Archive for the ‘Success Stories’ Category

I am writing this blog post at my girlfriend’s home. I consider that in itself a success. I’m an expert at almost nothing, but — if there’s something I not only do not qualify to give advice on, but believe that my advice may actually cause bodily harm — it’s dating.

Dating sucks. That’s why typical dating spots usually offer an abundance of alcohol. Without alcohol I would be so much of a worse/better dater.

The first enjoyable date I have ever attended was the first one with my current girlfriend. Yes, I had a beer, and yes, fajitas were involved, but there was so much more. Sour cream… Guacamole….

It was the first time I was out with a person when I was simultaneously not nervous at all — and yet completely terrified. I could completely be myself, yet still had to calculate my every move because I wanted another opportunity to be myself again. On the drive home, though I had just experienced something great, I knew, because of a lifetime of being in this situation before, that this would have been our only experience together.

She texted me five minutes after I left.

Today, I’m still in disbelief. For example, after spending a weekend with her, there’s still a part of me that believes she won’t want to see me again. Every new text from her is just like the first one.

I suppose 15 children and 65 years may improve my confidence.

I always see myself as young and healthy. Back when I wasn’t healthy, I was younger. Now that I’m healthy, I’m older. I never saw myself as overweight. Now, when I look at old pictures of myself, I wonder who that vaguely attractive semi-obese man is, and wonder why my mother never told me I have a second brother with no self control.

Back when I was big, and I saw those same photos, I didn’t see myself as other than skinny. Now, though thin, I refuse to believe I’m aging. My hairline is somewhat receding, yet I’m already using really cheesy middle-aged-man-methods to try to cover it up. I clip the front of my hair to make it try to blend in better. I brush my hair forward. I wear hats. I’m just kidding about the hats. I hate hats.

I believe God gave me the option of either youth or health, but never at the same time. Imagine if I had been young and healthy. I would have been married by age 18. That actually would have led to way more problems. In a way I’m glad I’m just now getting my life together.It helped me realize how bad things can get and appreciate how far I’ve come. If I had settled down by age twenty, I would have never realized what it’s like to really hit rock bottom, and wouldn’t appreciate anything, including my wife. Today, I appreciate my girlfriend more than anything, and I believe this is part of the reason. For ten years, I couldn’t even get a second date. Now, not only did I get a second date, but I’m on the cusp of starting a new life with someone who I wouldn’t have even imagined saying ‘hi’ to just two years ago.

However, I am still aging. My hair will fall out. My hip, which was just diagnosed with dysplasia, will give out. I will eventually care if my taxes get raised. I’m not a child anymore, and I really have no room to mess around. I can’t really sleep in anymore unless I’m sick, and even then, I really can’t. I can’t go to McDonalds everyday anymore. I can’t build forts anymore, because my sheets no longer have cartoons on them, so they would just end up looking like tents.

Without knowing how to properly allocate my income, I often find myself spending a lot of money on shampoo and then suddenly find myself without power, running water, or any form of insurance whatsoever.

How am I supposed to know how much money I’m supposed to spend on different things? Walgreens has 28 different types of shampoo, and I need them all for my hair to smell nice! Car insurance does not in any way make my hair smell nice!

I need to hire a financial advisor, unless that’s not what a financial advisor does. Now I will need money to pay someone to tell me what a financial advisor does. And eventually I will need someone to tell me where I can find a financial advisor-advisor.

Anytime I come across something I think I need, I spend money on it. If I can’t see it (insurance, car payments, psychic hotlines), it’s a lot more difficult for me to justify payments. I need instant gratification. I don’t even like ordering takeout or going to the grocery store. I want to pay for food and immediately eat the food. I’m not going to pay for something and then wait to make it myself. I’ve come too far in life to remember how to make something from other things.

So, as my life progresses and I begin to take on new responsibilities, I really need to know how to spend my money more wisely. When I was little, I had a plan to save all of my money once I got an adult job and wear really trashy clothes and eat really cheap food until I had enough money to buy a tuxedo. Basically, the tuxedo was the ultimate sign of success. I still do not have a tuxedo. I have so far to go.

