Online Dating

So I've been in the world of online dating for almost three years. A bit pathetic I know. But it's been a fun journey. I've learned lots of things about people and myself I'd like to talk about that a bit.

I started on eHarmony and what a crock of shit that was. After waiting two weeks to get any matches I get hooked up with a blind girl in Los Angeles and a pizza delivery driver somewhere in Ohio. Of course neither of them responded to my letters and when I changed the settings to find matches closer to me I didn't get any matches. When the month was up I let my subscription lapse. I'm weird but come on, I'm not that weird.

Then I ventured into the world of free sites. PlentyOFish, OKCupid, Match, to name a few. At first it was fun, but I wasn't having much luck in getting responses. A friend of mine that is a girl pointed out why. For the most part the girls on those sites get mail everyday from lonely and hopeful men. If you're pretty you can count on lots of email everyday. She also went on to say that it was a great ego boost and that her girlfriends and herself often used it for that. As a way to feel better about themselves by having all of these strangers vie for their affections in a safe environment. OK, that makes sense to me. I can diggit.

So what this meant to me was that I had to be twice as charming and creative as the next guy. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get someones attention with one sentence or just a subject line?

Eventually someone did decide that they wanted to talk to me and we hit it off and dated for a while until her drama got to be too much for me. Let's do the list shall we? Pregnant with a drug dealers baby, living in the home of a cross dresser that is currently in the U.S. Army and wants to get gender reassignment surgery, also living with a woman that is cheating on her husband with anything that crosses her path and that refuses to bath more then once a month, and living with said dirty skank's brother who had had two strokes by the time he was 25.

It got to be too much for me and honestly these people weren't bad people they just had too much shit going on in their lives for me to want to deal with.

I could write a book on my next girlfriend from the internet but I'll keep it short and just say that we were fundamentally very different and that wasn't immediately apparent to me and it didn't work.

I talked to and met many others but they all reeked of crazy. Any guy will know what I mean by this. Neurotic, clingy, slutty, or just damn odd.

That's not to say that I'm not action packed with issues myself, complete with monogrammed luggage, but I try to minimize and manage my shit.

"Why isn't this working for me?" I would often wonder. I go to these sites and they match us based on a bunch of questions and tests and still nothing.

I've discovered that there are many reasons why it doesn't work. Ultimately because it's fucking hard to meet someone you are actually compatible with. I know lots of couples that never go more then surface deep. It works for some but I'm a highly introspective person and in today's age of technology I think you see that more and more. You're seeing people that are OK being alone more frequently and people that question more. The more you question, the more you learn about yourself. The more you learn about yourself the harder it gets to find someone that feels and thinks the same way you do.

I've also discovered that there is a shelf life on how many emails you can exchange with someone before whatever spark you might have is gone. If you live across the country from your match this makes it difficult.

Another side effect of online dating is falling in love with a picture. I can look damn good in a picture if I try and most women in general are even better at it. But that's not real. It's all too easy to see a pretty face and a few paragraphs on a screen that sound like something you would say and develop an elaborate fantasy around it. I've known more then one girl that has had to deal with this and a couple of guys as well.

So if its so fucked, why try? Because we all seek that connection. I think we all want someone that gets us. Someone to share our dislikes and favorite recipes with. Someone to raid with or someone to spar with. But I'm more then my favorite movies and music. So is everyone else.

I think that online dating represents a good jump off point. But it takes so much more then a love of all things geek or that you both love to hike to make things stay good. You have to share those deep convictions. You have to see eye to eye on how you want to live your lives. From politics to how you want your children schooled or if you even want children. It's the deep dark secrets and fundamental desires and beliefs that need to be satisfied to make it work. It is very hard to find that.

I had a terrible fucking marriage that lasted 5 years. We had fun partying together until she got pregnant. Then things went quickly downhill and we realized how different we are. I know what it's like to differ from your spouse on everything, it's not fun.

Despite the difficulties I still remain hopeful. I've stopped actively seeking and now just look to talk to and get to know people. If someone doesn't come along that's OK, I'm quite happy by myself. It's taken me a long time to be able to truthfully say that.

