Tag Archives: update

Dating Life Update (or I Guess I’m Lucky I’m Still Seeing Humor In This)

It’s been a while since I’ve written much about any random adventures I’ve been having with dating or online dating. And that’s because there haven’t been any big developments. I’m still dating and finding a lot of the same struggles I’ve had for a while. I have noticed a few differences, but I feel like they are more about what I am learning about myself and not what I am learning about how to date or find the right guy for me.

I’m not fed up with dating (at least not yet), but it’s definitely testing me. I’m so tired of having the same things happen over and over again. And I know that they aren’t necessarily my fault. I keep finding men who are just in LA for vacation so they might be fun to meet up with for dinner but there’s no potential there. I find men who answer my innocent opening lines with something dirty and disgusting. On Bumble, women have to start texting. I usually have a simple opening line such as “Funny or scary movies?” and I get some fun answers. But then there are the few guys each week that answer it with something like naked movies or whatever they have filmed on a hidden camera in their bedroom.

Because my tolerance for things like that is going down, I’m unmatching with those guys right away and not feeling bad about it. They don’t need a second chance when they start a conversation like that. If they were someone I wanted to meet, I wouldn’t have such a negative reaction to what they wrote.

I’m also getting annoyed with men who either don’t seem to want to make plans to meet up or unmatch with me after planning a date. There’s only so much I can do to suggest meeting for coffee or a drink. If a guy won’t take the hint or won’t follow through, I don’t see the need to waste my time on them. I’m not looking for someone to text with, I’m looking to meet up and see what can happen. And I have encountered several men who make a plan to meet up and then the day of they unmatch for whatever reason. Maybe they changed their mind and didn’t feel like I needed to know, maybe they never wanted to meet up. I try not to take that rejection personally, but it’s hard not to think there is something wrong with me that made them do it.

I also went out with someone recently that I thought I really clicked with. We had a great first date that ended up lasting over 12 hours between meeting up, going for drinks, getting dinner, seeing a movie, and just talking to get to know each other. I was excited about a second date and he seemed to be as well. And while we were planning that second date, he said he didn’t want to go out again because he didn’t think we had a connection. Again, I tried not to take it personally but it wasn’t easy. But a friend put it in a different perspective for me. My friend said that if this guy couldn’t figure out if we had a connection while on a 12-hour date, I shouldn’t want to go out with him again because he’s not quick to pick up on things. I appreciated hearing that and it made me feel so much better about the situation.

But focusing on more positive things, I am trying to be more open to taking chances with dating. If I’m not 100% sure about a guy (maybe I don’t think they are my type or they have something in their profile I’m not sure about), I still am willing to meet in person since you never know. There are guys that I didn’t think I would like that I ended up going out with several times. And the same goes for guys I have gone out with before. I am willing to give guys from my past another chance as long as they didn’t do anything to hurt me before. If we just were in different places and that’s why we stopped seeing each other, then I am willing to try again if they want to. Of course, if they were rude to me or did something else that upset me, they don’t get a second chance no matter what.

And I’m still enjoying the various dating-related Facebook groups that I’m in. Many of the groups I’m in are about being single and not necessarily dating. They celebrate being single and dating posts aren’t as often. But it’s still a great support for me and I enjoy seeing how other people are enjoying dating and being single. And then there is one group that really is a dating support group for me. We can share anything that has happened on dates or dating apps and we all are sounding boards for each other. We can post texts for others to help interpret or screenshots of dating profiles (with the photos and names blocked out) to have a good laugh. That group has helped me stay sane when I feel like this is all driving me crazy. I don’t know what I would do without the women in that group. Their virtual support means so much to me.

I wish I had a better dating update to share, but it’s really that I’m just trucking along as always. I am becoming a stronger person as I go through the dating world and am more sure about what I want to find in a potential partner. I know what I deserve and what I don’t need to tolerate. And as much as I wished I had learned that lesson on my own, I think I had to learn it through dating because it really does help to make things clearer. I have more to write about my online dating book soon, but for now, the update is just that I’m still going and still trying to see the positive in the randomness of the dating world.

A NaNoWriMo Update (or Maybe I Need More Dates)

At the beginning of the month, I shared how I was going to participate in National Novel Writing Month. I was going to use the month to work on writing the book I planned on writing about my adventures in online dating. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed when the month started, but I figured that I didn’t have to hold myself to the daily goals of NaNoWriMo and just could work on a story every day.

