Making Friends

This was never meant to be a blog about a shy guy trying to date.

Why so many posts, then, about dating? Lets review an abbreviated version of the Original Plan, from the post "Organizing Our Efforts:"

1. Make friends online
2. Make dates online
3. Spend more time with existing friends. If applicable.
3a. Ask current close friends to introduce you to more of their friends.
3b. Get closer to your less-close friends, and acquaintances.
4. Talk to people everywhere you possibly can.

(The original post is essential reading. It goes into some important details on these points. )

Now, back to the question: why so many posts about dating? I've been on 4 dates, and I've only had 1 platonic meeting. Well, the answer is that it is just a lot easier to find people online to date than it is to find people interested only in friendship. As for #3, I haven't really had the chance. For #4, I really haven't done anything out of my ordinary, so I will definitely have to make a real effort at that now.

At long last, things are starting to shape up for #1. I've made tentative plans to hang out this weekend with the person (from craig's list) that I met in my first platonic meeting. That will be a milestone, since it'll be the first time I've seen anyone I've met on this mission for a second time.
Hopefully I will soon be able to call this person my second offline friend overall. Excellent!
And on top of that, the next day, I'll be meeting the other girl who I've been e-mailing for a couple months. Hopefully the same will come of that.

And still, there's more! (When it rains, it pours). Another girl (from craig's list's platonic section) that I e-mailed a few times finally moved to my area. I called her up tonight.....as with every phone call, I will recapitulate:

It went great. I had called my best friend before and after this call, so that was good for comparison. My voice was clear and eloquent, and I had enough things to say (for a 15-minute conversation) even though I only had a couple topics in mind when I dialed. I was relatively uninhibited...there were a few short silences, and some blind "uh-huhs," but in my estimation, they were pretty normal for a first phone call with someone you hardly know at all. I asked her if she wants to meet up on Labor Day, and told her I'd give her another call this weekend.

This was actually my first platonic phone call on the mission. I've only texted and e-mailed the other two people.

In reality, making new friends, no matter how it's done, is the one critical thing that has to be achieved on this mission. It is both the means and the end. After making a few friends, I'll have new people to spend time with, which will allow my social skills to improve. And I will use those skills to make new friends, and continue building, and building, and building.

Where does dating fit into the plan? Having so little to work with in the way of social skils and comfort level, the dates have all so far been one-and-dones (the verdict is still out on my 4th date..I will update you on that soon). Well, as it turns out, I think all these first dates have actually had great value. Dating is one of the toughest social situations to deal with. I think that having tackled those repeatedly from the outset is going to make all of these platonic meetings seem much easier. Right now I have little or no anxiety about these coming new platonic meetings, and I think I have my new dating experiences largely to thank for that.

My attempt here is to go all-out. Toward that end, I am going to try to start to make some new friends offline as well. The only way I've been able to figure out to do it is to join some type of club, or something where I will see the same people repeatedly. So, I am planning to start taking a hip-hop dance class on Saturday. Now how is a super-inhibited person like me going to handle that?? He is going to Just Do It. It's a great way to force myself into some uninhibited behavior (a principle theory mentioned in the last couple posts), so if I can get comfortable dancing - of all things - hopefully that will help me feel more comfortable with basic things, like...ya know...talking.

Improvement

Well, I was at it again today. For the fifth time, I met someone from the Internet. It was my fourth first date in less than 2 weeks.

Good news: it definitely went better than the last date that had me feeling like I was at the end of my rope.

This time I saw my date - who I had never even talked to on the phone - outside of the Starbucks. I went up to say hey. (I'm recapping this stuff for those who have never tried online dating....I think it's interesting). This time she asked if I was MyName. Ha, she had seen pictures of me, so it should have been obvious, but I said that I was. For the first time, no hug or handshake. She asked if we should go inside or sit outside. On the first 2 dates, I was asked something similar and was too indecisive, but this time I finally got it right (it was definitely too hot to be outside). So we went inside and ordered.

We sat, and talked. I didn't have a lot of specific things in mind to ask her, but maybe that was a good thing. My voice wasn't much better than the last time....some sort of weird psychological block on me speaking normally, I suppose....but things otherwise went pretty well.

I had in mind what I said before about forcing some uninhibited comments and a compliment. I made myself say a few, not-too-risky things (no updog joke..dang it) that came to mind, and it was good. I'm pretty sure we laughed together more than on any of my previous dates, so that was great. She seemed to do about 95% of the talking. Sounds crazy, but I'm really not exaggerating much, if at all. She spoke so much, in fact, that I wasn't even able to get in a few questions that came to mind before she changed topics. I said very little about myself, which is not necessarily all that bad...all of these girls talk A LOT. Definitely good for me starting out. But I've digressed.

I never felt like there was a good time to break out the favorite color question, or the compliment, so next time I will try harder to force those things as appropriate. Overall, I think this time I got a slightly better balance of lighter topics with career discussion and such.

The second thing that I mentioned last post was not trying to compensate for my lack of experience by trying to make myself sound more interesting in answering questions. I actually stuck to this ("Nope...didn't do anything except study in high school"), and found that I didn't bumble any sentences. Somehow I was a bit nervous again, and for a little while actually felt my face getting a little twitchy (the twitch used to be my nemesis...see "So you ready to meet now?" post). Not too bad, but at one point my nervousness caused me to blow saying the word Hospitality. Not exactly a tongue twister, so it's hard to see how I could mess it up. Just an indicator that I need to greatly increase my comfort level in these social situations.

After an hour and twenty minutes, I ended the date. I was aiming for 45 minutes, but I'm not so good at estimating elapsed time without glancing at my watch, and I was trying to wait until a high note to end it. Yes, this time I was determined to be the one to end it. As far as dating goes, I think that's one of the most important things (on the male side, of course). On my first three, unsuccessful dates, the girl was the one to end it, so I definitely wanted to do this differently. When I said I'd better get leaving, my date apologized for keeping me so long, and said something to the effect of: Wow, we've been here a while. Excellent! At least, I hope that translates to something like "time flies when you're having fun."

I walked to her car with her, so no issues with that this time. I said it was good meeting her, and I initiated a hug. So what did she say? The first date said it was fun, and we should do it again sometime. The second said she'd had a good time, and "I'll talk to you later....?" The third said "I'll see you later..?" Hmmm.

She just said to have a safe trip home :) It's probably silly to analyze these things, so I won't infer anything from it....I'm just glad it was different from those first 3 endings.

Now this time, I will probably go with another follow-up call in a couple days. If she's still interested, that would certainly bode well for my ego, and I just may experience my first second-date ever. If not though, I'll be cool this time, and just keep at it. I've already seen the worst, and it's not that bad....so now I'm quite fearless.

Coming soon: a second platonic meeting!

Persistence

"Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."

-- Calvin Coolidge

I want to thank Bárbara and Reese, whose comments were a big help in encouraging me to press on.

Well, I'm back. I was feeling really, really down for about 22 hours after the last date I told you about. After those 22 hours, I started to feel again what I was thinking: There's no reason to be discouraged. I knew I had a very long way to go when I started this, and so I knew some of my efforts would not go smoothly. But all in all, they're great no matter how they go. If nothing else, I learn something from every social situation I put myself into.