One great indicator that my life is finally on the right track is actually very subtle. It’s something that is difficult to pick up on at first glance, but after years of not caring about my appearance, having low self-esteem, and weighing about 100 pounds more than I should, I’ve been able to notice the indirect ways that people react to me.

A few years ago, when my life was out of control, people were still nice to me. I was still awesome. I was really nice and funny and had a pretty good personality, so people weren’t really mean to me. However, I would still get The Look. That brief glance that was about 90% pity and 10% aversion. I was still pretty good at talking to women, but if I ended up talking for too long, or went off on a tangent, or got too close, I would end up getting the look, meaning, ‘alright you’re pretty nice, but I’ve reached my quota for you and do not want to look at your fat, sweaty face anymore.’ I eventually was pretty aware that the look was eminent, and once it arrived, I was already gone.

I think I need to revise the last paragraph. I was not good at talking to women. I could maintain a conversation for about five minutes. In my mind, these five minutes were going great, when in actuality, I was flailing my arms, screaming, and had really yellow teeth, which has nothing to do with my conversation style, but didn’t help, either. After five minutes I would either just stare at her nervously or walk away.

Now I still get the look, but it’s completely different, because I’m awesome now. People aren’t disgusted by me anymore. When I smile at a stranger and say, ‘hi’, they don’t squint their eyes and immediately start walking in the opposite direction despite the fact that they’re already five minutes late to see their dying grandmother. They smile and say, ‘hi’ back like I’m a goddamn normal person.

This isn’t just due to my weight loss. It’s a complete lifestyle and partial personality change. My mannerisms are even quite different. Of course, it is far better to be unique and not conform to what people respond favorably too. However, I am too weak-minded to not conform. I must be liked.

Growing up, I used to love watching trashy daytime talk shows. I missed most of 9th grade pretending to be sick so that I could watch as much Jerry Springer as possible. I couldn’t put my finger on why I liked it so much, other than how unbelievably awesome it was. Then I realized, it wasn’t the fighting, or the outrageous storylines, or even Jerry’s Final Thought.  I loved seeing people worse off than me. No matter how bad a day I was having, or how bad I thought my life was going, at least I wasn’t a middle-aged overweight man convinced that I was a dog for the entertainment of a masochistic, older, sex-crazed woman.

It may sound bad, but it’s somewhat therapeutic knowing that there are those worse off than you. I think the word for this is ‘schadenfreude’. There’s a limit, however. I don’t enjoy watching people suffer or die, and I do not like when anyone I love or care about is in pain. Aside from that, pretty much anything goes. I like it when I’m driving down the highway and I see that a police car has just pulled over another car for speeding. I like it when I see another couple yelling at each other. I like it when I get the last cookie at the deli in my office. We all need some motivation and self-assurance in the fact that we are not the most miserable people on earth.

After many failed dates and rejections, I needed a confidence booster in that same vein. I thought about showing interest in women that I wasn’t interested at all, just so I could receive some sort of acceptance from someone. However, I figured that this was too cruel, especially knowing how painful rejection can be. Instead, I gained a little bit of confidence knowing that even though the women I sort of had interest in didn’t reciprocate the feeling, a few that I didn’t have interest in at least seemed to enjoy my company. And then I hit the jackpot. I won $10 from a scratch-off lottery ticket. And then I redeemed my jackpot. And then I bought a sandwich. And then I hit the metaphorical jackpot and met the woman I will spend the rest of my life with.

There’s no real lesson here, and most of my ‘lessons’ are impractical and may even get you killed.

Murphy’s Law states something like if something bad will happen, it will, or something like that. I’m not really sure, because if I look it up, it will depress me more. I don’t know who came up with it (I’m assuming Murphy) or the rationalization/science behind it, but from what I’ve experienced, it only comes true if you believe that it will come true.

