What did you do this week?

I went away! Actual away. I drove 7-and-a-bit hours all the way to Scotland to see my sister and her kids, who we haven't seen since christmas 2019. My little one was barely standing back then and now he's running everywhere and making jokes and sort-of having words to tell us things. My niblings have grown huge and are becoming wonderful young people rather than kids. It was lovely. Really, really lovely. Even if, it being Scotland in the summer, it poured with rain most of the time. We have boots and coats and umbrellas, it's fine. Lot of driving though.

I also started work on a raspberry pi + eink calender thingy for showing us upcoming calender events in a convenient device on the wall rather than everyone in the house having to remember to look at their phones, and along with that I have remembered how much of a pig working with Google's APIs is. Still, the 7-colour eink display is well nice, and it's going to be a bit different from the countless "magic mirror" things you see now that do the same job. This is just a nice slow project to keep me entertained so I'm not sweating it. My workshop is still in bits so I have plenty of time to get the software end sorted out before having to make an enclosure for it.

It has been hot as heck, so not a whole lot outside of work and lifting. I did make some fig sangria last night, and I am oh-so-ready to drink some after work today.

Gave up on online dating!

I'd never done it before, having been married for the entire birth, phenomenon, and slow decline of "swipe apps". I was always kind of curious about what the experience was like from hearing my single friends talking about it, and seeing people online share their experiences. After being separated from my ex for a couple of months, I decided to give it a try. I used three apps, Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge. My thoughts overall on it are varied and a little all over the place.
One, I don't think these apps are the hopeless hellscape that most people make them out to be. I'm a reasonably successful, reasonably attractive, shortish man in his mid 30s. I got a fair number of matches, had a decent number of conversations, went on a fair bit of first dates, a handful of seconds, and a couple of thirds. Met mostly perfectly nice women, but ultimately nothing really went past maybe a month or so.
Two, the thing I will say about the experience as a man is that it is work. Creating a good profile and taking good pictures takes a lot of thought and effort. Spending time every day swiping through profiles is work. Looking at your matches and coming up with something thoughtful and interesting to say is work.
Keeping those conversations going enough to form some sort of connection and get a first date is work. Planning the date, putting it on a calendar, confirming that she is actually going to show up is work. Preparing for, and going on the date itself is work. Keeping up communication afterwards and getting the second date is work, et cetera. The thing about all of those steps is that for the vast majority of people, they are mostly failures. Most swipes don't get a match, most matches don't have a conversation, most conversations don't turn into first dates, most first dates don't turn into seconds. You have to not only put forth all of this effort many, many times, you also have to learn to be ok with failing at most of them. If you're actively using these apps, it becomes a significant timesink, as well as emotional and mental labor. Most of the time, it's not even enjoyable. Sometimes I have a particularly nice date, but the amount of effort to get there makes it almost not worth it to me.

Lastly, I won't say the 4ish month experience has been a waste. I really did meet a lot of very nice, interesting women, who because of either something that didn't work out for me, or something that didn't work out for them, didn't proceed long term. I learned a lot about what I'm looking for in a partner, things that I have preferences about but am willing to tolerate, and absolute deal breakers. I also, counter intuitively, learned that I'm a lot more ok with being single than I initially thought I was.

At the beginning of the week I did a cost benefit analysis and realized that I'm putting a lot more into this escapade than I'm getting out of it, and decided to deactivate all of my accounts. I was still going on dates and texting with a couple of women, but those have mostly fizzled out as well, which, as always, is disappointing, but I'm not really torn up about it.

Maybe at some point I'll decide to get back in the saddle and give it another go, but that probably won't be for a while. For now, I'm content just hanging out with my friends, and doing my hobbies. Admittedly, most of my hobbies are heavily male dominated, and I most likely won't meet someone that I'm interested in doing them, but for the first time in a while, I don't really care. We'll see what the future holds for me, but the prospect of being single long term doesn't seem as utterly depressing as it once did to me.