Online Dating Part 1: Just when I thought I'd developed all my social skills

Talking to people one on one. Talking to large groups of people. Talking to people on the phone. Sending email. Chatting. Mingling. Talking to people in other languages. Talking to strangers. Hanging out with strangers.

These are all things I do pretty well, now (OK, except the mingling). Not consistently well, but let's not get into that. Just suffice it to say that I am a relatively competent socializer. This was not always the case, though. I was a shy kid, and I remember in excruciating detail all the stress and mishap I went through trying to add each of these forms of communication to my skill set. My current job in communications is undoubtedly related to this. I've been thinking about how people contact one another for as long as I can remember. One of my first memories is telling a lie, and weighing out the benefit I gained versus the anxiety I felt. I was still in diapers.

So, after 25 years + of studying the subject, I'd finally begun to feel that I could handle just about any format. Social media? Ha! I work in social media. Just try me.

Then I moved back to the States and found out that online dating isn't just OK now, it's absolutely mainstream.

For the first month or so, I held out. My roommate went through a brief fling with a guy she met online, and so the topic was often on the table. My roommate, though, is the kind of unflappable person who not only never becomes embarrassed herself, she actively puts people around her at ease. If I needed someone to negotiate a hostage situation, this is who I'd call. So seeing her, if not finding a lasting relationship at least having fun, really didn't do much to convince me that I should give it a try myself.

It was everyone else's reactions that made me start to feel like a technophobe. Whenever the topic came up around new people, they'd all tried it. People even thought my reticence was a bit strange. The consensus was pretty simple: once you're out of school, meeting people is a pretty random game. If you'd be OK with meeting someone in the produce aisle, why not meet them online?

The issue is that I wouldn't meet someone in a produce aisle. Not that I'd be afraid for my safety. I would just freeze and have no idea what to say. I once sat next to a guy I found extremely attractive for 12 hours on a plane. He actually made me blush, I thought he was that cute. I exchanged only 2 or 3 sentences with him the entire time. 12 hours and less than a half page of dialogue.

Once, my friend from Brazil asked me to clarify the word "flustered." When I started explaining, she said, "Oh, I know! It's like how you feel when someone is attracted to you."

Yep. She was dead on. For some of us, that is exactly what flustered is.

So, the topic of online dating has made abundantly clear something that I had been able to ignore about myself: my social skill set is not at all complete. I haven't the slightest idea how to date.

The one time that I ended up really falling in love, I had a crush on the guy for three years before I was able to make a(n incredibly sloppy and impulsive) move. It then took another six months of a casual relationship before I felt confident that yes, I really did want him to be my boyfriend.

The other side of my passivity is that over the years I've had more than one Accidental Boyfriend, situations that spun out of control before I really knew what was going on. About a year and a half ago I swore those off and have been trying to be more careful ever since.

So, whichever way you slice it, dating sounds terrifying to me. I'm extremely defensive about who I'll consider an emotional attachment to these days. And even when I like a person, it may take me, oh, three and a half years to be sure.

Not only do I not know how to date, it seems like my personality is at odds with it. It's terrifying and I seem destined to fail. So I signed up for OKCupid and started talking to people.

Someday I'll be able to look at my shiny, pretty box of intact social skills and say to my kids, "It was a long campaign, but eventually I took 'em all."

In the interest of balance

Following yesterday's downer post, I present to you:

10 details to love

The big things are obvious, so here's a list of the small things that make my time in New York wonderful. Not organized by weight or value.

1. It is impossible to leave the house without hearing at least 2 spoken languages aside from English.

2. The dry cleaner's by my house uses an antique sewing machine to do repairs, without pretension.

3. If I happen to be lying still in my room with my ear to the mattress when the subway passes nearby, I can hear and feel a faint rhythm like a bass line.

4. There is a spirit house in the back room at the laundromat.

5. When the train is about to arrive at the platform by my house, it causes a gentle wind tunnel. It always feels dramatic and special.

6. In Prospect Park, you can bird-watch.

7. Brooklyn has enough of a city vibe to get me to put on mascara and earrings when I go out for the day, but not enough that I feel guilty if I don't feel like putting an outfit together. A happy balance.

