I felt a surge of happiness a few moments ago. I realized that I'm having the time of my life right now. A sense of fulfillment is slowly but surely starting to replace the longing that I've suffered for so many years.
Wednesday night, I used the phone to arrange a Sunday second-date with the girl I talked about in the last post. Around the same time, I began to feel a cold coming on. Itchy throat, stuffy nose..... noooooo!!!
I hadn't had a real cold in a couple years. I am very careful to avoid these things. And now, one was threatening to ruin my second date with a girl I really liked.
I was hell-bent on doing everything possible to keep this date as scheduled. It'd already been 2 weeks since we first met (I had called and asked for this date 4 days after the first date, but there was a scheduling conflict), and I didn't want to wait any longer.
I immediately started taking Zicam cold remedy. I went crazy with this stuff. I use it all the time, but this time I went extremely overboard. To the point of worrying what an overdose could do to me. It wss a risk I was willing to take.
I also loaded up on Airborne - another cold remedy that some people swear by, but that I had never tried. I again worried about side effects, but I was willing to take the risk. I wanted to be well enough by Sunday to at least have a reasonable chance. Friday was bad; Saturday was horrible. I felt too terrible to go on a date, and I knew I couldn't go if I were sneezing, coughing, or had a runny nose. But I kept pumping myself full of the cold remedies...
Today - the fourth day of the cold - I woke up and felt pretty good. The symptoms were almost gone! The remnants were certainly not enough to prevent me from going on the date. I've digressed, but the moral of the story is that at least one of these products really does a lot to reduce the severity and duration of the common cold. Pretty amazing.
And so, I drove 40 miles, across state lines, to see this girl again. I really liked her, and she had been shy and a little awkward on our first date and once on the phone, so I was interested in seeing what it would be like if she relaxed and opened up a little more.
I had come up with an awesome date idea - laser tag - but it required me to drive about 30 minutes each way with her. That was further than I'd tried before, and I was a little worried about keeping up a conversation for that long. But as always, I decided: no risk, no reward, and stuck to it.
I arrived at her home. With a parental figure watching from the front door, she got in the car. And behold - the smell of perfume once again filled the air of my vehicle. The sweet scent of a girl liking me enough to put forth the effort to impress.
The conversation on the way to Laser Tag was good. As a basis, I used pretty much every remaining conversation topic I could think of. I was mostly just asking questions, as always, but I did manage to add some tidbits. These were bits of humors, related personal experiences, and lots of mental association-based follow-up questions.
We were the only adults at the laser tag place. We played a car racing game while we waited for our match to begin. We were both having a blast - things were going so smoothly!
Laser Tag was awesome. As my white shoestrings glowed neon green, we ran around hunting and being hunted in a dark, smokey maze filled music and lighting effects. It was all kinds of fun. I even broke a sweat.
We played a couple of games, and then I asked her if she wanted to get some food. She said nah, she was good. I found out later that she had planned to go out to dinner with her family, though, so it wasn't a bad sign.
All that remained was to get her home. After all this driving, I'm now completely confident in my ability to drive with a passenger (even a date). I had always been nervous thinking about it before, but it's no big deal - I can drive effortlessly while talking at the same time. That probably should have been obvious, but it's one of those things I just had to experience before I could have any confidence in it.
As for the conversation..... I used everything I could think of that I hadn't covered from the good 'ol list. I felt like some of them would be too random, but before any silences went on too long, I just threw them out there. To my surprise, she did have a tattoo, so that provided us with several minutes of good conversation. I asked what she thought of guys wearing earrings, and all that. In the final stretch, things got tough, so I went with whatever I could think of. "Whatever I could think of," in this case, is just a big word for "talking about the weather."
In way, it was good anyway. We both seemed to enjoy the topic-based conversation, so was there any problem? I began to get a little anxious. Partly because I was simultaneously thinking about giving her a goodnight kiss (against the advice of one or two of my readers, but I couldn't help it). And partly because I started thinking that most of our conversation was based on pre-thought-out topics. What would I do once I reached the end of the list?
We arrived back at her home. This had been a blunder-free date, and I didn't blow it here, either; I remembered to walk her up to her door, even though it was super close.
She hugged me and said something like "Thanks. I had a really nice time. I guess I'll see you the next time...if you're not busy."