I had been taking notes on the stories that I wanted to write and it seemed like it would take forever to get through it. But I felt better when I had the idea broken down into chunks and I decided that until I got started that it would continue to feel like a huge task. So I got started on the stories and fortunately they seemed to be easy to write and it didn’t take me too much time to get each story done. It was a bit fun to remember the crazy things that have happened to me. And it helped me reflect on how much I’ve grown as a person since I’ve put myself out there more and that I’m much stronger now than I was earlier this year.

I rarely worked on more than one story a day. It seemed better to focus on one a day and it allowed me to write the story and do some edits the same day. I didn’t have to spend too long working on it so it never felt like a task. But then I ran into a bit of a problem.

I ran out of stories to share! I could technically write about more horrible people, but I did try to lump in some of the smaller stories into a single story. There is no reason for me to write about each guy that called me fat or said something about how I was an item on the bucket list for types of girls they wanted to go out with. Those could be combined and that seemed to be the best thing for how the flow of the book was going.

There are still 2 stories I haven’t written. Both are guys that I’m still seeing a bit so I don’t know how things will end. And I don’t want to work on their stories too much yet because I think the tone of it will be based on what happens with them. If one of them says something horrible to me, I’ll be more suspicious of things leading up to that than I would be if things just end because they reach a natural end. One of those stories is probably going to be a longer one and the other may or may not be a longer one (it just depends on how many more dates I have with him).

But even if both of those stories are long ones, my book is pretty short. If I printed it without those stories, it’s only 50 pages long and that includes the cover and chapter page. That’s a tiny book and I know that if I ever want to do something with it the book probably needs to be longer. I have no idea if I will ever try to publish it, but I have had some screenwriter friends express interest in it to turn into a series or something else. But no matter what I do with it, I know that if I want it to be more than just something for me that I need it to be a more substantial book.

I could go back and try to expand stories. I’ve already started to do that and have gone through several edits on multiple stories. I know there is more that I can do, but I probably need to step away from it for a little bit before I can view it again with fresh eyes and new ideas.

Of course, the other idea is that I just need to go on more dates. I’m still not seeing someone seriously and unless one of the guys I’m seeing now ends up being someone who I end up being serious with (and that’s not necessarily going to be the case), I will have more dates in my future. I’ve been less active with the dating apps lately due to my schedule and the holidays. But I’m trying to get better at it again because I want to keep meeting new guys. I don’t like dating lots of different guys, but I know that I need to do that if I want to find someone to eventually marry. I don’t meet people at work (since I work from home) or in my workouts, so online dating really is the best way for me to meet new people.

Of course, if one of the guys I’m seeing now ends up being something serious, that’s fine and I’ll end the book that way. I don’t have to sell the book, but if I do I know I can always have it as a novella and it can be a short book. I don’t expect to sell this book and make a ton of money on it, so a novella is always an option.

But I don’t feel like my story is done yet. I think there are plenty of adventures still out there for me and when they do happen I know I’ll have to write them down. I’m glad I didn’t feel the pressure to stick with the NaNoWriMo targets and that this book is going to be something I continuously work on. I have what I hope will be a majority of it done so adding stories as they happen won’t feel as overwhelming to me anymore.

A year ago, I had no idea that all these adventures would happen to me. While some of them still make me mad, I know that they all happened for a reason. And I guess that reason for some of them is so I could turn the stories into a book. And one day, hopefully this will be something I can share with others and people will get some entertainment out of my adventures.

Mom Update (or Two Steps Done, Two More To Go)

Today is an exciting day (at least for me) in my mom’s ass-kicking of cancer. Today she will be getting the last chemo infusion of this particular chemo drug.

My mom has essentially 4 steps to go through with all of this. First was the mastectomy, and we all know she kicked ass at that! I’m still amazed how fast she recovered.

The second step was this first chemo drug. She got it 4 times over 2 months (one infusion every other week). She’s again kicking ass at this. While she’s gotten a bit achy and maybe has to rest a bit more than normal, she hasn’t gotten sick once! And she continues to win almost all of her tennis matches (and I know her tennis friends aren’t going easy on her).

