Wednesday, June 4
Thank God. I got a good night’s sleep - 9.5 hours worth. I still decided to work from home because I needed to get this sinus infection out of my system.
I immediately flushed out my sinuses with my neti pot and then I took 15 drop of Wellness supplement. The antibiotic seemed to be working. And my temperature was back to normal.
I ate a gluten-free raisin bagel with whipped cream cheese, a cage-free, organic egg scrambled with a trio of Italian cheeses, and a glass of light, organic orange juice. I had a cup of hot Matcha green tea with orange blossom honey. It’s like I have a regimen for reclaiming my health!
I opened my laptop and got to work, checking email and following up on requests, general communication, scheduling appointments, etc.
Meantime, I had the television on in the background. The Tyra Banks show came on and featured a young, good-looking lifestyle coach from New York City, Jared Matthew Weiss, who’s company Mad Proper was created to help people reach their full potential. The topic of the show was ‘get off your butt’, and Weiss gave women all kinds of helpful tips to a number of life situations. This was a repeat program that was originally aired back in January.
Weiss addressed a woman who complained there were no single men in her hometown. He told her that there were single men in her town, but she was holding herself back. He explained you have to figure out for yourself what’s holding you back from meeting someone? It’s usually something within. He then gave some useful tips for women to meet men, beginning with his 3-step program. He said when you see someone you find attractive (at a bookstore, in the grocery store, etc.) you should first find out if they are single, then find out if they like you, then ask them out. Then, he demonstrated how you do this in a role reversal roleplay with Tyra.
Hottie Weiss (pretending to be Tyra): Hey there. I was wondering if you are single?
Lucky Tyra (pretending to be Weiss): Uh, yeah??
Hottie Weiss: Cool. Because I think you’re really cute. My name is Tyra.
Lucky Tyra: Oh, hey. I’m Jared. You know, you’re pretty attractive, yourself.
Hottie Weiss: Cool. Well, maybe we could go grab a cup of coffee sometime.
Lucky Tyra: Let’s skip the coffee and go right to dinner… (or something to that effect)
But the point was he told women out there to get over their fears or old-fashioned ideals and ask a guy out! In fact, Weiss challenged all the single women in the audience to ask out three men every month. That doesn’t seem too difficult…I think.
I saw the cutest guy at Powell’s on Sunday and I just didn’t have the confidence to say or do anything. I just stared at him while he was seated in the home improvement section, flipping through a book, looking so cute in his army green cadet/military style cap. My first thought was, wow, that guy can fix things. Then I told myself the dude must be married. He’s too cute and he’s in the home improvement section. Taken already.
But I did exactly what Weiss said we need to stop doing! Stop assuming the guy out there is married, or must have a girlfriend because he’s so cute, or wouldn’t be interested in you because you’re too short. Go introduce yourself! I wish I had seen this episode before seeing this cutie in Powell’s. The challenge for me will be to see if I can actually take Weiss’s advice and approach a cute guy in this kind of situation. Not my comfort zone. I am traditional, old school, I like to be courted. But, whatever. I can change.
Then the day seemed to fly by. At 5:00 p.m. I tuned into the Stanley Cup game. It was an exciting game. Meantime, I was on the phone with my mom who for the past two days had been in and out of the basement closet with my dad and our dog, Cricket, during tornado warnings in the mid-Atlantic. Crazy!
I made a Glutino brand gluten-free personal sized pizza with spinach, feta, ricotta and mozzarella. I drizzed some olive oil on it before baking it on the top rack. It wasn’t very good. I think I needed to let it bake a little longer.
The Red Wings ended up winning the game and, thus, won the Stanley Cup.
Jared Matthew Weiss is a fraud! Don’t listen to anything he has to say! He’s a criminal!
I have to kind of wonder what advice they give to people who aren’t hot or gorgeous. I don’t know … this sort of thing seems to me a great way to feed superficial ideas of attraction. I mean sure, what guy wouldn’t like to have Tyra Banks walk up and hit on him? But what about my friend who is very bright and witty and charming, but whom most guys would rate, at first glance, as a 4 out of 10? She won’t have any luck with this approach, and she’d be asking for very painful rejection if she tried it. Then again, I guess the guy with the combover and the bad pickup line faces the same rejection all the time because women can’t see past his version of 4 out of 10, even if he’s great once he gets past his initial nervous stupidity. Maybe it’s just equal-opportunity pain.
