Posts Tagged ‘Love’

Online Dating: Forced or Fabulous?

Monday, March 23rd, 2015

An old friend of mine posted on Facebook noting that she felt online relationships were forced and not necessarily a way to meet the person you’re going to spend either a few good months with or even the rest of your life.  I went to comment my thoughts, both agreeing and disagreeing, but she removed the post before I could hit submit. :booo: … but thanks to good old copy and paste…and the thought being stuck in my head… I’ve moved it to here.

When it comes to online dating, I used to think it was the ‘meh… that’s not kosher’ way of life. I always felt there needed to be a person-to-person kind of connection in order to really find love or happiness. However, I never had that spark hit me and gave up. Now, I didn’t go looking for anyone.. life just kind of happened and maybe now I’m the exception to the rule. Sean and I have been together for 9 years, we’re engaged, we own a home together, and we’re at our happiest point of planning the rest of our lives. We met online. It wasn’t a dating site though, it was through my blog. We started going back and forth through comments and the rest kind of sparked from there.  We knew each other based on our words first, not necessarily our pictures.  Though, he is a cutie and he knows it.

For the most part though, we were pictureless people.  We only spoke through email and instant messenger but we both have similar personalities and sarcasm coming out the wahzoo. It went comments to chat to phone, and eventually we met in person.

So yes, it could really go both ways. I’m not saying her way of thinking is wrong, far from it because I also believed that the old fashion ‘love and first sight’ thing needed to be more than just a profile picture and random duckface selfies going back and forth.

Her and I both had the benefit of growing up in a time where computers were just getting started so social media had no bearing on our everyday life (unfortunately it does now, but that’s a different issue). AOL was one of my first instances of being online and it, nationwide, became the ‘norm’ but I don’t believe any single person knew things would take off and advance the ways that they have. The general population didn’t see the bigger picture. If you went back to my 13 year old self and told me about Facebook I probably would have said “Hm… that’s nice, let me get back to my book”. Now? I’m unfortunately on it every single day – and not just for seeing what’s going on with the rest of my corner of the world, I’m managing like 60 different pages for my job..but I digress.

We knew based on all of those horrible 70’s, 80’s and 90’s movies that you dated people within your town or you met them at a party that X Y or Z was throwing as they did every Friday night. Or in those flash forward instances of walking into a coffee shop with your 22 year old self and bumping into a person where the angelic “”Ahhhh”” kind of music came into play and the persons face had a fresh 100 watt bulb shining into it for a halo effect. This wasn’t freaking normal either, it’s what Hollywood wanted us to believe. Actually meeting someone for the first time (depending on personalities) is the most awkward experience in the world. Body language changes, side smiles, giggles, awkward silence. Alcohol curbs most of these, not necessarily for the better, but I don’t drink so I wouldn’t know.

In the world we live in now – you have the option to swipe them left or right, you can follow a celebrity on all of their social media accounts and maybe they’ll notice you so to fulfill some long running fantasy of what you’d actually do with them if you had the chance. Then people go the complete opposite way and find someone who’s confident and comfortable with their body and jump on the hater bandwagon because they’re too fat, skinny, tall or purple. Log into your accounts and have to remove/deny numerous ‘friend’ requests from people you’ve never met and have no interest in but they found your profile pic and started to fap all over it. Or you can spend $40 a month and have a computer generate a match for you based on algorithms that were literally built by a programmer in the middle east for 50 cents an hour.

There’s a big difference between living behind a screen name and living in the real world. I think that’s where the ‘online dating’ thing gets misconstrued. The fantasy world of having everything you could ever want in a significant other with just the click of a button takes the priority over making a real connection based more on words and less on pictures.

Everyone wants a hot boyfriend or hot girlfriend, but everyone also has a different description of ‘hot’. There are people who look like her (a downright gorgeous girl with a good heart and soul) who get swiped over for someone with bluer eyes or darker hair. Then there’s people like me who would get swiped over by just about everyone unless they want their BBW fix. It’s just a matter of preference, it’s just easier to swipe on the phone than it is to do in person.

It’s all based on preference and everyone is too busy spending the day looking at their phones and not the people around them. Friends are hanging out in the same living room, none are talking but they’re having a great conversation on Twitter and Instagram. Hell, Sean and I wind up on google hangouts for most of the day because we work in two completely different areas of the house. My office is up stairs, his is in the basement but we always meet in the middle. When it comes to meeting someone online the ‘forced’ aspect is having to look up from your phone long enough to speak to them in person. It’s easier to like a pic or a status and move on than it is to have a proper conversation with someone.

