Modern Dating

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Tomorrow I start the new level in German - or shall I refer to it as a partial-level? - and I'm quite excited about it. More German, more knowledge and a step ahead for mastering a new language. Yay! Can't wait to know enough to start reading books in German! I'm already crunching up numbers. trying to figure out ways to squeeze a day in Vienna for my next trip to Europe, which will be now during the Spring. A really short trip. I smile just imagining going to Vienna and looking at it differently, able to understand more and say more. Won't that be a hoot?

I think I might also be nervous a little bit, as I dreamed that the first day of class I forgot about it and went home after work, and when I realized I was at home and the class had started 40 minutes ago. Waaaaah! It was awful! I remember thinking that I'd ask my sister in law for her notes and then thinking that actually nobody's notes were as good as mine. It's not the first time I have a bad dream like that, and curiously they are all about forgetting something important and not remembering until it's too late.

Recently I also went out on my first date since... a freaking lot of time. By the end of last year, I decided to give the online dating a chance, mostly out of curiosity. It was quite surprising for me to realize that more friends than I thought were on different dating sites, or used to be, and that they were meeting people through them. I tried it out, as you know, and well, this week I had the first date with someone I met online. I was thinking about it, and realizing it was a date, instead of a simple meeting, as I usually tend to see this kind of thing. But then again, I normally meet people face to face and then decide to go out somewhere, usually in the frame of some program, so maybe I've never actually dated before.

The guy I met is really nice and we got along really well. It was pleasant and casual, and I guess I won't really see much of him ever again - just the way I like it - but the point is that, as this went on I realized that I might like this quite a lot. :-) The world is changing, and people don't pick up people at bars and so, as we used to, back in the day, but when people's heads are stuck in their phones, effectively cutting them out of the rest of the world, isolating them from real life, the way to meet people now is online. Kind of sad, but this is how mankind rolls now.

Dating Amid Turbulence

Life as a single person... is quite a busy thing. Happy but very busy. I still have a pile of letters to reply and my reading of books for entertainment is going really slow - though that's in part due to the fact that I have read three of the Anne of Green Gables novels, and by the end of Anne of the Island I couldn't be bothered with reading another of her books. The first one was enjoyable, the second one was also quite nice, but the third one got to my nerves. Be it as it may, 2016 is proving to be a year full of activities and tasks for me, with my trusty filofax nearly bursting at the seams with things to do. Between the German classes at the Goethe Zentrum and the classes I've taken at the University to get ahead with Finance and Marketing, I'm finding myself again at that point where I really don't seem to have much time to do anything.

I must admit that I take it as a wonderful blessing that I can live this phase in my life being single. I know that for many people a life partner means support and companionship and someone with whom to share the burden of daily life, but that hasn't been my case. I'm too much of a lone wolf to find much solace in company when I need to power up to charge on life, I guess. Between studies and lots of plans for the future, I've also been experimenting with the world of online dating. Some of my friends have tried it out - more than I thought - and I find this world quite interesting. Haven't actually met with anyone yet, but no like I aiming towards that either. Hyne, I think I might be doing the whole thing wrong, actually. OK, not like I'm putting much effort in it, truth tobe told, but then I connect with these people, we exchange messages and start chatting, and I feel really good with them. I make friends and I act accordingly, and so, when suddenly someone says something more flirty to me, I'm startled thinking "why is he flirting with me?" until I remember that this is a dating site and I'm supposed to be out there looking to date people, not just friending them.

What am I supposed to do there? Honestly I'm a little at lost there, because though I know a lot of women complain about how many men approach them butnever want anything serious, in my experience, I'm always the one that just wants to have fun why the guys that apporach me all are aiming for the white picket fence and the 2.1 children. So, am I looking for dating? I don't want a relationship, but I do would love to meet people for some casual get together, have a drink, share a good conversation and then maybe - if things click right - have unattached sex. The operative word being "unattached". My life is speeding ahead and I have so many wonderful projects in my plate right now, that I really don't need something else to pay attention to. But then is adating site the right place for me to find those loose tied, entirely casual brushes with like minded people?

