he winked at me

I get ego boosts at random moments throughout the day. I'm in an editorial meeting, my phone alerts me to an email, I look, and discover "he winked at you!"

Same scenario, only I'm at my computer to see "he emailed you."

That makes me stop.

In the world of online dating, emailing is a big deal. Winking is playground material. But emailing? I mean, when are we getting married?

These methods of communication jolt me back to the reality of the fact that I'm single, and maybe one day I won't be, which leads to the bigger questions: how is that going to happen?

I started online dating three years ago, and I'm terrible at it. It's to the point now where it's a form of entertainment, an ego boost and a downer when one popular site tells me that "0 people were interested in you."

How could you not be interested in me?! I am an interesting person.

I'm terrible at online dating because I'm cheap, and I won't pay the subscription cost. So I bounce from one free communication period to the next in hopes that the random hand of love will fall and in the same 7 days I'm communicating, he (whoever he is) will be too.

I emailed one guy for maybe a week, but that fizzled. Another guy told me he'd never take the smile off my beautiful face. Another guy was not physically attractive.

In one sweep of an index finger, these guys are archived, closed, deleted, 'just not feeling you' and I never have to think about them again. And vice versa.

I think the biggest trapping of online dating for me is curiousity. Now that I know that someone emailed me, I want to know who he is and what he said. Another guy winked at me. He's 23. He might as well be 15.

Another site tells me that my "mother wants what's best for you" and I'm supposed to translate that into spending $20 a month for the next three. That $20 will buy me a few bottles of (cheap) wine that I can enjoy silently on my back deck.

Other sites want me to participate in personality tests. As if my personality has anything to do with the reason I'm on their site.

Online dating makes a lot of assumptions, the least of which that you're desperate and emotionally disfigured. I am neither. My excuse is probably the all-time classic online dating excuse:

I'm too busy to find someone the traditional way.

But in the very next moment after I get the email notification that "he emailed you!," the nudge of curiousity dissipates with my tasks at hand, and before long I've forgotten that I "caught his attention" until I sit down to blog about it.

And now here we are, nearly full circle.

Bottom line?

Online dating is entertaining. I'm an expert profile-skimmer (I'm doing it now), and I can archive with the best of them. And while I'm doing it, I'm usually texting someone or jotting down notes for my next online dating post.

So email me. Wink at me. Poke me. Message me.

Maybe one of these times I'll give in.