8. Manhattan has such a different vibe that it feels like a completely different place -- and it's only half an hour away.

9. Good music in cafes. On the whole, this is true.

10. Sometimes, you just need to see the water. It's never too far away, here.

The One-Month Blues

It's been a difficult couple of days, though nothing in particular is wrong.

I didn't want to hang out with the new CouchSurfers today. I hid in my room while my roommate greeted them. I worked in my bed, propped up against pillows.

I hate working from bed.

The calendar on my wall has nothing penciled in for this week until Saturday. Saturday! Big empty square spaces of no plans. The New Yorker would come today, though; I'd look up some new things to do and the calendar would be lively and full again. Maybe I should use colored markers this time. Brighten the thing up a bit.

The New Yorker didn't come.

I decided to go for a walk after work. Get some fresh air, enjoy the park, people watch. It was raining, so instead I went to the bagel store.

Standing in line, the cheapest, dirtiest way to my heart came on the radio. You have one of these songs, too. The one that was getting airplay when your heart was being broken. Some stupid pop thing with a line that guts you, usually insulting in its simplicity. But you couldn't get away from it -- it was in the grocery store, at the bar, coming out of car windows. And years later you still can't hear the thing without being pulled right back to the hollow feeling you felt then.

Bagel store, I really don't need this right now.

I went home and made tea and stared at the dark feeling in my rib cage. Not the rain. Not the song. Not the failures of Conde Nast's subscription services. Not even the potential friend who had said she'd get in touch on Friday but didn't, or the fact that last night I couldn't think of a thing to do and ended up watching a movie that made me cry.

It's called transition, I know that all too well. Turns out it comes a little bit faster when you're on your home turf.

As a traveler I didn't backpack, I moved from place to place. As such, I became a bit obsessed with the nuances of transition, how it hits you and when. The two month mark, the six month mark, the nine month mark, and the year mark. Those were the dots on my map.

It's only been one month! I'm thinking now. It's not time for this yet!

But so it is. There's not as much to adjust to here, so the work of getting settled in a superficial way is proving to be somewhat faster going than anticipated. And it's on to the next stage: the craving for a life.

The highs don't go away now, which is a relief. I can still expect to be honeymooning off and on for a while. And I also know that the best part is a few months down the road. But the initial bliss is over (so soon!).

Making a commitment, whether to a place, a job, or a person, puts you on the sharp emotional edge of life. When something good happens, you are exhilarated, beside yourself with love. Things have never been this good before. Then, when there's even the slightest aberration from that thrilling feeling -- a dull evening, a plan that doesn't work out right -- it hits you far harder than it should. It brings on doubt. This is what it's always going to be like. Maybe this is a mistake.

I have said many times before, publicly and privately, that I was going to stick it out somewhere and really get through all of the tough times. And I failed every time. I'm committed to making it, this time. I want it more than I ever have before. The alternative has ceased to be a viable way for me to live. At the base of it, I know that I need this.

But commitment is scary, folks. It's time to stop telling myself that this is going to be a breeze, and time to face up to what's going to be a lot of adjustment.

Mint tea, make me calm. Take me to sleep.

On making things

One thing that is very difficult to do, while traveling, is to create crafts. Anything that you make is another thing that you need to carry to the next place, for one. And it's also an unreasonably expensive past time if you need to buy a completely new set of tools and materials each time in order to avoid carrying a bag of craft supplies around with you.

Of course, if I cared enough, I could have figured out a way to make it happen despite the difficulties. I've been living in locations for months at a time, after all. It's not as if I've been backpacking all this time.

Somehow, though, I've forgotten how much happier I am when I'm creating things. It's odd, because I have spent many, many hours in my life creating bad art. It sometimes happens when I run into someone whom I haven't seen since my teen years that they'll ask, "So, I assume you went to art school?" (For the record, I think there's lots of relief mixed in with the reply when I say no, because I never had anything approaching professional level talent). For most of my childhood, I was taking 2 to 3 art classes at any given time. As a teenager I spent a lot of my free time -- and nearly all of my time in class, which pleased my teachers greatly -- drawing comic strips and sketches. I have manufactured enough macrame and hemp jewelry to decorate the wrists and necks of a marching band. My father built me a darkroom in our basement. My first time traveling without my parents was motivated more by art than by travel -- a friend and I spent a month studying drawing and painting in Paris.

