Online Dating at 36 - The Good, the Bad, & WTH?

Well, tonight was my first date in almost a year. For some reason, that seems shocking to me even though I've spent extensive stretches of my life not dating. As the minutes ticked closer today, I felt the nerves getting worse. I felt "out of practice" on this whole first-date thing. I went on them at least once a month when I was on Match, and that kind of frequency can be beneficial. Or jading. Your choice. It was just coffee. No pressure, we agreed. We carved out about an hour out of our busy schedules to just sit and chat. Become friends. See if the chemistry that seemed to be there in the text messages and phone conversations actually carried over to real life. So of course that explains why I was so numbingly nervous. *eye roll* This afternoon while getting ready, I probably changed my clothes close to a dozen times. I knew what jeans I was going to wear, but jeans are such a blank canvas. It was just coffee. But he was coming from work, from Corporate America

We're nearing the final countdown. In less than 2 days, I'll be having coffee with Mr. E. I'll be honest, I'm getting increasingly excited for this date. It will only be about an hour long; he can't get there until 5:30 (unless he slips out of work early) and I have to leave for my own work at 6:30. So far, the connection has been good. First, the texting. Then last night, a 45 minute phone call - not bad for a first conversation, even if it didn't end until 11:30, which both of us agreed tonight was a bit too late. Yes, tonight. I walked in the door at 7:35, a little later than usual for a Tuesday, clutching my McDonald's take-out because I was too tired to cook. I was ready to change from workout leggings into sweats and settle down at my home office desk to work further on a freelance project. Then my phone rang. An hour and a half later - you read that correctly, 90 whole minutes later - we hung up. We were both that much more relaxed and "our

Things are moving along just nicely with the newest gentleman. At the conclusion of my last post, he had texted - as promised - and said he'd text later. He did, and we once again texted the evening away. We also set up a coffee date, after much schedule wrangling. We found an hour or so on Thursday to meet at a Starbucks. Not as much time as either of us said we wanted, but a little time was better than no time, we agreed. As we said goodnight, he said he would be in touch "very soon." So far, I've left initializing contact completely up to him. But if you're a regular reader, you know just how humorously hard that is for me. Last night, dealing with a round of laryngitis, I was "sitting out" in rehearsal - listening, marking my score, etc. while not singing. And oftentimes, bored out of my mind. So of course I texted him. It's the first time I've reached out, and I was rewarded by a response. It wasn't long into the conversation, though

This first went up as a "quick post" to satisfy the curiosity of my recent Facebook status that let drop I was "texting with a potential date," which brought on questions of, "Does this mean the blog is back up?" Now that I have a little more time, I've come back to expand upon it. First, a brief review of the status of the last round of twitterpated drama. There were three guys. Gentleman #1 got married over Thanksgiving weekend. Most of our mutual friends said, "I didn't even know he was dating anyone!" Gentleman #2 and I are still comfortably friendzoned, and in spite of the firm beliefs of my ex who thinks this guy & I have some sort of sordid sexual history that I refuse to admit, we probably always will be just friends. And Gentleman #3... just, no. Now for our newest entry, Mr. E. This is another set-up by a friend, although this time around the friend knows at least one of us pretty well. (If you remember from the disastro