As long as you are actually happy though, I don’t think it really matters how you meet someone. Now the Internet is the new ‘ladies night’ at the local bar. It’s unfortunately been added to the list of acceptable means of conversation. However, there is a level of ‘tradition’ that dating sites are trying to bring back in order to take some of the anonymity off of social media and put people face to face. Such as the theme night / bar nights that Match is hosting now. The flip side of that is the fact that people are actually paying monthly to utilize a service that’s telling them to go bowling. And that literally makes me laugh.

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It’s been…hectic…

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

This post brought to you by TwoOfUs. All opinions are 100% mine.

Things have been pretty hectic lately. I’m so overloaded with work that I’m close to losing my mind. The biggest goal for my leaving that horrible office job was for Sean and I to be able to spend more time together. This hasn’t really been working out for either of us considering we’re BOTH so bogged down with work we’ve resorted to chit-chat whenever we pass each other. We have a lot of goals and dreams that we’re working hard to meet, but I’m hoping it doesn’t put a permanent strain on things in the meantime.

I’ve been floating around TwoOfUs.org, it’s a site specifically for relationships. There are different columns for advise, and tips on keeping your relationship fresh. It starts in the Dating category, and works its way from Dating to Exclusive, Engagements, Married couples, and even parents. Obviously being with Sean for as long as I have (6 years in July) we’ve pretty much lost the ‘category’ in which we’re in. We’ve skipped the exclusive stage, we’ve spoken about marriage, life dreams and children and already know that we’ll be together forever, but even without the ring we’ve passed the ‘engaged’ stage. We’re more like an old married couple than anything else. So I found myself reading through multiple categories. Even though we’re not officially engaged/married – we still live our lives as though we are. All of our finances are joined, everything we do we consult the other person, both of our names are on my SUV – there’s no separations there. While I did enjoy the articles and found a few areas to be informative, I’m still having trouble locating that ‘grey’ area that my relationship is in (not that Grey is bad in this case, there’s just no special category name). Life isn’t black and white, the grey tone areas are where people LIVE, I wish there was more about the grey areas on Two of Us.org, but the information on the page itself is helpful.

I think the one thing that caught my eye was the article about over sharing. I find that I do over-share with certain people, but at the same time I know that Sean also knows everything I’m volunteering. There are more personal and private aspects to our life that I don’t blast out all over the internet, or even with close friends. There has to be some kind of separation to insure that you don’t leave your relationship vulnerable.

Another article that caught my eye was to Discuss Finances Before Marriage.  I’ve completely screwed the pooch on this one.  Our finances have pretty much been merged for the last 5 1/2 years.  The upside is we’re fully aware of how much money is needed to get our bills paid, and how much we have left for personal spending.  I’ll admit that I’m the big spender in the relationship, he’s more of the “I can’t justify this” kind of person.  It does take a lot of effort on both our parts to balance things out… but it works.

I’ve taken the time to look through a few of the videos, the one that stood out the most was an interview with Hill Harper, where he discusses the importance of The Conversation. He noted that the world is too involved with technology and no one talks anymore, except through Facebook email and twitter. What he does is he has a get together with friends/family, each of them bring a few cards with different questions on them, they’re pulled together and anonymously the questions are asked for members of the opposite sex to answer them. As an example, mine would probably be something along the lines of “Why do men hold onto underwear when it looks like a skirt and the elastic is holding on with a piece of string?”, this question would be answered truthfully by the men in the group. I’m sure it would bring up a heated discussion, but at the same time – you’re TALKING, it’s not a Facebook thread going back and forth, you’re actually looking at the person in which you’re talking to.

All in all it’s a pretty decent site, lots of tips and tricks, the video’s give you an “ah ha” kind of an effect after words as well, and after watching “The Conversation”, I think I’m going to have to put one of these parties together. I went ahead and marked like on their Facebook page as well.

What questions would you ask?

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Non Stop…

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

This week has been the week from hell and unfortunately it doesn’t look as though it’s going to let up any time soon.  On Wednesday it was announced that we’re switching over to the new system at work that has been in the ‘creation’ process for the past couple of months.  The problem with this is the fact that there has been absolutely no training put towards this system so everyone is basically lost right now.

We had a little bit of a ‘training’ session on Wednesday and come Thursday morning we were all kind of thrown into the system that has so many errors it’s unreal.  It’s heavily coded with ASP/AJAX and with the way it’s trying to read the database things just aren’t working out the way they’re supposed to.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen as much choas at work as I have in the past few days.  We’ve wound up switching over to the old system mid-way through the day on both Thursday and Friday because the productivity that we usually have with the old system was well beyond what we’re able to accomplish with the new one.  So it’s my hope that we’ll get to use the old system a little longer just so we keep moving at the pace that we’re accustomed to.  This new one has slowed us down so much it almost feels as though we’re wasting our time with it.

