Archive for the ‘JBloggers’ Category

This is what happens when one loses internet. For the first thirty minutes, you frantically repeatedly connect and disconnect from your network, with the faint hope that turning it on and off again at a frenetic pace will suddenly make internet for that which there is no internet. After a half hour, you start looking for other wireless networks that are not secure. By ‘not secure’, I, of course, mean not password protected, because if you’re going to steal somebody else’s internet, you’re damn sure not going to try to guess somebody’s password using only the name of the network as a clue. After ten minutes of not finding any other non-secure networks, you restart your computer exactly seven times, using the same ‘on and off’ theory you first used when repetitively disconnecting and connecting from your network.

After an hour of no internet, it’s time to break out the reserves. You start looking through all of the photos on your computer. If you are a photographer, like me, then you have a lot of pictures to look through while waiting in vain for your key that can unlock the world (wide web).

After about two hours, you go to the bathroom because you have been frantically drinking ice water because the a/c has also been broken, but you haven’t spent any time trying to get it fixed because the internet is also broken, and that always takes priority. On top of that, your water bill, cable bill, electricity bill, rent payment, and taxes all have to be done, but again, the internet. On top of that, it is also your father’s birthday, your aunt and uncle’s anniversary, and the day for your scheduled colonoscopy.

So the 24-hour period that I had no internet directly coincided with the time I was supposed to write a new, hilarious JBlog post. Instead, I sat in an OCD-induced stupor waiting for the internet to come back. Now that it’s back, I still have nothing to write about.

I have finally decided that I have exhausted all options and have run out of women to date/marry/mother a child for me in the metropolitan area in and around Houston, TX. Though it is (arguably) the fourth largest city in America and has potentially (kinetically) millions of women, I have met all of them, and they all hate me. Granted, the Jewish population is considerably less populous. However, I have broadened my options because I am in survival mode.

Because of this horrible realization, I am officially holding the first official (this is not official) Operation: Procreation. Of course, the goal here is not to procreate per se, it just sounded like a funny title. If you read this, and that’s a bit of a stretch, let me know by sending a message to me (member name: JeremySpoke). Let me know if you would be willing to come visit Houston to see me/pay for my flight to your city. This does not exclude international participants. However, the logistics are inherently more difficult and an international plane ticket is obviously more money. If, however, you are normal and would never fly across the country to see someone based on a joke blog post, just say, “Hi”. I love getting messages, in any format. I never cancel spam or take myself off of mailing lists I don’t belong to anymore just because I love getting messages. You can send me a message that just reads, “I hate you.” On second thought, please do not send me a message that says, “I hate you.”

If you can not message me because you are not a member of JDate, it shouldn’t be too difficult to reach me. I am one of only three ‘Jeremy Balkin’s in the world. One is a young man in Australia, and the other is a movie producer in Los Angeles. Sending a message to any one of us should be sufficient.

This weekend, I’m going to be the first person on the planet (there’s no way that’s true) to Tweet my date. Everything from the awkward first greet to the awkwarder inevitable silence that accompanies any nervous conversation to the awkwardest goodbye-should-I-go-in-for-a-kiss hug will accompany clever lines written for the world to see.

First, I will start a new Twitter account, because my current one, which was supposed to accompany my oh so original blog, is as unread and unused as that blog is today. I will try my best to use a clever moniker like ‘ThisiswhyIwilldiealone’ or ‘Mymotherneedsagrandchild’.

I will begin Tweeting two hours before the date starts. This is the exact time I freak out and ponder spending the evening in my room by myself. I start obsessing over how I will present myself until all I’m left to present myself with is a shaky, sweaty ball that used to compose the pieces of a man. Every twenty minutes, I will muster the courage to concentrate and say something that will fully illustrate just how miserable I feel.

During the date, I will comment on everything both she and I say. Every sentence will be deconstructed until the point when the dinner conversation will consist of me laughing awkwardly while trying to hide the fact that I’m typing things into my cell phone after every sentence she mutters. I will also be sure to cover the moment she storms out of the restaurant because I refuse to talk to her and instead hide under the table with my phone. I will Tweet about eating the rest of the dinner by myself and will be sure to cover my driving home by myself and the following week of loneliness and despair.

Of course, I’m not actually doing this. Although, if you really want to read a minute-by-minute deterioration of a man’s soul, let me know. You will have to pay me a considerable amount of money to cover all of the therapy and drugs that will be needed afterwards.

