Okay, I'm 39 and single. I've almost come to grips with that.....almost. One of the greatest challenges in my life at this point is finding people to hang out with and (gasp) pursuing romantic interests. My lifestyle really doesn't lend well to either of these pursuits and it is a source of constant anguish for me. The term "Normal" is rarely used to describe me (unless you mean normally insane) and this can create some barriers in meeting and forming relationships with people. I work until 10:30 at night in a windowless room populated with people that make the term "Anal Retentive" seem as loose as a breeze puffing through the Grand Canyon. This means that when most normal people are off of work going about the usual activties of life, I'm at work trying to find ways to deal with the multitudes of leaky urine specimens that find their way onto my counter (I plan on dedicating a whole post to that endeavor someday).
I have no social life, there is no way of sugar coating it. No social life usually means spending your Saturday evenings in a coffee shop writing a blog on how much internet dating sucks as opposed to going out with people you know to have fun. No social life means that I have to resort to extreme measures in finding members of the opposite sex who may or may not be interested in a long term partnership with a crazy guy. Extreme measures means Match.com in my case.
Internet dating is supposed to be far less taboo than it was just 5 years ago but I don't think that means that it's any more dignifying. Here's how it works: You start off by creating a propaganda filled synopsis of who you are and what you are looking for. This is a very important step, you want to list all of your top qualities (I'm still trying to figure out what mine are to this day) and find ways to embelish them enough to make yourself seem desirable without going too far overboard. Next you have to come up with some sort of tag line that sits at the top of for profile next to your picture (more on this later). This is usually some creative, witty statement that sums you up in just one sentence. That's great and everything but anyone who knows me knows that I can't sum anything up ten paragraphs as opposed to just one sentence. It took me forever but I decided to run with "Life is journey and not a destination". Pretty good, huh? At least I think so, if life were a destination, I would have discovered the destination to be the local Wal Mart parking lot and that I'm about 24th in line to park my Winnabago there.
Okay, so I have my somewhat edited and inflated profile (hey look at me, I'm normal I lived in Hawaii for two years, I'm cool and hip, I have an iPad....etc), my cheery/cheesy yet deep tag line, tons of pictures of me and the dogs doing our thing and I haven't had much more than a nibble in over 6 months now. You can send people "Winks" or emails but every time I send one off I can just hear the recipient saying "Who the fuck is this guy?" to themselves. My possibilities are so bleak that I've started wondering if life as a gay man would be more productive (kidding of course). I was conversing with a woman from Hamilton over the last 2 weeks and then all of a sudden I can't access her profile any longer, I guess I must either have leprosy or my profile screams Chester the molester. The other problem is that Missoula definitely has a very finite number of single women in their mid to late thirties. Couple that with my preference for one without children (something that I am currently reconsidering) and the odds of finding one without baggage (I certainly don't need that, especially after the last girlfriend) becomes very slim indeed.
Match.com? Whatever, more like Awkwardanddesperate.com. I think I'll cut my losses and try my luck (or lack thereof) out in the the real world. Hopefully my crazy woman magnet personality has toned itself down and my crazy woman detector is working better than it has in the past.
I'm going to be 40 in just over six months and as I'm sure is apparent, I'm in a bit of a panic. The older I get, the more bleak the sex life becomes and the more my midsection seems to expand. Oh well, I'm pretty sure that the dogs still love me, as long as their is food in their bowl and they get their daily puppy treats.
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