Andrew Culyer's Blog
August 8, 2017
July 25, 2017
Inspirational words of encouragement...
Inspirational words of encouragement...the dedication at the back of the book The Theo Mallier Story, which has brought tears to a few eyes...
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July 22, 2017
My monster and me: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
How Frankenstein by Mary Shelley made a 17 year old giant identify with one of the greatest literary characters in history, but not the doctor...
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Frankenstein
https://www.reviewsofgoodproducts.com...
Frankenstein
December 4, 2016
7: My first conversation on Tinder
Okay, okay, I got the message. I wrote a blog post about profiles and didn’t mention pictures.
Hm.
I did research this as well, and found some unusual tips which I’ve used, they being; have a picture where you’re smiling, have one where you’re doing an activity, and have one where you’re with a beautiful woman, and she looks happy.
That last one is meant to show ‘social proof’, which is a sales term. That is, if a woman sees you with another woman and that other woman looks happy to be with you, then you must be okay, and the new woman will want to be with you as well. Oh, and don’t have pictures where nobody knows which one you are (swipers will assume you’re the ugly one).
Women, for all their glories, have some faults as well (before you get on that high horse and media-shame me, us men have plenty of faults, too), and one of them is when they see a man with another woman, they don’t (like a man does) think they would like to get someone similar; they think ‘I want that man’. I think it’s been proven somewhere that women aren’t all that keen on single men, because if the man is single, there must be something wrong with him. They want men who are attached, because they are already validated as being decent and partner-worthy, not to mention the idea that men in relationships are forbidden, and everybody wants what they can’t have.
Those who have been following my posts will understand that my knowledge of the female mind is somewhat limited, though I do know a few things just from life experience, and one of them is, a woman will stop at nothing, even alienating her friends, if there’s a man she wants. The cat wants the cream which, I guess, is an unfortunate phrase to use when talking about women and dating.
So, to get back to the point, I put the pictures on my profile, and the main profile picture is in black and white, not in colour. I think pictures always look better in black and white – it’s got something to do with being cool and classy, but also, it hides a lot of blemishes, so I was now ready for the influx of women beating at my virtual door, ready to talk to the new kid on the block.
I matched with quite a few women before I even did the profile properly, so now I had upgraded it, went about the business of right-swiping as many as possible, and spent about an hour going through all the faces available, but what was this?
I ran out of likes.
WTF?
So I had to wait a couple of days, then when I was back on, I only got five faces to see before I got the message, ‘There’s no one new around you.’
Eh? And when I say ‘Eh?’, what I mean is, ‘EH?!?’
I thought this was meant to be a free app, with unlimited access to thousands of women in my area? How can it ‘run out’ of people?
I live in Tynemouth, and with a 50 km radius, which includes Newcastle, Sunderland, and Middlesbrough, we’re talking here about two million people, which, removing men and children, leaves about half a million women, aged between eighteen and forty (more on that in a later post. It sounds creepy, I know, but, well... just, more on that later. All I’ll say for now is, it turns out women like older men. Who knew?).
So it took a week to get my strategy down, that being, don’t spend much time swiping, and only swipe on the ones you like, which has cut down my matches considerably, but at the same time, has meant I get to have only a few conversations.
Yes, readers, conversations, or I should say, conversation (singular).
I matched with ten women, and armed with the knowledge that I should at least say hello to them, I did, and one of them replied, so here, in all its glory, is the first conversation I ever had on Tinder. It was with a twenty-five-year-old called Laura (the comments in brackets are not part of the conversation, merely what I was actually thinking at the time):
‘Hey, Laura, you know what...?’
‘What?’
‘Curiosity always gets the better of people’
‘Ha. I like that. What are you curious about?’ (I wasn’t. I was just trying to be big and clever.)
‘Why your age settings are so high?’
‘What can I say? I like older men, and you look hot xx’ (what’s with the kisses, though? It’s only the third line she’s said)
‘Thanks. What is it you like about older men?’
‘I don’t know, they’re just more experienced’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah, they know what to do in the bedroom’ (What? We’re like ten lines in, and she’s got to the bedroom talk already.)
‘Yeah, we know how to do a lot of stuff’
(The conversation was paused for about three hours – no idea why).
‘Hey, there’ (from her.)
‘Hey. Where’d you go?’
‘Did you miss me?’
‘Yes, I’ve been pining for you’
‘Oh? You’ve been thinking about me?’
‘A little’
‘What about?’
‘Just stuff’
‘About what you’d like to do to me?’
‘A little’
‘What like?’
‘I was thinking what it would be like to go shopping in Ikea with you’
‘Ha I doubt that’
‘What did you think I was thinking about?’
‘About banging me’ (Her parents must be very proud.)
‘Er, I was, yes’
‘Tell me what you’d like to do to me’
‘I’d rather do it than talk about it’
There was a pause for about an hour, then when I went back on, I had been unmatched. I have no idea why. I know women are fickle souls, but it seemed to me that when I didn’t describe what I wanted to do to her, she got pissed off and left. I am new to all this stuff, so if anybody can tell me where I went wrong, I’m all ears.
So that was it, my first ever conversation with a woman along my new (and now I realise even more, long) journey. A psychologist would have a few things to say, I’m sure, and saying as how I’m not one of those, I’m guessing that since the last time I was in the dating game, nearly thirty years ago, things have certainly changed.
@andyculyer
My books on Amazon
Hm.
I did research this as well, and found some unusual tips which I’ve used, they being; have a picture where you’re smiling, have one where you’re doing an activity, and have one where you’re with a beautiful woman, and she looks happy.
That last one is meant to show ‘social proof’, which is a sales term. That is, if a woman sees you with another woman and that other woman looks happy to be with you, then you must be okay, and the new woman will want to be with you as well. Oh, and don’t have pictures where nobody knows which one you are (swipers will assume you’re the ugly one).
Women, for all their glories, have some faults as well (before you get on that high horse and media-shame me, us men have plenty of faults, too), and one of them is when they see a man with another woman, they don’t (like a man does) think they would like to get someone similar; they think ‘I want that man’. I think it’s been proven somewhere that women aren’t all that keen on single men, because if the man is single, there must be something wrong with him. They want men who are attached, because they are already validated as being decent and partner-worthy, not to mention the idea that men in relationships are forbidden, and everybody wants what they can’t have.
Those who have been following my posts will understand that my knowledge of the female mind is somewhat limited, though I do know a few things just from life experience, and one of them is, a woman will stop at nothing, even alienating her friends, if there’s a man she wants. The cat wants the cream which, I guess, is an unfortunate phrase to use when talking about women and dating.
So, to get back to the point, I put the pictures on my profile, and the main profile picture is in black and white, not in colour. I think pictures always look better in black and white – it’s got something to do with being cool and classy, but also, it hides a lot of blemishes, so I was now ready for the influx of women beating at my virtual door, ready to talk to the new kid on the block.
I matched with quite a few women before I even did the profile properly, so now I had upgraded it, went about the business of right-swiping as many as possible, and spent about an hour going through all the faces available, but what was this?
I ran out of likes.
WTF?
So I had to wait a couple of days, then when I was back on, I only got five faces to see before I got the message, ‘There’s no one new around you.’
Eh? And when I say ‘Eh?’, what I mean is, ‘EH?!?’
I thought this was meant to be a free app, with unlimited access to thousands of women in my area? How can it ‘run out’ of people?
I live in Tynemouth, and with a 50 km radius, which includes Newcastle, Sunderland, and Middlesbrough, we’re talking here about two million people, which, removing men and children, leaves about half a million women, aged between eighteen and forty (more on that in a later post. It sounds creepy, I know, but, well... just, more on that later. All I’ll say for now is, it turns out women like older men. Who knew?).
So it took a week to get my strategy down, that being, don’t spend much time swiping, and only swipe on the ones you like, which has cut down my matches considerably, but at the same time, has meant I get to have only a few conversations.
Yes, readers, conversations, or I should say, conversation (singular).
I matched with ten women, and armed with the knowledge that I should at least say hello to them, I did, and one of them replied, so here, in all its glory, is the first conversation I ever had on Tinder. It was with a twenty-five-year-old called Laura (the comments in brackets are not part of the conversation, merely what I was actually thinking at the time):
‘Hey, Laura, you know what...?’
‘What?’
‘Curiosity always gets the better of people’
‘Ha. I like that. What are you curious about?’ (I wasn’t. I was just trying to be big and clever.)
‘Why your age settings are so high?’
‘What can I say? I like older men, and you look hot xx’ (what’s with the kisses, though? It’s only the third line she’s said)
‘Thanks. What is it you like about older men?’