I have been on a cold streak (10 years) when it comes to dating. I am really good at meeting my date. I say, “Hello.” and listen to her answer. Then, I conduct myself as a normal human being interacting in a way that employs both my verbal and physical abilities. I listen to her talk and answer accordingly. I laugh when she says something clever and cast sympathetic eyes when she tells me something sad. I sit and hold back my conversation in order to let her speak more about herself. I also offer to pay if we are patronizing a place of business. If she insists, I let her pay for because a.) I have almost no money, and b.) I want to show her that I’m progressive, too. I am so progressive that I’ll let her pay for my entire meal.

Though I think I am handling myself well and carefully, I don’t think that I look and sound like what I think I look and sound like. What, to me, seems like genuine laughter at one of her anecdotes may, in fact, look like a crazy person punching the table and kicking wildly while laughing two octaves higher than most humans can speak. What, to me, seems like pensive thought while she shares something somber, instead, looks like utter confusion and profuse sweating. As I sit and try to listen, I seem to laugh intermittently at just the right moments and at just the right volume. Though, in reality, this looks like a manic seizure that years of therapy and Xanax have not fixed. Though I think that I am being progressive by letting her pay, I am in fact regressing the date back to 1955 when the woman was in charge of feeding her man.

I am now at a point where I feel a strong compulsion to text the girl immediately after every date because I am so afraid that she will never want to see me again. I know I shouldn’t do it, but I feel such a strong urge to do so. Tonight, after another first date that I thought went relatively well, I texted her about twenty minutes after the date. This time, she said she’d like to go out again. I wonder what a second date is like.

Most people who know me often ask, “What is it you love so much about online dating?”  If you are so knowledgeable about the female mind and how to pick up women, why not just do it in person?

Well, here are my answers.  The following are reasons why I will always prefer online dating to any other form of meeting women:

1.  I’m lazy.

2.  What’s better than being able to pick up women while sitting in your pajamas scratching your stomach?

3. I can meet women any time of day or night.

4.  I get to shop for the perfect woman.

5.  Did I mention I’m lazy?

6.  There is less pressure.

7.  I’m sorry, did I mention I was lazy?

There you have it. 7 reasons I love online dating.  Okay technically five. But five good reasons!

Steve and Laurene Jobs on the day of Steve's last keynote. Twenty+ years married.

First of all, let me preface this by saying that this post is going to be a little heavier than my typical light-hearted and sarcasm-filled posts here on JDate.

For those of you who don’t use Facebook, Twitter, an iPhone®, read the news, watch the news…but still manage to read JBlog, Steve Jobs died yesterday. Now, you might be wondering why that’d be something I’d find relevant enough to share on a dating blog, but bear with me for a sec.

I worked at Apple for two years back in 2004, and for years before that, I’d already been a fan of their products. It was only as an employee, and later on as an entrepreneur, that I began to truly understand the ingenuity that is Steve Jobs. The man could surely teach you about business (Apple is the largest company in the world, based on valuation) and living (see below) but I’m about to tell you that he could probably teach you about love too.

Steve Jobs was famous for bringing up this typically unattributed quote during his Stanford University commencement speech in 2005. He said, “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right” and added that “remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

What if, instead of talking about life, you made this quote about love? If you knew you had 24 hours to live, would you behave any differently in your love life than you do today? Would you finally tell him or her that you’ve been in love with him/her for years? Would you stay in the relationship you’re in knowing that it isn’t working, despite both of your efforts? Would you call back that guy you met and had a great date with last month but never heard back from and ask him what happened? Would you be as scared of getting hurt?

Probably the most solid, important piece of advice I have ever gotten about love and relationships is that “no matter how hurt you get, emotionally, you are still going to wake up the next day” and that there are not many things, when it comes to pain, that this statement applies to. Our hearts, not as in the physical, anatomical organ beating in our chests, but the emotional component of “our hearts” that allows us to love deeply and feel hurt, will still be beating even after we are rejected, broken up with, divorced from…it is truly the most resilient part of us.

So my question to you, as is my question to many clients who come to me with fear-based rationalizations as to why they won’t take a risk when it comes to their love life is — why aren’t you exploiting the resilience and strength of this beautiful heart you have to increase your chances at finding real, can’t get enough, absolutely fantastic love?

