The Soulgeek Girl

I didn’t mean to be writing a blog tonight. This time was allotted for writing episode four, but I’m not in the right mindspace for that at the moment. But this is Scheduled Writing Time, so here I am.
This is the second day in a row that I’ve not written the next episode and had planned to. Yesterday was because I spent the night with friends instead, which is important to do from time to time. Tonight I have the time, just not the mindset, which I think is not as valid of an excuse. Tomorrow I need to write it.
I also spent some time with Shannon going over rough plans for designing the website last night, so it wasn’t a total loss. It’s productivity of a sort, but I’m trying to get into a groove writing, and it’s hard going.
That’s not to say I feel ready to publish yet. I want to get another like… five episodes or so written before I start to publish them. And then maybe I can start work on the second series while simultaneously writing an episode a week on this one. Then maybe I can build like an eight story buffer on that one before starting on the third while maintaining the other two. These are lofty goals.
So, I suppose I’ll discuss those last two things about Stacy I mentioned in the last post. Interestingly, Emily didn’t ask me about that since. Weird.
I don’t know why I’ve been sitting on these. They’re fairly inconsequential. I think it’s because by the time they sort of came to mind, I was really past the point of feeling like I needed to be thinking about and discussing this sort of thing anymore. I guess I was sort of saving them for a time when I wanted to write a blog entry, but really didn’t have anything of consequence to write about. And here we are.
Thing number one. I used to say to Stacy: “I love you so much,” with a decent amount of frequency. Now, this thing isn’t really about Stacy at all except for the fact that she was the recipient of the phrase. The only thing I have to say about this is that saying it sounds weird. That’s really not much to discuss.
I think it’s the way that I said it with genuine feeling, and that it ended on the word “much.” The way that the word came out of my mouth and sounded really seemed very awkward to me.
There. Glad I got that off my chest. I feel better, you?
Thing number two is more of a statement about Stacy in particular, and the relationship I had with her. But I really don’t want to dwell on it that much. So, what I’m going to do is give it a brief setup, a brief explanation, and then skip the part where I explore what that says about life and relationships and Stacy as a person and me as a person and all of that stuff that I usually go into in this space.
I’m very stereotypically cheesy sometimes. Specifically in relationships. When I was with Dana, we did that adorable/annoying “you hang up first. No you hang up first” thing. I liked that. We also did the “I love you more” thing. With Stacy, I always waited for her to hang up first, and she always did. And I never ever tried the “I love you more” bit. Because, well, it was obvious.
There. That’s done. Said, and moved on from.
Next on the agenda, I want to talk a little bit about Melissa, the fact that I have this crush on her, and the nature of crushes.
I don’t understand it. She’s cute. By which I mean, I am physically attracted to her. But I don’t really know her that well. Which is why I can have a crush on her, acknowledge it, but not let it control my life or make me majorly upset that I won’t be dating her. That’s not what I want to talk about.
What I want to talk about is; why do I have a crush on her anyway. Yes, I’m physically attracted to her. But there are at least two other girls from work that I can think of offhand that I’m physically attracted to, and I don’t have a crush on either of them.
Why not? I don’t dislike them. I like them fine. It’s not like the small amount of time that I’ve spent with Melissa has been unusually fun or anything. So, I don’t get it. Where does the crush come from?
And the answer is, seemingly, it just sort of does. It’s not something that’s necessarily fundamentally explainable. It’s just something that happens. If I got to know her a lot better, there’s a good chance that I would develop what I would call real feelings for her as opposed to this easily disregarded crush that I’m currently harboring.
Of course, there’s also the possibility that I would find out I don’t like her at all. I don’t really even know her well enough to be able to disregard that as a possibility. So where does this feeling of a crush come from?
I don’t think this is something that has a satisfactory answer. I’ve written here about things like it before. I remember specifically wondering over the dynamic between people who find each other physically attractive, enjoy spending time together, but don’t have sexual/relationship interests in each other. Where is the disconnect between these things? It boggles the mind.
On a semi-related note, there’s this girl I found on OKCupid.
Let’s back up.