In reality, the first round of dates I went out on were pretty much sacrificial. I'd only been on one before in my life, before starting to go on about 2 per week. The first few were almost certain to be one-and-dones, no second date, since I started out in need of drastic improvement.

Just an update....I dropped my second date an e-mail, since she didn't respond to my phone call. No response to that, either. It's interesting....having had no experience with this, I didn't really know how people handle this. From my first 2 experiences, I learned that if a girl (may be different for guys) is not interested, she may either A) Talk to you and deliver the Friends Speech or B) Completely ignore you. Heh. The latter seems to me a bit less than tactful after a date that was at least friendly and amicable, but hey... it really doesn't make me any difference.

As for the third date... like I said, I was really unusually nervous (though not necessarily anxious; think "nervous laughter" and bumbled sentences) on that one for some reason. I decided this time to try something new. I sent her an e-mail telling her it was nice talking to her, and asking if she'd like to get together again sometime as friends..and I suggested something specific. She very well may not want to be friends, but I figured it was worth a try.

More updates. I have another first date set for tomorrow. I set it for the exact same location as the last one :) So it will be my chance at redemption.

On the platonic front...a friend from craig's list that I've been e-mailing for months, since I started this blog, told me that she (who is admittedly a bit shy) would like to finally meet up. I'm going to meet her soon, as well as another person from craig's list that just moved to town. Just what I needed.

And finally, I've decided on a change in strategy. My last theory - about trying to reduce inhibition by just trying to lose one's sense of self-awareness - failed miserably the first time I tried it with someone in person. That's OK, because I said early on that if any of my plans don't work, I will simply adjust and try something else.

So I have a new idea. Instead of trying to passively do nothing to reduce inhibition, I'm going to try the exact opposite. I'm going to instead be ACTIVE, and force myself, no matter what, into some uninhibited behavior. What I have in mind is forcing myself to say some of the types of things that have been coming to mind, but that I've felt too inhibited to say.

These things are mainly humor, and silly comments or questions. For example, as a date question...what's your favorite color? And teasing in response. Or blurt out a silly joke. Some of the fun things on the Conversation Topics post. Likewise, I'm going to force delivery of any compliment that comes to mind. I thought of these things before, but didn't actually do them - I guess there's some added inhibition there because of the potential for embarassment, or whatever. The idea now is that if I make myself do them, the other person will almost surely react positively, giving some good reinforcement. Hopefully seeing positive reactions to just being myself will help me loosen up a bit. And it'll lighten the mood, which is something my previous dates (the platonic meeting was actually pretty fun) could have used.

Lastly, something I learned from the last date. The main reason I bumbled a few sentences was that I was trying to give an answer that I thought would be interesting to the other person, rather than just answering normally. I've been getting into the position of feeling like others are more interesting than I, because I haven't been as many places or done as many things, for reasons obvious to you. To be myself, and bumble less, I'm going to have to just accept that and not put forth extra effort to seem more interesting.

Hopefully that last paragraph wasn't too vague. See ya soon.

Discouragement

Well, tonight I had my fourth in-person meeting; my third date. I came out of it feeling...depressed.

It didn't go catastrophically bad. How could it? But it wasn't so good. In fact, it was really just more of the same. I didn't feel much anxiety during the 1-hour meeting, and there weren't any major silences. Once again, I was able to ask some questions, and my date was very talkative about herself, filling most of the time. As always, I bumbled a few sentences, and felt inhibited. And this time, my voice was as bad as ever. I couldn't seem to get it in gear. It's weird, because I don't think it's a physical thing - immediately before and after, my voice was just fine. But during, it was too high, and not clear enough, something miserable like that. Maybe an odd complaint, but I feel like I could have considered the date to have gone "reasonably well" if not for that.

This having gone similarly to my first 2 dates, why am I depressed? A few reasons... first of all, my date literally yawned a couple times, and was the one to end the date (after only an hour).
Clearly not good for my self-esteem. Second, this was my fourth meeting on this mission. I feel like things are supposed to be getting better, not a little worse. I really hate the feeling of going backwards, even a little. And thirdly, I wasn't able to pull off that trick I mentioned last post, about losing self-awareness to become less inhibited. I couldn't get comfortable enough mentally...not this time.

The date ended with a weird sort of handshake-hug, and an "I'll see you later..?" from the girl. The observant blog reader will notice the similarity to the date before this, which ended with an "I'll talk to you later..?" In that case, I called 3 days later, and got a voicemail. I left a message, and still haven't gotten a call back, 2 days later. I felt like that date definitely went better than tonight's, so.....once again, not good for my self-esteem. I am pretty sure this time I won't even bother making the follow-up phone call. I try to brush these things off, but eliciting another needless Friends Speech would be downright masochistic. Of course there's the extremely remote possibility that the girl is for some reason still interested, but....

The idea is to gain as much experience as possible, so in that sense, everything I do is a "success." But I'm already very, very tired of experiencing failures in the traditional sense. I'm the type of guy who needs to be successful after putting in so much time and energy. It's strange to talk to someone over e-mail for a couple of weeks, then meet up with them for an hour or two, and never hear from them again. But dating is a good way to gain social experience, of which I need as much as possible, so it's worth dealing with.

I felt a little like giving up on the way home, but of course that will NEVER happen. Right now the plan is to set up another first date tomorrow, and focus on other things when I'm not doing that or writing here (i.e., according to items #2 and #3 last post, I'm supposed to not dwell on the event afterwards, and not concern myself with the results...doing either would be depressing). I also need to figure out a way to get some more platonic meetings in...that would help, since those tend not to end in discouragement.

These methods aren't for the faint of heart.....

Weekend Update

I generally don't take days off from working on the mission that is the title of this blog. If I ever do, it'll only be because I absolutely have to.

That said, I started off this weekend by doing a little thinking about where I am, and what I need to do to take things to the next level. From my previous post, it was apparent that the main thing I need to work on is reducing my social inhibition. Amazingly, it seems that if I could just fix that one thing - and with all other things being the way they are now - I would be at about a normal level. Wow.

So I hopped on google, and feverishly searched for information about how to reduce social inhibition. Surprisingly, I found very, very little. My search led me to a few interesting issues, such as: how do I classify the general problem I'm trying to work on here? Is this what people call shyness? Starting out, I didn't think so. I came across numerous other possible terms, but none of them seemed to fit just right. As it turns out, this classification issue is pretty complicated, and will probably get its own blog entries later.

But I've digressed. A few of the sites I found on shyness and other issues helped me formulate a better idea of what may be causing this inhibition. According to a psychologist named Carducci, shyness "involves feelings of excessive self-consciousness, negative self-evaluation and negative self-preoccupation." I decided that, whether it should be considered shyness or not, perhaps my social inhibition may be caused by some of the same things.

Now, the first thing I recognized is that my entries about my social interactions were accurate on the fact that I wasn't NEGATIVELY self-conscious. This means that negative self-evaluation and negative self-preoccupation are out of the picture here, unless they're going on subconsciously (which I doubt).

That just leaves "excessive self-consciousness." I said before that I wasn't self-conscious at all, but at the time I was thinking of self-conscious as meaning thinking negatively. Now I think that maybe I was self-conscious, as in highly aware of my thoughts and actions, but without a negative spin on the awareness. I decided that maybe this non-negative self-consciousness was enough to cause, or at least contribute to, my inhibition in social situations.

