Comfortably Uncomfortable

As you guys know I have been on this mission to push myself outside of my normal boundaries and force myself to do things that normally make me uncomfortable, and one of those things has been dating. Yikes, right!  Now a quick background on my dating life….or lack thereof! I have never really dated, I know, I’m a mid-thirties woman who is just entering the dating world and oh boy is it quite an interesting journey. I had always only dated people that I already knew, but now it’s time to expand, put myself out there and meet some new people. I had in the past tried to dabble in it, I’ve made quite a few online profiles and gone through the process of the chatting with people but nothing had ever really materialized or as I’m learning, I really didn’t put any effort into it.

Well that has changed in recent weeks and here is where the adventure begins. It was a really weird thing, I began chatting with someone from one of those online dating sites and he happened to be in my area, like literally IN.MY.TOWN, he was there visiting a family member and said, “Hey I’m here in your area, lets hang out.” I got super nervous, I had never just gone out with someone that I didn’t know and thankfully I had to work that night so, crises averted.  But he didn’t give up, he was still in the area a few days later and again said, “so what are your plans tonight, lets hang out”, shit, ok, I was still at work, and said, screw it, I’m going in, there was something about him and our conversation that made me feel ok about actually meeting. We made plans to meet at a local pub in my town and I started to feel really confident about it, I mean this was the farthest I had ever gotten to a real date and for a moment I felt great, I was doing this. Then I got nervous as the minutes ticked on and it was getting closer to the time for me to leave and go get ready, I began to have cold feet, should I just cancel, what the hell was I was getting myself in to!

I convinced myself on the ride home that I couldn’t do this and thought I was going to cancel again, then he texted saying he couldn’t wait to meet me, so I gave myself another pep talk and ran home to start getting ready as my heart raced and I realized I WAS doing this. I cleaned up quickly and changed, surprisingly I even came up with an outfit fast without changing my mind a few times and headed out. I got to the pub looked around and didn’t see him or anyone that looked at least similar to his pic in his profile, so I took a seat at the bar and texted him, he said he was on his way. I ordered a beer and waited, and waited, shit, so here I am finally putting myself out there and now I think I am getting stood up! I begin texting my best friend what I had done and giving her the low down about what I knew about him, then…..he walked in.

I stood up to say hello and stepped on his feet, (face palm) of course, my clumsy self would do that. We sat at the bar and talked, and talked and….talked. My fear of being awkward and not being able to hold a conversation was forgotten, I mean the beer helped to take the edge off too, but I’ll take most of the credit for not being as socially awkward as I had assessed myself to be. He was pretty interesting himself another traveler who had been to many of the same places I had been and we wound up having quite a few things in common.  We were talking so much that I didn’t realize that it was 1am and they were yelling for last call a few hours later.

Actually putting myself out there into that comfortably uncomfortable spot wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I thought it would be, I mean I actually had a great time, I had met this really cool person whom I have since seen a few times since then. Is he the one, most likely not, but I am now more open for the next Bumbler that does seem intriguing enough to go out and actually meet in person and who knows what might come of it! :)