There’s this dating site called Soulgeek. It’s fairly new. Well, it’s like a year old at this point, I think. So maybe not so new anymore. The point is, it exists, and it’s small. It was put together by a guy who is, I think, an actor and, I know, a voiceover work… guy. He does voices for cartoons, is what I’m saying.
I think his wife died. I’m not sure on that anymore. It’s been like a year since I knew the specifics. But he’s a geek, and she was or is a geek, and they were very happy together. He seems like a good guy, and the reason he created the site was out of a genuine desire to help other people like him to find a geek like themselves out there so they could find the happiness that he had.
I bring all this up to say that the reason I still pay any amount of attention to that site is because I think that the attempt is laudable and I would like to support it. Unfortunately, it’s really small still. So there really aren’t many people in a given area that are on it. Which kind of defeats the purpose.
So, while I feel it is a worthy cause, and it’s worthy of my support, it’s just not worth paying a monthly fee for. Even though the monthly fee is considerably smaller than the fees of sites like Jdate or Match.com.
They way these sites work when they have the monthly fee, is browsing through the members is free. Creating a profile is free. But making substantive communication is locked for paying members. All you’re able to do as a free member is send a pre-fab message saying “hi. I’m interested in you.” But that’s it. There’s no way to follow up in any substantive manner.
This message is called variably a flirt, or a wink, or a number of other things depending on the site in question. On Soulgeek, it’s called a Hail in keeping with the geeky nature of the site proper. (searches are called Scans, and your homepage is called the Bridge… get it?)
So, I found this girl on Soulgeek who was in Miami and was cute and seemed alright by the little bit of a profile you can make on Soulgeek. Which is largely talking about what sorts of sci fi you’re into and what other types of things make you a geek.
So, I sent her a Hail, and she sent me a Hail back. And then nothing. Because that was really all that was possible from that site at the time without paying for it.
I sort of thought about paying for a month just so that I could send her a proper email, but there’s every possibility that you need to be a paying member to READ the proper emails as well. So I didn’t even know if she would be able to read it. And also, even if she was able to, I figured there wasn’t that much of a chance that anything worth mentioning would come of it.
This was all, I would say, six months ago. Maybe more.
So, I was on OKCupid the other day for some reason, and by some chance I came across the same picture of her that she had used on her Soulgeek profile. OKCupid is, for the most part, a free dating site. They are introducing a pay section, and it offers things like highlited profiles and more inbox storage, but the messaging and all the real functionality of the site is, for the moment, still free.
So, recognizing her picture, I checked out her profile. And I really liked it. This goes back to the whole crush on Melissa thing. I don’t understand it, really. There’s not very much that you can learn about a person from these stupid profiles, but for some reason I felt like I had a crush on her the same way I feel like I have a crush on Melissa.
So, a long story of stuff that doesn’t matter comes to the unsatisfying conclusion;
I sent her a proper message telling her I was interested. She got the message, and looked at my profile, but she hasn’t responded back.
What that probably means is that she isn’t interested. That’s fine. It would be nice if she was and we could meet up and maybe there would be something there, but I’m not emotionally invested enough in this person who I have never met, and yet still feel I have this crush on, to be really any amount of genuine upset.
However, maybe it doesn’t mean that at all. Maybe she just doesn’t think that me sending a message to her really means anything at all, and that I just spend my time sending these messages to lots of people. A lot of girls on these sites have things saying “don’t message me if you’re just looking for sex” etc. And she had a whole big list of those sorts of things. I’m sure she gets messages all the time of that nature.
So, I’m going to try to take a little bit of education from that story I wrote, and go with reason number 2. Reason number 1 would mean that communication with this person is over, but reason number 2 means that persistence may be worthwhile.
I’m pretty sure we’re dealing with reason number 1 here, but oh well. If I don’t hear from her in a week, I’ll send a short message saying that I’m sorry I hadn’t heard from her and that I’m being sincere and that it would be really nice to hear back.
Then, if message number 2 is disregarded, I give up and move on without undo amount of heartache, but with at least the knowledge that I wasn’t letting my, admittedly numerous, neuroses prevent me from something.

