It's more than halfway through the year, which means I'm overdue for an update on my dating situation. If you're just tuning in now, I took three years off dating with the intention of looking for a serious relationship, starting January 1st 2015.
Thanks to an introduction from a reader, I met a fantastic girl who I dated for a little over four months. I don't want to say too much about the relationship, mainly because I don't think she wants to be splashed around the blog. I will say that I think that the blame for us not working out falls squarely on my shoulders, and while I think that breaking up was the right decision, I'm certainly not sure.
If I'm honest, my motivation to date is really low. It's one thing to declare it as my first priority, and it's another for it to actually be the driving force in my life. It's definitely not.
Something critical I've realized through my re-entry to dating is that I'd rather be single than date someone I'm not extremely excited about. Just finding someone I'm excited enough about to go on a first date is very difficult. I've never actually met someone through a cold approach who I thought could be a long-term partner, and my online dating screen leaves me about half a dozen girls in any major city.
So, overall, it feels like a very inefficient process. I'm not giving up or tapping out, but I'm trying to face my reality and think about what adjustments I can make.
Another obstacle between me and dating is that I really like being single. I never feel alone, lonely, bored, or unfulfilled. This, unfortunately, can deter me from putting in the effort to make a relationship work, or giving girls the benefit of the doubt on a date. My first thought is, "If I don't go on a second date, I get another night to work or see my friends..."
So my current strategy is to do online dating stuff in my spare time. When I'm in line at the airport, I swipe left and right. I answer OKCupid messages when I check my email. When friends try to set me up, I say yes. Maybe that's enough that I'll meet someone fantastic, or maybe it will happen in my everyday life. Or maybe I'll come up with a better strategy in the next few months.
That's where I'm at. I wish I had much more exciting news, but the truth is that my low level of motivation and my being extremely picky has made this a difficult process. I'm not discouraged, though. I've dated a lot of amazing people, so I do seem to find them somehow. And, if not, I think I could die single at 90 and not have a regret in the world.
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Photo is a puerh mini tuo cha.
Still open to being introduced to people through blog readers... prize still applies.
After a long day in the sun at the 2010 Crossfit Games in LA, I've flopped into my Aeron in the RV, which is parked near my old stomping grounds in Hollywood. I found an amazing parking spot right near the Farmer's Market that has no street cleaning and is always empty at night. You'd be surprised how important things like street cleaning become when you live in an RV. Anyway, I don't have enough energy left to pull myself out of my chair, so it's time to tally up the survey results from a couple weeks ago and share what I learned.
Life Nomadic
This one was totally unexpected. Around a third of the people who responded said that they want more Life Nomadic. To be totally honest, I didn't know people were that interested in it. The site, when it was separate, never developed the same sort of following this site has.
You can't control definitively whether you'll succeed or fail, but you do get to set the parameters. The way I live my life, I will either be an big success or a huge failure. There are a variety of potential paths ahead of me, and zero of them lead to comfortable success or minor failure. None of them lead to numb mediocrity.
How do you adjust these parameters? You set goals and accept risks. If you set goals low and don't accept many risks, you have no chance of huge success or huge failure. You'll end up somewhere in the middle. Maybe you'll end up a bit better off than you expected, or a bit down on your luck, but you'll be somewhere in the range of "fine". On the other hand, you can set extremely high goals, leave yourself no reasonable plan B, and take massive risks to get those goals. It's the only way you'll even reach them, but you may fall short and crash.
In my case, I've put all of my eggs in the SETT basket. I hope it becomes a huge success that makes me a lot of money, gives me some power to improve conversation on the internet, and all that. At this point I've invested two years of my life into it, with no plans of changing that allocation going forward. I've passed up many smaller opportunities that could have made me money. I do have some money saved up, but it's hard to count it as a backup plan when I know with certainty that if SETT failed I'd use it to start another company and go all in.
I work as smart as I can, I live frugally, and I plan for contingencies-- I'm not reckless, but when a calculated risk presents itself, I'm all over it.
