I took last week off. The beginning of June marked the fifth month of this blogging journal. After 20 weeks of reading profiles and then documenting the good, the bad and the ugly, coupled with a second negative experience with an individual I met online, I just needed to take a break. I will not write with any detail about specific negative experiences I have encountered for two reasons. The first is that some things should remain private and confidential and not be broadcast to the world via the ever-permanent internet. (This is not to say that I have not verbally shared these stories with family, friends and/or co-workers.) Secondly, I will not give “life” to negativity. If you are familiar with the laws of the universe, you already know that positive attracts positive and negative attracts negative. I do not wish to invite anymore “negative” into my life. It finds me just fine on its own, often in the form of adult bullies and individuals with lots of baggage. I do consider myself a positive person who sees the glass as half full. I believe that if you lined up ALL of the people in the world, you would find that MOST people are good. (Watching the evening news might portray a different view with its incessant focus on war and terrorism.) With that said, I also believe that when you are dealing with people on the internet, whether it be online dating, chat rooms, blogs, etc,. you must proceed with caution. The adage, “most people in the world are good” changes to “most people are bad until they prove otherwise.” A male friend recently quoted this statistic-75% to 80% of people on online dating sites are bad. (My super-duper math brain tells me that if you believe P. and his stats, only 20% to 25% of possible “matches” are good.) While at first this seemed like a doomsday sort of revelation, I would probably have to agree that he is right.

In early July, one of my dating sites comes up for its three-month renewal, at which time I will cancel my subscription. This will come at no great loss other than the money and time I have already invested. For the past ten weeks or so, they rarely send me any matches, and when they do, the vast majority have no photo and live HUNDREDS of miles away! I have also decided to be more selective in the profiles that I read. (I used to read all of the ones I was sent if for nothing else than possible “material” for this blog.) Now, I read only the profiles whose photos match my “type” (see Week 20 for details), and I am also limiting myself to checking the site only twice per week. Quite frankly, so many of the profiles are beginning to sound like one giant, run-on sentence. I become extremely bored reading through them, much like I did with an American history assignment in high school.

I continually remind myself that online dating is merely ONE avenue for meeting a potential mate. It is still much more important to remain engaged in my everyday life where I have opportunities to meet people through friends and co-workers, the gym, my writing group, and yes, even the supermarket! The biggest step I have made to-date was just deciding that after ten years of widowhood (and a “little” other drama mixed in), I was finally ready to meet someone. The rest is up to God and his co-pilot-my guardian angel, Debbie.