If you think that you will never find someone, you won’t. If you believe that not buying rental car insurance is going to cause you a lot of pain, it will. If you don’t look at the expiration date of that gallon of milk, you will die. If you have no expectations, then nothing will let you down. I’m not telling you to always be optimistic, because that would be ridiculous. You would always be disappointed. Also, you should obviously not always be pessimistic, or else you won’t make it through your day. I’m telling you, that in most situations, have no expectations. See what life comes up with for you. Whenever you make plans, you’re setting yourself up for either disappointment or severe disappointment.

Blind dates are a perfect example of this. Don’t go expecting defeat, because you will then be defeated. Also, don’t go in expecting marriage, because you will then also be defeated. Go in expecting to have a beer and some food with a nice lady, because that is exactly what will happen. There is usually no such thing as instant gratification. Everything good takes time. Treat a date as an extension of your life. It’s not a gamble where you have to put all of your chips (or money) into one event. Win or lose, it’s just another night of your life. I used to take every date to heart. Everything was calculated. If I didn’t like her, I was disappointed, and if she didn’t like me, I was devastated. That is no way to live life.

You are going to eventually die. That is the only concrete thing that you should expect. What happens before then is due to a lot of factors, the least of which are what you think will actually happen. The only exception is if you’re President of the United States. If you are this person, you have been planning that shit for a very long time. However, thousands of other people also planned to be this person, but failed, and will probably never be. Obviously, a lot of other people have also worked hard towards goals and eventually achieved them. I’m sort of lost and am contradicting myself now, but just don’t give yourself unrealistic expectations, okay?

Dating my girlfriend is so much easier than dating single.

Okay, first I want to make a disclaimer that all of you will hate this post, outside of the fact that a lot of you hate my posts anyway, because I’m writing about my girlfriend. However, after being single almost my entire life, outside of a short stint at hookup sleepaway camp and dating a few other horrible people, I no longer care.

Anyway, dating your girlfriend is so much more pleasant and bearable than going out with strangers. I am a 100hookup success story, and though it has often been frustrating, which was mostly the fault of my own personality, I stuck with it for a long time, and all of those people I had previously hated that told me to not give up I hate slightly less now. Roughly five years of rejection, incompatibility, and lethargy did pay off in a big way.

I first signed up for 100hookup roughly five years ago, when, probably like many of you, my mother offered to pay for my account. I was new to online dating and was amazed that I could browse many women in my area, and was equally amazed by how little I knew about dating/the human condition. I was pretty proactive at first, but after years, I slowed down. I got to the point where I would get about one message a month from a woman, and we would go out, and it was usually okay, but would never see each other again.

Now, I’m in a wonderful relationship, and dating somebody consistently is so much better. If you’re out there in the 100hookup world, and are starting to lose hope, the best advice I could offer would be to not give up. I completely understand slowing down. Perhaps maybe you should not browse 100hookup nightly. This could come off as desperate while also increasing desperation within yourself. I’ve said this before, but take a step back. However, stay somewhat active. Browse peoples’ profiles, but do it in a more thorough way. Read their entire profiles this time. Don’t just rush through reading it to feel better about yourself. Don’t just send out mass messages in a one-night frenzy that you know in the bottom of your heart will not result in anything. Look for things that may pique your interest, or at least things that the two of you may have in common. I know this sounds obvious, and this may partly be due to the fact that I’m writing this while sick, but the way you act on 100hookup should reflect the way you act in the real world. You wouldn’t just run up to every women in a bar, one after the other, and scream, ‘Hi! You’re hot!’, and if you would, I really want to meet you.

There is a thin line between modesty and self-effacement. I live on that line. I honestly don’t know if it’s because I just have a generally low self-esteem, or because that’s just become a part of my personality because I have tried to create the illusion of friendliness or am actually friendly. In any case, I am a generally modest person. Whenever I say something modest, I think to myself how humble I may sound saying it, when in actuality, I may just sound pathetic.

There are only so many things you can say you suck at until a woman believes that you were not meant to be on this earth. Through my gradual lifestyle overhaul over the past couple of years, I have learned to refine my modesty into borderline self-contentment. Women don’t like men they can feel sorry for. They like friends they can feel sorry for. They like men they can respect. Though modesty often wins over arrogance, nobody likes being in a relationship with a community service project, unless that is their community service project.

