I had to pick one of four to get past the screen, so I picked
- Looking for
- somebody patient enough to have the conversation in ordinary language
- Experience
- None in practice. A great deal of reading and nobody to ask.
- Around
- the east end, Toronto
Making a profile required me to choose what I am from four options, and I picked one more or less at random, because there is no way past that screen without picking. Then I spent a fortnight worrying that people were reading it as a claim about myself rather than as the price of getting through a form.
Thirty four, east end. Treat the label on my profile as a placeholder.
Here is what I do know. I want somebody else to decide certain things. Not everything, and I have a reasonably firm sense of what I would hate. But the moment I try to work out whether that makes me one word or a different word, I lose the thread entirely, because the words seem to arrive with a whole set of behaviours attached and I have no idea whether I want those.
I have read a good deal and spoken to nobody. That is the true state of it and I am not going to dress it up.
What I want is somebody patient enough to have this conversation in ordinary language. I can describe a situation and how I think I would feel inside it. I cannot yet tell you which term it belongs under, and I would rather not guess in order to sound like I belong here.
Divorced, no children, hospital work, a regular and dull week, which I suspect is an advantage.
In April somebody told me what I was after two messages, with enormous confidence, and it put me off the whole thing for a month.