picture, or who appears completely un-photogenic, or took a shirtless self-photograph of themselves in the bathroom. I can also say "no thanks" if he's too fat, or too skinny, if he's too ugly, or too pretty, if he's too dorky and shy, or too macho and egotistical. Basically, if there is something I don't consider "just right," I have permission to immediately reject the guy.
Go ahead, call me Goldilocks. That's the privilege of online dating.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
setting boundaries
I'm not a big fan of new year's resolutions, but this year I kind of decided that I would try setting boundaries for myself.
I didn't do a great job at the start of 2010 - I continued to talk to modesto, albeit half-heartedly because some things he had said over the holidays made me see (again) that he was never going to motivate and allow our phone-lationship to progress. I also let sales guy (a guy I met in october who seemed pretty cool until I found out he was an immature douchebag of a man-boy) take advantage of my niceness for a few weeks into 2010. That all ended when he called, drunk, asking for a ride home or for me to pick him up so he could crash in my car because he'd missed the train from sf to sj. I stood my ground (thanks to some prodding from my bff), and was surprised that sales guy actually wasn't mad at me later, but thought I was mad at him, and apologized. Damn straight! Finally. Bottom line on sales guy, though, is that it was yet another dead end. It did, however, remind me that I needed to set boundaries going forward (since I hadn't set those when I met him in the Fall of '09, however, it was difficult to add them with him).
With that in mind, I also ended things with modesto. I really wasn't ready for them to end, but had they really ever started? We hadn't progressed in 16 months of knowing each other. Sure, I'd dated other people, but I still had him on the back burner, and could count on him to satisfy a major emotional void that I have without a "relationship." I finally decided that I needed to be honest with him - and myself - and to tell him that I wanted and needed more, and that either he was going to have to give that to me, or admit that he was unwilling to do so and that was that. Unfortunately, it ended up being the latter. Modesto thought we lived too far from each other, he had originally been too scared of ruining the great thing we had to take it any further, he thought too much time had passed as us being phone friends and something had changed, he wasn't ready for a relationship, etc., etc., etc. Lots of excuses. Lots of signs of fear and immaturity. Lots of things, but one bottom line: modesto and I weren't going anywhere.
Modesto still wanted to be friends, though. Because why would modesto want to have me mad at him? Why would he want his self-proclaimed "best friend" and the person who he's "had the best connection with in his life" out of his life completely? Why would modesto want to tell the "first person [he] told his friends and family about" good riddance? Yeah, well, he wouldn't want to do that. He just didn't want to have a relationship with me, either. So I decided that I needed to set my boundaries, and tell him about them. It sucks that setting those boundaries for myself means that I don't get to talk to my best friend anymore, either. I can't - it will be too hard, and I won't be 100% honest with myself about what he and I have (or don't have) if I continue to use him as an emotional crutch. And so, here we are. To me, the worst part is that he admits we are best friends and have more in common/a better connection than anyone else we've met. To add insult to injury, he even said:
I just don't think he gets it. He must have a wall up--he certainly has his own boundaries--"I can't be in a relationship with the new house and new job," "I don't have time to put into a relationship what I want to." Ok, fine, if you get to decide that you just "can't" do these things, then I get to decide that I just "can't" be your friend.
I didn't do a great job at the start of 2010 - I continued to talk to modesto, albeit half-heartedly because some things he had said over the holidays made me see (again) that he was never going to motivate and allow our phone-lationship to progress. I also let sales guy (a guy I met in october who seemed pretty cool until I found out he was an immature douchebag of a man-boy) take advantage of my niceness for a few weeks into 2010. That all ended when he called, drunk, asking for a ride home or for me to pick him up so he could crash in my car because he'd missed the train from sf to sj. I stood my ground (thanks to some prodding from my bff), and was surprised that sales guy actually wasn't mad at me later, but thought I was mad at him, and apologized. Damn straight! Finally. Bottom line on sales guy, though, is that it was yet another dead end. It did, however, remind me that I needed to set boundaries going forward (since I hadn't set those when I met him in the Fall of '09, however, it was difficult to add them with him).