Over the course of the day on Thursday we were able to input about 100 assignments with the new system – this took us 8 hours.  However, when we got fed up and switched back to the old one we managed to put in about 150 assignments in the course of 45 minutes.  This has to tell you something when it comes to how things are going to look within the next few weeks.  As of right now I’ve got about 6 hours of overtime, this includes the two hours I’ve just spent at the office this morning (Yes, I also go in on Sunday mornings for a few hours – I told you this place was sucking the soul out of me!) – so my next paycheck should at least be for something decent which helps me considering there are a lot of bills to be paid in upcoming weeks.

On Friday I left at 6:30 – when I’m actually supposed to leave – and ran home in time to wash up and wait for Alicia and Dave to get to my house.  We were treating Dave to dinner for his birthday and went to Friendly’s.  Yesterday Alicia and I were out for a few hours at KMART and Dollar Tree to pick up stuff for the surprise party we’re holding for him later this afternoon.  So right now I’m finishing things up at work and Alicia’s going to pick me up and then we’re going to head back to her house to finish getting things together.

We have this pretty elaborate plan in order to keep Dave out of the house for the afternoon.  He keeps wondering when Sean and I are going to get married.  So I said “RING SHOPPING!”  So I gave Sean my dinky $7 walmart ring and said “Here, this is a half size too big for me, go to Zales and do some ring shopping – take Dave with you and then I’ll text you when I want you guys to head back to Alicia’s house”.  Alicia thought it was a great idea, Sean was confused (as usual) and Dave is completely clueless as to what’s going on so it’s working out VERY WELL right now.  As of my last text from Sean he and Dave are eating lunch at Johnny Rockets and then probably surfing through a few jewelry stores in the mall to see what he can ‘find’.  So that gets Dave out of the house and gives Alicia and I plenty of time to get the rest of the stuff setup.

I also told Sean to throw his bathing suit in the trunk of the car cause it’s a rather warm day and I know the pools open at her house.  Granted there really isn’t anyone going in the pool but I know Sean will more than likely dive right in anyway so at least it gives him something to do.  We more than likely won’t be there for that long, everyone has work tomorrow so she’s expecting things to clear up around 6:30.  Which is fine for me, I still have some things to do to prepare myself for the week ahead.

We’ll be down one person in Dispatch tomorrow, she’s taking a much deserved day off.  But Monday – unfortunately – is one of our CRAZY BUSY days.  So on top of going to the new system plus all of the claims we’re bombarded with on a Monday morning/afternoon – I’m hoping things run smoothly!

In any event, Alicia’s on her way here to pick me up.  Sean just sent me a text where he sounded surprised because the waiters/waitresses dance at Johnny Rockets during certain songs.  Boy is it going to be an INTERESTING day!

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Still Kicking

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

I know I haven’t been around in a while, but knowing how the internet works I’m sure no one really gives a shit anyway.  Work is taking it’s toll on me so I don’t even have the time to check my email anymore.  I’m home early enough with nothing to do so I can finally sit down and at least update to let you (those who do actually care) know that I’m alive, I’m just too damn busy.

I have no drive for just about anything anymore, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing ’cause I’m out of the house all day and making some pretty decent money.  I’m enrolling in school with the next pay check so I really won’t be around to do much of anything when that happens.  I’m finally getting my Bachelors so I can find a job that pays a bit more in a field that I used to, at one point, enjoy very much.

I’m permanently living in New York, Sean and I are working hard at getting our own place so we’re no longer a burden on anyone, even though we pay our own way around here and for others as well.  Hopefully with a degree under my belt and all of the work that Sean’s been doing lately we’ll be able to get something nice and cozy just for us and Bella (of course).

On the animal front – Bella’s been doing OK but she’s got this horrible growth on her stomach that’s cause for concern.  It’s gotten much larger as we’ve been up here and right now it looks as though there’s a ball (a little larger than a golf ball) stuck under her skin on her stomach and it’s just kind of hanging there.  I’m pulling money together so I can have it removed.  It’s uncomfortable for her, and everyone can see that.  She isn’t as active as she once was and her appetite has gone out the window.  She can’t sit or lay down properly because it gets in the way so it’s certainly time to get rid of it completely.  I originally wanted to get it taken care of a few months ago but bills are very tight and it’s just not something that I can afford since the VET isn’t willing to work out any kind of payment arrangements.

Dad’s doing well, no sign of cancer thanks to his treatments.  My mother, on the other hand, it’s been pretty much up and down for her for the past few months.  She’s been pretty weak, and it’s been hard for her to get around so my sister’s over there a lot helping her out.  I would be if I wasn’t always at the office.

I don’t think I ever mentioned anything about this job since I started there – it’s been about five months since my start date.  I love the environment, can’t stand a few people, and have bumped heads a few times but that’s my personality.  I’m working with two absolutely wonderful ladies and I’ve spent a lot of time with one of them outside of work because she’s one of the coolest people in the world.