In two weeks, she will be starting step 3. It’s another chemo drug. This time it will be every week for 3 months. This drug is supposed to be easier than the first one, but everyone reacts differently.

After all the chemo will be radiation.

It seems like a lot, but when you think about it, she’s finished half of the steps that she has to do. I think that is awesome!

I won’t be seeing my mom until she’s gone through several weeks of the new chemo. I’m planning on going home around Christmas (I have a couple of days off of work then) and it can’t come soon enough. I’m still feeling a bit guilty for being in LA living my life while my mom is going through all this. She’s got my dad there and she can go to San Francisco to see my brother (or he can drive down to my parents), but I’m here. I know that it’s what my mom wants me to do (she wants everyone to keep going on like everything is normal, which I think is helping her stay healthy through all of this). But I wish that December would get here sooner so I can be there and help out doing whatever my parents need me to do.

I honestly think that I’m always going to feel a little guilty that I didn’t drop everything to be there for my mom for these months (the entire length of treatment is supposed to be about 9 months), but I have to think back to when I had my hip surgery (not that I’m comparing cancer with my hip issues, but it’s all I’ve got in personal experience). While I did want my parents to come to LA when I had my surgery to help me come home from surgery and drive me around while I recovered, I was happy to be independent again when they left. And the main reason that I needed them there for a lot of things was that I lived alone and wasn’t dating anyone. So there was nobody to take care of me. My mom has my dad there, and since he’s a retired doctor, I think he’s a pretty great choice as a caretaker.

I’m excited to see my mom doing so well with everything that she’s taken on, and that makes some of the guilt go away. She doesn’t need me there because she isn’t allowing herself to be sick. She’s doing pretty much everything that she did before her diagnosis now and that’s the example that I should be living by.

Life Updates (or Some Of What’s Going On)

Today, I’ve decided to update you all on a couple of little things going on in my life.

First of all, the most recent car accident I’ve had. I haven’t gotten my car fixed, or even gotten an estimate. I’m hoping to do that sometime in the next few weeks. I haven’t decided if I’m going to fix it at all. It doesn’t look horrible, and right now I don’t have the money for the deductible (I could get it together in time, I just don’t know if that’s a priority for me right now).

Also, I’ve finally decided what I’m going to wear to my brother’s wedding. I’m nowhere near the weight loss goal I had for myself, but that’s ok. The wedding is in Hawaii, and it’s black tie optional. I don’t want to wear a full length dress, so I’m going to wear the same dress that I wore to my friend Marie’s wedding last year in Texas. The dress is fancy and I think the color is tropical. Here’s a little picture of it.

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I still need to figure out what I’m wearing for the rehearsal dinner and need to go out and buy another bathing suit (I only have 1 right now), but I’ve got some time to get those done. At least the most important outfit for the trip is figured out.

I also wrote about how I have a black thumb a while back. I’ve been trying really hard to not kill my plants this time. I think I’ve succeeded in not killing my plants (yet).

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I sent this photo to my dad, and he thinks that it looks like the plants are thriving. Hopefully they will still look this good when he comes to visit me in the fall.

And finally, a long overdue update. I said last year that I was thinking of getting rid of cable. I kept my cable but tried to only watch my shows through Hulu, Netflix, and the internet. And while it worked for many of my shows, it just wasn’t a good solution for them all. In order for me to do my research, it would get to be pretty difficult to not have cable and a DVR.

But I am trying to expand my shows to be things that don’t air on traditional TV. I had yesterday off (there was an awards show filming at my work and it wasn’t safe for us to be there), and I watched all 13 episodes of “Orange Is The New Black”, which is a Netflix original series. If you haven’t watched this show yet, start now! It’s amazing! It might be one of the best shows on tv (and it’s pretty much an all female cast which is amazing and pretty much unheard of).

So that’s what has been going on in my life. I’m feeling pretty reflective as I’m coming to the last week of my 20’s. I’ve been looking back at some photos and just thinking about how much I changed over the last decade. And how so much will change again for me in this next decade. I know I’m probably sounding very sappy, but big birthdays will do that to a person. And when I turned 20, I had no idea that I would be in the place that I am now. So my imagination has been going wild thinking of the possibilities that could be when I’m looking back at my 30’s ten years from now.