Of course, this is so far just a theory of mine, but that's a big part of what this blog is about! I haven't found a good answer to the problem on Google, so therefore it is up to me to discover it and share it with everyone else in my situation.

I then proceeded to integrate my new theory into a short list of goals to focus on in upcoming interactions:

1. Try to (greatly) reduce my high level of inhibition, to the point that I'm as uninhibited talking to new people as I am talking to my best friend. Or at least close. Attempt this by mimicking the latter situation: try to minimize even noticing the thoughts you're having, and general awareness of yourself. Instead, just partake in the conversation while putting forth only minimal effort to come up with things to say. Don't put yourself under any pressure to think of what to say; it will have the opposite effect of what you want, making that more difficult.

The last point deserves further explanation. I wrote that after stumbling upon this gem from a site on shyness: "Feeling [uptight]?? First of all... just chill. The secret to knowing what to say is learning what to feel. According to the experts, if you feel positive, feelings of fear will not interfere with your ability to think of something to say."

2. Focus on gaining experience in social interactions, and don't concern myself with the results. For example, if I go on a date, I'm just happy to be getting that experience and doing my best with it; I won't concern myself with whether it is going well enough for there to be a second date, or anything like that. This should reduce anxiety even further.

3. Don't dwell on social interactions before or after. My dwelling kept resulting in long periods of anxiety in the aftermath, even though there was very little during the interactions. And similarly for some of the hours leading up to these activities.

Finally, I was able to try these things out on Sunday. As older posts reveal, I was once terrified of talking on the phone. Now, it has become my friend; a great tool in this mission.

I called up a girl from yahooPersonals who I've been e-mailing for about 10 days. Before dialing, I thought through item #1, and then tried to let go of my self-awareness and feel like I do when calling my best friend. It's difficult or impossible to describe how to do this...you just have to try it out.

No answer...she called back about 15 minutes later, and I answered with very little forethought. And then...success!! We talked for 20 minutes. The only self-awareness I recall was thinking that my voice sounded great, and this was amazingly working: It seemed extremely close to the feeling that I have when chatting with my best firiend. As usual I had a brief list of backup converstion topics, but I don't think I even looked at it. My mind was clear. This time, there was nothing blocking me from thinking of what to say. It was almost as automatic as talking to a friend or family member.

I won't celebrate too soon here, because maybe I just got lucky on this one. I will try the same thing next time though, and see if it results in a similar experience. And next time, I will also spend less time thinking and planning before I call. Just have a couple things in mind to talk about, relax, and chat.

So I ended the (rather relaxed) conversation by setting up a meeting...sweet. This time, I thought I'd try Starbucks (as in my 1st, platonic meeting), instead of going to dinner at a nice restaurant (as on the first 2 dates). It's set for Wednesday.

Lastly, tomorrow will be the third day since my last date, so I will call the girl up for a post-mortem on that. Honestly, I'm hoping not to hear another Friends Speech, but I'm keeping item #2 above in mind so those things should have minimal effect on me whenever I do encounter them.

I'll leave it at that for now...the mission is definitely in full-swing.

Keeping the Ball Rolling: Another date in the books

Well, I went on another date tonight. The third date in my lifetime, and the second this week.

Despite my efforts, I did a rather poor job of dealing with the results of the first date. Even after my post, I found myself thinking about it almost constantly. I was also very anxious....I think this was the result of all the thinking, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I won't get back into rationalizing why I should have reacted better, and all that - hopefully that was covered sufficiently in the last post.

By date time, I pretty much had myself together. My anxiety from thinking about the first date's results were diminished, and - once again - I was not very anxious in anticipation of my next date. I felt a little something, but I'm convinced that in every case, that has been no more than what just about anyone would feel in anticipation of meeting someone from the Internet from the first time. And in fact, maybe my anxiety level was less than average...

I stood in front of the restaurant where we were to meet. After a couple minutes, I saw her. I wasn't completely sure it was her, but then she waved. I said Hey, and we probably had one other little exchange....then I hugged her. This time, I initiated, after learning from my first date that it's a pretty good greeting.

It seemed like history was repeating itself a little, because like on my first date, we needed to choose a different restaurant (first time, too hot...this time, too crowded). This was the chance for me to correct my previous error of being indecisive: This date, too, asked me if I wanted to stay or find another place. I made the same error...I said uh, and said I'd leave it up to her. Not good for dating, but I really wasn't sure! It was in the city, on her turf, and I didn't know the area or what other restaurants would be like. But anyway, perhaps I will handle that properly the next time. Just do something decisively, it doesn't matter as much what that something is.

And so, we made it to the next restaurant. On the way, she mentioned (in reference to her stumbling a little on a word) that she was a little nervous. I thought this was so interesting! Why? Because, as you know, it should seem that *I* would be the nervous one in any social situation, especially on a date. But instead, as in my first 2 meetings, I felt almost zero anxiety and nervousness. (This is probably a good time to point out that this is the "I love you too" girl from match.com, so presumably she was quite interested in me, at least from the get-go.

We ate, and talked. She was very talkative, and so there was never an awkward silence, and we never ran out of things to talk about. The same happened on my first 2 meetings...I find this result to be interesting, because quantity of conversation was one of the main concerns that I had going ino this stuff.

So was this an unbelievably amazing breakthrough? Not really....but why not? We talked plenty, but I was still inhibited. Kind of like in Stiff Mode...I just wasn't the same super duper neat-o guy that I am talking to my close friend and family. Hard to describe, but chances are you know what I mean if you're reading this blog. I would say the inhibition level was about the same as on my 1st date, and a bit higher than on my first (platonic) meeting.

That said, it still went "pretty well," which is what I expected of all of these things going in. By the way, was I interested in the girl? Yeah, I liked her...I would like to see her again, but I won't trip out this time if I run into another Friends Speech.

We were together for a total of about 90 minutes. When we left, I this time was sure to offer to take her home. She declined, and I asked if she was sure....so then I let it go, which I think was okay. We hugged, and she said it was good meeting you, and "I'll talk to you later?" Yeah, with the question mark. I'm not sure what this means...maybe she's still interested and not sure if I was? Lets hope so. I would like to actually go on a 2nd date when I have the chance, because with more depth, maybe I could start to get comfortable with someone and start to be more like myself around them.

So here is the list of things that were successful:
1. Low anxiety level. In fact, remarkably low considering the situation.

2. General comfort level. I was pretty darn comfortable the whole time. To the point that afterwards, it didn't seem like a big deal AT ALL. This time I had only talked to my date on the phone for 27 minutes prior, so now we know that isn't a big factor.

3. Conversation. My date did most of the work, but as usual, I had way more than enough questions. There were so many things I had in mind that I didn't get to, it was kind of unreal. I was too inhibited to ask some of the fun questions, though....

4. Confidence. I wasn't self-consicous. Period.


And here's the list of things that I need to work on:
1. Talking about myself. Like on the first date, I was a bit awkward talking about myself, and describing things in general. I also did very little of it, so I need to work on the quality and quantity. (I copied and pasted this from the first date results...argh!)

2. Inhibition!!!! When I came home and spoke to those close to me, it was TOTALLY different! The word inhibition describes it perfectly, so I won't dwell on it. I'll let you know when I figure out how to improve this, if there's anything other than just doing these social gigs a ton.

