Thursday, January 07, 2010

Hard Drive Memories

While rummaging around on my pile of old hard drives this week, I came across a couple of photos sent to me by a woman with whom I had a very brief online flirtation a decade back. No, they they are not that kind of photos – just ordinary pics of her life and her work.

We had met on the Well, where I was a daily visitor at the time. To make a long story short, we had several weeks of back-and-forth emails, then made arrangements to meet in a 'neutral' city. Then I did what I often did, which is to 'way overcommit, say some things I shouldn't have said while trying to be charming. Instead, I pretty much scared the bejeebers out of her. We called off the meeting and had no further contact.

I had forgotten about her until I found these photos.

It was another in a long line of instances of me fumbling around with my substandard social skills and alienating people instead of building friendships and relationships.

After my last 'woe is me' rant, I made myself a promise that I was going to go a year on this blog without writing any more self-examining or self-pitying relationship stuff.  That was 51 weeks ago, so I've come up a little short.

Well, it's all in the past now. But I think it's useful for me to be reminded what a mess I was making of my life year after year, and why I live the life I do now.

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