I don't really understand how I was able to drop such a huge portion of my identity without really noticing or caring. I'm not sure when it happened, exactly. But changing locations at ever increasing rates was the nail in the coffin for my artistic life.

Which is why I am very happy to introduce you to This Thing I Just Made.

Ahem. Kitchen Mobile. Meredith Hutcheson, 1983 - . Mexican tin ornaments, embroidery floss, balsa wood, metal beads, thread, glue. Private Collection.

Crafting, for me, is a way to be artistic without reminding myself that I'm not really an artist. I'm not sure when I last created something. My favorite thing, of mine, is a table that I painted in 2006 while I was living in San Diego.

Since then, I've made some jewelry, but mostly I've just thought mildy about projects and then forgotten them. Suddenly, since I've arrived in New York, I've been thinking about it more often. There is some psychological shift that goes along with making a commitment to a place. It's affecting me in ways I didn't expect. For instance, beyond crafting, I've actually found myself thinking of paintings I'd like to make. I haven't wanted to paint in years. I can't even remember the last time I tried.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to put on a podcast and paint a flower pot.

"I live in New York City"

A week or two ago I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge instead of taking the train to Manhattan. It was a beautiful, beautiful Sunday and the people were out and about.

Come, people-watch with me!

(The music for this video, by Sxip Shirey, is probably the most compelling reason to watch this. It's from his excellent album Sonic New York, which samples street sounds from the city and weaves them into the beats and tunes. As discussed on Radiolab!)

"I'm going to be just like you"

Two and a half months ago, I was riding in the back of a truck from Vientiane, Laos, to the train station. It was a large pick up truck that had been converted by adding a bench running down each side of the bed. I was in the last seat at the back, holding onto the pole that supported the shade structure above me. The sun was hot and slanting in against my face. The sky was a brilliant blue, and we passed farms, trees, and domestic elephants as we drove.

All that I could think about was how bored I was.

Hemingway, who, amongst other things, portrayed a louche and drifting expat existence in his books, has a famous story called "Hills like White Elephants." It's a stunningly concise piece that places a pregnancy as the catalyst that sheds light on the different desires of two people.

"It tastes like licorice," the girl said and put the glass down.

"That's the way with everything."

"Yes," said the girl. "Everything tastes of licorice. Especially all the things you've waited so long for, like absinthe."

"Oh, cut it out."

"You started it," the girl said. "I was being amused. I was having a fine time."

"Well, let's try and have a fine time."

"All right. I was trying. I said the mountains looked like white elephants. Wasn't that bright?"

"That was bright."

"I wanted to try this new drink. That's all we do, isn't it--look at things and try new drinks?"

"I guess so."

In the story, the male character is pressuring his girlfriend to get an abortion so they can go on traveling and leading their lives. She is unsure.

I'd begun to feel like that woman. There are people who can travel their whole lives. I know and love many such people. For a while I thought I was like that, too. And then some changes in my circumstance, set in motion early in this calendar year, began to work on me. At first I just thought I was going through a transition, irritable but soon to recover and carry on as before. It took me nearly six months to realize what was really going on.

"Everything tastes of licorice."

Exploring felt like a chore. I was tired, introverted. I'd stopped cultivating new connections --what was the point? soon I'll be gone -- and had lost my energy to pick up new skills. At some point I realized that airports and airplanes felt more like home than anywhere in the world, and I don't mean that as hyperbole: the second I got on line to check in, something in me would unclench and I would relax into the joy of knowing exactly how to navigate every situation that would present itself to me in the next 10 to 20 hours.

I'd begun to thrill on the rush of leaving, only to feel cold and depressed on arrival.