‘I don’t know, they’re just more experienced’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah, they know what to do in the bedroom’ (What? We’re like ten lines in, and she’s got to the bedroom talk already.)
‘Yeah, we know how to do a lot of stuff’
(The conversation was paused for about three hours – no idea why).
‘Hey, there’ (from her.)
‘Hey. Where’d you go?’
‘Did you miss me?’
‘Yes, I’ve been pining for you’
‘Oh? You’ve been thinking about me?’
‘A little’
‘What about?’
‘Just stuff’
‘About what you’d like to do to me?’
‘A little’
‘What like?’
‘I was thinking what it would be like to go shopping in Ikea with you’
‘Ha I doubt that’
‘What did you think I was thinking about?’
‘About banging me’ (Her parents must be very proud.)
‘Er, I was, yes’
‘Tell me what you’d like to do to me’
‘I’d rather do it than talk about it’
There was a pause for about an hour, then when I went back on, I had been unmatched. I have no idea why. I know women are fickle souls, but it seemed to me that when I didn’t describe what I wanted to do to her, she got pissed off and left. I am new to all this stuff, so if anybody can tell me where I went wrong, I’m all ears.
So that was it, my first ever conversation with a woman along my new (and now I realise even more, long) journey. A psychologist would have a few things to say, I’m sure, and saying as how I’m not one of those, I’m guessing that since the last time I was in the dating game, nearly thirty years ago, things have certainly changed.
@andyculyer
My books on Amazon
October 23, 2016
6: How to make a profile on Tinder for (absolute) beginners.
There is nothing like writing about yourself to find out who you really are...
When you’re a clever person, like me, one thing you’re good at is research, which means trawling the internet. When you’re a stupid person, like me, another thing you’re good at is trawling the internet aimlessly.
I find it incredibly easy to start research with good intentions, then end up on a website nowhere near what I was looking for to start with, and this is what happened when I started researching how to write a good dating profile.
I mean, how you can start searching for that and end up looking at images of Jessica Alba, probably the most out-of-my-league woman you could possibly imagine? Well, her and Kate Beckinsale, and Kate got a search as well.
It happened because, when you start looking for internet dating sites, random pictures and ads appear all over the screen. ‘Young Russian brides looking for you’, ‘there’s a match for everyone’, and even ads that just say ‘single?’ I find it helpful to not be insecure and click on everything that comes up, but still, it ignites fantasy in your head, and before you know it, you’re doing a Google search for ‘Jessica Alba hot’, and ‘Kate Beckinsale 2016’, and you stay there for a while, until reality kicks in again, and you remember you have to write a blog post about online dating profiles for beginners.
The only way I can find other people’s profile descriptions is to look on women’s Tinder profiles. If I wanted to find out what men’s profiles are like, I had to register on Tinder as a woman, and reader, I just couldn’t do it. You can try and be as open about it as you like, but the nasty truth is, I just plain don’t like looking at pictures of men, and from comments I’ve seen elsewhere, these men aren’t always dressed either.
Urrgh!!
So, I went onto Google to find dating profile examples for men, and as you may or may not know, the internet will give you a 50/50 split of doing something one way, and also doing it another way. It was all a bit of a mess, but if there’s one thing I like about trying new things, it’s the experimenting part, and with the knowledge that you only really properly learn from doing, not reading, I put my profile together.
Now, writing an internet dating profile is a bit like writing a c.v. for a job, only quirkier.
In a c.v., you put a quick overview of yourself, then you put your qualifications and experience, then your pastimes...so far, so blah blah blah. In a dating profile, it is very similar. You put in a bit about yourself, what you do with your time, and what you can offer. You’re qualifying yourself as a potential candidate, and essentially saying ‘look at me; I am not a homicidal maniac. Don’t worry, you’ll be okay with me’.
Then, a tricky bit – how to come across as not eager, or desperate; how to be nonchalant even, like, ‘Yeah, I don’t really care, just doing this for fun’ (yeah, right, mate. You do things like hang with your friends for fun, or do paragliding, or play sports. You don’t spend hours aching over the right things to say in a profile. Tell the truth, mate, you’re doing this because you want to get shagging again (am not putting this in the profile)).
I also have to make myself interesting to others. A woman wants someone to take her on an adventure, not sip wine or cocktails in a local bar doing small talk, pretend-laughing at someone’s crap jokes and wonder why they spent all that time dressing up to have their night wasted by some frightful dullard. They want to know you have passion, and depth, and honesty, and are genuine, and thoughtful, and protective, but at the same time, are wondering if you can throw them around the bedroom in a fit of total dominance, and want to test you constantly to see if you really are the man you appear to be. I mean, who wants a lame duck, right? Nobody (except, I guess, a lame drake – there’s someone for everybody, so I hear).
So, in a nutshell, you just to have to be perfect in every way.
And the profile has to have something funny in it. Everybody, not just women, has and likes a good sense of humour. In the olden days, this was abbreviated to GSOH, which can also mean Good Salary, Own Home, which, to me, is a blatant attempt to woo ladies by offering them a good life, which, also to me, is like a bastardized form of prostitution – you may as well just say, ‘man here, all mod cons’.
So you have to put something stupid or funny in your profile. They also want someone to be different, to stand out (being 6 feet 10 more than covers this part), and they want to go on ‘an adventure’. I have no fkg idea what this means – there aren’t many Indiana Jones’ or James Bonds about, so am hoping this is really related to just not being the same old shit man they meet every day.
So here it is, my very first online dating profile:
‘Hey, there! Walter here...6 feet 10, book shop owner, member of an alcohol abuse display team on the weekends, looking for similar (not 6 feet 10, though), for fun, and for deep conversations. I’ve been told I’m a good listener, but only because I can’t usually get a word in edgeways.
I like listening to Elton John and movie themes, and if you look anything like Kate Beckinsale or Jessica Alba, you’re in.’
Form a queue, ladies...
@andyculyer
My books on Amazon
When you’re a clever person, like me, one thing you’re good at is research, which means trawling the internet. When you’re a stupid person, like me, another thing you’re good at is trawling the internet aimlessly.
I find it incredibly easy to start research with good intentions, then end up on a website nowhere near what I was looking for to start with, and this is what happened when I started researching how to write a good dating profile.
I mean, how you can start searching for that and end up looking at images of Jessica Alba, probably the most out-of-my-league woman you could possibly imagine? Well, her and Kate Beckinsale, and Kate got a search as well.
It happened because, when you start looking for internet dating sites, random pictures and ads appear all over the screen. ‘Young Russian brides looking for you’, ‘there’s a match for everyone’, and even ads that just say ‘single?’ I find it helpful to not be insecure and click on everything that comes up, but still, it ignites fantasy in your head, and before you know it, you’re doing a Google search for ‘Jessica Alba hot’, and ‘Kate Beckinsale 2016’, and you stay there for a while, until reality kicks in again, and you remember you have to write a blog post about online dating profiles for beginners.
The only way I can find other people’s profile descriptions is to look on women’s Tinder profiles. If I wanted to find out what men’s profiles are like, I had to register on Tinder as a woman, and reader, I just couldn’t do it. You can try and be as open about it as you like, but the nasty truth is, I just plain don’t like looking at pictures of men, and from comments I’ve seen elsewhere, these men aren’t always dressed either.
Urrgh!!
So, I went onto Google to find dating profile examples for men, and as you may or may not know, the internet will give you a 50/50 split of doing something one way, and also doing it another way. It was all a bit of a mess, but if there’s one thing I like about trying new things, it’s the experimenting part, and with the knowledge that you only really properly learn from doing, not reading, I put my profile together.
Now, writing an internet dating profile is a bit like writing a c.v. for a job, only quirkier.
In a c.v., you put a quick overview of yourself, then you put your qualifications and experience, then your pastimes...so far, so blah blah blah. In a dating profile, it is very similar. You put in a bit about yourself, what you do with your time, and what you can offer. You’re qualifying yourself as a potential candidate, and essentially saying ‘look at me; I am not a homicidal maniac. Don’t worry, you’ll be okay with me’.
Then, a tricky bit – how to come across as not eager, or desperate; how to be nonchalant even, like, ‘Yeah, I don’t really care, just doing this for fun’ (yeah, right, mate. You do things like hang with your friends for fun, or do paragliding, or play sports. You don’t spend hours aching over the right things to say in a profile. Tell the truth, mate, you’re doing this because you want to get shagging again (am not putting this in the profile)).