The Story I'm Not Writing

What I want to be doing right now is writing a story. The story that I want to write, and have been meaning to get around to, will not be very good. It's not the sort of thing that I would want to read. Even if I write it and it turns out well, there's pretty much no chance that I'll be happy with it. But still, I want to write it.

I'm not currently, though. I think I'm afraid of it. It's been such a long time since I've really written anything, and the only thing that I wrote that I'm really proud of is the script I did with Jim. I don't really know how to start writing.

I need a cast of characters. And I need to know my characters. At the very least, I need to know my main characters. And I don't want either of them to be me, though I'm fairly certain that one will end up being. I don't actually mind that he's me, since the impetus for writing this is based on my insecurities in the first place. I just feel like sticking yourself into the lead role of something you're writing is a cop out.

I lied, but it was a useful lie. The real main impetus for this story is a blog entry I wrote a little while back about flashback stories. But that's really just where the idea germinated from, and not what the story is actually about.

Aside from the problem of character creation, I have a whole slew of other problems preventing me from getting started. I have a rogh idea of the first scene, and a rough idea of the last scene, but I'm not sure how to handle all the middle bits. My biggest problem with writing is figuring out how to move the story along. If I could think of details and things to happen, I'd have no problem. The actual writing part issn't usually the part that scares me.

Except, at the moment, it kind of is. Even if I knew my ch aaracters right now, and had a decent idea of things to make them do, I'm not really sure what sort of narrator I want to use. My instinct is to use a very detatched and boring narration style, because that's the sort of story it is. But I'd much rather be able to bring some life to the story through narration, like Pratchett.

A big problem I have with writing is... Well... This is sort of hard to explain. It always seems inauthentic. Dialogue is easy, but describing action never seems natural to me. Even when I'm reading something. As long as I don't think about it, it's fine. But if I allow myself to sort of take stock of the actual narration of action and setting it all sort of feels like "it was a dark and stormy night" to me. I think that's why I prefer scriptwriting. The action tags are there specifically to be action tags because you need to know what it physically happening. They're not supposed to flow with the story in the same way as they do in prose.

The last problem is that I don't owant to write a story onto my phone like I do the blogs. And I don't want to sit in bed at the compter either. I think I should use a notebookb, bt I don't know. I never used to really think about the setting I need to writ e in, bt now it's become a problem for me for the first time.

All that said, and bearing in mind that this paritcular story is trite and worthless, I'd still really like to get it written. Maybe if I can get this one done I can soart of take the momentum of writing something and use it to go into writing something more fun. I'd like to revisit that Heroes at Home thing I started a couple years ago, but I don't really feel up to it at this point, and maybe writing this trite piece of crap will help me get there.

In other news, there's this whole thing I want to write about here about talking to and checking out girls, but the subject makes me feel dirty and pathetic in an odd way. And it really shouldn't. It's right in line with the sort of stuff I usually discuss here, and really it also falls right in with the story I'm hoping to write.

So, maybe I'll revisit that topic in a couple days. In the meantime; I got a promotion at work. Basically, that just means that the stuff I thouight I was responsible for before , I actually am now. So, no actual change there. It's just that now my responsibility for the stuff I do is oifficial finstead off... I don'td know whkat it awas before. I'm also going to be fll time starting in mid august, and I got a pay raise to just above nothing instead of just below.

There's also a girl at work that I think I have a crush on. I say sI think because I'm really not sure at all at this point. It's been so long since I've had any sort of interest in anyone. I don't know her well enough to have any actual interest in her, but I think I remember this beihng what a minor crush feels like.

I'm also fairly certain she has a boyfriend, and I don't work alongside her enough to have had any sort of meaningful conversation with her. So, in all foreseeable likelihood this is the stage the crush will remain. But I just thought I'd mention it.