In any event, my 10 minutes online has certainly stretched a bit further than I would have liked it to.  I would like to update more often but I don’t have the ability to do it at work during any downtime and by the time I get home at night the only thing I’m looking to do is keep my head on a pillow until the following morning.  I have been able to check my email more often though so anyone still floating around feel free to drop a line (krissyville @ gmail.com)  let me know your new web addresses too – I haven’t kept my list updated in quite some time.  You can even comment with it, I have them all on moderate anyway.

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Keeping Busy

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

After a long talk with Sean, I’m moving back up to New York permanently.  There’s a lot going on up here as far as family is concerned and I’m at a point in my life where I’m supposed to be out on my own, but I’m also the kind of person where family always comes first.  So I’ve actively been putting in resumes to places all over Long Island in just about any industry I can find.  I’ve applied to numerous web design jobs, secretarial jobs, even to a company that just lists products on eBay.

My recent application was to the hospital here in town, it’s my mother’s old job (technically) and I know for sure that they want her back.  She’s unable to do that at this point in time so I applied and now I’ve just got my fingers crossed.  It’s per-diem work but once you have your foot in the door you’re basically set.  So I can start at per-diem (basically call you when they need you) and within a few weeks I can be full time – it really just depends on what they need and when they need it.

We’ve been in NY for much longer than we’d originally planned.  Sean doesn’t want to go back down to DE by himself, and I don’t blame him.  I know I’ll miss him too, considering we just celebrated our two-year anniversary.  So it’s been a very difficult choice to make but as soon as there’s enough money coming in, and an apartment in a reasonable price range opens up we’ll be able to get him moved up here and we can continue our life together on our own.  I know the first couple of weeks are going to be hard on us, only because we haven’t not been together for the last year and a half (considering we’re living together) but I’m completely confident that we’ll be able to handle it so I’m not too concerned in that department.

We’re staying up here for another week or so and then heading back down to either pack my stuff or go back to the drawing board.  If I know for sure that there’s no job up here than I don’t know if I’ll stay here.  I want to, I really miss everyone, I just don’t want to leave Sean and still not have any money coming in up in NY, it wouldn’t change my situation at all – in many regards it would make it worse.

So I’m crossing my fingers in hopes to hear something from someone up here.  I did apply to a place out in Brooklyn that I’m crossing just about everything for.  It’s a great salary and it’s in the web design field and that to me would be a dream-job situation.  They’re looking for a front end developer with strong HTML/CSS and Blog skills.  I guess being a one-trick-pony for the past couple of months is something to laugh about now considering I’ll be able to use that portfolio to get my foot in the door.  It’s a dream job that I’m going to have to travel for though.  Luckily it’s only a block or two from the train station so I’m not too concerned about the commute.  I can very easily get to the train here in the morning without any real issues – it’s right up the block so if I have a car or not I should be able to handle it.

In any event, I have to push some more applications and get started on some design work.  I also need to finish some work for Adam.  He has a very complicated template that needs to be coded for CSS.  I’ve had to really stretch my know-how just to get the basics done.  A lot of layers on top of layers and being able to accomplish that without absolute positioning is working out pretty well.

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Internal Alarm…

Friday, April 11th, 2008

I’m really not sure why but my schedule is beyond screwed up right now. I’ve finally got some work to do thanks to a new contract position but for my initial project I stayed up until about 5am putting a lot of finishing touches on the photoshop aspect of things. I rolled into bed and then popped right up at exactly 10:32am. Now, the reason that number is so “hrm….” for me is based on the fact that my body has trained itself to wake up at the exact same time every day for the past week or so. I really don’t understand why, either. I know that yesterday the landscapers showed up around our house at the same time yesterday morning which then triggered Bella to sit in the window and bark her freaking head off. I’m seriously going to start going to bed with her sonic zapper because I can’t take waking up to a barking dog anymore. Today was no different. They’re showing the house next door and having people walk around is never a good thing when you have a bitchy dog to deal with. So of course she insisted on barking. Come to think of it, she’s been the reason I’ve popped up so frequently in the morning. I wish I could figure out why she’s the new resident alarm clock.

It’s taking it’s toll on me though. I’ve been up for an hour and a half and I’m already exhausted. I can’t continue on 5 hours of sleep but I really don’t want to go back to bed because I have so much to accomplish today. I have a couple of posts to do, a lot of emails to respond to, a PSD to convert to XHTML/CSS and then I think I just landed my first big project with this company of creating a template for a social networking site. I’ll base my template on the network site that Sean’s designing, and then add MySpace, Facebook and Vidilife to it. Why? Because I’ll do the complete and total polar opposite of all of them. I see no point in having them all look the same so I’m going to come up with something different. :hmph:

Guess I should get myself in gear. I think I’m going to need to put on a pot of coffee. If I don’t get some kind of energy boost I’m probably going to be asleep within the next half hour.

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