Fall In Love With Goals, Not With Systems
This morning around a quarter to one, I was struck with a sudden urge to rearrange my bookshelf. I had been meaning to do it for days, so I did it. And while doing it, the momentum carried me over into rearranging and cleaning my desk and notebooks as well.
Weeks ago I had bought several notebooks and laid out a new system for my freelance writing. So this was not a dramatic overhaul of what I am doing. Think of it more as my weeding the garden, as it were.
But what interesting weeds I found during the process:
–A USB drive that had been set aside for photos at one point, which had never even been taken out of the box.
–A sheet of paper designated to hold the screen names and passwords for “useful” websites that I don’t think I have visited in at least a year. (including an ill fated free website for my writing business in its failed 2008 incarnation.)
–The directions to a long-over seminar I had never attended, complete with companion literature in a nice little folder.
–A notebook which had records of every job to which I applied about 18 months ago, complete with the dates of application, contact information, and a section for recording the correspondence I received from same. (None of those sections were filled out, as none of them ever contacted me back. There were 60 jobs recorded in that book for March of 2009 alone.)
–A preserved outline that detailed the (at the time) next phase of my job hunting plan. I have to admit it wasn’t a bad plan at all. Outlined and clearly defined. Laid out in an easy to follow structure and ready to be added to as needed.
And also completely abandoned a while ago. As were the charts, outlines, contacts, folders, labels and lessons found in various nooks and crannies of the desk as my bookshelf momentum carried me on to other things. The detritus of previous plans and well thought out systems.
It got me to wondering about what had happened? Why had these formerly best laid plans of mine eventually gone awry? So much so in some cases that I didn’t even remember I had conceived them until last night’s chance encounter with their remains?
Well, I didn’t wake up one day and say, “To hell with this system.” Otherwise I would have thrown all the stuff away long ago. Instead, it all sat in the same ergonomically determined place on my desk where I had placed them in some cases over a year ago, after their most recent use. It can better be described as slowly withdrawing from said plans. Making an exception here and an exception there to the system. Pursuing a singular goal which would require more flexibility. And just plain system fatigue. Like the Roman Empire, my systems of the past were not wiped out in a single stroke, but simply allowed to slowly, quietly dissolve into oblivion.
But why?
I have been thinking about it, and while I can’t ever be sure, the reason that keeps coming to mind is this:
I wasn’t ready for a system.
Oh, I had them, as I have shared with you. I’d have things categorized, scheduled, charted and graphed. And it would give the illusion of progress for a time. And I’d stick to them with a near religious discipline for a time. But after a while, as I mentioned, they would just fade away, and become nothing more than a dusty notebook shoved away on my desk. And I would muddle through and still make progress in my goals without a system in place. And I’d be fine like that for a while, until I would feel obligated again to sit down, devise another system, and the process would repeat itself. On some level this has happened for much of my life. A recurring pattern of systems born, and systems abandoned.
It’s because for years I assumed that any system is better than no system. But the truth is, sometimes we just are not ready for a system. No matter how many people say we need one, and no matter how many ideas, plans, thoughts, and motivations crowd our head at any given moment, we need to stop and ask ourselves not which system we need, but if we are ready for one at all. Sometimes no system is better than any system.
Now it would be great if I could provide a bullet list here for you to check off to see if you really do or do not need a system. I’d love to be able to do that for you, but I can’t of course. Each person must determine if they need a system for any given endeavor or not. I can’t make that decision for you. But I can offer one piece of advise as you determine which of your systems are useful to you and which are not. Ask yourself this single question;
When I think about a certain area of my life. (A goal, dream, research, whatever), what comes to mind first; the mission I want to accomplish or the system by which I am trying to accomplish it?
If the first thing that comes to mind is the system you have/are/should develop to organize that facet of your life, instead of what the goal itself will accomplish for your life, you probably are not ready for a system. But if you have a clear idea of what you goal is, and can clearly devise a system which makes the hard parts easier, and the easier parts routine as you pursue what you want while leaving room for change, you are ready for a system.
The system for my writing that I now have in effect sprang from specific goals. I want something in my life, I do not have it, but I can take the steps to get it. I just need to write down the steps and follow them in an order that is most useful to me, (as determined by a lot of introspection.) The result? A system. A system that this time just feels right. It feels like a tool now. It all has fallen into place because it’s not subservient to my goals. It isn’t determining them.