3. Saying "uh" too much.

And specific dating things I missed, outside the scope of the mission:
1. Compliment. I would have liked to have tried complimenting my date on something. I noticed she had beautiful nails, but I missed mentioning it, probably due to inhibition. At least I will have that to say if there's a second date.

2. Having weekend plans. When in a non-platonic situation, I should ALWAYS have an answer to what my weekend plans are. I said I didn't really have anything planned yet, but wow, I had a couple of good things I could have mentioned.

And so, I am making progress. I will try to have a good conversation when I call her for the post-mortem, and hopefully this time there will be a second date.

Finally, I decided that I should go for MASS, ridiculous volume (a date every night!) with these things, because they're just too short if there's no 2nd date. I need all the experience I can possibly get. When I got home I saw that another girl had e-mailed me her phone number....sweet....keep the ball rolling.

The Friends Speech

Well, today was one of those days. One of those crappy, off days. I felt anxious about whether my date from Monday would call me back, and what she'd say if so. I spent way too much time thinking about how the date went. And worst of all, I allowed myself to think about what it'd be like to see the girl again, and even go beyond that. Not good.

And so, she eventually called. We talked for about 7 minutes - it was good, I was as comfortable as ever. As has been the case in every actual social situation I've talked about on this blog, most of the anxiety I'd had all day quickly diminished.

But at the end, she didn't say what I wanted to hear. Instead, I got the dreaded Friends Speech. She said she had a great time with me, but didn't really see the romantic thing, but would still like to hang out again. Cookie cutter stuff .

I had foreseen this possibility, so I was quite cool about it on the phone. I said that's cool, and I'd talk to her later. Yeah, right. It would be better than anything (for the mission) if we became friends, but I think that rarely happens with anyone with these things. She said she would call me if she wanted to hang out...something like that, anyway. That was the nail in the coffin.

Of course, I didn't expect my first date on this quest to be successful in the usual sense. I mean, I started about 10 years behind socially, so how could I? ;) So this shouldn't have upset me at all. I've found, however, that it is somehow, at a minimum, a little depressing nonetheless. The Friends Speech is a global killer of the male ego, so it's going to take some extra effort here to avoid losing any of my precious self-esteem and confidence.

One thing I didn't really point out before - because it was outside the scope of the mission - was that my date and I never really clicked. We never really found something in common that we both had a lot to say about, or whatever...surely you know what "clicking" means without me trying to explain it! So I can understand her not being interested - I probably wouldn't have been either, except that she was attractive enough for me to be willing to go further just because I am after the experience... :) Our secret, eh?

So what should I do to avoid feeling depressed? There's a bit of an urge to recap the date and figure out what went wrong, but I've decided that's not the way to go. Not for me, I would obsess over it and it would make me more anxious and down.

Like all mishaps on this quest, I am going to try to just shrug this one off. In reality, I'm communicating with seven other ladies......'nuff said. Plus, going on a date with this girl and talking to her on the phone several times was GREAT experience for the quest! And, it's good to have experienced the first Friends Speech of my life. Remarkably, that indicates that I partook in a romantic social activity (!), and "rejection" is no longer some unexperienced, yet inevitable bump in the road to be feared.

Finally, I already had another date lined up for tomorrow before I even knew she wasn't interested. So.....I should be fine ;)

Here is a summary of mistakes that I made in the aftermath of my first date, that contributed to problems (e.g., anxiety and feeling down) afterwards:

1. Getting too attached. With the objective to socialize as much as possible, I need to just enjoy my time with my dates, but avoid forming any expectations or even hopes of things going further. If it happens, it happens. If not, fine - that would really only put a damper on my ability to see a large number of different people.

2. Overthinking the meeting. In my post-meeting entries, I list what went well, and what I need to work on. That's about all the thinking I should be doing about the dates, or whatever. It's obviously natural to think about things a little, in passing, but this time I was anxiously dwelling over the events of the entire evening. That can't happen again.

Another date tomorrow. I've learned plenty from my mistakes with the first one, so hopefully it will go better. And if it doesn't, I will just shrug it off, learn from my mistakes, and keep on pushing.

The journey continues.

"I love you too"

Oh man, what a night. Two events to talk about here. After the first one, I was so happy I was going to write a blog entry about how amazing this mission is, and how it's by far the most fun, interesting, exciting, satisfying thing I have ever undertaken. I took a little wind out of my sails with the second event, but anyway, lets talk about them in reverse order.

Event 2
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I attempted to make the first follow-up phone call with the girl I went out with 2 days ago. I screwed up mentally today, and thought about doing this way too much in anticipation of the evening rolling around. That just made me anxious, so I will have to be very careful not to do that again. So I finally called, and got her voice mail (which I had been dreading all day). I really hate leaving messages. I planned to leave one anyway so it wouldn't be weird if she had caller ID, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.

So I proceeded with event 2, and then called back an hour and a half later because I really wanted to get her on the phone tonight. I got the doggone voice mail again! This time I forced myself to just leave a message. Or, at least I tried.

I spoke, and omitted what I had in mind about telling her it was great meeting her the other day (she has a business message recorded on her voicemail, so that made me even a little more uncomfortable). I just said "Hey, it's My Name, I just called to see how your big day went yesterday. Talk to you later." Goodness, I really really hate leaving messages, more than I can describe...but it's one of the many social things I will have to work on. So anyway, I was obviously a little on edge, so I hung up as soon as I finished speaking, without pressing # or * or waiting for the voicemail thing to say anything. The problem is, I'm not sure whether the messages get recorded when you do that. Argh!

I really want to get some feedback on our date...see if she's still interested. I'm not sure if she got the message, but I can't risk calling again, because (1) it would be weird if my telephone number were on her caller ID 3 times and (2) it would be REALLY weird if I left two messages. I want to e-mail her or text her or something, but right now I think I will just let it be for a few days, see if anything happens. In reality, she probably will get the message. I'll try to forget about it for now.

Event 1
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So now I will backtrack to the event that took place between my two attempts at the date follow-up call. Like I said, I had been very anxious all day. Why? Well, because I was basically waiting until the evening so I could (1) call my last date and ask her on a second date, if she still seemed interested and (2) call another girl, this one from match.com. Definitely have to distract myself with other things instead of getting anxious next time.

I made a brief list of topics for the girl I'd be speaking to on the phone for the first time. (Tip: review all the messages you've exchanged, she noticed my "good memory"). She would be only the second girl I've talked to on the phone during this mission, or really even at all. It didn't look like enough, but I was quite anxious and decided to just go ahead and dial the number.

And this time, the other party picked up the phone. It's quite interesting to talk to someone live for the first time after exchanging e-mails for a couple/few weeks. You have no idea what their voice will sound like, and don't necessarily know what their personality will be like.

So I said, "Hey, is this ?" And she said something like, "umm...yeah.." and I followed up with "It's ." We then had some basic conversation like, "how's it going?" And "what have you been up to" type things.

Thankfully, this girl was TALKATIVE! Even more so than the first. She started giving extra info in her responses, which allowed me to easily ask questions. And unlike the first time I called someone, I could hear her crystal clearly. After a couple of minutes, the anxiety that I'd had all day diminished completely. I was still a little stiff rather than uninhibited, but felt good nonetheless.

