Children of the Revolution

What can I say, I was having a Moulin Rouge moment as I was simultaneously thinking of a title... But that's not (unfortunately) what I'm here to talk about. Maybe next time. Regardless, i'm definitely ready to start a revolution. But first some background...

I don’t mind the busy work.

Or the answering phones. I can do both in my sleep, and I actually enjoy (for the most part) helping the other secretaries with overflow and the attorneys with their own projects. I can make do without having access to Facebook, or my non-work email. I can sit here all day, looking pretty and smiling when people walk in. I can even deal with the secretaries forgetting my breaks.

I can’t deal with the quiet. Or really, the silence. There’s no music for me to listen to, and, worse, much worse, no one to talk to. It’s not that I don’t have work friends; it’s the infrequency in which I get to talk to them. My set lunch hour is typically the earliest because it allows whoever has been covering my desk to take her lunch when she’s done, but still have it at a reasonable time for lunch. This means that I’m taking a lunch a tad earlier than the rest of the office. Cue montage of Nora sitting in the office kitchen eating (for the most part) by herself.

But fear not, dear reader(s) (....do we still have readers?) for I have found a solution to my problem.  Or at least, an outlet.

I have taken to regularly using OkCupid.

Some of you may remember that I have a profile on the popular dating site. I’m sorry, that link is to a mystery profile...can’t possibly be mine. Well wherever mine is, the important part is that I have one. And even more so, I have the OkCupid app on my Pear-Pod. Which means that while at work I can flick through the Quick Match feature and by my afternoon break, someone that I have ‘liked’ on the site has shared their interest in me.

 You may be asking (fine, you're not but for arguments' sake let's say you are) why, why do you do this? Well, I’m up every day at 6am and work as a receptionist from 9 until 5:30.  And it’s those last few hours...that post afternoon break, but before 5:30 time period where the quiet really gets to me. By then, most everyone has gone home and I’m just sitting at my desk twiddling my thumbs, waving at everyone as they go by. But I still have an hour left before I too can go home. I don’t know about the rest of you but the more tired I get, the more unfiltered my mouth gets.

 My illustrious co-writer calls it sleepy-drunk. That point in the day (and it’s different for all of us) where you are just so tired you almost feel like you’ve had 4 vodka sodas and you are just ready to let everyone know what you’re thinking as you’re thinking it. ‘Hey, your name is the same last name as a woman my mom used to have as a client (hair dresser, rude), do you have any relatives who used to have their hair cut on the south west side?’ or ‘You’ve got a sucker! I’m jealous’ cut to a partner giving me a sucker on her way out of the office. Which once again leads us to ‘You mentioned being batshit crazy is a deal breaker, I swear I’m not that. But the internet says we’d be great friends, and we both know the internet doesn’t lie.’

Obviously the answer is go on OkCupid to the above mentioned 'Quick Match' section and send some messages. One day a few weeks ago I ended up talking to a young gentleman about my hatred for Evanston born out of my loyalty to Chicago (he also happened to have gone to school in Evanston, but did that stop me? Of course not). Just the other day I noticed someone was wearing a bow tie in a picture and sent “I noticed you wear bow ties, bow ties are cool.” followed by a quick “Oh god, and now I’m sitting here hoping you got the reference and don’t just think I’m a loon”, He must not have gotten the reference. The one I sent last week may very well be my favorite, I told someone that he was obviously too cute to be on a dating profile site and that I hoped he wasn’t a serial killer. (And I maintain that position.)

What’s the point of this, you’re probably not asking yourself? Who knows.  Will these seemingly crazy, but hopefully quirky messages be taken seriously? Probably not. And honestly, I find that to be unfortunate and yet, at the same time, it’s helpful.

Because my point people, yes I do have one, is that we’re at our most true selves when we get like that. And so I say that if you have read one of my messages and think immediately “that girl is crazy”....you’d be right. However, if the second half of your thought is, ‘there’s no way this chick can be real, she’s got to be putting on an act. No way am I responding to this,’ well then have fun going out with the girls who sound all sweet and innocent when they message you but are either going to bore you to tears or throw all of your stuff out a window and then set fire to it.

Meanwhile, I’ll just be sitting over here, having fun with the people who read a message and thought ‘okay she may sound a little crazy, but she also sounds like my kind of crazy.’

I think if more people were really themselves when attempting to make contact with another carbon based life form, whether it’s online or in a bar (do people meet anywhere else?), then maybe the dating world wouldn’t be as scary as we make it out to be. You act like you, someone likes that person, and the two of you get together. At the very least, you might end up friends with an awesome person.

And with that, I leave you with my current favorite representation of dating. Or at least, how I sometimes want it to be:

On the off chance you read that and said: Hey! These girls sound interesting, I should follow them on all forms of social media....you can follow us at the following.

 

 

Twitter: Andimatrainwrec (Katie), npalmerco08 (Nora)
Tumblr: Aaanndimatrainweck (official),  kahildreth (Katie), stillnuttypony (Nora)

 

And yes we did just re-read that and said, "Who let's us talk to people!"