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.