It’s not the end of the world if you aren’t ready for a system. Don’t be afraid of this. It just means you can take time to brainstorm. Explore your mind. Take stock. Look inside and determine what you want, and be honest about it to yourself and everyone else. And only then, devise a (flexible!) system which can organize your plan of action.
Are you beholden to your established systems, or those or others? Do you give yourself space and time to explore something without a system in place? If you have systems in place, how are they working for you?
Christmas Equilibrium Day
Today, according to most “Western” calendars is June 25th. That means that for most people who celebrate Christmas in some fashion, today is exactly six months since last Christmas, as well as six months until this Christmas.
I love symmetry, don’t you?
For the last few years I have used June 25th as sort of a “Mini-Christmas”. Not much else is going on this time of year by way of celebratory holidays, anyway, other then the American Independence Day.
Many people/companies actually use July 25th, (aka, “Christmas in July”) to do similar things, in order to pick up some extra dollars in what is otherwise a retail waste land. (July-September.) Some resorts go all out for it. Theme parties and everything. I don’t go to all of that, but I’ll sometimes pop in one of my Christmas CDs while I am cooking dinner that day. Or I may go to bed watching a Christmas movie. (Again in June as opposed to July, because I am a very symmetrical person in many ways.)
The point is, Christmas is never further away, technically, than it is today.
Which is why I also use today as a bit of a meditation. Despite my being more spiritual than officially religious, I follow the spirit of Christmas, (charity, mercy, gentleness, and all of that). There does seem to be a bit more of those things during the holidays. At least outwardly. (Unless you are at the mall.)
But I try to make those attitudes part of what I am, and not simply a side-effect of a specific holiday. (Which in many ways has become massively corporate and kitschy in some circles.) I want to show goodwill toward men, and recognize the miraculous in my daily life, not just between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. As the Salvation Army bellringers, (they and their signs being a Christmastime staple in their own right) remind us;
“Hunger knows no season.”
Indeed. Which is why, as an adult, I have tried to delve into my soul and bring out by myself at all times of the year, what the pine trees, cookies, music, (good and bad) and Charlie Brown bring out somewhat more easily for me during December: a connection between my humanity, and the Divine.
So I whistle a few carols when it’s 94 degrees outside. It’s fun, and a reminder that it isn’t in fact those tunes that make the real holiday what it is. Christmas is a state of being, not just a time of year. I can create inside of me what it means to me. I can conjure up and manifest the nobler aspects of my nature when I choose to do so. I don’t need the trimmings. They are nice, and I cherish tradition and ritual to a great deal. But as I get older I seek to remind myself that such things are there to serve man in his journey…not for man to stop his journey in order to serve them.
That isn’t to say that we can change the things that happen around us much. Those of you who have gotten to know me realize that I have quite a few ridiculous obstacles that have been thrown in front of me rather often in the past. But I do have the power to alter how quickly I recover from same. When and where I can shine a light.
Which means, friends, that you don’t have to celebrate Christmas for the lesson of June 25th to apply. It can be a day that is 6 months on from any day that to you symbolizes and celebrates the better angels of our nature. Birthdays. A wedding anniversary. The Solstice. It doesn’t much matter, so long as you take a moment during a day long removed from those holidays/recognitions to remember that whatever those days mean for you is actually what you bring to those days.
Take some time, six months away from your most important day of the year, to ask yourself if the day puts those things inside of you, or if it is you that puts those miraculous things inside the day.
And if you find that you can put them into that day, whatever it is, you can put them into any day. Every day. You can be a holiday unto yourself.
What are your most meaningful times of the year? What rituals do they contain? What do you bring to them? What do you do when those rituals and holidays are long passed to keep their spirit alive within you all the time?
College? Epic Fail.
I have been exchanging messages recently on Brazen Careerist with Demetra Allen. (Find her website here.) We were both part of a thread about how going to college has helped everyone leverage their talents, and get to where they are today.
When I answered that it had not in any way helped me, she became very curious, because she had not encountered many people who responded in such a manner about their college education. She asked me if I might be willing to expound upon the issue. Not being able to do so within the character limits of a Brazen Careerist post, I opted to post a blog entry about it.