Even though I knew I didn't sound completely relaxed, she responded to me as if everything were normal. And I suppose it was. This a theme I've noticed in these early interactions - once I get to talking to these people, it's as if they just treat me like.....a normal person. Odd, but that is a feeling I've often lacked, and almost never experienced before college. It's great.

So I formed questions based on things she said, and pulled a few things from my backup topics list. By virtue of having done a bit of this already, I was able to give decent answers to a few questions about myself this time. Great! It was a fun little 27-minute, 50 second conversation.
She sounded really fun, and nice, and honestly, my interest in her rose quite a bit while I was talking to her.

When she had to leave for her jog, we set up a meeting (she initiated this, I still haven't done that) at 7 p.m. on Friday at a nice restaurant. I then told her to have a good run, and she said "I love you too...I mean, goodnight!" Haha! It was a joke I guess, but it gave me an amazing feeling, since I've never heard anything close to that, even jokingly, from a girl. Plus, it put me even further at ease. Before the first date I went on this week, I had to tell myself that it would probably go well. This time, I honestly can't imagine it going any other way - especially having learned from my few mistakes on Monday - so at least for now I feel quite comfortable going into it.

Finally, having another date lined up already (this is 2 dates in 5 days; I had previously been on 1 date before in my entire life) has really put my mind at ease about the currently uncertain outcome of my first date. That was always one of the ideas behind my (brilliant?) plan to "overbook" social engagements.

And so I'm really sticking to this mission.....much more soon.

I went out on a date!!!!!

I went out on a date!!!!! Yep. I can cross this one off of my 43 things (http://www.43things.com). This was the second date I've ever been on (at almost 24 years old), and the first date I've ever been on with a girl I actually had some interest in.

I shall now venture to describe said date. My date texted me in the morning to say her meeting was boring. Ah, simple pleasures. I really enjoyed this - I never had many (ok, ANY) friends to text me, and certainly not a female. She called me in the early evening, and we agreed to meet up at an Italian restaurant in her area.

So I arrived before her, and gave her a call to see if she was already there. Nope - 2 minutes, she said. I got to thinking - wow, this should be a dramatic 2 minutes. I mean, I've never been on such a legitimate date, and I had talked to her on the phone but never even seen her in person. But hey folks, I wasn't too anxious! Just a little. So little, in fact, that I might even dare to say that it was just a normal anxiety level for anyone, not just for people like me who are behind 16 years socially and need to write blogs about such things. Umm...anyway.

So this, the second person I was to meet on my quest, walked up behind me.
"What's up?"
"Hey!"

And this time, a hug. Cool! I have to tell you, it was pretty darn interesting. We walked to the restaurant, and I failed to get the door. I let her in first, but didn't get it by the handle, just held it at the top after she pulled it. Now this is veering off topic, because this is a blog for everyone, not just guys, and that (and a few other things) were just general rookie awkwardness on my part - outside the scope of this blog.

Amazingly, I was really very comfortable! In other words, my anxiety level was extremely low, almost zero, even in just the first few minutes of our interaction. Awesome! To be able to do these things with little to no anxiety is already an absolutely amazing achievement. That is critical - it should open the door to being able to really do these things a WHOLE lot, to the point that I become comfortable and good at doing them. And that, as you know, is our simple plan.

Anyway. So we left the first restaurant (it was too hot), and walked and talked outside while going to another. The conversation was awesome. By awesome I mean that there were no silences, let alone awkward ones. We started by just talking about the surroundings, which led into briefly discussing restaurants and such. I had a brief mental list of backup topics, but I didn't need it until later.

When we arrived at the restaurant, it was pretty much the same. Lots of questions from me. At some point I pulled out a couple of the topics from the convo topics blog: favorite food, tattoos, earrings on guys.. Mostly I didn't need that mental list though. Instead, the majority of the conversation just went rather normally from topic to topic, with my date doing most of the talking. I was able to pick things out of what she was saying to get more questions. Doggone it, I was pretty good at that when I started this blog, and I think I'm getting even better at it.

At some point, I was looking at my date while she excitedly told me a story. I noticed her crossing her leg, and little things like that. I was absolutely in awe. Not of her, per se....but of that fact that I was out on a real date, having conversation with an attractive girl who was interested in me. And it was going well. Amazing.

Well, I was quite happy that the conversation was flowing throughout the date. Even after the first 5 minutes, I was already thinking - hey, this is going well! Ha. I noticed at dinner that my date didn't use any salad dressing on her salad. I tried it, and realized it was garlic. Aha! Ok... after we finished eating, she broke out some deliciously refreshing gum, and offered me a piece. Of course, I took it! See what's going on here? Then, she broke out chapstick. CHAPSTICK!! Oh man. By then I was thinking, I really really want to kiss this girl! The date had gone reasonably well (I'm measuring this almost solely by the lack of silences in the conversation), so it was starting to seem like a possibility.

Ok, so I was a little ridiculous. I got to the point of thinking how I would celebrate if I did indeed kiss this girl. Haha...geez. It was exciting though. The key observation here is that I was comfortable enough to not be anxious, and to think about a kiss while at least remaining attentive enough to keep some questions going.

Fast forward to the end of the date, because the rest was more of the same. I was awkward about recognizing where I had parked, and it was time to say goodbye. We.....hugged. I never really saw an opening for the kiss - now I know how those guys on Blind Date feel. It was ridiculous for me to have been wanting to kiss her though...not really worth the risk on a first date for me on this mission. She had just gotten me going with the gum and the chapstick :)

So here is the list of things that were successful:
1. Low anxiety level. Low enough, I think, for any situation.

2. General comfort level. I was pretty darn comfortable the whole time. To the point that afterwards, the 2-hour shindig didn't even seem like a big deal. I'm guessing this is partly due to the fact that I talked to my date on the phone for a total of a couple hours before we met.

3. Conversation. I was able to keep conversation going the whole time, by asking questions, and my date was smiling and definitely laughed a few times, so that was good! Without drawing on the list much at all, I kept coming up with tons of conversation topics. To the point that I even forgot about some good ones that came to mind by the time others were finished.

4. Confidence. I generally wasn't self-conscious, with exceptions below.

And here's the list of things that I need to work on:
1. Talking about myself. More often than not, I was quite awkward when talking about myself (e.g., I suck at describing what I do for a living) and describing things in general. I also did very little of it, so I need to work on the quality and quantity.

2. Voice. I have this thing where my voice sounds wonderfully eloquent at times, and at others it sounds a lot different and to me, bad. Throughout the date, it was closer to the latter. Plus, there were a couple of times when my throat wasn't clear when I started speaking. Weird, I know, but I need to work on being able to clear it gracefully :)

3. Awkwardness. I wasn't very smooth about some physical types of things (like opening doors and pulling out chairs, and remembering to walk her to her car) and stuff like making decisions (showed some significant indecisiveness), plus things like the way I said hello and goodbye.

So was the date successful? I'm really not sure. When I paid for our meal, she said she would get it next time. When we separated to go to our cars afterwards, she said it was fun and we should do it again. Sounds good, but who knows. After all, I committed the blunder of not walking her to her car, so maybe that killed it. That's okay though - it's only natural to make some mistakes starting out. And I definitely won't repeat them in the future, so you could say it's good to have them out of the way.