I also have to make myself interesting to others. A woman wants someone to take her on an adventure, not sip wine or cocktails in a local bar doing small talk, pretend-laughing at someone’s crap jokes and wonder why they spent all that time dressing up to have their night wasted by some frightful dullard. They want to know you have passion, and depth, and honesty, and are genuine, and thoughtful, and protective, but at the same time, are wondering if you can throw them around the bedroom in a fit of total dominance, and want to test you constantly to see if you really are the man you appear to be. I mean, who wants a lame duck, right? Nobody (except, I guess, a lame drake – there’s someone for everybody, so I hear).
So, in a nutshell, you just to have to be perfect in every way.
And the profile has to have something funny in it. Everybody, not just women, has and likes a good sense of humour. In the olden days, this was abbreviated to GSOH, which can also mean Good Salary, Own Home, which, to me, is a blatant attempt to woo ladies by offering them a good life, which, also to me, is like a bastardized form of prostitution – you may as well just say, ‘man here, all mod cons’.
So you have to put something stupid or funny in your profile. They also want someone to be different, to stand out (being 6 feet 10 more than covers this part), and they want to go on ‘an adventure’. I have no fkg idea what this means – there aren’t many Indiana Jones’ or James Bonds about, so am hoping this is really related to just not being the same old shit man they meet every day.
So here it is, my very first online dating profile:
‘Hey, there! Walter here...6 feet 10, book shop owner, member of an alcohol abuse display team on the weekends, looking for similar (not 6 feet 10, though), for fun, and for deep conversations. I’ve been told I’m a good listener, but only because I can’t usually get a word in edgeways.
I like listening to Elton John and movie themes, and if you look anything like Kate Beckinsale or Jessica Alba, you’re in.’
Form a queue, ladies...
@andyculyer
My books on Amazon
October 9, 2016
5: How Tinder works
‘We didn't start the fire, It was always burning, Since the world's been turning, We didn't start the fire, No we didn't light it, But we tried to fight it’ – Billy Joel
Before you start reading this, I must do a disclaimer:
I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TINDER WORKS.
Well, not strictly true. I mean, I have some idea, like, you have to put a photograph on it, and a little description, and you have to swipe left and right, but let me tell you how things went when I started out on the app...
The first thing I noticed: the picture on the app looks like a fire.
That should be the first warning.
Yes, I can see it: the name Tinder comes from the material used to kindle a fire, hence the picture of a fire in their app. It’s red as well, which is the colour of passion, and of a heart. Overall, I think, a pretty good job done by their marketing team, though, inevitably, it also brings me to think about what ‘Tinder’ and ‘fire’ actually mean.
These are the descriptions I have:
What is tinder: a dry material which burns easily, used for lighting a fire.
What is a fire:
An instance of burning in which something is destroyed
Wood or coal that is burning in a hearth or stove for heating or cooking
Passionate emotion or enthusiasm
Dismiss an employee from a job
Direct a rapid series of questions of statements towards someone
To stimulate.
So, overall, a fire is something that can be stimulating, and passionate, and can be used for cooking, though more noticeably brings destruction and devastation, after a heated set of unwanted questions before being dumped.
Yep – that’s sounds like just the kind of woman for me...
So, the last time I was on here, I had the app downloaded. The next thing I did was to forego trivialities like good profile pictures and writing an online dating profile, and went straight to looking at pictures of the women that were on there.
Now, women are not going to like this part, but a man’s view of a woman is not that much different to a women’s view of a man, and what I mean by this is, and I am talking about at the deepest, most subconscious level you could get, Tinder’s method seems to fit perfectly with how the law of attraction works in real life.
That is, when a man or woman walks into a room full of people, and sees members of the opposite sex, they do an instant evaluation of everyone they see.
We’ve all done it, probably without even knowing it; been in a room and looked around and your subconscious is looking at the faces and bodies and going: ‘Yes, yes, no, yes, no, no, yes, no, etc...’
When you’re using Tinder, for all its modernity, you are doing exactly the same thing that humans have done throughout history, except instead of being a mental ‘yes’ or ‘no’, it is called ‘swipe right’ or ‘swipe left’.
An instant evaluation, in about a second, based on nothing but the way the person looks in a photograph.
Harsh.
And a lot of them...? Well, I wonder what they’re doing on there. I’ve seen pictures on Tinder of women who are beautiful, and some who are not so, and the beautiful ones, they could be anywhere, at any time, and get hit on by any number of men, yet here they are, on a dating website, opening themselves up to all the kooks and weirdos who are on that website because they cannot get a woman in the real world.
I am, of course, one of those kooks and weirdos now, which immediately makes me think in a different way, i.e. hold on, I am not a kook or a weirdo, I am a normal man that is starting on a long or short journey towards new romance, and need somewhere to start, and if that is the case for me, then it is probably the case for most other people on there as well.
It’s like, a dating starter pack, where you can harmlessly check out hundreds of single women in your area (without them knowing), and swipe right on the ones you like the look of, then don’t have to have any contact at all if you don’t want to, even if they match with you, and when they do match with you, it’s mostly the same as in the real world, that being, the man has to talk first.
So, in two weeks, I have matched with fifteen women, and not sent any of them a message, and now they’re not matched with me anymore.
Again, like the real world, if there’s a spark (there’s that ‘tinder’ link again), you have to move to do something with her, and when you don’t, you’re under the bus forever, rejected without even trying.
I know. I’ve already noticed it. I’m thinking of calling the next blog post ‘How to behave in the world when you’ve had your balls removed’. I won’t, though.
It’s called ‘How to make a profile on Tinder for (absolute) beginners’.
@andyculyer
My books on Amazon
Before you start reading this, I must do a disclaimer:
I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TINDER WORKS.
Well, not strictly true. I mean, I have some idea, like, you have to put a photograph on it, and a little description, and you have to swipe left and right, but let me tell you how things went when I started out on the app...
The first thing I noticed: the picture on the app looks like a fire.
That should be the first warning.
Yes, I can see it: the name Tinder comes from the material used to kindle a fire, hence the picture of a fire in their app. It’s red as well, which is the colour of passion, and of a heart. Overall, I think, a pretty good job done by their marketing team, though, inevitably, it also brings me to think about what ‘Tinder’ and ‘fire’ actually mean.
These are the descriptions I have:
What is tinder: a dry material which burns easily, used for lighting a fire.
What is a fire:
An instance of burning in which something is destroyed
Wood or coal that is burning in a hearth or stove for heating or cooking
Passionate emotion or enthusiasm
Dismiss an employee from a job
Direct a rapid series of questions of statements towards someone
To stimulate.
So, overall, a fire is something that can be stimulating, and passionate, and can be used for cooking, though more noticeably brings destruction and devastation, after a heated set of unwanted questions before being dumped.
Yep – that’s sounds like just the kind of woman for me...
So, the last time I was on here, I had the app downloaded. The next thing I did was to forego trivialities like good profile pictures and writing an online dating profile, and went straight to looking at pictures of the women that were on there.
Now, women are not going to like this part, but a man’s view of a woman is not that much different to a women’s view of a man, and what I mean by this is, and I am talking about at the deepest, most subconscious level you could get, Tinder’s method seems to fit perfectly with how the law of attraction works in real life.
That is, when a man or woman walks into a room full of people, and sees members of the opposite sex, they do an instant evaluation of everyone they see.
We’ve all done it, probably without even knowing it; been in a room and looked around and your subconscious is looking at the faces and bodies and going: ‘Yes, yes, no, yes, no, no, yes, no, etc...’
When you’re using Tinder, for all its modernity, you are doing exactly the same thing that humans have done throughout history, except instead of being a mental ‘yes’ or ‘no’, it is called ‘swipe right’ or ‘swipe left’.
An instant evaluation, in about a second, based on nothing but the way the person looks in a photograph.
Harsh.
And a lot of them...? Well, I wonder what they’re doing on there. I’ve seen pictures on Tinder of women who are beautiful, and some who are not so, and the beautiful ones, they could be anywhere, at any time, and get hit on by any number of men, yet here they are, on a dating website, opening themselves up to all the kooks and weirdos who are on that website because they cannot get a woman in the real world.
I am, of course, one of those kooks and weirdos now, which immediately makes me think in a different way, i.e. hold on, I am not a kook or a weirdo, I am a normal man that is starting on a long or short journey towards new romance, and need somewhere to start, and if that is the case for me, then it is probably the case for most other people on there as well.
It’s like, a dating starter pack, where you can harmlessly check out hundreds of single women in your area (without them knowing), and swipe right on the ones you like the look of, then don’t have to have any contact at all if you don’t want to, even if they match with you, and when they do match with you, it’s mostly the same as in the real world, that being, the man has to talk first.
