Having arrived in San Francisco yesterday, I felt a strange sense of pride well up inside me. I sat at a park near the water looking out at the Golden Gate Bridge and had this “I made it. I’m here.” sensation. I walked with a little more bounce in my step, and having been here…
Category: Dating
In the Company of Others
On this trip around the country, I’ve met up with a few people through dating apps. It’s a good way to meet locals and it can break up the monotony of sitting at bars and staring at screens. Despite trying to live as though I have all of the time in the world (my minor…
Where Joy Has Been Rumored to Appear
The person on Twitter had quoted Vonnegut: “I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” Whenever I come across this quote, I’m reminded of Stephen Dunn’s essay on gambling in which he…
Sleepless Diagnostics
It’s 3:30 am on a Monday. I don’t sleep well on Sunday nights. In fact, I don’t do well with Sundays in general. Often, they give me feeling of heaviness. If I’m lucky, I’ll spend part of my Sunday morning reading or slowly drinking my coffee, but quite often, I get into a mood where…
Wanting More (part 2)
How we need that security. How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into. -Sylvia Plath Yes, I want more…. I suspect I always have – most of us do….
A Type of Writer’s Block
We humans are, or can be, a miserable lot. The last few abandoned blog posts have all started with complaints about the weather. We had a string of 8 or 9 days where it rained every day – and for a few of those days the temperatures were in the 30s. By contrast, the last…
Green Flags and World Beliefs
The prompt on the dating app reads, “I’ll fall for you if…” One answer I recently came across said, “You’re a gentleman who does that thing where you walk on the street side of the sidewalk …” Admittedly, this is not something I do or consciously put into practice. This isn’t the first time, I’ve…
Unqualified
Sometimes I think I’m not really qualified for this job,the job of my life, I mean. “Homework” by Tony Hoagland Today, I felt wholly unqualified for life. I bounced between trying to write poetry, trying to write a post about trauma, processing the potential challenges of moving (tied to the post about trauma), reading poetry,…
Adjusting the Throttle of Indifference
Indifference…. we sometimes deploy it as a defense mechanism. We sometimes use it as a cudgel. Because it can be used in these ways, it seems important to be able to distinguish between real indifference and manufactured indifference. As a defense mechanism, feigned indifference – saying one doesn’t care – means they can’t be disappointed,…
Sometimes on My Mind but in Different Ways
Last week I started texting with a woman from California. We talked late one night and I found myself frequently referring to my recent past as “a few years ago.” It seems everything in my life happened a few years ago – all of my dating history falls into this category, my recent jobs, my…
Chemistry and Stars
The text conversation began … “I wanted to match with you first and tell you that your first date description gave me a little bit of the goosebumps because it’s been a while since I’ve had that kind of a first date.” Over the July 4th holiday weekend we went out. We had a good…
Slow Walk to the Edge of Admission
Friday Morning
During one of my earlier quiet phases – one of those one- or two-week unintentional hiatuses from writing when I wasn’t sure what the point was or just felt tired and confused