Yet where to start? When something fails to live up to so many expectations, and is so far off of the success curve of so many other people, it can become almost impossible to pinpoint all of the exact reasons. But I will make an effort to illustrate some of them through the use of broad categories. This isn’t a thesis or a study, so the categories are informal. This is just me sharing some observations and thoughts with you, as always.
To begin with, let’s talk about the degree itself.
The bachelor’s degree in this country as a whole has been quite devalued over the last 30 years. I knew going into college I would never be able to walk up to my dream job, wave a diploma at them, get hired, and become rich and powerful. I was wise enough to avoid that delusion.
Yet I wasn’t wise enough to realize that all of the time, expense, and work to get a degree might not ever open any doors. And it certainly did not for me. I thought that it would at least get my foot in the door of a mail room somewhere. Maybe a small cubicle on the first floor of someplace. Or at least get me some interviews.
I was given no full time job in five years of looking, and was granted only three interviews.
Having gone to a career counselor here and there, I was advised more than once to “hide the college experience.” That when employers in my area see it they assume I am going to want more money than they can pay, and assume that my liberal arts background would make me restless and unwilling to sit down and do “real work”.
As the years passed, the same advice was given because, “employers are going to wonder why someone with a degree has never been able to get a full time job.”
So at first college was a drawback because I looked too smart. Later it was a drawback because I looked not smart enough. Same diploma.
Then of course many jobs advertise a need for people with a diploma. A diploma I did not have. A job I know I was perfectly capable of doing, but for which I was not qualified because I majored in the wrong thing. College graduation is not a reward in and of itself anymore.
So one reason college was a waste of time and money was the empty degree.
Another failure was the weak network.
I made friends in college. You almost have to. But that is just what they are. Friends. I don’t want to get into a discussion of shallow friends and personal betrayals, but let’s just say my friend pool from college was thinner than most. Even when friends bothered at all to keep in contact with me after college, they had no connections to any industry for which I would be qualified. Or they were going through similar post-collegiate employment difficulties. Or they all lived so far away that any connection they would have would prove to be of little use to me. Even if someone knows a guy who knows a guy in Oregon, what good would that do me in Maryland? Especially given that I had never made enough money to even think about moving to another state?
The career center at my college was not much more helpful. I went there once or twice before realizing they were not telling me anything I didn’t already know. They would ask to see my resume, and advise ways to punch it up. They would offer, (though I declined) to give me a mock job interview and critique it. They would suggest things like, “Hmm, maybe if you look in the phone book under your interests and start making cold calls…”
Thanks! As obvious a tactic as that was, it was never going to happen. In other words, they had no personal connections to share with me. Half the point of a career center is to connect you with people that work with the college, or alumni of the same. But the only time the career center really had any thing to offer in that department was if you were looking for the corporate life. The business majors, or the PR people. Those looking to get into computer tech and that sort of thing. Want to get involved in community non-profits?
“Well, we don’t really have anything like that at this time…”
Then there were the wonderful, life changing internships everybody always talks about. Lord how people love their internships. How they put them on the right path, and all that song and dance.
Not so much with mine.
It was a requirement for all political science students to have an internship. I figured I would go to my adviser, see the list of places with whom the college had relationships that led to previous internships before, and pick one that fit my style.
They basically had none. No relationships with businesses in town. My professor didn’t know anybody. There was literally no sense of the college having established any community ties for internships. Nobody my professor could introduce me to. It really felt as though the department had never helped establish an internship before. It was as though students had always been 100% on their own in finding a connection and building an internship. I didn’t know how to do that. I came to college because I didn’t know how to do everything, after all.
It took over a year. A year of looking for internships, with several falling through in my own home town during the summer. (“We really don’t have anything an intern could learn here. We’re such a small town.”) Finally, I went with one of the few connections the college did have, which opened up locally near campus. An internship with the local Congressman’s office.
This sounded exciting. Meet a Congressman maybe. Help people. Maybe get to go to some speeches.
The internship consisted of my sitting at a desk and cutting out newspaper articles that contained certain keywords. I would then fax them to another office where they would do all the interesting stuff with them. I would just cut and fax.
Halfway through the internship, the woman that ran the office started leaving early, letting me lock the place up. Most of the time I interned, I sat alone in an office, cutting newspaper. Never even met the Congressman.
Believe it or not, this didn’t open any doors for me either. I didn’t even bother leaving it on my resume for any more than two years after I graduated. What would be the point? Do you know how embarrassing it is to try to spin that into something worthwhile to a potential employer? I wasn’t even buying it myself.
