Checking In

The month of February has only 6 nights left in it and I haven't had a single date this month. A friend, and fan of the blog, is doing her part to help my project and has introduced me to someone who I hope to go out with on Thursday. We are comically worlds apart (or cosmically), which my friend knows but she's doing her part for my cause and dating education. Thank her when I write up that date.
Honestly I found myself really frustrated and burnt out this month. Two months into this dating project and I was already feeling this way? That's either a really scary foreshadowing of my future or it says something about dating in this day and age. I think part of my burn out was that I jumped into this with so much enthusiasm in January and signed myself up for a bunch of activities in addition to dates and before I knew it I had no time to myself. I really need downtime to re-charge and face the world. When I don’t have it I get really grumpy and my fuse grows short.

I think the other thing is that I really feel that this should be easier. I know that there are so many good single people in Seattle that don’t want to be single anymore. For some reason, connecting to these people has been challenging in the past.

When I was in college, and even post-college, finding someone that I liked and wanted to date was so incredibly easy. I remember my senior year of college I had broken up with one guy and immediately started dating another guy. I came out of the Business School one afternoon to find a rose on the right side of the windshield of my car and a note on the left side of the windshield. The rose was from the new guy and the note from the old guy (complaining about how he wanted to leave me a note and there was already a rose on the windshield). I had men fighting over me! About a year ago I found an old diary and one entry was like a laundry list of guys that I liked and me debating over which one I liked more and should date. I wish I had this problem right now.

Back to the easy theme and today – part of me feels like I’m doing this whole process because there’s some lesson for me to experience and something to learn about myself. I have the ability/good fortune/frustration of knowing that everything is going to be ok. I can feel and know that I’m not going to be single forever and I will end up with an amazing guy. The frustration is going through these experiences because I need to, because they get me to where I need to be in the long run & trying to be patient with the process and timeline.

This goes back to the theme of it should be easier. I kind of feel like I’m doing all of this, just to do it, and its not really about meeting someone. It actually wasn’t ever supposed to be about meeting someone. Maybe I lost the original intent of the blog the last month. It was to have fun and learn something about myself. It wasn’t about meeting the guy of my dreams.

I have these angel cards. They have one word on them and you can pick a card each day or whatever you like. The angel card that I’ve picked twice in the last 3 days is “Play”. I’ve been hard on myself this month trying to hit my dating quota & forgot to have fun. I’m very goal oriented so maybe it was a bad idea to give myself a quota.

March kicks off with a twenty-five hour flight to Cape Town, South Africa. Maybe it’s possible to meet someone nice while confined to an airplane cabin for that length of time. Even if the person sitting next to me isn’t up to snuff I can probably make my way to the galley and see who else is hanging around. I did meet someone on my flight back from San Francisco last weekend. It was actually a very woo-woo meeting. He came up to talk with me in the gate waiting area. Once I got on the plane I ended up changing seats so that a father and son could sit together and I found myself sitting next to the same guy from the gate area. I found out that we both have a fascination with quantum physics but I was too hung over to continue that discussion on the flight. He gave me his business card and we’ve emailed so perhaps that could develop into a date.

Wanted: Sales Rep

I have found that in addition to working my regular job, I'm now a sales rep for myself and my dating project. It's exhausting.
I find myself culling for date leads. If someone tells me once that they might possibly have someone that they kind of know, that's a lead. I then have to follow up with this person to find out a few things about this possible date. Is he actually single? No. End of lead. Is he single and interested in being set-up? No. End of lead. I keep going around and around trying to find out who's an actual reasonable lead for a date. That leads me to the "qualified lead stage". Once I have a qualified lead, the next step is to connect us via email or the phone. We have a conversation and make a date. Sale complete! Well, technically the sale isn't complete until we go on the date. Once that happens the date goes towards my sales quota of 2 dates per month. January was a good month. I had 3 dates! That tied the record for all of last year.
So far February is slow. However, I'm a big believer in sandbagging. For those without the sales lingo, that means that I say I've got nothing and the last week of the month I'll bring in my sales, I mean go on dates, and hit my quota. That's pretty much what I did in January. I'm a procrastinator and work better under pressure.
I have a couple of leads for this month. They are both unqualified leads right now. Two other leads that I thought would hit this month moved to the March sales, I mean date window. I'm definitely sandbagging those and moving them for sure to March so that I hit my quota that month.
I'm still enjoying this experience and really thankful for how it's opened me up to trying out a lot of new things and experiences. I kind of equate it to getting dressed for a night out and I'm trying on lots of different outfits to see what's perfect to wear. Some pants are too loose, some shirts too tight. I'm trying to find out what's just right for me.
I had a second date with the "B" named guy from my last entry. It was nice enough but I didn't feel like the conversation was overly interesting, easy, or stimulating. My week had been really busy and I was exhausted and ready to end the night fairly early. I think that's legitimate but I think if I really, really liked him I would have been energized by his company and not noticed how tired I was feeling. C'est la vie.