First Update - What a difference a day makes

Well, this is the first post discussing what I've been specifically doing. First of all, I had an off day yesterday -- I was already tired, and nothing seemed to be going anywhere with this, so I was pretty down about it. There was a fleeting thought about giving up, so I ran with it and used it as motivation. If that ever happens to you, just think about what's at stake, and it should be easy to see that your effort really is worthwhile and there's no reason to ever give up. Today seems the exact opposite. Everything is working! The principle idea was to essentially overbook myself with social activities, in other words, get involved in so many that I can't even keep up with them. Not quite there yet, but we're definitely cooking with gas. So now, the update:

Craig's list
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This is the most interesting one. I responded to approximately 39 ads, mostly from the "strictly platonic" w4m section. Of these, I am still e-mailing back and forth with a whopping 3 people. That's 7.7%, folks. So as you can see, this internet thing is a numbers game. Most of the people never responded to my e-mail. One or two responded the first time, but not to my second e-mail. Interestingly, in a couple cases I didn't think I had enough in common with the person or just generally didn't feel interested, so I was the one to stop responding.

So, as for those 3. I have already talked to one of them about meeting up in the next couple weeks. Our e-mail conversation is very fluent, and she actually expects me to be kind of shy, so I'm thinking we are a lock to be friends offline.

The second person said in her original post that *she* was shy. Haven't asked her about meeting up yet, but we've exchanged 95 e-mails now so I think I will.

The third person seems to be a lot like me in some cool ways (not related to this stuff), so I'm thinking we might end up meeting up as well.

MEETin
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Haven't used this at all. The people on there seem to be mostly well outside of my age range.

Dating Sites
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Yahoo: Only got 4 *views* in about a week. Wish I hadn't paid for this one. Received one icebreaker, sent an e-mail in response but got nothing back. No responses to other icebreakers/e-mails, after sending about 30.

Date.com: This site sucks. I got 8 views, but half of them were bogus out of towners, 43 year olds, etc. Got 1 mutual interest (out of about 20) but so far I haven't been compelled to pay money to e-mail her.

Match.com: By far the best. 13 views, 4 winks in only about 4 days. That's an over 30% conversion rate, which is amazingly high for this stuff. I plan to pursue several of these. As a side note, I got a wink from a girl who I'm really not interested in at all -- I plan to avoid going on such dates. I need the "practice" really, but I'm not willing to lead anyone on if there really is no potential.

So, that's about it for now. The big thing will be starting to meet up with some of these people in person (Phase 2, if you will). It's going to take some courage and willpower to actually put any fears aside and just do it. I fully expect that some of these things will go very....not smoothly :) But that's okay, it will get better.