So, in two weeks, I have matched with fifteen women, and not sent any of them a message, and now they’re not matched with me anymore.
Again, like the real world, if there’s a spark (there’s that ‘tinder’ link again), you have to move to do something with her, and when you don’t, you’re under the bus forever, rejected without even trying.
I know. I’ve already noticed it. I’m thinking of calling the next blog post ‘How to behave in the world when you’ve had your balls removed’. I won’t, though.
It’s called ‘How to make a profile on Tinder for (absolute) beginners’.
@andyculyer
My books on Amazon
September 22, 2016
4: How to get stuck in a rut…I mean, plateau (part three)
A wise man, etc... (can’t wait to finish this part, so I can put a new introduction in)
So, then, something to look forward to...
This is the bit where I struggle.
In my life, I’ve had a good job, been married, had kids, own my own shop, been to a few places all over the world, and when I think now to what I look forward to, I think of....well, nothing.
It feels like, all the things I had to look forward to, they’ve all passed and are now memories. At a push, I could say that the future holds my kids weddings, having grandkids, retirement, but they’re not things to look forward to, they’re just a part of life that inevitably happen. Future holidays? What? There’s nowhere I can think of where I feel like ‘yes, I must go there before I die.’
So in this short series of ‘How to get stuck in a rut’ blogs, this is the ‘rut’ part.
Maybe even the mid-life crisis part, but don’t worry, I have no feelings of getting a sports car, a ponytail, and a leather jacket that I push the sleeves up to my elbows. It’s more a feeling of ‘what’s left to do’?
And I think it’s been adding to that general feeling of ‘should I start dating again’?
At least that would give me a new purpose, I guess, and hey, something to look forward to, even if the first time I go dating it will be full of angst and nervousness.
When I really sit down and think about it, looking forward to things is really looking forward to seeing familiar people again. I enjoy nights out for this reason, and when I don’t have the kids for a few days, I am happy to see them again when they come back. It’s like, when you see the same people all the time, you don’t really look forward to seeing them – they’re just there, all the time.
I wonder if I will date this way?
I am fifty years old, and therefore have a pretty solid take on how I want to live my life, and one thing (I think) I know before I set off on the dating lottery, is that I do not want a relationship where I see the person all the time.
This is because if I have a new relationship, I want to look forward to seeing them, every time I see them, and I want them to feel the same about me. I do not want things to go stale, or complacent or, dare I say it, boring.
There’s a kind of greater enjoyment in not seeing someone all the time. This is also why, when I see couples (seemingly everywhere I look now I’m thinking about the dating game), they’re mostly just sitting there, not talking, just being, not really enjoying each other’s company, merely tolerating it, because the alternative is to be on your own and have to go through all the crap I’m about to go through.
Even their small talk is bland shit. They just don’t know what to say to each other any more. It’s dead, gone, done, and I DO NOT WANT THAT (I haven’t written a dating profile yet – I’m guessing I won’t put that line in).
And this is because they are doing what society has told them to do.
Grow up, get a job, get a partner, get married, have kids, look after them, see them disappear, retire, die...
...don’t get divorced – you have made a commitment and you have to stick to it because ‘society’ has said you have to, stay together because the grass isn’t greener, put up with the others’ faults and call it familiarity – ‘oh, that’s just their way’ and, ultimately, have a small, sneaky feeling of relief when they die, but don’t tell anyone because ‘society’ has dictated this is not allowed, but then miss their familiarity, miss the feeling of just having someone else there, even if you didn’t necessarily like them all that much any more...
Wow, I have certainly overdone my scorn towards married life, or even just relationships. That is some lucky lady that’s eventually going to end up with me.
And who am I anyway? I have lived two-thirds of a life so far, and not really lived for any of it, and if people want to live that life I have just described then, really, good luck to them if it makes them happy. It’s just not what I want for mine.
The only relationships that work are the ones where the woman is in control. Yeah. I get that.
Did I mention?
I. Do. Not. Want. That.
This, of course, is my view as I sit from where I am now. I have no idea what is going to happen.
So then, the Tinder app is downloaded onto my phone, as yet untouched, and its icon, every time I see it on the screen, entices me, calls me in to its world of new adventures, experiences, and feelings.
I’d better get on with it...
@andyculyer
My books on Amazon
So, then, something to look forward to...
This is the bit where I struggle.
In my life, I’ve had a good job, been married, had kids, own my own shop, been to a few places all over the world, and when I think now to what I look forward to, I think of....well, nothing.
It feels like, all the things I had to look forward to, they’ve all passed and are now memories. At a push, I could say that the future holds my kids weddings, having grandkids, retirement, but they’re not things to look forward to, they’re just a part of life that inevitably happen. Future holidays? What? There’s nowhere I can think of where I feel like ‘yes, I must go there before I die.’
So in this short series of ‘How to get stuck in a rut’ blogs, this is the ‘rut’ part.
Maybe even the mid-life crisis part, but don’t worry, I have no feelings of getting a sports car, a ponytail, and a leather jacket that I push the sleeves up to my elbows. It’s more a feeling of ‘what’s left to do’?
And I think it’s been adding to that general feeling of ‘should I start dating again’?
At least that would give me a new purpose, I guess, and hey, something to look forward to, even if the first time I go dating it will be full of angst and nervousness.
When I really sit down and think about it, looking forward to things is really looking forward to seeing familiar people again. I enjoy nights out for this reason, and when I don’t have the kids for a few days, I am happy to see them again when they come back. It’s like, when you see the same people all the time, you don’t really look forward to seeing them – they’re just there, all the time.
I wonder if I will date this way?
I am fifty years old, and therefore have a pretty solid take on how I want to live my life, and one thing (I think) I know before I set off on the dating lottery, is that I do not want a relationship where I see the person all the time.
This is because if I have a new relationship, I want to look forward to seeing them, every time I see them, and I want them to feel the same about me. I do not want things to go stale, or complacent or, dare I say it, boring.
There’s a kind of greater enjoyment in not seeing someone all the time. This is also why, when I see couples (seemingly everywhere I look now I’m thinking about the dating game), they’re mostly just sitting there, not talking, just being, not really enjoying each other’s company, merely tolerating it, because the alternative is to be on your own and have to go through all the crap I’m about to go through.
Even their small talk is bland shit. They just don’t know what to say to each other any more. It’s dead, gone, done, and I DO NOT WANT THAT (I haven’t written a dating profile yet – I’m guessing I won’t put that line in).
And this is because they are doing what society has told them to do.
Grow up, get a job, get a partner, get married, have kids, look after them, see them disappear, retire, die...
...don’t get divorced – you have made a commitment and you have to stick to it because ‘society’ has said you have to, stay together because the grass isn’t greener, put up with the others’ faults and call it familiarity – ‘oh, that’s just their way’ and, ultimately, have a small, sneaky feeling of relief when they die, but don’t tell anyone because ‘society’ has dictated this is not allowed, but then miss their familiarity, miss the feeling of just having someone else there, even if you didn’t necessarily like them all that much any more...
Wow, I have certainly overdone my scorn towards married life, or even just relationships. That is some lucky lady that’s eventually going to end up with me.
And who am I anyway? I have lived two-thirds of a life so far, and not really lived for any of it, and if people want to live that life I have just described then, really, good luck to them if it makes them happy. It’s just not what I want for mine.
The only relationships that work are the ones where the woman is in control. Yeah. I get that.
Did I mention?
I. Do. Not. Want. That.
This, of course, is my view as I sit from where I am now. I have no idea what is going to happen.
So then, the Tinder app is downloaded onto my phone, as yet untouched, and its icon, every time I see it on the screen, entices me, calls me in to its world of new adventures, experiences, and feelings.
I’d better get on with it...
@andyculyer
My books on Amazon
3. How to get stuck in a rut…I mean, plateau (part two)
A wise man once told me... yadda, yadda..
That quote is in part one, and the second part of it was to have ‘a family you like’.
It depends what you call ‘family’. What does that mean, exactly? Most people would say: ‘mother, father, brothers, sisters, children, grandparents, cousins, etc.’, and I guess they’re right, but to say I like them all? I’m not sure.
First off, my family is huge. I have six sisters, three brothers, and forty-five cousins, each with their own kids (and therefore mostly they have the Wiggenstein name), and I cannot possibly know all these people very well. I might like them, I might not, and will probably never find out.
So where does it end, this definition of ‘family’? At which point do we say they’re not a relation any more? I read somewhere that we are all mostly descended from the same place – how does that work, then?