Right now I plan to call her tomorrow night, which will allow me to test the waters a bit. It would be amazing to get good feedback. But it doesn't matter if not. I have a backlog of other people I'm chatting with who I'm getting closer to meeting. My total number right now is 8, so yep, I'm actually doing this thing! Practice makes perfect.

Conference: A Quick Entry Before the Good Stuff

Well, today was indeed a very interesting day. I had two social things going on - yes, in person! First of all, I went to a conference that was semi-business, but there was still some social stuff worth talking about. The date that I went on tonight certainly deserves its own entry, so that will come in the next post.

This will be quick. I've done lots of these business-type things, and they don't make me anxious at all, when I'm not presenting anything. But the minglings with individuals still fall under the (rather broad) category of social situations in which I haven't been totally comfortable (though this is probably the best one). Anyway, good news: I was able to make pretty good, fluid conversation with one acquaintance that I saw there. It was pretty brief - only a few minutes, but I was totally comfortable and it was good. As usual, the conversation consisted mainly of me asking questions, and listening to the answers. As it turns out, I was already quite good at this, and I think I'm getting even better at it. It's great to have such an asset to work with on this mission of mine. Anyway, to keep bragging on myself, I am good enough at this such that it doesn't seem like an interview. I ask open-ended questions when I can, and use things that are mentioned in the answers as springboards to new questions. Occasionally I'll repeat something that the person told me, in a different way. For example, the girl I speaking to was saying how when she had a class with only 1 other student, she had to be able to answer the teacher's questions. So I said "Couldn't sleep in that class, huh?" Ok, that is a basic conversation skill, but I figure if you're reading this blog there is a chance that you don't have it. I can actually handle that much, so I won't dwell on it. I recommend the book "Conversationally Speaking" by Alan Garner if you need these basics.

Anyway, I also went out to lunch with another person, who is a borderline friend/acquintance. That's good, because one of my objectives (see early posts) was to become closer with acquaintances such that they'd be friends. This went really well. There was no awkwardness in any of the conversation, and there seemed to be more than enough to talk about. I was even able to talk more about myself than usual. Right now, that is the main thing I need to work on, because it's at the polar opposite of my question asking/listening skill.

Ok, that was boring. Next post: My date!!

Tomorrow is going to be a Very Interesting Day

Well, I haven't posted in a couple of days, so we have lots to talk about. Or at least a little to talk about - as it turns out, until tonight, this weekend was a lull in the action. There was scarcely even an e-mail from anyone Friday and Saturday. I really wanted to keep at this stuff, but I was cool about it this time - I know there will be lulls every now and then.

Tomorrow I have to go to a conference, where I will have the opportunity to chat with a lot of people my age, doing some similar things in life, as well as some others. This is a semi-business type of thing, but I plan to make the best of it and work on having relaxed, good conversations.

That's not the most interesting thing going on tomorrow, however. This afternoon, the girl I've been talking to (on the phone) from eHarmony gave me another call. We talked for about 10 minutes, and we're going to meet up tomorrow evening. Great! This will be my second in-person meeting with someone, and the first date. Right now I'm feeling quite good about this. I'm only a tiny bit anxious, and a bit more happy and excited about it. We've now talked on the phone for a total of 2 hours, and I somehow have not stumbled enough (and I've stumbled plenty...) for her to lose interest (as you can see, she is largely the one doing the pursuing). So I genuinely expect this to go pretty well. I don't have expectations beyond that though, we will just see what happens. No matter what goes down, it will be a succees! At least, for this early stage of the game.

One thing I can't really stress enough is that, for those of us doing this, we need to line up as many social engagements as possible. I think it's really helping to relieve the stress and anxiety of these things. It's a major comfort to know that there are plenty of other fish in the sea, no matter what happens, and you actually have said fish lined up :) It's great that I was able to have a successful first platonic in-person meeting before going on a date.

So what other fish do I have lined up? Well, there was one girl from match.com that I was about one e-mail away from setting up a date with. She then disappeared - I didn't hear from her for an entire week. I was wondering what I could have said wrong :) But I pretty much shrugged it off, because I expect attrition throughout the process of getting to know people online first. She e-mailed me tonight though, and it turns out that she thought she had sent me an e-mail a week ago. She sent me her phone number, and said she very much would still like to hang out with me. Excellent!

So, thanks to my early successes on the phone (dating) and in person (platonic), I actually don't have much anxiety about calling this girl up when I get a chance! I have a long way to go, but it's an enormously good sign to already be experiencing a decreased anxiety level with any of these things (see earlier posts where I mention apprehension about such things).

In addition, I've been sticking to my plan, and chatting with as many people as I have time for via e-mail, so hopefully I can keep these meetings rolling now that I've broken ground.

For now though, there's tomorrow. For my date, I plan to figure out a decent list of backup conversation topics tailored based on what I've learned through our online and phone conversations. I plan to focus on the conversation and on enjoying our time together, but hopefully different things we discuss will trigger my memory, such that things I wrote down will come to mind from time to time.

And so, the mission is in full-swing. I'll let you know how things go tomorrow night.

Prying open the floodgates: Another Milestone

I must say....for a while after I started this blog, I was really determined to do what I planned out here, but I really couldn't see how I was going to break ground to start. Well, now not only have I broken ground, but I'm prying open the floodgates to a social life. Not all that close to getting them open yet, but I did reach another milestone today:

The first in-person meeting. I met up at Starbucks with one of my friends from the craig's list "strictly platonic" w4m section. Pretty interesting, I had never met anyone from the Internet before. I arrived a few moments after her, and simply said "hey :)" and got something similar in return - no handshake or hug. We had exchanged about 50 e-mails before meeting.

So she ordered a coffee, and I ordered a blueberry frappuccino, or something like that. We sat down at a table, and we talked. And talked. And......talked. This talking went on for a whopping 2 hours and 50 minutes.

My anxiety level ranged from little to none. Meeting up with someone from the Internet was surprisingly non-awkward: we immediately got into normal conversation. I should say though that after talking to this particular girl via e-mail for a while (never talked on the phone, by the way) I felt quite comfortable meeting her, because at some point she realized that I was "shy" and said that she didn't mind shy people and was going to get me out of my shell, stuff like that. All of that had put me at ease.

Overall the conversation was good, I presume, because
1) it lasted almost 3 uninterrupted hours
2) she kept talking for a while even after saying she needed to head out
3) at some point, she invited me to a party at her friend's house next week

There were a few times where I was just smiling a lot and listening to her, and she asked me what I was thinking and I didn't really have an answer. That sounds weird, but in actuality it was just kinda funny, and wasn't really all that indicative of the problems I'm working on with this blog. In general though I noticed (as always, so far) that I am good at asking a lot of questions (somehow without it seeming like an interview), but have relatively little to say about myself. The first part of that is great, but it would be a big help to have more to say, or to have it come more freely to my mind. I did feel a bit inhibited, but for a first meeting and at this early stage of my quest, that wasn't too bad.

In almost 3 hours, we hit some interesting topics. I wish I could remember them all, but I will add them to the old Conversation Topics blog entry as I do.

