Kissing Frogs

This is a dating post.

In catching up, via email with an old friend yesterday afternoon, I told her that I was job hunting and man hunting. I'm not sure if the latter is the case, but I have definitely been kissing a lot of frogs of late.

When I was first laid off from my job, I was reading all these "You're unemployed, Now what?" blogs on the web. And while they all spoke of how to make good use of your time while on the dole, I was surprised to see how many of them talked of dating. Apparently, since dating is basically a full time job (and gee whiz, recent experiences prove that it is!) while you are unemployed is the best time to really concentrate on it. Here's the thing - you're unemployed. You're sitting at home all day - sure, maybe you are being productive in some way or another. You are caught up with what's happening in the world since you have so much time to read blogs/news/etc ... You are caught up on all the "water-cooler worthy" tv viewing, since you're not working. If you live in a city that has matinee pricing, you have seen all the new movies at these low priced matinees. You'd think you have a lot to talk about on a date. Maybe you do.

But you're not living in the world. You're whole day is leading up to this date. It encompasses your brain. You don't have deadlines or conference calls or meetings to think of. All you have to think of is which shoes to wear and what time to leave your house so you are there on time, but not too early. Just because you are desperate for human contact, doesn't mean you should be too eager on this date!

I went on a bunch of dates with a fellow unemployee a while back - he was trying to get published however, and put himself on a pretty strict schedule, almost like he was going to work. Of course, that simply meant that he plopped himself down in front of his computer the whole day long to write. And while, I was (am) interested in what he was writing about, it definitely gave us limited conversations. More recently, I went on a few dates with a gainfully employed fella - and our conversations revolved almost entirely around his work.

There must be some happy medium, no?

I am sick of kissing frogs.