I could be with a woman, with no knowledge that maybe our great-great-great-grandparents were married to each other. How would we know, and where does the distinction of family stop?
To me, ‘family’ basically means ‘the people you care about, and (maybe more importantly) that care about you’.
I don’t really care if someone is related to me or not – if I care about what happens to them, then they’re family, by blood or not by blood, and that means: my kids, brothers, sisters, (close) cousins, my parents, my friends, the people I work with, women I’ve humped (though not always, even when I was humping them), and in fact, here is a list of what is important to me, in order:
My children
Me
My family (again, whatever that means)
My friends
My workmates
The north east of England
England
Great Britain
Europe
The world.
That list kind of changes depending on the situation I am in and the mood I am in but, yes, in general, that is how things are to me. The only other thing that could possibly make the list is ‘a woman I like’, but honestly, they would only ever go in at number five at best, and at some point would leave the list anyway.
So then, kids...
I have two, Jessica, 14, and Jack, 11. I don’t where the ‘J’ trend came from – we didn’t really notice it until we noticed it (if you catch my drift), and I don’t know why there was a three-year gap either. It seems to me it would be best to have all your kids in one go, so you don’t have to go through the sleepless nights, nappy-changing, and being sicked on for more than one period in your life, and once they’re at school, you can start building your own life back.
Shocking, isn’t it, that kind of attitude towards kids? Have you noticed this blog is called ‘I’m not a Keeper’? There are plenty of reasons for it.
Circumstances have meant that my kids live with me, in a six-bedroom terrace in Tynemouth. We, when we were a couple, bought the house as an investment to rent out, and now I am living in it. It was a good job we bought it when we did, though – the house prices in Tynemouth are now, ahem, ridiculous. Last year, there was a house in the main street of Tynemouth town centre that was up for sale for a million pounds.
A million fkg pounds!!!
Has nobody noticed that we are in the north east of England? Million pound houses are left for other areas, not ours. Still, though, I am not complaining about that. Who would?
Anyway, kids. Of course, I love them more than anything else in the world (see list above), same as any other parent, and I would do anything to make sure they have a happy life (within reason, I suppose – I mean, if they asked me to kill someone they didn’t like, I’d probably say ‘no’...probably).
There’ll be more about kids as this blog continues, as I also I want to talk a little about others in my daily life, namely, the people that work for me.
My shop is in Pilgrim Street, Newcastle, and I have two people working in it; Ula and Ray.
Ula is British, and has Polish parents who have been here for twenty-five years, bringing Ula with them as a baby, and is one of those women who could probably have had a career as a model, being tall, dark-haired and pretty, that being another good reason to employ her, i.e. to get people (men) to come into the shop, even if they never have the balls to talk to her. Another thing about Ula is her name sounds like the Martian war call in War of the Worlds, and if me and Ray feel like irritating her, we use that to call on her. She hates it.
Ray, well, I could write numerous blogs about Ray, and probably will. Let’s just say he is ‘individual’ and leave it at that, apart from one thing: when we want his attention, we sometimes sing ‘Ray, raydy, Ray’, like Elmer Fudd singing the Bob Dylan song.
I also employ a gay cleaner, Richard, who cleans the house and the shop. Being the modern, hip, non-homophobic people we are, we tend not to rib Richard too much about being gay, and even listen to his dating stories, until he tries to go into detail, and we have to instantly stop him. I mean, being gay is fine and everything but we don’t want the ins and outs (so to speak). Also, his name can be shortened to Dick, which with him being gay, calls for any amount of innuendo (did you see that, everyone who thinks we don’t tolerate gay men in Newcastle? Shut up, man).
These people work for me, in that, I pay them to be where they’re meant to be and to do what they’re meant to do. I’m not sure if this counts as friendship, though even when you pay someone, and you’ve done that for years, friendships do develop, and I would say that I would do anything in my capability to help these people as much as I would for anyone else I care about.
So that’s it for now. There are many other people I could talk about in this blog, and will in the future, but it would end up being about 20,000 words long, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about writing blogs, they’re the same as good speeches: have a good start, and a good end, and keep them as close together as possible.
Oh, and before I forget, check out this Geordie female take on Tinder dating: Tinder in the Toon – it’s, how we Geordies say, proper geet lush (that means ‘very good’).
Find you again next week, in part three, the future... hmmm... it’s another country, so they say.
@andyculyer
My books on Amazon
That quote is in part one, and the second part of it was to have ‘a family you like’.
It depends what you call ‘family’. What does that mean, exactly? Most people would say: ‘mother, father, brothers, sisters, children, grandparents, cousins, etc.’, and I guess they’re right, but to say I like them all? I’m not sure.
First off, my family is huge. I have six sisters, three brothers, and forty-five cousins, each with their own kids (and therefore mostly they have the Wiggenstein name), and I cannot possibly know all these people very well. I might like them, I might not, and will probably never find out.
So where does it end, this definition of ‘family’? At which point do we say they’re not a relation any more? I read somewhere that we are all mostly descended from the same place – how does that work, then?
I could be with a woman, with no knowledge that maybe our great-great-great-grandparents were married to each other. How would we know, and where does the distinction of family stop?
To me, ‘family’ basically means ‘the people you care about, and (maybe more importantly) that care about you’.
I don’t really care if someone is related to me or not – if I care about what happens to them, then they’re family, by blood or not by blood, and that means: my kids, brothers, sisters, (close) cousins, my parents, my friends, the people I work with, women I’ve humped (though not always, even when I was humping them), and in fact, here is a list of what is important to me, in order:
My children
Me
My family (again, whatever that means)
My friends
My workmates
The north east of England
England
Great Britain
Europe
The world.
That list kind of changes depending on the situation I am in and the mood I am in but, yes, in general, that is how things are to me. The only other thing that could possibly make the list is ‘a woman I like’, but honestly, they would only ever go in at number five at best, and at some point would leave the list anyway.
So then, kids...
I have two, Jessica, 14, and Jack, 11. I don’t where the ‘J’ trend came from – we didn’t really notice it until we noticed it (if you catch my drift), and I don’t know why there was a three-year gap either. It seems to me it would be best to have all your kids in one go, so you don’t have to go through the sleepless nights, nappy-changing, and being sicked on for more than one period in your life, and once they’re at school, you can start building your own life back.
Shocking, isn’t it, that kind of attitude towards kids? Have you noticed this blog is called ‘I’m not a Keeper’? There are plenty of reasons for it.
Circumstances have meant that my kids live with me, in a six-bedroom terrace in Tynemouth. We, when we were a couple, bought the house as an investment to rent out, and now I am living in it. It was a good job we bought it when we did, though – the house prices in Tynemouth are now, ahem, ridiculous. Last year, there was a house in the main street of Tynemouth town centre that was up for sale for a million pounds.
A million fkg pounds!!!
Has nobody noticed that we are in the north east of England? Million pound houses are left for other areas, not ours. Still, though, I am not complaining about that. Who would?
Anyway, kids. Of course, I love them more than anything else in the world (see list above), same as any other parent, and I would do anything to make sure they have a happy life (within reason, I suppose – I mean, if they asked me to kill someone they didn’t like, I’d probably say ‘no’...probably).
There’ll be more about kids as this blog continues, as I also I want to talk a little about others in my daily life, namely, the people that work for me.
My shop is in Pilgrim Street, Newcastle, and I have two people working in it; Ula and Ray.
Ula is British, and has Polish parents who have been here for twenty-five years, bringing Ula with them as a baby, and is one of those women who could probably have had a career as a model, being tall, dark-haired and pretty, that being another good reason to employ her, i.e. to get people (men) to come into the shop, even if they never have the balls to talk to her. Another thing about Ula is her name sounds like the Martian war call in War of the Worlds, and if me and Ray feel like irritating her, we use that to call on her. She hates it.
Ray, well, I could write numerous blogs about Ray, and probably will. Let’s just say he is ‘individual’ and leave it at that, apart from one thing: when we want his attention, we sometimes sing ‘Ray, raydy, Ray’, like Elmer Fudd singing the Bob Dylan song.
I also employ a gay cleaner, Richard, who cleans the house and the shop. Being the modern, hip, non-homophobic people we are, we tend not to rib Richard too much about being gay, and even listen to his dating stories, until he tries to go into detail, and we have to instantly stop him. I mean, being gay is fine and everything but we don’t want the ins and outs (so to speak). Also, his name can be shortened to Dick, which with him being gay, calls for any amount of innuendo (did you see that, everyone who thinks we don’t tolerate gay men in Newcastle? Shut up, man).