Job Security

As I've mentioned I work in a Help Desk. This is a Help Desk for a major U.S. company and my role is greatly expanded over that of your typical support analyst. I work on literally everything electronic that any of our over 2500 branches might have issues with. There are some things that we don't support but the standard rule is "best effort" which means even if we technically don't support it we should try to help.

I take about 35-45 calls a day and my average talk time per call is usually 15-25 minutes. Most of my calls are genuine issues the the end user wouldn't know how to fix. But about 4 to 6 of my calls everyday are things that anyone should be able to fix. Anyone. Very simple things that can be reasoned out by simple logic.

I am told that these callers are job security. As in, as long as they are calling I'll have a job.

Well that's all fine and good and I can easily see the sense in that but to me that's the wrong angle to look at it from. I would rather work myself out of a job and know that my company is being staffed by responsible people then continue to work with lazy assholes.

I have no formal college education and everything I know I have learned through experience. There is no reason that a Branch Manager can't figure out how to put his Outlook back online after it goes Offline. Click the button that says Offline and uncheck that option. Just screwing around will show you that. Many, many issues can be resolved by simply trying. Then you don't have to wait on hold for 10 minutes so I can fix your issue in 3. I worry that they are looking at other problems at the branch in a similar fashion. I worry that they see an issue, any issue, and think "Hmmm, I don't really know how to approach this so I'll just wait until someone else comes along and fixes it." This may be unreasonable but the company I work for is very fragile right now and is one of the U.S.'s largest companies. If we were to go under it would seriously fuck several markets for a while. And I can't help but wonder about things like that.

Also, at my office we are supposed to tip toe threw the tulips with these people and take any level of disrespect in favor of better customer service.

I call bullshit.

If you call me for help and I am the subject matter expert why are you telling me how to do my job? Why are you insisting that I don't know what I'm doing and why are you refusing to follow simple instruction?

I know that not every IT Help Desk person knows what they are doing but if you call them for help you have to be prepared to at least give them the chance to try.

Really what all this amounts to is that this isn't the industry for me. I couldn't be happy working this job in ten years like many of my co-workers are.

Oh well, the search for meaning and fulfillment in life continues. I worry that I may have fucked myself by getting out of the military. I wasn't happy but at least I had purpose. I guess I just need to find something that is...... more. And of course it will be very easy to do so.

Secret Lives

I've been thinking about the secret lives that we all lead a lot lately.

You know all the thoughts and desires and kinks that you have that you never tell anyone. That you really don't even share with yourself sometimes.

There is a ruddy faced blond girl that works at the Blockbuster that I always go to. I've never given much thought to her or what her life is like until the other day when I realized that she is pregnant. She kept walking around and putting movies back the whole time and she was crying. About 10 minutes later a young guy came in that I'm guessing is her boyfriend and he comforted her.

This was all too much for me. Someone who I've been having casual conversation with for the last year is pregnant, crying, and apparently has a somewhat serious relationship. It was odd to see all of these things at once. She was never more then the Blockbuster girl in my head. But I was forced to see more of her life.

I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that even the most simple of us have far more depth then we often realize.

This of course led me to think about all of the shit about me that even the closest of my family or friends couldn't even guess at. When you add that to the fact that I am not unique it gets even more interesting and has turned into my new favorite game.

I work as a help desk operator for a living and I talk to about 50 different people everyday. Some of them are repeat callers that I have helped before and know to an extent but many are new voices. I like to make up elaborate histories and sexual habits for these people.

Lets say I get a call from Joe Bagodonuts. He's having a problem with his Outlook, he's not receiving email. Oh my! In the 2 minutes it takes me to fix this issue I've decided that Joe is one of the Heracleidae and spent his early years being guarded and trained by an Etruscan cult dedicated to the worship of Charun. Joe himself possesses an ancient hammer that is rumored to be at least 1000 years old and likes to walk the streets at night bashing in the heads of the old and infirm. When he goes home to his wife he makes love to her in the missionary position and the missionary position only, looking at a picture of Macaulay Culkin the whole time.

That's just an example, they are usually much more detailed.