I wanted to kiss her, but I didn't have a good physical angle at it. I had fleeting thoughts of blog reader comments about this stuff, and about my other experiences going for a kiss. I decided to follow this advice and wait this time, instead of forcing it. I just told her to have a good night, and she smiled broadly.
This date was good. It was so good, in fact, that I had absolutely no doubt that my companion enjoyed it and really wanted to see me again.
Of course, it always helps if the other person initiates a follow-up. She almost broke her own record for fastest follow-up, and sent me this text less than a couple hours later:
"Hey [Me]. Thank you so much for a good time! I had fun today :)"
And so, it's another success. I'm batting .1000 on 3 second-dates so far. I quite like her, but this time I have a lot of experience behind me, and know not to get caught up in my interest in her (doing that with another girl created for a rather depressing month of September).
My only real concern here is conversation. With my list of conversation topics nearly exhausted, how can I keep having good conversation with her? (I welcome any and all suggestions on this). She was very relaxed and comfortable with me this time (i.e., she had regular dating shyness that first time - nothing like the kind that I'm working on here), but she still didn't ask many reciprocoal questions. Only a handful - can you believe it took until a 2nd date for her to ask what I even do for a living?
The good news is that overall, I was (still) pretty much myself with her. No blasted "voice thing" to speak of. I sounded confident, relaxed, and all that jazz. I was able to tease a little with jokes.
And despite the availability of cell phone text messages and e-mails, I've been steadfast in my determination to only use my voice to make dates, in spite of my awful (but hopefully improving) telephone anxiety.
The singular issue is this: how do I get conversation to be open and fluid with her? I did it with the one friend I've made so far, so it's certainly possible. I will work on this, just in general, before I see her again.
Speaking of working on things....
Over the 4-day holiday break from work, I got on match.com and just went wild. I sent out around 150 winks. Now I have conversations going with 6 or 7 girls. It's crazy - I really don't even have enough time to keep up with all of them. But if you search through the gibberish I wrote when I started the blog, you'll find a lot of talk about my goal of "overbooking" myself with social activities. Now, that's starting to look like a very real possibility - especially if I can get past the first date with a few more girls. I've also been working on making some platonic friends, but it's tough - the 3 I was talking to online dropped out (my term for internet people ceasing to respond to e-mails) on me.
It's going to be a busy year.
Wednesday night, I used the phone to arrange a Sunday second-date with the girl I talked about in the last post. Around the same time, I began to feel a cold coming on. Itchy throat, stuffy nose..... noooooo!!!
I hadn't had a real cold in a couple years. I am very careful to avoid these things. And now, one was threatening to ruin my second date with a girl I really liked.
I was hell-bent on doing everything possible to keep this date as scheduled. It'd already been 2 weeks since we first met (I had called and asked for this date 4 days after the first date, but there was a scheduling conflict), and I didn't want to wait any longer.
I immediately started taking Zicam cold remedy. I went crazy with this stuff. I use it all the time, but this time I went extremely overboard. To the point of worrying what an overdose could do to me. It wss a risk I was willing to take.
I also loaded up on Airborne - another cold remedy that some people swear by, but that I had never tried. I again worried about side effects, but I was willing to take the risk. I wanted to be well enough by Sunday to at least have a reasonable chance. Friday was bad; Saturday was horrible. I felt too terrible to go on a date, and I knew I couldn't go if I were sneezing, coughing, or had a runny nose. But I kept pumping myself full of the cold remedies...
Today - the fourth day of the cold - I woke up and felt pretty good. The symptoms were almost gone! The remnants were certainly not enough to prevent me from going on the date. I've digressed, but the moral of the story is that at least one of these products really does a lot to reduce the severity and duration of the common cold. Pretty amazing.
And so, I drove 40 miles, across state lines, to see this girl again. I really liked her, and she had been shy and a little awkward on our first date and once on the phone, so I was interested in seeing what it would be like if she relaxed and opened up a little more.
I had come up with an awesome date idea - laser tag - but it required me to drive about 30 minutes each way with her. That was further than I'd tried before, and I was a little worried about keeping up a conversation for that long. But as always, I decided: no risk, no reward, and stuck to it.
I arrived at her home. With a parental figure watching from the front door, she got in the car. And behold - the smell of perfume once again filled the air of my vehicle. The sweet scent of a girl liking me enough to put forth the effort to impress.