Alumni Association? There is one for my alma mater. But like the career center it caters to certain types of students. And they, like anybody else, want a proven track record and long resume before they will even touch you. It helps if you already know somebody important that you can leverage within the alumni community, too. In other words, useless for someone like me.
Plus, no professor took any active interest in me. So I lacked the advantage of having a professor for a friend.
So college didn’t exactly grow my network.
College is also not personal enough.
There are a lot of colleges out there, and I can’t of course speak for every one of them. But based on what I have read, and what I have experienced myself, not enough of them are tailored to the specific needs of individual students. Yes, I know that is a favorite bit of copy included in virtually all advertisements put out by all colleges (“tailored to the individual student’s needs“) but in practice, nothing is tailored.
Colleges of any size tend to subscribe to cookie cutter mentalities. They have declared within their insulated sphere what an education is, and those who wish to stay on campus must conform to same. My college certainly did, and it was a disservice to me. I graduated, and did so with good grades, but only because it was the only game in town. That was the system. I bucked it a few times, and predictably only managed to piss off well ensconced and out of touch professors in the process. That “outside the box” thinking they were famous for was never to be applied to the college itself.
A truly personalized experience would allow any given student to form their own approach to what they want to do with their lives, and remain flexible as those goals change. Not free reign to be willy-nilly, but the freedom of a self exploratory education. With faculty that is focused on helping students find who and what they are, not digest the next exam’s answers, promptly to be forgotten during spring break.
My college didn’t make things personal in this manner, and I have realized, in the years since, that despite my dedication to my education, I didn’t belong, and was not served by the standard educational model I just described.
That lack of a personal approach sort of dovetails into the final category. College failed to teach me how it really works.
Again, I wasn’t naive, but I was caught off guard by how different jobs, job hunting, leveraging my degree, not to mention student loans and debt worked after college, as opposed to how they appeared to work while there. Most colleges, not just mine, offer no training for what to do after college. There are no mandatory classes about networking, or job hunting, or debt control, or how to handle your loans.
Being a business themselves, colleges avoid telling you how it really works, and instead let credit card companies harass you outside of the lunch line. (I didn’t get one!) They have career centers that tell you what you already know, but nothing you will need to know. They laud heaps of praise on the importance of getting an education, and the prestige of getting it with them, but don’t explain that such an advantage truly died off in the 1960’s.
In other words, they are not preparing you for life. They are isolating you from it for four years. And while I knew that for the loftiest, prettiest claims this was true, I didn’t realize it was true even for the most modest, every day, run of the mill claims, such as “this will be useful to you when you get out there.” It wasn’t.
I could go on, but I really think the point is made. And I think that any other reasons I could think of pertaining to college’s failure would basically fall within the four meta categories I laid out here; the weakness of a degree, a failure to make it personal, the lack of a built-in network, and the failure to prepare students for any real life experiences.
Many people will suggest that really all it takes is the right attitude, and hard work to succeed, and that college is what you make of it. That may be true for some people at some colleges. And while I confess I may not have had the highest fire under my ass all the time in college, I will not succumb to the notion that the reason it did nothing for me was because I didn’t want it enough. The fact of the matter is that college, as advertised and explained in this country today is supposedly the place to go to become prepared to go out and do those things. It is the place where that fire is supposed to be set, not the place where you have to already be on fire from the get go in order to succeed on campus.
College isn’t what it used to be. People like me need a place where we can be educated in ways that both suit us, and prepare us for what’s ahead. We don’t care about school spirit, the proximity to historical landmarks, or the famous people that went to this school before us. We care about learning. Learning in a way that will make it worth the time, money and energy in the end. Getting an education that will actually guide us towards success. Not education for the sake of having gone to college.
I don’t know if any college really acts like that anymore, but that is what I needed, and did not get. And if nobody gets that from college anymore, the perception we have in this country of what college is should at least adapt to its reality, so those who can be helped by it can go, and those who are Too XYZ can go elsewhere.
How the C&O Canal Taught Me a Life Lesson
I live just about two blocks from the C&O Canal’s towpath. (If you don’t know what it is, click the link.) On most days, I cover anywhere from two to six miles on it, as part of my semi-regular exercise regime. I did this even before I lived right next door to it. For the last 3 years I suppose, I have been a regular visitor to “The Canal”.