With that in mind, I also ended things with modesto. I really wasn't ready for them to end, but had they really ever started? We hadn't progressed in 16 months of knowing each other. Sure, I'd dated other people, but I still had him on the back burner, and could count on him to satisfy a major emotional void that I have without a "relationship." I finally decided that I needed to be honest with him - and myself - and to tell him that I wanted and needed more, and that either he was going to have to give that to me, or admit that he was unwilling to do so and that was that. Unfortunately, it ended up being the latter. Modesto thought we lived too far from each other, he had originally been too scared of ruining the great thing we had to take it any further, he thought too much time had passed as us being phone friends and something had changed, he wasn't ready for a relationship, etc., etc., etc. Lots of excuses. Lots of signs of fear and immaturity. Lots of things, but one bottom line: modesto and I weren't going anywhere.
Modesto still wanted to be friends, though. Because why would modesto want to have me mad at him? Why would he want his self-proclaimed "best friend" and the person who he's "had the best connection with in his life" out of his life completely? Why would modesto want to tell the "first person [he] told his friends and family about" good riddance? Yeah, well, he wouldn't want to do that. He just didn't want to have a relationship with me, either. So I decided that I needed to set my boundaries, and tell him about them. It sucks that setting those boundaries for myself means that I don't get to talk to my best friend anymore, either. I can't - it will be too hard, and I won't be 100% honest with myself about what he and I have (or don't have) if I continue to use him as an emotional crutch. And so, here we are. To me, the worst part is that he admits we are best friends and have more in common/a better connection than anyone else we've met. To add insult to injury, he even said:
I like you as a friend, and love you as a person.
I just don't think he gets it. He must have a wall up--he certainly has his own boundaries--"I can't be in a relationship with the new house and new job," "I don't have time to put into a relationship what I want to." Ok, fine, if you get to decide that you just "can't" do these things, then I get to decide that I just "can't" be your friend.
Monday, February 15, 2010
somewhere between a booty call and an 'elationship' . . .
. . . lies an honest to goodness relationship with a man who has a shred of maturity, self-confidence, and respect for others.
'booty call': a late night summons -- often made via telephone -- to arrange clandestine sexual liaisons on an ad hoc basis.
'elationship': a couple (friends, lovers, whatever) that know each other only via online correspondence (e-mail, IM chats, video rooms, etc). See, e.g. this timely article at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35338085/ns/technology_and_science-love_in_the_digital_age/from/ET
'booty call': a late night summons -- often made via telephone -- to arrange clandestine sexual liaisons on an ad hoc basis.
'elationship': a couple (friends, lovers, whatever) that know each other only via online correspondence (e-mail, IM chats, video rooms, etc). See, e.g. this timely article at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35338085/ns/technology_and_science-love_in_the_digital_age/from/ET
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
vital organs may soon rupture
My brain and heart (ok, the heart is an organ - what's the brain? a muscle? this is why I'm a lawyer, not a doctor people! let's just give me poetic licence and consider both vital organs - at least we can agree to their vitality, right?) may soon burst with the number of topics and stories and misadventures I want to share via my blog. Unfortunately, however, my "professional responsibility" (i.e. billing a certain number of hours a year) has taken over the last few months of my life and so I have been thinking about all sorts of things I could be writing, but have yet to taken the time to do so. I will try to post some things soon so that my brain and heart remain intact ... worst case, I'll try to make it a 2010 "resolution" to get on here and lament my misadventures more often.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
why I "quit" eharmony
I know that an update is long overdue, and I will get to it eventually. For now, I figured I'd post this email I just received from an eharmony wooer I started communicating with over gmail right before I "quit" eharmony (ok, I didn't "quit" so much as I let my subscription lapse, but for some reason I feel compelled to call it "quitting"). We'll call this guy "berry guy" since he works for driscoll farms. I must admit, I love their raspberries and blueberries, and find it fascinating that his job is international marketing for the blueberry division, which allows him to travel to places like Chile ... but other than thinking, "what a super cool job!" I'm not that intrigued by this guy. Granted, we had nice email exchanges that covered a wide variety of topics (including Obama winning the Nobel prize, which he asked my opinion about and I gave him, and which I don't think he agreed with), but I felt like he was trying way too hard. By that I mean that he appeared to be trying too hard to come off as a world-traveler and empathetic to humanity and into living life just to live it and shit. Maybe the fact that I don't feel that way everyday makes me a bad person, but hey - I am what I am, and unfortunately I have to take care of my own crap, which means doing as much as I can in the rat race I'm currently stuck in.