We take risks every single day that put us in the risk of physical pain! We play extreme sports, knowing our body might hurt after. We ride motorcycles (sometimes foolishly without helmets) knowing we might fall and injure ourselves. We go to the gym and lift weights because breaking down those muscles hurts but it build them back better, faster, stronger.

Well guess what, literally speaking, your heart is muscle too.

So yes, you may, and I’ll go as far to say that you probably will get hurt. But your heart, and you too, will come out of it better, faster, stronger.

And one day, when you’re hesitating to take the risk to leave someone or love someone or propose to someone or accept someone’s proposal because you want it to work out for the best but are afraid it might not, ask yourself:

“What would Steve Jobs do?”

And if that’s not enough for you, or you don’t care about what Steve Jobs would do, then think of this, what I am saying to you now:

“No matter how hurt you get, emotionally, you are still going to wake up the next day.”

I truly hope all of you have a great day…now go out there and fall in love.

Got a question, comment, love letter to send? Reply below or send Mel a private e-mail here.

The science teacher called on me even though I totally did not have my hand up to volunteer. I got up in front of my whole kindergarten class as the teacher introduced me to the peers I already knew. Today, we were talking about differences (i.e. the differences between shapes, colors, etc.)

There were two circles drawn on the board. The teacher put a yellow square inside one and a red rectangle inside the other. Then she said, “Jeremy, how are these two objects categorized?” I answered, “By shape.” “Nope,” she answers. “Okay, by color?” “No” “What is it, Jeremy?” “I can’t think of anything,” I said. Then the whole class started laughing and pointing at me. I felt mortified. Not because I was being laughed at by a large group of people, but because this happened yesterday. I, a TA, was laughed at by a group of kindergarteners for being stupid.

I stood there, while kindergarteners laughed right at my face. I tried my best to think of how else those two objects could have been categorized. Have my past four years with no formal education made me stupider than someone who can’t tie hisown shoes without either crying or vomiting? No, this would not stand. “Excuse me. Sorry to interrupt in the middle of your lesson. I just…I cannot see how else those two objects are different from one another. I said ‘shape’ and by gosh, I will not back down.” “Oh. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have used a rectangle when I meant to use a square. I’m sorry.” Despite her apology, I don’t feel like I received emotional compensation for the gravitational strain that this will have had on my afternoon. “Can you please tell the children that I’m not stupid, and that when Michael Friedman told me, in 1989, that I have never been to Disney World® , he was wrong?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

Oh! This week, I also joined another dating site. So far it’s not very effective.

The many faces of Mel

From my experience working with clients (and as an online dater myself!), I know a lot of people find some frustration in choosing the best pictures to put up on their profiles. What pictures should I put up? What should they say about me? What order should I put them up in? (Meaning, which one should be the “main” profile picture?)

Hopefully this article will help answer some of your questions, and, just for fun, I put up some of my JDate pics too, as a reference.

First of all, I recommend that everyone have at least three pictures. One should be a semi-close up of your face, another should have some/most of your body in the picture and, finally, one should be a little bit quirky, or, a picture that tells something about you in less than the thousand words it would take to explain it (a picture is, after all, worth a thousand words…)

If you look at my pictures, you’ll see that picture #1 is a good “headshot” type picture. It’s not too close up yet not too far away and most importantly doesn’t have anyone cropped out of the picture. That is the number one flaw I see in a lot of pictures: don’t crop someone out, especially if you’re standing cheek to cheek or close enough where it is obvious. With the ease of use of digital cameras and the improvement of cameras on our mobile phones, there’s no excuse for you to not have at least one decent picture of yourself, by yourself. I chose that picture because I’d done my hair (for once), put on some makeup (I was going to a wedding) and looked relaxed, not too posed. Avoid those uber-posed glamour shots! And, to add on to the “cropped photo phenomenon” — unless you write that the person is your brother, sister, cousin, best friend, etc. — try not to have a picture with another person, especially if it looks very “couple-y” and might deter someone from messaging you.

Picture #2, that’s my quirky picture. You’d be surprised how many Android fans are out there on JDate who messaged me simply because of that silly little mug I’m holding. It says “something about me” (mainly, that I need caffeine in the mornings and that I rarely brush my hair…but nonetheless, it‘s not a typical picture!) Yours could be after running a marathon, playing the guitar, snuggling with your puppy, cooking in your favourite apron…whatever.