Lots of people use it. And lots of people make a mess out of it buy littering. Rare is the hike that I take where I don’t find some sort of detritus from lazy-ass people who just drop shit wherever they stand. Some of the worst offenders are the health nuts that are obsessed with their body’s health, but not that of the ecosystem through which they run or bike. I see many a protein bar wrapper.
Litter pisses me off anyway. Litter in a National Park is worse. And for a time, I used to take a bag with me and pick up everything I saw, no matter what it was. That, as you can imagine, got tiring sometimes, to the point of ruining the walk for me. So, I didn’t do that anymore. But the litter still bugged the hell out of me, and I wanted to give back to a park that provided me with a service. So I came up with a plan that allowed me to both give back to The Canal, (and the National Park Service), while also still being able to enjoy it.
I decided, first and foremost, that I would designate certain days to picking up any trash. There will always be trash there because there will always be lazy, selfish bastards. I can’t stop it, but I can play a part, and I can go into a walk knowing that it’s a “pick-up” walk.
Second, in order not to be overwhelmed, even on a “pick-up” day, I made an agreement with myself that I would only pick up that litter which fell directly in, or slightly off of, my personal path. Both walking up, and walking home. No more delving into the sometimes thick woods, or mosquito infested swamp ponds to pick up a few cans. I figured if I stuck with what presented itself to me directly, there would still be plenty of trash to pick up. I would still be playing my part as custodian of that which I personally used.
Finally, I put limits on what I was willing to pick up, even if it crossed my path. An apple core, for instance, I know will decompose back into the earth. Might even feed a hungry creature. So I leave such things.
I do not touch cigar or cigarette butts, or anything that appears to have been directly in someone’s mouth. I avoid used tissues as well. (Such things are harder to pick up with anything other than my hand, and though I could wash my hands later, there are some places I don’t need to go.)
And so now, I have a more balanced, enjoyable, and hence effective way to play my small part in cleaning up the canal. (Well, the towpath, technically.)
Another thing one does a lot when walking the C&O alone is thinking. Sometimes the monotony of that “tunnel of trees” through which a person walks, sometimes in near silence, brings about automatic meditation. And one day it occurred to me that my new system for picking up trash on the Canal was sort of what I did in other areas of life. At least, it could be applicable to same.
Consider:
There are many problems out there in our world. (All the litter on the whole path.) Some tend to take care of themselves. (apple cores). Some do not. (cans, plastic bags.) And some problems are just too deep, or problematic, or beyond us. (snot rags. cigarette butts.)
So we can’t possibly spend all of our time trying to solve every problem. But if we set aside some specific time (my pick-up days) to do our best to solve some problems that are within our reach (picking up the litter that lie in my direct path), we can get a lot more done, and feel less burned out in the process.
Sometimes my walks are just for me. Just as sometimes our time, no matter how brief, needs to be just for us. But to be grateful, and to acknowledge my place in the world, I put forth effort to make better that which crosses my path. A friend in need. An old man going into the same store as I. There will be plenty of that in a given lifetime, without having to get ourselves buried in the weeds everyday trying to solve all of the world’s problems every time we leave the house.
So go forth, friends, and as you walk this long canal of life on earth, take some time for yourself, some time for others, and if something comes into your life that you think you can make better, do so.
And maybe, once in a great while, you can still delve deep into the woods, and pick up everything you see, just for good measure. Just don’t get lost, and always come back to the towpath before dark. (It closes at dark, after all.)
I’ll see you on the C&O…
I Hate Dating (A Featured Post on Brazen Careerist)
I am not a fan of dating.
There, I said it. Scoff, gasp, puke or faint. Do what you must, but I am Too XYZ for what most people think of when they hear “dating”.
Not to be confused with Dating, with a capital “D”, which, for our purposes, will refer to a serious, committed relationship. I have had those. And I have also had some ill advised superficial relationships. But more on those in a moment.
But I don’t date. And although for some it serves the most basic human need outside of getting something to eat, I struggle with finding the logic in it.
Even when I was a teenager, when I was supposed to be desperately motivated to do it, I wasn’t. Sure there were times I wanted a girlfriend when I did not have one. And like anybody that age, my teen awkwardness and shyness certainly played a part. But I just didn’t have it in me to put forth too great an effort in overcoming those things because even then it made no sense.
