Randomness in a Netshell
Apparently my heartbeat is too fast? Every woman I have ever kissed has commented on it. That’s only 7, so that sample is pretty small. Plus it tends to be years in between. So I guess there is some excitement at the prospect.
I’m only reminded because of a comment the other night from my date. In overthinking the whole thing, I landed on her remark.
Found this story interesting. I was a very disagreeable teen and still am as an adult.
Disagreeable teens tend to grow up into disagreeable adults. A 10-year study finds that disagreeable teens often have no awareness that their behavior is harming their relationships.
In my early 20s, I did hold the view that everyone else was the problem. By 25, I mostly lost that view. I am still disagreeable, but I know that it is all me and in my head.
And I have poor relationships still because I do not really wish to inflict it too much on others. It is exhausting being nice. Between being nice enough to not get fired from my job and navigate society, there is not enough willpower capacity left over to attract and maintain a close relationship.
Whether Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity (actually a mashup of both last night), I will have to judge a card which encourages people to comment on my dating history. The one from last night was, “What ended my last relationship?” Yes, I picked “My personality” as the winning card.
So, I was glad when we stopped playing that game. Give me strategy, bluffing, and backstabbing to achieve world dominance any day.
I laid down my book. Hannah wanted to know what it is. I re-oriented it so she could see the cover and told her it is a Conan book of the original stories by Robert Howard. (The Conquering Sword of Conan)
She asked if sword and sorcery is what I read. I admitted that I tend to read lots of it, as one cannot read quantum mechanics all the time. She reads mysteries.
In retrospect mine was a pretty poor stated answer. I read lots of both non-fiction and fiction. With fiction it is thrillers, mysteries, and sci-fi but more fantasy. With non-fiction I am more diverse about equally physics, biology, history, biographies, prognostication. My answer could be interpreted as I just read two things.
I asked who is her favorite author. She thought about it for a while. Maybe because I am still in the mindset of interviewing people for jobs we have open, I offered a qualification: Just someone you enjoy reading. She asked could she answer with a poet. I replied that works. She named T.S. Elliot. It happens a friend of mine has a cat named T.S. Elliot Destroyer of Worlds.
She left to go to work. I went into the Kindle app on my phone and bought The Waste Land on my phone. I started reading it and ran across “You who were with me in the ships at Mylae !” I felt like I should know of Mylae, but it did not readily come, so I looked it up to go off reading about the First Punic War.
Ah, the stuff my brain suffers because of a pretty woman who talks to me.
Single & Happy: The Party of Ones by J. Victoria Sanders
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Back in late 2011, I ran across the Single & Happy blog. WordPress.com had drawn me in, but I started looking at various tags including dating. Lots were people talking about current dates and especially the horror that is online dating web sites. Single & Happy was a better, maturer different.
My only other experiences with blog writers who publish a book is to collect the best blog posts, give them to an editor, maybe expand a bit upon them, and publish the collection. Instead we get an actual book influenced by prior work and so something new and exciting.
While not a single black woman, I am single and almost black. I strongly sympathize with the plight of attempting online dating. The dating stories seem eerily familiar. And the advice Victoria gives on being a friend to yourself is good advice. It happens I a friend posted on Facebook on why she hates the question, “Why are you single?” so I referenced a quote from this book.
Somehow after decades of being single, I think I am happy. Well, happy-ish. There is room for improvement. It is good to know there are others out there working on the same issues willing to talk about the challenges.
Sneezy 