These people work for me, in that, I pay them to be where they’re meant to be and to do what they’re meant to do. I’m not sure if this counts as friendship, though even when you pay someone, and you’ve done that for years, friendships do develop, and I would say that I would do anything in my capability to help these people as much as I would for anyone else I care about.
So that’s it for now. There are many other people I could talk about in this blog, and will in the future, but it would end up being about 20,000 words long, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about writing blogs, they’re the same as good speeches: have a good start, and a good end, and keep them as close together as possible.
Oh, and before I forget, check out this Geordie female take on Tinder dating: Tinder in the Toon – it’s, how we Geordies say, proper geet lush (that means ‘very good’).
Find you again next week, in part three, the future... hmmm... it’s another country, so they say.
@andyculyer
My books on Amazon
2: How to get stuck in a rut…I mean, plateau (part one)
A wise man once told me there are three things you need to live a happy life: a job you like, a family you like, and something to look forward to.
I kind of have all three.
Finding a job you like is never easy. This is a dilemma for kids at school: they’re being asked what career they want, what they want to do in the future. It’s a tough one: I know people who are in their fifties and still don’t know what they want to do with their life, and teenagers are expected to know when they’re still at school.
Somebody gave me this advice years ago: find something you enjoy doing and make money out of it, and you’ll never work another day in your life. But what? I’m not counting the usual dreams like being a rock star, or top sportsperson, or movie star...they fade pretty quick (though never completely go away, I’ve noticed – singing along to a song in the car is tantamount to wanting to be on a stage in front of thousands of people).
So your dreams become smaller, more manageable. I’ve found that to be the main part of becoming a grown-up, making your dreams smaller. It’s a shame isn’t it? That knowing you’ll never be a huge success at anything. It’s no wonder mid-life crises happen.
I don’t think I’ve ever suffered a mid-life crisis. From what I understand of it, it’s when you evaluate your life and what you’re doing with it. If that is the case, I’ve been having a mid-life crisis since I was about twelve. I do know, though, as you get older, your ‘give a shit’ levels drop, and it’s very freeing, like being a kid again. Here’s a handy graph to show you what I’m talking about:
I think the closest I’ve been to an age crisis is when I gave up my job as a surveyor to become a book shop owner.
I received erratic support when I did this, from the platitudinal ‘yeah, you go, boy’, to the downright envious ‘don’t do it, it’ll never work’.
Envious, you ask? Yeah, I think so. Most people don’t want their friends to succeed.
It’s like, people don’t want other people to be happy. You can tell someone genuinely that you are happy and content and enjoying your life, and they don’t want to hear it. They want to hear about how shit your life is, so they can feel better about theirs. It’s the same being single and happy. It’s kind of not allowed. Society says you should have a partner, share your life with someone else, that’s the only way to be truly happy, and if you tell people you’re single and happy, they just don’t believe you, like, single and happy? How is that possible?
‘Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little’. That’s what Gore Vidal said, and I completely agree. Not with the sentiment from myself; I genuinely want everyone I know to follow their dreams and be a success, and actively ask them how much of their dream they have worked on today. But when I wanted to follow my own dream, small though it was, I could feel the angst dripping from their pores. When they say ‘don’t do it, it’ll never work’, what I heard in my head was, ‘if you follow your dream and succeed, it brings into focus how much I haven’t followed mine. Please don’t succeed – you’ll make me feel inadequate.’
Of course, what goes in my head doesn’t generally follow reality. I’m a dreamer; that ‘s what I’ve always been told. Always have a dream, I think, and work on it. How’s that saying go? ‘Beware the dreamers of the daytime, as they’ll make them real.’ (or something like that).
Sorry, I have digressed again. I do that a lot. I’m good at it. I’m meant to be writing about my work, and have skipped into ‘having something to look forward to’.
So, my job.
I took a risk, and it has sort of paid off. Being a surveyor was okay, I guess. It more than adequately paid the bills, gave me and my family quite a comfortable life, but at the then age of forty, and with twenty-five years of that job to go, I just saw my future life right in front of me and thought,’ I don’t want that’.
My ‘other future’ meant watching the kids grow up, going to dinner parties, talking about house prices, the state of the country, competing with other parents about how your kids are better than theirs, name-dropping people you know in the higher echelons of society, seeing the kids leave the house, going on holidays as a couple and not talking about anything substantial, just filling the silent gaps...
All boring, bland, beige, vanilla... crap.
And, yes, some of that other future is still in this one, but it’s different now.
I’d always loved reading books, and enjoyed talking about them, seeing what other people thought about them (mainly seeing how differently they thought about them), asking what people are reading, and why they are reading it. You can get a fairly good take on what people are like when you have a look at their book shelf.
You can also get a true picture of someone from looking at their internet browsing history...
So, in my head, I had this dream life I wanted to create for myself.
I would be able to talk about books all day, and engage with the customers and staff who have the same interests as me. I’d be my own boss, away from all the politics and gossip that permeates all other workplaces. This was naive, I know that. It doesn’t matter what line of work you are in, or how you’ve set it up, you always have to deal with people, and that’s what dicks everything up.
Admin, marketing, bills, accounts, stocking, restocking, throwing books away (I especially don’t like that part, there’s something almost Nazi-ish about it), staff being off sick, or on holiday, having hardly any holidays myself...yeah, it’s glamorous. I do get good bits, though. We get regular customers (we have a coffee shop in the store, which actually is what brings people in), some of them having a break from work, or a break from shopping. Some of them are just lonely, and want someone to talk to. Some people actually come in to look at the books, and some of them actually buy them.
So, it hasn’t quite worked out exactly like the dream job I had in my head, but it’s not so far away that I don’t want to continue.
Catch you in the next blog, part two, family... hmmm... do I really have to...?
Link to my books
@andyculyer
I kind of have all three.
Finding a job you like is never easy. This is a dilemma for kids at school: they’re being asked what career they want, what they want to do in the future. It’s a tough one: I know people who are in their fifties and still don’t know what they want to do with their life, and teenagers are expected to know when they’re still at school.
Somebody gave me this advice years ago: find something you enjoy doing and make money out of it, and you’ll never work another day in your life. But what? I’m not counting the usual dreams like being a rock star, or top sportsperson, or movie star...they fade pretty quick (though never completely go away, I’ve noticed – singing along to a song in the car is tantamount to wanting to be on a stage in front of thousands of people).
So your dreams become smaller, more manageable. I’ve found that to be the main part of becoming a grown-up, making your dreams smaller. It’s a shame isn’t it? That knowing you’ll never be a huge success at anything. It’s no wonder mid-life crises happen.
I don’t think I’ve ever suffered a mid-life crisis. From what I understand of it, it’s when you evaluate your life and what you’re doing with it. If that is the case, I’ve been having a mid-life crisis since I was about twelve. I do know, though, as you get older, your ‘give a shit’ levels drop, and it’s very freeing, like being a kid again. Here’s a handy graph to show you what I’m talking about:
I think the closest I’ve been to an age crisis is when I gave up my job as a surveyor to become a book shop owner.
I received erratic support when I did this, from the platitudinal ‘yeah, you go, boy’, to the downright envious ‘don’t do it, it’ll never work’.
Envious, you ask? Yeah, I think so. Most people don’t want their friends to succeed.
It’s like, people don’t want other people to be happy. You can tell someone genuinely that you are happy and content and enjoying your life, and they don’t want to hear it. They want to hear about how shit your life is, so they can feel better about theirs. It’s the same being single and happy. It’s kind of not allowed. Society says you should have a partner, share your life with someone else, that’s the only way to be truly happy, and if you tell people you’re single and happy, they just don’t believe you, like, single and happy? How is that possible?
‘Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little’. That’s what Gore Vidal said, and I completely agree. Not with the sentiment from myself; I genuinely want everyone I know to follow their dreams and be a success, and actively ask them how much of their dream they have worked on today. But when I wanted to follow my own dream, small though it was, I could feel the angst dripping from their pores. When they say ‘don’t do it, it’ll never work’, what I heard in my head was, ‘if you follow your dream and succeed, it brings into focus how much I haven’t followed mine. Please don’t succeed – you’ll make me feel inadequate.’
Of course, what goes in my head doesn’t generally follow reality. I’m a dreamer; that ‘s what I’ve always been told. Always have a dream, I think, and work on it. How’s that saying go? ‘Beware the dreamers of the daytime, as they’ll make them real.’ (or something like that).
Sorry, I have digressed again. I do that a lot. I’m good at it. I’m meant to be writing about my work, and have skipped into ‘having something to look forward to’.
So, my job.