Anyway, I didn't email him back a few weeks ago because we were exchanging these looooooooong emails and I didn't have time that week. He later wrote me on a Friday night asking for a last minute coffee or drink date on Saturday night, but I wasn't in town. I wrote back and apologized a few days later, but then I caught up with work and other things, and have yet to draft a novella in response to his last email. If I were interested, I'm sure I would have; however, his lengthy, slightly arrogant (?) emails, the fact that he lives a few hours away, and my personal opinion that he wasn't all that cute in his photos, resulted in me just putting it off. I suppose I had already decided I wasn't interested. I certainly didn't mean to be rude or ignore him, but time just got away from me. I suppose that's why today he sent me this:
See what I mean? Who uses the word "vaunted" in a random email? I just found it aggravating. Do I really care? No, not really - I am not interested in dating him or taking the effort to get to know him from afar, his attitude is off-putting, and he doesn't seem to be my type physically. Does this still bother me? Yeah, to an extent. I just don't understand the passive-aggressive thing. If we had met in person and dated a bit and I just blew him off, that would be one thing, but this was an Internet connection that never got past 4 or 5 emails so if it disappears, it disappears. Hell, one of the guys I went on two pretty good dates with from eharmony just never called me back, and did I call or email him with some passive aggressive crap? Nope. Nature of the online dating beast.
Which brings us back to why I quit eharmony.
Anyway, I didn't email him back a few weeks ago because we were exchanging these looooooooong emails and I didn't have time that week. He later wrote me on a Friday night asking for a last minute coffee or drink date on Saturday night, but I wasn't in town. I wrote back and apologized a few days later, but then I caught up with work and other things, and have yet to draft a novella in response to his last email. If I were interested, I'm sure I would have; however, his lengthy, slightly arrogant (?) emails, the fact that he lives a few hours away, and my personal opinion that he wasn't all that cute in his photos, resulted in me just putting it off. I suppose I had already decided I wasn't interested. I certainly didn't mean to be rude or ignore him, but time just got away from me. I suppose that's why today he sent me this:
Hey Blaire,
Hope you've had a good, if probably hectic, last couple of weeks. Gotta say it's too bad you let this go. I was looking forward to cooking dinner with you, testing those vaunted skills of yours. Anyhow, I used to let things fade away, but now try not to...so it was really was a pleasure getting to know you briefly, and wish you the best. Enjoy Hawaii.
Take care,
berry guy
See what I mean? Who uses the word "vaunted" in a random email? I just found it aggravating. Do I really care? No, not really - I am not interested in dating him or taking the effort to get to know him from afar, his attitude is off-putting, and he doesn't seem to be my type physically. Does this still bother me? Yeah, to an extent. I just don't understand the passive-aggressive thing. If we had met in person and dated a bit and I just blew him off, that would be one thing, but this was an Internet connection that never got past 4 or 5 emails so if it disappears, it disappears. Hell, one of the guys I went on two pretty good dates with from eharmony just never called me back, and did I call or email him with some passive aggressive crap? Nope. Nature of the online dating beast.
Which brings us back to why I quit eharmony.
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