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.
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.
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