You encounter a total stranger that your body finds attractive. You approach them, to talk them up, and hopefully, after deciphering something approximately as complex as the Da Vinci Code, you get their number, or, go straight to the guts, and ask them if they would like to “get some coffee” sometime.
Let’s suppose they say yes. Let’s also suppose that you are a bit classier than “one night stand” antics. So you do in fact mean a date.
This is exciting. And you think about this all week, as you buy new clothes, get a haircut, do whatever, hoping to put your best foot forward.
The day arrives, and you meet her. She looks just as done up as you do. You order, and you talk to one another. It’s casual at first. It goes well. Then, if you are lucky, before the date is over you somehow come to realize that you both stand on the opposite side of the political fence, and can’t stand each other’s views. You thank each other, say you will call one another to be polite, but you never will, and the whole thing ends up a story she will send in to the “Bad Date” page in Vogue or whatever.
It doesn’t get you down too long though. You need to go home, and freshen up, because you are meeting another stranger at the movies later that evening after she gets off of work.
And if that doesn’t work out well, or hell even if it does, that is what next weekend is for. There is a whole world of people out there to ask out. How exciting!
Um, what???
“Now, now,” the conventional wisdom, (not to mention my friends over the years) will tell me. “Dating is all about having fun, and getting to know each other better. How are you ever going to know who you want to spend your life with if you don’t go out there and date a lot? You’ve got to find out these things! And even if it doesn’t work, you’ll have a great time meeting all kinds of new people.”
Yeah, right. I’m an introverted writer and actor. I haven’t the slightest desire to meet “new” people. I am still dealing with the shit from the people I already know.
Okay, I exaggerate. (A little.) But remember those relationships of mine that I told you about? Good, bad, indifferent, boring, deep, or superficial, almost all of them had one thing in common;
We never “dated”. We already knew one another somehow. Maybe not very well, but there was a connection already established before we made the decision to “evolve” things. Or they just evolved on their own without a specific decision, if you catch me.
The point is, there have been all kinds of ways I have gotten to know someone, and to at least be friends with them first. Plays. Mutual friends. Once or twice in my life, the internet. But I knew them first. And because I am not into “one night stands”, I feel I need to at least be acquaintances, if not friends, before I can develop feelings for someone.
I don’t know if I have ever been “in love”. Maybe. But I can tell you that if I was, I was friends with her first. I don’t take women I barely know out to coffee over and over again to wait and see if that will happen.
And that is just it. “Dating” is about seeing if there is any proverbial spark. But like my story with the woman and the political views, that is an awful lot for me to go through, only to be derailed once something as clear as, oh I don’t know, her religion comes up. If I have worked with somebody, or better yet, been friends with them a while, I already know what their fundamental make up is. I may not have intimate knowledge of everything that makes them tick, but I do know their personality. Their attitude. Some of their preferences and view points. What it feels like to be around them. Those are the things that, to me, would take years of “getting coffee” to establish. I should live so long.
They say you can’t ever fall in love with “friends”. That once you have established yourself as a woman’s friend, (or a man’s), that it is impossible to successfully fall in love with them. That romance must spring forth from actions that were taken based upon a first meeting’s animal lust, and allowed to evolve from there, in order for a real passion to develop. “That’s the way it’s done.”
Oh really? Check the divorce rate in this country for me when you are done pontificating, will you, Dr. Phil?
Not that I can prove a direct correlation, of course. But for my money, I am not going to let some initial attraction to somebody motivate me into playing some kind of game of “get the number”, so that I can get all nervous, drain all of my arts-guy personal energy on meeting someone new, all in the hope that from Coffee Number One, an electricity will be present, which one day will lead her to becoming the mother of my children.
Even casual knowledge of the everyday, non-dating persona of someone, (and boy is there a difference between it and their dating persona) can help save everybody a lot of heartache and time.
To be fair, I am the same way with just making friends. I don’t go out and “make friends”. Again, as an introvert, the very concept of making a choice to go somewhere and “make new friends” almost makes me break out in hives. Friendship for me, like any relationship, develops as a result of exposure to the same things and experiences. Through conversation, and a bit of effort. It takes, above all things, time.
And time seems to be of the essence for people who are “dating”.
And lord, please don’t even get me started on “speed dating”. I’ll have a stroke.
Ty Unglebower 