It took a long time for me to understand all of this. Travel, or more specifically, living in new places, has been motivating me since I was a teen-ager. It's been my guiding principle, the one thing in my life that all other things were arranged around. I grew up in a bedroom suburb; both of my parents had moved there from other places. They worked in the city. It was a good childhood, and a pleasant one, but one that felt like waiting. Waiting for my turn to go out and find a place for myself.

When it did come time to leave, it felt impossible to simply go and pick a place to live. How could I make that sort of decision without knowing what my options were? Thinking about all the places I didn't know made me itchy, aggravated so I couldn't sleep. Like Conrad's narrator in Heart of Darkness, I couldn't take my mind off of the blank places on the map. Seeing the shape of a country and not being able to add the colors and smells and sounds to those bare lines gave me a deep anxiety. I was missing something, I was always missing something, and every second I wasn't off somewhere was a second wasted.

And so I left for a series of places that it never occurred to me to consider home. First, northwest Pennsylvania, where I attended school and gaped (to the sometimes amusement, sometimes annoyance of my friends) at the rural world. Then, France, a country I loved but where I could never find a real emotional foothold. San Diego, a city of compromise, where I and a boyfriend slowly learned that meeting halfway means no one is happy. New Zealand, a dreamland of landscapes, where I met multiple transplanted North Americans who had been tearfully airborne over the Pacific while members of their family passed away. Chile, a culture I loved more as an ongoing intellectual dilemma than as a sustainable life choice. And then, at a hyperactive pace, San Francisco (where I failed to create a base of local friends), Costa Rica (where I learned that small towns by the beach make me dull and lethargic), China (where I watched with fascination a culture I had no interest in entering), Istanbul (where I was defeated by the Turkish language), and Thailand (where I had to relearn the lesson about small towns by the beach).

And all of a sudden I was 27, I hadn't been in love in three years, I rarely saw most of my good friends, I spent many hours cultivating acquaintanceships that I knew would shortly be ending, and the things that had driven me up to that point -- curiosity, adrenaline, and the careful cultivation of my own mental landscapes -- were just not enough anymore.

Of course, I pause here to assure you that it was all worth it. Non, rien de rien. Non, je ne regrette rien. This decade-long (perhaps life-long) obsession of mine has shaped everything about the way I now relate to myself, to others, and to the world.

But it's time to confront a new identity for myself. I always felt it, that there was something odd about me for a traveler: while my truly nomadic friends were purging themselves of possessions at every chance, I was buying posters and putting them in storage. In some corner of my mind, there has always been an apartment, filled with my books and large plants. When I was eight I was walking down a street in Boston with my family one night, and at a lit window there was a young woman in sweats painting her walls. I don't know why I decided this, but I thought to myself, "It's her first apartment. Someday that will be me."

It's time to move somewhere and mean it. Again, with feeling....

Riding in the back of the truck, my eyes were barely focused on the scenery flying by. As I sweat in the Laotian sun, my pulse was quickening as I thought of all the things I was going to do, the things I was going to have. Hobbies. Friends. Lovers. A gym membership. A subway pass. A telephone. A steady address. Magazine subscriptions. Bookshelves. Plants. Everything was going to change.

Trainspotting Final Scene

João | Myspace Video

For anyone who's ever followed someone down

It's been years and years and years since I felt this way, but somehow watching this video ignites the deepest nostalgia in me. I've been watching it on repeat for over half an hour now, chasing that feeling. It hits somewhere behind the sternum. There's something so beautiful, from the vantage point of topical connections, to know that there is the capability in me to feel so deeply. I think about this sometimes, when dramatic songs come on my music list. How strange to know that once these songs hit me so hard, without a touch of irony. How strange that I would miss those times on some deeply felt level.

Watching this video, with a lot of concentration, I can bring back the reverberations against my ribs of what abject emotional destruction feels like. I hope I never feel that way again, but somehow, this exercise leaves me feeling good.

The Beauty of Speed

What's your recurring nightmare?

My theme is zombies, and it has been, as far as I can remember, for about ten years. I don't remember when the dreams started, but they seemed to have emerged in tandem with my entry into an adult mindset. I grew, and the dreams grew, and these days I have scarcely any nightmares that don't contain at least a couple of zombies. I'm a troubled sleeper and I tend to have a lot of nightmares, so this adds up.

