The Muse

She will wait in the corner all day; wait while I put in some extra time at the office ,  wait while I clean my apartment , and wait while I check my social media. But finally I acknowledge her , my muse.

She responds like a child who has been impatiently waiting for their parent to play with them , the words spilling from her mouth in one long excited sentence. Each time we play , the games get a little bigger , a little more wild .

I thought at first that my muse was a separate being that decided to show up once in a while to provide inspiration. But the more I played with her , the more she showed up. I soon realized the truth ; the muse was always me, a younger me.

I have been writing since I was 9 when I interviewed the town selectwoman. I became a writer and dreamer then and that little girl has been inside of me ever since.

There is no reason to quit your career or stop doing things that need to be done but when you feel the nagging tug at your shirt , shut the email and go play for a while.

Why I Quit Online Dating

 " Are you sure you want to end your subscription to  eharmony.com? "   I pressed "yes" and instantly felt free; free from expectations , free from constant scrutiny  , free from questioning my worth when my dates did not work out.

An online dating website by nature forces you to make snap judgements based on photos and some basic information. When someone peaks your interest , you immediately begin writing the dialogue in your head of "your story" together. Expectation is the root of all disappointment.

I lost myself in the quest for the perfect profile. Sometimes I would text forever with a guy before they disappeared. Sometimes they looked perfect on paper then there was no chemistry in person. The more options, the more confusion and anxiety I had about dating. More choices are not always better.

 Sometimes the stories of my dates were so awful that they made great stories for dinner parties.  But eventually excitement of lots of first dates gave way to exhaustion.

When I did finally meet someone through a social group , I realized that this was someone I would have never met through online dating. I would have scrolled by because he was not my "type" , he was  older , didn't live by me , and we are very different.  But despite all of this, time with him has made me realize we complement each together perfectly.

Perhaps the reason online dating doesn't work for some people is that we think we know what we want but we actually have no idea what is best for us.

The most important thing I have learned from this experience is not that online dating is bad but whether online dating or in person, we should think outside the box of what we think we need and stop living in our heads so much.