There’s an art to drawing attention to yourself without drawing attention to yourself. Of course, I do not know this art at all. I can either make a complete ass of myself, or I can make myself out to be the quietest, weakest person in the room. However, I have learned through self-imposed personality reassignment that I can infuse my instinctual modesty with some dignity. I still display my signature horrible self-conscious shrugs and face scratching, but often don’t accompany that with detailed stories about the genesis of my back hair or tales of my immeasurable sadness.

Having a wonderful girlfriend certainly helps with my modesty issues, but I wasn’t able to get her to like me if I wasn’t already on this path to pride. I now know that the only reason that I lost all of that weight and changed my life around was so that I could find her. That is cheesy. I don’t care.

Over the past year-and-a-half, I have drastically altered my life. The most aesthetically noticeable aspect is my weight loss, as I have lost over eighty pounds. However, while I was fat, and during this entire process, I felt that someone or something celestial was working against me. Every time I hit a milestone, I seemed to face an equal and opposite force working against me.

Over the past few months, I’ve started jogging regularly. It’s really helped me feel better about myself, because, as a fat man, I could jog for about one minute before collapsing in a very public way on my treadmill that seemed to be struggling equally as hard to support me. Over the past month or so, my hip started hurting increasingly more every time I jogged or ran. I tend to ignore things I don’t like, so I pretended that none of this was happening. I went limping into work every day, and when people asked why I was limping, I told them that this was always how I walked, and then immediately collapsed. I thought nothing of it until, finally, after one workout, I couldn’t walk or lift my left leg for about twenty minutes. I went to the doctor soon after and was diagnosed with hip dysplasia. This means that, barring major surgery, I can never jog or run again, and will develop arthritis by the time I’m in my 50’s.

Now, this is really not bothering me that much. My OCD and anxiety tend to focus on little things that don’t matter at all. This is nothing. I have bigger things to worry about, like what position my towel is in when I hang it over the shower and violently jerking my head for no reason every time I think I’m developing a headache.

However, this is just another thing that seems to be working against my progress. It’s going to be hard to maintain my current weight without cardio. I know I could swim, but it’s getting cold outside, and even when using indoor pools, I dislike taking off my shirt in public. Also, I know I could ride bikes (stationary or real), but I don’t want to do that because I dislike doing that. Maybe I’ll try something like tapeworms or the Limb Whacker®.

I have been fortunate in both Dallas and Austin to be friends with two long-term couples. Both have been together a long time (3+ years) with the Austin couple set to have their first child in March. They are two seemingly low-maintenance couples who find constant joy in being around each other no matter the circumstance. Below is a list of observations that I’ve seen from both couples, things that can be easily translatable to your own love life.

1. Dallas couple: After every time they hung out in the getting-to-know-you stage of their relationship, the male always texted “I had a great time! Can’t wait to see you soon!” It was something simple, yet something that resonated with his girlfriend even to this day. This might give away a dating secret of mine, but its something that I’ve copied to an extent, as it’s a simple, yet far-reaching gesture.
2. Austin couple- I happen to be in a leadership group with them, and what I notice is touch. Not PDA, not ridiculous hand-holding, but a simple touch on the back when getting up, or a tap on the leg when in a conversation. It’s not overt, but a mechanism that still indicates affection without being too teenage-like.
3. Dallas/Austin couple- Both couples are able to tease each other, even in the public sphere. Once again, there’s a huge a difference between making fun of someone maliciously and teasing, but the two couples understand and are ok with their faults enough to make light of them in front of others.
4. Dallas/Austin couple- While both couples absolutely adore each other, they also give each other space. The girl in Dallas is one of my best friends, but there’s just something about the idea of “guy time”, as she encourages her boyfriend to go watch the game with his guy friends, talking about guy things, as she goes shopping and watches reality TV with her friends. Yes, my Dallas buddy incessantly texts her while he is watching the game, but there’s still that idea of “doing your own thing”, allowing both people in the relationship to have some sort of independence.

Follow these simple guidelines and you will probably have the same productive relationship that these two couples have enjoyed.