The conversation on the way to Laser Tag was good. As a basis, I used pretty much every remaining conversation topic I could think of. I was mostly just asking questions, as always, but I did manage to add some tidbits. These were bits of humors, related personal experiences, and lots of mental association-based follow-up questions.
We were the only adults at the laser tag place. We played a car racing game while we waited for our match to begin. We were both having a blast - things were going so smoothly!
Laser Tag was awesome. As my white shoestrings glowed neon green, we ran around hunting and being hunted in a dark, smokey maze filled music and lighting effects. It was all kinds of fun. I even broke a sweat.
We played a couple of games, and then I asked her if she wanted to get some food. She said nah, she was good. I found out later that she had planned to go out to dinner with her family, though, so it wasn't a bad sign.
All that remained was to get her home. After all this driving, I'm now completely confident in my ability to drive with a passenger (even a date). I had always been nervous thinking about it before, but it's no big deal - I can drive effortlessly while talking at the same time. That probably should have been obvious, but it's one of those things I just had to experience before I could have any confidence in it.
As for the conversation..... I used everything I could think of that I hadn't covered from the good 'ol list. I felt like some of them would be too random, but before any silences went on too long, I just threw them out there. To my surprise, she did have a tattoo, so that provided us with several minutes of good conversation. I asked what she thought of guys wearing earrings, and all that. In the final stretch, things got tough, so I went with whatever I could think of. "Whatever I could think of," in this case, is just a big word for "talking about the weather."
In way, it was good anyway. We both seemed to enjoy the topic-based conversation, so was there any problem? I began to get a little anxious. Partly because I was simultaneously thinking about giving her a goodnight kiss (against the advice of one or two of my readers, but I couldn't help it). And partly because I started thinking that most of our conversation was based on pre-thought-out topics. What would I do once I reached the end of the list?
We arrived back at her home. This had been a blunder-free date, and I didn't blow it here, either; I remembered to walk her up to her door, even though it was super close.
She hugged me and said something like "Thanks. I had a really nice time. I guess I'll see you the next time...if you're not busy."
I wanted to kiss her, but I didn't have a good physical angle at it. I had fleeting thoughts of blog reader comments about this stuff, and about my other experiences going for a kiss. I decided to follow this advice and wait this time, instead of forcing it. I just told her to have a good night, and she smiled broadly.
This date was good. It was so good, in fact, that I had absolutely no doubt that my companion enjoyed it and really wanted to see me again.
Of course, it always helps if the other person initiates a follow-up. She almost broke her own record for fastest follow-up, and sent me this text less than a couple hours later:
"Hey [Me]. Thank you so much for a good time! I had fun today :)"
And so, it's another success. I'm batting .1000 on 3 second-dates so far. I quite like her, but this time I have a lot of experience behind me, and know not to get caught up in my interest in her (doing that with another girl created for a rather depressing month of September).
My only real concern here is conversation. With my list of conversation topics nearly exhausted, how can I keep having good conversation with her? (I welcome any and all suggestions on this). She was very relaxed and comfortable with me this time (i.e., she had regular dating shyness that first time - nothing like the kind that I'm working on here), but she still didn't ask many reciprocoal questions. Only a handful - can you believe it took until a 2nd date for her to ask what I even do for a living?
The good news is that overall, I was (still) pretty much myself with her. No blasted "voice thing" to speak of. I sounded confident, relaxed, and all that jazz. I was able to tease a little with jokes.
And despite the availability of cell phone text messages and e-mails, I've been steadfast in my determination to only use my voice to make dates, in spite of my awful (but hopefully improving) telephone anxiety.
The singular issue is this: how do I get conversation to be open and fluid with her? I did it with the one friend I've made so far, so it's certainly possible. I will work on this, just in general, before I see her again.
Speaking of working on things....
Over the 4-day holiday break from work, I got on match.com and just went wild. I sent out around 150 winks. Now I have conversations going with 6 or 7 girls. It's crazy - I really don't even have enough time to keep up with all of them. But if you search through the gibberish I wrote when I started the blog, you'll find a lot of talk about my goal of "overbooking" myself with social activities. Now, that's starting to look like a very real possibility - especially if I can get past the first date with a few more girls. I've also been working on making some platonic friends, but it's tough - the 3 I was talking to online dropped out (my term for internet people ceasing to respond to e-mails) on me.
It's going to be a busy year.
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