Finally, picture #3. That was taken in one of those funny little booths at an event and it does a great job of being a good “body” picture and a funny one as well. If you’re wondering why I mentioned that it’s important to have a body shot somewhere on your profile, here’s the explanation: much like people want to determine if they’re attracted to your face, body type also matters. I’m strongly against ab shots (haha), but a lot of the time, you can tell how someone takes care of themselves by their body and at the end of the day, if they go on a date with you, they’re going to know what you look like. It’s not necessarily a good thing, but I’ve had clients tell me they wouldn’t go on a date with someone because the pictures in their profiles were too ambiguous. As shallow as that sounds, most of the time it’s not the “few extra pounds” that matter, but people tend to like people who are in a similar type of health lifestyle than they are. I always say that everyone is gorgeous but not gorgeous to everyone. In short, post your best side of yourself but don’t hide!

My last bit of advice about photos is to keep them slightly updated. 1-3 months old is a-ok if you’ve not changed much in your appearance. As someone who frequently changes her hair colour, I have to update my photos pretty regularly.

Happy dating!

Got a question? Comment below or send Mel a private e-mail here.

I am currently on a diet, and just recently hit the benchmark of sixty pounds. Is that a benchmark? I don’t know, because I’ve never lost any amount of weight ever before. People say that weight loss often accompanies more energy and less depression. I have experienced neither so far. I am just as sluggish and sad as ever.

The other night, I had to walk up and down a set of stairs twice, and was completely winded by the time I got up the second time. The all too familiar scent of watered-down over-perspiration from years of malnutrition and the body akin to an out-of-shape werewolf came back to me like I was obese all over again. I had flashbacks of horrible dates and Big Macs® which came flooding back in an instant, and I instinctively got in my car and drove to the neighborhood McDonald’s®. I was halfway through the drive-thru when reality kicked in and my sweat-induced hallucination came to a very quick stop as I crashed into the car ahead of me.

Now, not only will my insurance premiums go up, but either one of my parents or one of my siblings will have to know that I was at a McDonald’s®. It is a very good thing that none of this actually happened (after losing 60 pounds) and I just made it up because my life is empty.

In a related story, I am about to go to a wedding this weekend where I will be reunited with a very nice girl that didn’t want more than one date with me after I ruined it by being myself. She is in charge of the food at this wedding, and it’s kind of a coincidence and it might be glorious.

Let’s start with a few quick texting tips for both the ladies and gents:

1. Don’t text to ask someone on a date, especially a first date.
2. Don’t break a date via text, unless you don’t care whether or not you’ll reschedule. If you truly do want to meet the person, call them up. The personal connection and time you take to call shows you care.
3. Text-flirting is good but make sure that you’re comfortable with what you’re texting. In other words, make sure the temperature of your texts matches up with the temperature of your real-life relationship. (More on this in a sec)

A tip for the ladies: don’t send those “three text-long” texts to a guy you’re just starting to date. Keep it short, sweet, and to the point. And gents, texting is good to maintain some rapport but not a complete substitute for picking up the phone and calling her!

Ok, now that we’ve got some basics out of the way. Let’s talk temperature. What does that even mean? Temperature refers to the tone of the text message. Think of a scale of cold – neutral – hot. A text that says something like “hi, whatcha doing?” falls in the neutral category because it’s probably not going to elicit a huge emotional reaction from its recipient. Answering something like “thinking of you” shifts things into a higher temperature — it’s probably going to put a smile on the face of the person reading it.

So here’s what I always say about texting — keep the temperature consistent with your real-life interactions. For example, if you’ve just started seeing someone, you’re probably not at the “hi baby honey shmoopie” stage, so your text messages shouldn’t be. But, that doesn’t mean you need to be cold either. In short, text how you talk. This is good because it’s consistent with your real-life interactions so shouldn’t slow down/weird anyone out.

On the other hand, if everything’s in neutral (shy people unite!) texting is a great way to flirt and raise the temperature. Time for date #2? Text your guy that you’re dying for him to smell your new perfume. Or gents, tell your lady that you need her opinion of your new shirt/pants/tie/whatever because you’re just asking her to check you out. Here’s the catch though: you can’t text-flirt and then not back it up when you get together! Just remember, if they’re flirting with you it’s because they’re into you.

Rule of thumb? If you’re into the person, try to maintain your texting temp, or raise it. Responding to a message like “Hope you’re having a great day! I know I am since we’re going to that great show tonight” with “its fine, thanks” is just a buzzkill!

Got a question? Comment below or send Mel a private e-mail here.