The biggest help so far has been that the girls I've talked to, like most females, talk A LOT! I'm at a point where I feel very confident about 1-on-1 conversations with talkative people, provided I have a decent list of reserve topics in mind.

I wish I could somehow see statistics on how much I say compared to the other person in the conversation...and on how much I say about myself, as opposed to asking questions. The numbers would be astounding, but like I said, I'm going to work on being able to handle both sides a bit better.

Finally, a side note about the "strictly platonic" nature of this meeting. This was my whole-hearted intention, but, with this craig's list section, I get the feeling a lot of the people who post there actually have more in mind. She was telling me about another guy she'd met who'd also responded to her post. She didn't like him at all, and said that she thought about saying they could "just be friends" but didn't even like him that much. Uh...wouldn't that imply that she had some intentions that were certainly NOT strictly platonic? I wonder if she had that in mind with me as well. That would be a complication because I hope she will become (just) my second actual offline friend....but I guess we will see.

I've got to admit, it's getting better...getting better, all the time!

Wow. Ok. I am definitely making progress now, so it's kind of amazing. I just had my second telephone conversation! Same person as last time, but this time she called me (great intrinsic value there; proves that somehow, the first call was successful). I missed the call, so I had a chance to prepare a brief list of backup conversation topics. I didn't really need the list - used a few things I hopefully could have remembered anyway.

The good news is that I had much less anxiety and reluctance to dial the number this time. And, I had a very very low anxiety level throughout the entire conversation - just the result I was looking for! The conversation was much more fluid. There were silences - including some long ones, even longer than the ones on the first call - but these were somehow less awkward. This got pretty interesting for me, because she brought up the topic of relationships. I, obviously, have never been in one, but I was bold enough to *try* to tiptoe around the many dangerous subtopics. Of course, this is an advanced area for ANY guy, so I didn't do a great job. For example, she mentioned that she had been cheated on twice, and (in an effort to avoid silence) I tried to ask a little about it. Dangerous. The only major blunder I made though was something very basic I've learned about dating-type conversation for guys. I really wanted to break a very long silence, so I said the first thing that came to mind - what do you think of our eHarmony match? D'oh! The territory doesn't get anymore treacherous than that. I just got an "uhh" in response, and gave the question a different meaning :) That led to some more conversation (topic: the eHarmony matching system) that got me to the end of the 38-minute phone call. She had to go this time, but said she would love to hang out some time. Sweet, so I didn't blow it too badly :) She suggested tomorrow (Thursday), but I had plans; she's got plans for the rest of the weekend, so she said maybe Sunday or Monday. I told her to just give me a call.

All in all, this is amazingly good, mainly because 1) That was only my second phone conversation with a girl, ever and 2) The anxiety level was markedly reduced, and I was a heck of a lot more comfortable, indicating that YES, these things do improve with practice.

The more success I gain, the more I want. Onward.

Success

Things are going well. Really, really well. I'm still in the early stages, but what turned out to be a rather long setup phase has become a complete success. My goal was to overbook myself with more social events than I had time for, and - thanks to the Internet - that will be happening any day now. I already don't have enough time to keep up with all of the people I'm chatting with online. So you ask, how many connections does it take for that to happen? Well, in my case, 7. I have ongoing conversations with 2 people from craig's list, 3 from match.com, and 2 from eHarmony. I might stop responding to one of the ladies from match.com - she's the only one who doesn't seem very interested.

As for my first phone conversation.......despite all of the awkward silences and stumbling I mentioned, it was a success! I sent her an e-mail the next day saying it was great talking to her, and I got one in return saying the same, and that we should do it again soon. And to top it all off, this message included three exclamation marks! So, sweet. I'm busy the next couple of days, but I think the next time I call her I will actually have a specific purpose - to ask her out!

Getting to the point of actually going out with some of the girls from the dating site, I've had some passing thoughts of: what if more than one of these actually works out? How would I turn someone down at that stage? Well ha! Now THAT is the type of problem I need ;) But really, I don't have any expectations for now, I'm just taking it one step at a time. When I first thought about working on this last year (I backed off of it before anything at all went down), I was thinking about choosing unattractive girls from the dating sites since I thought it would be lower pressure for me. Well nah, like I said before, I've only been corresponding with ladies there is at least a chance I could actually be interested in. That makes all of this more fun, and interesting, and perhaps will result in better progress.

First platonic meeting Thursday. I hope it goes as well as our e-mail conversations, cause it would be amazing to have a 2nd actual friend ;) I'll let you know soon.

First Milestone!!

Finally, a significant post! The danger with all of this blogging and what not is that, with this stuff, it's easy to spend a lot of time thinking about and researching these things instead of actually doing them. That is precisely one of the problems: social skills are skills. They are not social THEORIES...they are not social INFORMATION....they're social SKILLS. You don't get skills by thinking about them; you get them by actually doing them..practicing them.

Well, I just got off of the phone with one of the people I met at eHarmony. Yes, this was the first phone conversation I have EVER, in 24 years of life, had with a female (outside of my family, you know what I mean). Right now I'm trying to stem the somewhat negative feelings I get after trying/doing such things...there's a slight emotion of embarrassment, or something like that, going on, just from things not going perfectly.

BUT, they went pretty well! Like I said, to try is to succeed at this stage of the game. Before I called, I used what I knew about her from our e-mail chat to make a list of standby conversation topics. I won't post it, but it was 18 brief phrases, written up in Notepad, to remind me if I got stuck. I googled up stuff about how to have a good phone conversation, and it was a relief to find that my method had been suggested by numerous other people (making it not seem so weird!). This site had a humorous presentation, if you want to take a look: http://personal.riverusers.com/~thegrendel/hmw5.html

Anyway, I've digressed. I had planned for the conversation to last 15-30 minutes. It instead lasted a whopping 61 minutes, 51 seconds (remarkable, but she was probably doing 90% of the talking...questions from me). I wanted to end it earlier, but I knew I wanted to end on a high note (or at least, not on an awkward silence), and I couldn't seem to find one...dammit. Perhaps the saving grace here is that I was eventually able to end it (got another phone call and said I had to go) myself, rather than her ending it..definitely a good thing, she never gave up on me :) The only problems were (oh what the hell, I'll list them):

1. There were several awkward silences, especially after my list of topics ran out. I skimmed the blog entry on conversation topics, but didn't find anything very good. In retrospect, there was some good stuff there, but I didn't really think of it at the right time in the conversation.

2. Sometimes I would bring up a topic and then not have much to say about it myself (even music). I'd like to have some answers in mind for such things, or just be loose enough for good responses to actually come to mind.

3. Was definitely a bit inhibited, though definitely not as much as in the Stiff Mode post. Called a family member on the phone immediately afterwards and everything felt much looser...a lot different really. The good news is that, while I felt quite anxious for the first minute or so of the first call (and in fact had to force myself to actually just go ahead and dial), I calmed down quickly and felt little to no anxiety during the rest of the conversation. Cool!

4. Couldn't hear her well on her phone, dang it. Kept having to say "what's that?" Either that or just say "uh-uh," or "yeah," not knowing for sure what had just been said. Not good, but this is one isn't really my fault, huh?

