I have read this board for two years and never written a word
- Looking for
- one conversation with somebody unsurprised by how little I have done
- Experience
- Two years of reading. No conversations, no meetings, no arrangement.
- Around
- Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin
Two years. I open it three evenings a week, read whatever is new, occasionally type something into the message box and delete it before sending, then close the application. I could describe half the regular posters here from memory. Not one of them has any idea I exist. This is the first thing I have ever actually sent.
Fifty eight, Prenzlauer Berg, curious, and the sum of my experience is the paragraph above.
I retired early last year, which is what changed. While I was working I could tell myself there was no room for it. Now there is a great deal of room and no explanation left, and it turns out the reading was never research. It was a way of standing near the thing without risking anything.
What I want, so far as I can tell, is to be useful to somebody in ordinary practical ways with clear expectations attached, and nothing physical to begin with. That may read as a hedge. It is a genuine preference and I have had two years to check it.
Not looking for anybody who wants to move quickly, because two years of caution does not switch off in a fortnight. Not looking to be congratulated for finally writing something. And not looking for a person who finds a man my age with no history charming, since I find it mildly humiliating and would rather it were treated as a plain fact.