I suppose everyone has different ideas about what or whom is cute or attractive … but I just cringe a bit when I hear any kind of dating advice based on seeing a stranger, liking how he or she looks, and approaching based on that. Maybe I’m biased because all of my worst relationships were in fact with women who approached me because they liked my appearance. I’m highly suspicious of that, now … of being approached by strangers, I mean. Probably that’s not a good thing. But I think I’d rather be approached by someone who has some idea of who I am, rather than someone who just happens to see me and likes what she sees. Even if it’s more than looks, even if it’s that mysterious *ping* that happens between people sometimes … that’s still not much to go on, as it’s probably more pheromones than compatibility.
Personally, I think a better strategy is to make sure that people you know and respect are aware that you’re single and interested in dating … chances are they have single friends whom you’d never meet otherwise, and since they know the friend, and they also know you, it’s a lot less random, and much safer (accountability on all sides) … and good people know other good people.
But what’s funny is that it might take more courage to tell someone you know that you’re interested in meeting someone special than to approach a total stranger in a bookstore. The vulnerability level is different; the risk is different. I think the payoff would also be different, and far more real.
Then again, I’m apparently a guy who would turn down a hit from Tyra Banks, just because she’s a stranger to me, so maybe I’m not so bright.
Good points. In Portland, it’s very difficult to date. First of all, people don’t date here in the traditional sense of courtship. I haven’t figured out if it’s a Portland thing or a west coast thing. But, back east, I would go on lots of dates without any expectations. You’d meet a nice guy, he’d ask you out to dinner and you’d either become friends or go out on a second date. Here, none of my friends have friends to introduce me to - everyone is either married or in a relationship. So, it’s not easy. And I don’t have anyone to set my female friends up with, either.
Responding to someone who you feel an attraction to in a bookstore (or at Church, or in a coffee shop) isn’t any different than winking at someone in an online dating platform, as far as I’m concerned. We base all of our interactions with potential partners based on our attraction to them. And attraction does not necessarily translate a person’s response to another’s physical appearance. I have walked around in Powell’s bookstore before and felt a strange and exciting electricity from certain men. That initial chemical reaction wasn’t just based on physical attraction - there was an energy there. A moment when eyes met, locked and wow!
And it’s ashame to not respond to that because of a lack in confidence or plain fear. And, my old fashioned, traditional ways had kept me from responding to that kind of magic. It doesn’t happen often - at all. I see hot men all of the time, but it’s rare when I feel that crazy, wild spark.
If that can initiate conversation which can eventually get you better acquainted with someone, then why not take a chance?
So - I don’t think the dating advice on the Tyra show was limited to responding to someone’s hotness factor. Saying “I thought you were attractive” was just an example. If you are against shallow responses to physcial appearance, I’m sure you can say (if you’re in a book store), “I noticed you’re in the gardening section. Have any good tips on how to not kill a gardenia plant?” Or whatever clever thing comes to mind.
For me, I’m okay with responding to an initial attraction because I know it’s just an initial response - the work is to find out if there’s a potential connection there, and if after a cup of coffee or two you think the other person is a flake or rude or whatever doesn’t meet your own criteria for ‘datable’, you don’t have to go out with them again. It’s called dating. And there are many ways to go about dating - sometimes you have to just take the lead and a chance.
Just to play Devil’s advocate … when you’re in an online dating forum, usually you know quite a bit about the person, unless I’m mistaken? Of course, that person could be lying, but let’s assume people tell 75% of the truth … you have a pretty good idea about that person’s values and basic interests, and often some idea of what is sought in a partner or date. Granted, that person is still a stranger, but … I think the level of basic knowledge is quite different than approaching a stranger. What isn’t known is whether there is any three-dimensional compatibility in a strictly energetic sense, so it’s a potential waste of time in a different way.
I still think (because I’m stubborn, and possibly narrow-minded) that it’s a mistake for people of either sex to date, or attempt to date, based on random attraction, but that’s probably because I’ve never seen a positive result from it, either personally or in my friends’ lives … whereas I have seen a many positive things happen between people who had a chance to observe each other prior to deciding whether to interact. This also may be a Portland/West Coast thing … it’s possible that we regard dating differently than people do on the East Coast. Casual dating is comparatively rare here; people take it pretty seriously, though I don’t know exactly why that is.
I realized I wasn’t clear about telling your friends you’re single — I meant your men friends, not your female friends. Nice men know other nice men, usually. For that matter, your married friends’ husbands probably know a couple of good guys. It occurred to me as I was typing this that perhaps I’m unusual in having several opposite-sex friends, so it’s possible that this is a tactic that’s more useful for me than for most people.