5. A little too much of general stumbling about. That's okay though...after all, it was my first time!

Anyway. I'm VERY happy that I actually put my money where my mouth was and did SOMETHING. Just imagine....this is the first time I ever even tried something like this in my ENTIRE FREAKIN' LIFE! So, as far as I'm concerned, it's a great success. I would love it if I got some positive feedback in the way of this girl not bailin' on me, as far as the whole dating thing goes :) But regardless, I'm good to go. I'm about to set up the first platonic meeting with one of my craig's list friends...yep, that will be the first in-person meeting, and a blog entry on how it goes will be coming up Thursday evening.

This blog entry can't really do justice to the magnitude of this evening's event. A mere phone conversation, yet it's monumental to me - the first step toward turning my life around, not just thinking about doing it. Until next time, my friends.

"So you ready to meet now?"

Well folks, it's all coming together now. I started planning all of this on about July 2. Now it's August 4, and I've finally gotten to the point where I'm about ready to start meeting (and talking on the telephone with) the new people I've been communicating with on-line. There was a lot of attrition throughout the process, but it looks like I've been able to achieve that goal of sort of "overbooking," having more social engagements than I really even have time for. 1 platonic friend from craig's list, 1 person from match.com, 2 from eHarmony, and others waiting in the wings :) I'm also doing job interview type of stuff, but I find that business socializing is a somewhat different animal, so I likely won't discuss that much in this blog. Right now I'm focusing on keeping a good mindset, as I discussed earlier, and setting up these initial meetings. I find it a little comforting to have so many...it's like I have an immediate backup in case anything doesn't go well. But everything should go just fine! Blog entries on these things soon, so it should be interesting.

Oh...while I'm blabbering. Since some of my socializing is going to consist of dating, I thought it would be a good time to recap my previous history with such things. In high school, I remember 2 girls - who I was extremely uninterested in - giving me their telephone numbers. Of course, I never called. In college, 4 girls who I was quite uninterested in also gave me their telephone numbers. I never called 3 of them. 1 of them asked me out (implicitly) on a date through facebook, and we arranged it and met up...went to a basketball game, then briefly to her campus apartment, then she drove us to a movie and back to campus. I was pretty comfortable (though still somewhat uninhibited), obviously because I had no real interest in her. I went because I had already started thinking I needed to seriously work on this stuff...that was only about 6 months ago.

Finally, there was one time about 3 1/2 years ago that there was a girl I absolutely adored, and asked for her telephone number (campus extension at the time). Now THAT was dreadful! I was extraordinarily anxious, and my left eye was twitching like CRAZY for the entire time I was talking to her. I experienced that eye twitch often when I got really anxious in college...usually as a result of some social thing, like having to give a presentation. Anyway, the experience was so embarrassing that I was super glad when she graduated and I didn't have to face her on campus again. I have a pretty good mindset now, and I'm doing all the things I talked to you about in terms of minimizing anxiety and all, so I hope to NEVER experience a twitch (or anything else) like that again! I already sense some distance from that now, but by the time this blog is done, it'll be a million miles behind me.

"What do you think about talking sometime?"

Welp. I said I'm getting close to actually doing some stuff for the socialize-as-much-as-possible mission. I haven't bothered to post updates on what I'm doing on those particular sites (and I haven't done anything out of the ordinary offline, so I really need to get on that), so just a quick summary:

* Nothing going on with yahoo personals or date.com. I met one person on yahoo who I said I would meet up with when she moves here in a couple months, but, that's pretty irrelevant for now.

* On match.com there is 1 girl who is apparently very interested in me (i.e., she talks a lot in e-mails), so unless I chicken out, I will almost certainly be meeting up with her soon

* I have one (platonic) female friend I made from craig's list/e-mailing, and it looks certain we'll meet up when she is free. We have exchanged phone numbers, but haven't yet talked. I have a second friend from that site, with an e-mail conversation like 110 messages long, but I know she's shy so I don't have an immediate expectation of meeting up with her soon.

* I joined eHarmony. Shocking even to me, but I decided to use every resource possible..! I mean, I'm obviously not particularly looking for anything serious, so I was quite reluctant to join a site that focuses on getting people married. It's easy though....I had no idea, this site gives you a bunch of matches (like 88 in a week), and then it's all multiple choice communication for a while. Anyway, see the next bullet.

* I've exchanged a few long messages with one person I met on eHarmony. Tonight she ended her message with "What do you think about talking sometime?" When I saw this, I had a panicky sort of anxious reaction. After a few moments of this, I remembered what I posted last time, and tried to think some positive thoughts. Have to work on that, but anyway....I intend to practice what I post and not avoid this! I have mixed feelings about the phone....sometimes I think it's easier, and I know I sound and usually feel good making business calls and of course talking to my 1 or so friends. But sometimes I think it's awkward compared to speaking in-person. So in keeping with my new philosophy, I'm just going to think positively about it now, because it should be fine. So here's the gameplan:
1. I'll tell her sure, that'll be cool, and exchange phone numbers and a time or whatever within the next day or so.

2. For this one, I will make a post with a list of a few things I have in mind to chat with her about. I would prefer not to use it, but it'll be a nice standby in case of any "awkward silences" and should make me feel a little more comfortable/confident going in.

3. I will relax, think positively, and just do it! To try is to succeed in this game.

4. I'll post an update, telling you all about how it went, of course!

Gearing Up

Well, today I chatted on the phone with my best friend for a little while. After about 15 minutes I thought about it...no anxiety, no inhibition, never really had to think about what to say....just relaxed and fun. How amazing would it be to have that with everyone? Or even just a few other people. Anyway, I'm getting close to being able to try some things and actually start on that socialize-as-much-as-possible plan. So in this post, I am going to list some of the things that I am trying, as far as mindset goes, as I proceed.

1) Being positive, embracing possibilities of success. Basically I am expecting success going into anything I do with this, in spite of all of the past difficulties. Going into things expecting them to instead be difficult or not go well, even just starting out, can't possibly help. Just think about it...in the situations you're fine in, you certainly don't have any such negative expectations. We want to mimick those good situations as closely as possible. Now, IF anything *doesn't* go well, we will still be fine, *then* recognizing that result is perfectly normal starting out, and just brushing it off accordingly.
* Update: Thought about this some more, and I've decided the way to go is to work on being as confident and positive as possible doing everything, not just this stuff. It will take some time, but by doing this, I think I can re-train my brain to make confident feelings (instead of anxiety) the default reaction to things. I'm already confident in a lot of other areas, so for me it will just be sort of an expansion. One important thing to realize is that in social situations, there's nothing to be negative or unconfident about. Certainly you *can* do just fine, as evidenced by your experiences with family or whoever it's normal with. The problem is, there have been so many poor experiences (or just a lack of good experience) with others that negative expectations automatically arise, rather than positive ones. This all comes back to what I just said about the need to re-train your mind to think positively.

2) Not avoiding opportunities. I've found myself being avoidant quite a bit starting out, for fear or whatever reason. With #1, there's no reason to fear anything. There will still be passing thoughts/feelings of doubt, however. When I have these, instead of running away, I go in the opposite direction and do even more to work on this stuff.

3) Relaxing in social situations. Simple stuff...eliminate or at least minimize any self-conscious thoughts. Instead of worrying about what the other people are thinking, or about your flaws, or even about what to say next, just focus passively on the conversation.

4) Being patient. I'm in this for the long haul. Being impatient would just lead to discouragement, which would hinder progress.