It's not a recurring dream in the sense of exact repetition. It's thematic. Last night, for example, I had a relatively straightforward genre dream. I was in a large house in a pine-forested suburb somewhere. I had two companions. The zombies were outside; we were in the house; there was much running and shutting of windows. This is how the dreams tend to go: the zombies never get close enough to attack. They're always just a hair away, clawing at the door I forgot to lock, or approaching as I nail the last board over a hole in the wall.

Other times, the dreams are far less typical of the zombie trope. Say an average little yuppie nightmare: I've forgotten some major project. Or I discover an unpaid bill that I can never afford to pay off. Or something bad happens with a boy. In the middle of one of these pedestrian disasters, oops, here come the zombies. I'll be standing in a cafe arguing with a love interest, and then we look out the plate glass window and -- time to run! There will be an interlude of escaping, then eventually the dream will wander back on course.

Sometimes they look like movie zombies, all lurching and blood-spattered.

Sometimes, they look like normal people.

I've even seen robot zombies, and zombies that were essentially swaths of color.

It doesn't really matter what they look like. Just as in a dream you can see someone, and know in the instant that you're seeing them that although they look like a stranger this person is actually your close friend, all that matters is the understanding that they are zombies.

So what's a zombie? In the form I'm talking about, a zombie is relentless, dangerous, and singularly fixated on destruction. A zombie is also not alone: it's part of a sea of danger that surrounds the vulnerable. But most essentially, it's an inhuman human. From philosophical zombies to my own B-movie variety, the fascinating (for me) aspect is that the creature appears to us as one thing when in reality it is another. It appears to be a person like ourselves. Our impulse tells us that we can say or do something that will create an echo inside the chambers of the creature's experience and consciousness. But we can't. There is nothing there.

It's not surprising, then, that this would be the stuff of my recurring nightmares. In fact, I'd be interested to know whether writers and communications people have a greater tendency to dream about zombies than the general population. A world of zombies is a world in which I am deprived of my main skill. It's a world where I am helpless.

My life is a series of drastic changes, when viewed from the right angle. It can be absolutely chaotic, and I thrive off of the madness. I've reflected on this a lot this year, because several incidents have proven to me that I really don't like change -- when it's something external that happens to me. I remember having terrible depressions each time I had to change schools as a child, and that tendency to take transitions badly continues today.

And so it seems to me that helplessness in the face of change seems to be my personal zombie army. From the moment I was old enough to do it, I responded to the threat of change by upping the ante. When it was time for college, there was a long relationship that I wanted desperately to be out of but couldn't figure out how to end. I went rural and out of state, and that solved that. Two years later, a large number of the friends I'd made were graduating and I felt abandoned. I went to France. When I graduated -- perhaps the biggest change -- I moved to California. When a serious relationship ended, I got on a plane to New Zealand. When it ended for a second time, I went to Chile.

So it seems to me that the majority of travel in my life has revolved around this theme. By throwing myself into change instead of allowing it to happen to me, I've turned it into my favorite drug. Externally inflicted change is always coming, but I can always get that board in place just in time. Sometimes it nearly catches me, grabs my leg, tries to pull me down, but I always get away. As long as I can do it on my own terms, I'm not helpless: I'm the most powerful creature in the universe.

This is why I will stay in Istanbul until May. There are changes happening right now that will affect me but are not orchestrated by me, and every single cell in my body is screaming "plane ticket!" But looking back on the last few years, seeing the frenzy underneath the illusion of my own power, is sobering. I do not want to spend my life running away from imaginary monsters. Or rather, what's imaginary is the thought that I can run. Time is a zombie. It looks rich and colorful, like it has feeling. It holds my experiences and so I think that it can feel them. But time is empty, sweeping, relentless. And running doesn't change anything. I want to travel because I want to, because I've decided to, not because I'm afraid of my own ability to weather a transition. So I'll wait this one out in Istanbul, at least til May. Right now, I don't know how I'll do it, but I know it's what I have to do. Step one.