I took a risk, and it has sort of paid off. Being a surveyor was okay, I guess. It more than adequately paid the bills, gave me and my family quite a comfortable life, but at the then age of forty, and with twenty-five years of that job to go, I just saw my future life right in front of me and thought,’ I don’t want that’.
My ‘other future’ meant watching the kids grow up, going to dinner parties, talking about house prices, the state of the country, competing with other parents about how your kids are better than theirs, name-dropping people you know in the higher echelons of society, seeing the kids leave the house, going on holidays as a couple and not talking about anything substantial, just filling the silent gaps...
All boring, bland, beige, vanilla... crap.
And, yes, some of that other future is still in this one, but it’s different now.
I’d always loved reading books, and enjoyed talking about them, seeing what other people thought about them (mainly seeing how differently they thought about them), asking what people are reading, and why they are reading it. You can get a fairly good take on what people are like when you have a look at their book shelf.
You can also get a true picture of someone from looking at their internet browsing history...
So, in my head, I had this dream life I wanted to create for myself.
I would be able to talk about books all day, and engage with the customers and staff who have the same interests as me. I’d be my own boss, away from all the politics and gossip that permeates all other workplaces. This was naive, I know that. It doesn’t matter what line of work you are in, or how you’ve set it up, you always have to deal with people, and that’s what dicks everything up.
Admin, marketing, bills, accounts, stocking, restocking, throwing books away (I especially don’t like that part, there’s something almost Nazi-ish about it), staff being off sick, or on holiday, having hardly any holidays myself...yeah, it’s glamorous. I do get good bits, though. We get regular customers (we have a coffee shop in the store, which actually is what brings people in), some of them having a break from work, or a break from shopping. Some of them are just lonely, and want someone to talk to. Some people actually come in to look at the books, and some of them actually buy them.
So, it hasn’t quite worked out exactly like the dream job I had in my head, but it’s not so far away that I don’t want to continue.
Catch you in the next blog, part two, family... hmmm... do I really have to...?
Link to my books
@andyculyer
1: Into the Minefield…
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that men will never fully understand women, and that women will never fully understand men.
‘Why don’t you start dating, Dad?’
This was from my daughter, Jessica, 14 years old.
‘I don’t really know.’ I said. ‘I’ve never really thought about it all that much.’
‘It’s been three years since Mam went. I think it’s been long enough.’
‘Okay, but what with running the shop, and looking after you two, I don’t really have the time.’
‘Dad. Me and Jack are teenagers now. You don’t need to ‘look after’ us any more.’ She did that quotes-with-fingers thing when she said ‘look after’. I don’t know if she meant I don’t need to look after them anymore, or that I never did. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘don’t use us as an excuse for being too scared to get back out there.’
Wise words, I thought.
Fascinating things, kids are. They seem to have a lot more wisdom than I did when I was their age, and I still can’t decide if kids are adults that haven’t grown up yet, or if adults are kids that never grew up. This kind of wisdom makes me wonder.
It was this conversation that got me thinking about it.
DATING.
But before I go on, you need to know who I am...
My name is Walter Wiggenstein.
Don’t laugh: I’ve had enough of that.
I was born in 1966, and named Walter after one of my uncles. My parents could never have foreseen this, but the word ‘wally’ in the 1970s and 80s was a derogatory term, used for someone who was a dork, or a bit stupid, or did a stupid thing.
It caused a fair amount of grief for me, that did. At least it’s better for me now. The world’s name for stupid people has changed (I think it’s ‘doofus’ now, or something), though when I introduce myself to people of the same age as me, you can see that smirk spread across their face.
As an aside, there was a kid in our school whose surname was Horn, and was therefore imaginatively called ‘Horny’. It didn’t mean, in those days, what it means now, so at least I know that what happened to me with Wally has been reversed for him. I haven’t seen him since school – God knows what kind of life he’s had since then, being called ‘Horny’ (although I don’t know...if I heard a woman being called that, I’d probably get a bit curious more than anything).
Wiggenstein, I have decided, is a corruption of Wittgenstein. I found out there was a philosopher with that name years ago, and like to think our family came from that line. I don’t want to research this, for fear I might find out it’s not true, and that we descended from a long line of village idiots or something, like they couldn’t even spell Wittgenstein, and I ended up with the name I have now.
My middle name is Oliver, which has given me the initials WOW (I’m sure my parents were well aware of this). This had served no purpose to me until I left my job as a surveyor and became a book shop owner; the name for the shop, WOW Books!, just seemed ready-made.
Anyway.
Dating.
My daughter was right. I am scared. In fact, I’m absolutely stonewall petrified, and I know that’s the only reason I haven’t being doing any of it. I use the ‘too busy’ line as a cover for my fear, and now I’ve been rumbled, and not just rumbled, I’ve been rumbled by a 14-year-old girl.
So, after some thought (actually, what the hell, I may as well just call it what it is). So, after some procrastination, I started to do some research, which, as most or all of you will know, ‘research’ as a verb has been replaced by the word ‘Google’, and did a search using the word ‘dating’ which came back with 532 million results.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ I thought. Actually, I’ve just written that down out of politeness – what I really thought was: ‘Shit!’
532 million results.
Where on Earth do you start?
Sorry, I have drifted off again...
I am not that interested in dating.
Well, at least, I wasn’t, until I had that conversation, and then I did start to think about it. It’s been three years, and I haven’t been in any kind of relationship with anyone in that time, mainly because I don’t have time for one, or at least that’s what I told myself, and others. What I knew, deep down, was that I was scared to go out there and get one. I didn’t want to go and start dating again – it all seemed to me like one big hassle with nothing at the end but a load of drama.
But these are my thoughts on this:
There are people that need to have a partner to complete their life, and there are people that don’t. I’m a ‘don’t’.
The more lonely you feel, the more willing you are to attach yourself to someone else. This is ‘settling’ for less than you deserve. I don’t feel I deserve that.
I have a decent full-time job, a decent job on the side, go to the gym four times a week, look after my kids all week, and have a night out with mates at the weekend. I only have one night a week to myself, and look forward to and thoroughly enjoy that night.
And how many women would want to only see their man only once a week? Not many, I’m guessing, unless all they wanted was a FB (that’s F@#% Buddy, not Facebook – if all women wanted was a Facebook, it seems to be readily available – it’s not for me, though. I don’t even care what I’m having for my own dinner, never mind what other people are having for theirs).
From writing that list of how busy I am, I thought, you know, I have a lot to offer, but no real time to offer it, and also looking at that list, I thought, that’s a lot to give up to be in a relationship with someone – it would have to be some woman.
And then, I thought about it some more.
As time passed, the seed grew, and I started to think, I need to put a bit more effort in. All those times in the last three years when I could have asked a woman out, and didn’t, even in the face of (in my head) explicit interest. That was going to have to change. I’m fairly decent-looking, am very tall, am in okay shape (getting better as my training progresses), my finances are sound, and on top of the earlier list, I really do have most of, if not, it all, and I’m not going to give it to the first woman that comes along.
It’s okay, I already know: I should just stick a big ‘S’ on my T-shirt and walk around spouting about ‘truth, justice, and the American way’, which would be fine, I guess, apart from three things:
Truth is subjective
Justice is fleeting
I am not an American, I’m English.
The point I am trying to make is that presenting yourself is like a sales pitch. I’m no salesman, but the last time I noticed, if you wanted to get a good response from what you’re selling, you promote the positive things you can provide, not the negatives – it’s best for them to find the negatives out later on, when they’re either committed, or you’re moving on.
I am also starting to get flecks of white hair on top, and have had these on my sideburns for about twenty years. It is a saving grace that at least it’s only white, and not gone. The other good thing is, my eyes are starting to go as well, so it won’t be long before I can’t see the white hairs when I look in the mirror.
It’s not such a bad thing, the eyes starting to go. It makes everything look better, which includes women. You don’t see the small blemishes they’ve tried to cover up, and there’s a kind of ‘fuzziness’ around the edges of everything, like a ‘low definition’ sight. This is no good for televisions, but definitely makes the world look a bit better.
The ears going would be better, though.
Not listening...yeah, that’s something I am often accused of. What I try to tell people, though, is that I listen all the time, and what people are getting upset with me about is that I just don’t agree with what they’re saying to me. When I do agree...yeah, I seem to be listening fine.