Some people are nice, some people are really loving and smart, and then some are players that like to lead on others, or see how much can they jerk other people's chains. People can be so strange sometimes. I don't know, I'm still thinking about this all, about what should I do about this part of my life, and then thinking about how I used to solve these questions before, only to realize that I have never worried about it, it has never been my thing to go look for people, but people happened, I flashed my smile and things somehow got going.

I'd give it more thought just for the fun of it... it I didn't have so much studying to do.

Love of Friends

Happy St. Valentine's Day! ^_^ My first St. Valentine's Day without a boyfriend in quite a while, and it is wonderful! I spent the last two days with two of my best friends, going to the movies and having a spendid time. Confidences with friends are so sweet and wonderful, and I find such endless love in them, so fresh and delightful and honest. I wonder sometimes why can't actual love be like this, so open and free and fresh. Well, perhaps for some, but in my experience that sort of love life is always crowded with unspoken things and a lot of guarded moments.

St. Valentine isn't one of my favorite holidays, though I love greeting my friends, but it's still worth a few words of introspection. It's good to have a day to celebrate love, even it the day was created for commercial purposes as many say. It shouldn't matter if the day was invented to sell more flowers and chocolates, book more hotel rooms and restaurant reservations, what matters here simply is the chance to remember love.

Though the celebration centers quite strongly on the romantic kind of love, a day to celerate love should also be about remembering the love we feel for our friends, our family, our pets and also ourselves. And how about all those things that fill us with love, like our favorite stories and our favorite books, and even our favorite series and characters and "ships". It's  day to remember the jobs and hobbies we love, our dear colleagues, our sweetest memories, our favorite places... As we go remembering all the forms and types of love in our liveswe realize that we might feel alone sometimes, but we are surrounded with love. Isn't that wonderful? <3 div="">

Thinking about Blogging and Journaling

I haven't journaled in quite a while, so I tried to do it today while waiting for Nate to get washed (it's been a while since I last washed my own car). Not like I've got much written, since Nate was the only car at the carwash and all the five guys at the carwash devoted to him. Naturally I don't journal everyday, specially since I don't carry my journal around in my bag, but then, I really haven't journaled in a while. I was thinking about that and what really stops you from journaling, specially when you have an idea of what you'd like to journal about.

The thing is that journaling - I realized - is actually much easier than blogging, because you journal (usually) for yourself, and it's supposed to be a record of things that have passed in your life, recording your recent past for the further future, if you ever feel like revisiting it (I usually don't), while for blogging you actually need a sort of topic for posting. Well, sure, you could make a blog that functions as a journal (as I sort of have tried), but let's be honest, you never open up as much in a blog as you do in the close intimacy of your journal.

The other day I was watching videos about notebooks and journals (some people have the most curious concept of "journals". They call "journals" even notebooks I'd call "planners" or simply "notebooks"). As usual, I saw videos of people who had loads of active journals, and some really overwhelmed me. I remember this one woman who kept a journal of her relationship with her partner, which she planned to read in the future to her children. Yes, um... ok. She did keep journals of her other relationships as well. Some people do that.

I've read articles about the benefits of journaling (and I guess the same principles may apply to blogging, except the part of the benefits of handwriting compared to typing), and I can't really sign next to many of them, but one thing that's sure is that it does give you a fabulous time to set your thoughts and help you sort and organize your feelings as well. A journal is a great place to dump your anger or your sadness and even your success and your happiness. As you write it down you live it again or see it in a better light. Such a process shouldn't really happen before the eyes of the Big Anonymous Cyberspace.

Blogging - I would say - takes a different role for the writing-obsessed people. A blog is where your settled and processed thoughts go. You journal it first, work it over, and when you have distilled it to a clear thought you blog it. No, not all blogposts are backed by a journal entry nor all journal entries end in a blogpost, but I'd say that process pretty much remains. Yes, sometimes some distilled thoughts are too intimate, too personal to end up thrown at the Big Anonymous Cyberspace, and sometimes more spontaneous, raw thoughts and feelings also fall onto blogposts, but I would say that most blogposts and journal entries follow this rule almost instinctively. I don't know, perhaps because you feel safer with the journal, or the blog seems wider. Or at least, this is how it works for me. I wonder if it works the same for others.