My personality, I think, is okay, too. It’s a kind of mix between John Craven and Darth Vader. John Craven is on the telly. He’s on Countryfile or Songs of Praise or something – I’ve definitely seen his face on the telly on a Sunday afternoon. I am making the assumption that you know who Darth Vader is. If you don’t, he’s the bad guy from Star Wars, until they tried to humanise him (Note to George Lucas: Darth Vader is the bad guy, and doesn’t show emotions, and he shouldn’t be screaming ‘Noooooo...!’ at the end of Episode Three. Thanks to JJ Abrams – he’s put a lot of things right again, which he had to, otherwise JJ would have labelled as Jar Jar (If you’re not too squirmish, check out this link to a cross between the movies Snatch and Star Wars) – it’s got nothing to do with dating...it’s just funny.).
I don’t quite know how I managed it, but I seem to have gone from potential dating to Darth Vader’s emotions, but back to reality again (boooo...!). That conversation with my daughter was eight weeks ago, and since then, I’ve been doing that thing that the robot does in The Terminator, where he’s looking at someone, and their details appear in his vision to decide whether they’re a target or not (that analogy was blatantly stolen from The Simpsons episode, Principal Charming, where Homer actually does that very same thing).
So, yeah, I have to get back into this.
But...
...where to start...?
Link to my books
@andyculyer
‘Why don’t you start dating, Dad?’
This was from my daughter, Jessica, 14 years old.
‘I don’t really know.’ I said. ‘I’ve never really thought about it all that much.’
‘It’s been three years since Mam went. I think it’s been long enough.’
‘Okay, but what with running the shop, and looking after you two, I don’t really have the time.’
‘Dad. Me and Jack are teenagers now. You don’t need to ‘look after’ us any more.’ She did that quotes-with-fingers thing when she said ‘look after’. I don’t know if she meant I don’t need to look after them anymore, or that I never did. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘don’t use us as an excuse for being too scared to get back out there.’
Wise words, I thought.
Fascinating things, kids are. They seem to have a lot more wisdom than I did when I was their age, and I still can’t decide if kids are adults that haven’t grown up yet, or if adults are kids that never grew up. This kind of wisdom makes me wonder.
It was this conversation that got me thinking about it.
DATING.
But before I go on, you need to know who I am...
My name is Walter Wiggenstein.
Don’t laugh: I’ve had enough of that.
I was born in 1966, and named Walter after one of my uncles. My parents could never have foreseen this, but the word ‘wally’ in the 1970s and 80s was a derogatory term, used for someone who was a dork, or a bit stupid, or did a stupid thing.
It caused a fair amount of grief for me, that did. At least it’s better for me now. The world’s name for stupid people has changed (I think it’s ‘doofus’ now, or something), though when I introduce myself to people of the same age as me, you can see that smirk spread across their face.
As an aside, there was a kid in our school whose surname was Horn, and was therefore imaginatively called ‘Horny’. It didn’t mean, in those days, what it means now, so at least I know that what happened to me with Wally has been reversed for him. I haven’t seen him since school – God knows what kind of life he’s had since then, being called ‘Horny’ (although I don’t know...if I heard a woman being called that, I’d probably get a bit curious more than anything).
Wiggenstein, I have decided, is a corruption of Wittgenstein. I found out there was a philosopher with that name years ago, and like to think our family came from that line. I don’t want to research this, for fear I might find out it’s not true, and that we descended from a long line of village idiots or something, like they couldn’t even spell Wittgenstein, and I ended up with the name I have now.
My middle name is Oliver, which has given me the initials WOW (I’m sure my parents were well aware of this). This had served no purpose to me until I left my job as a surveyor and became a book shop owner; the name for the shop, WOW Books!, just seemed ready-made.
Anyway.
Dating.
My daughter was right. I am scared. In fact, I’m absolutely stonewall petrified, and I know that’s the only reason I haven’t being doing any of it. I use the ‘too busy’ line as a cover for my fear, and now I’ve been rumbled, and not just rumbled, I’ve been rumbled by a 14-year-old girl.
So, after some thought (actually, what the hell, I may as well just call it what it is). So, after some procrastination, I started to do some research, which, as most or all of you will know, ‘research’ as a verb has been replaced by the word ‘Google’, and did a search using the word ‘dating’ which came back with 532 million results.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ I thought. Actually, I’ve just written that down out of politeness – what I really thought was: ‘Shit!’
532 million results.
Where on Earth do you start?
Sorry, I have drifted off again...
I am not that interested in dating.
Well, at least, I wasn’t, until I had that conversation, and then I did start to think about it. It’s been three years, and I haven’t been in any kind of relationship with anyone in that time, mainly because I don’t have time for one, or at least that’s what I told myself, and others. What I knew, deep down, was that I was scared to go out there and get one. I didn’t want to go and start dating again – it all seemed to me like one big hassle with nothing at the end but a load of drama.
But these are my thoughts on this:
There are people that need to have a partner to complete their life, and there are people that don’t. I’m a ‘don’t’.
The more lonely you feel, the more willing you are to attach yourself to someone else. This is ‘settling’ for less than you deserve. I don’t feel I deserve that.
I have a decent full-time job, a decent job on the side, go to the gym four times a week, look after my kids all week, and have a night out with mates at the weekend. I only have one night a week to myself, and look forward to and thoroughly enjoy that night.
And how many women would want to only see their man only once a week? Not many, I’m guessing, unless all they wanted was a FB (that’s F@#% Buddy, not Facebook – if all women wanted was a Facebook, it seems to be readily available – it’s not for me, though. I don’t even care what I’m having for my own dinner, never mind what other people are having for theirs).
From writing that list of how busy I am, I thought, you know, I have a lot to offer, but no real time to offer it, and also looking at that list, I thought, that’s a lot to give up to be in a relationship with someone – it would have to be some woman.
And then, I thought about it some more.
As time passed, the seed grew, and I started to think, I need to put a bit more effort in. All those times in the last three years when I could have asked a woman out, and didn’t, even in the face of (in my head) explicit interest. That was going to have to change. I’m fairly decent-looking, am very tall, am in okay shape (getting better as my training progresses), my finances are sound, and on top of the earlier list, I really do have most of, if not, it all, and I’m not going to give it to the first woman that comes along.
It’s okay, I already know: I should just stick a big ‘S’ on my T-shirt and walk around spouting about ‘truth, justice, and the American way’, which would be fine, I guess, apart from three things:
Truth is subjective
Justice is fleeting
I am not an American, I’m English.
The point I am trying to make is that presenting yourself is like a sales pitch. I’m no salesman, but the last time I noticed, if you wanted to get a good response from what you’re selling, you promote the positive things you can provide, not the negatives – it’s best for them to find the negatives out later on, when they’re either committed, or you’re moving on.
I am also starting to get flecks of white hair on top, and have had these on my sideburns for about twenty years. It is a saving grace that at least it’s only white, and not gone. The other good thing is, my eyes are starting to go as well, so it won’t be long before I can’t see the white hairs when I look in the mirror.
It’s not such a bad thing, the eyes starting to go. It makes everything look better, which includes women. You don’t see the small blemishes they’ve tried to cover up, and there’s a kind of ‘fuzziness’ around the edges of everything, like a ‘low definition’ sight. This is no good for televisions, but definitely makes the world look a bit better.
The ears going would be better, though.
Not listening...yeah, that’s something I am often accused of. What I try to tell people, though, is that I listen all the time, and what people are getting upset with me about is that I just don’t agree with what they’re saying to me. When I do agree...yeah, I seem to be listening fine.
My personality, I think, is okay, too. It’s a kind of mix between John Craven and Darth Vader. John Craven is on the telly. He’s on Countryfile or Songs of Praise or something – I’ve definitely seen his face on the telly on a Sunday afternoon. I am making the assumption that you know who Darth Vader is. If you don’t, he’s the bad guy from Star Wars, until they tried to humanise him (Note to George Lucas: Darth Vader is the bad guy, and doesn’t show emotions, and he shouldn’t be screaming ‘Noooooo...!’ at the end of Episode Three. Thanks to JJ Abrams – he’s put a lot of things right again, which he had to, otherwise JJ would have labelled as Jar Jar (If you’re not too squirmish, check out this link to a cross between the movies Snatch and Star Wars) – it’s got nothing to do with dating...it’s just funny.).
I don’t quite know how I managed it, but I seem to have gone from potential dating to Darth Vader’s emotions, but back to reality again (boooo...!). That conversation with my daughter was eight weeks ago, and since then, I’ve been doing that thing that the robot does in The Terminator, where he’s looking at someone, and their details appear in his vision to decide whether they’re a target or not (that analogy was blatantly stolen from The Simpsons episode, Principal Charming, where Homer actually does that very same thing).
So, yeah, I have to get back into this.
But...
...where to start...?
Link to my books
@andyculyer
