Fishing, Shooting, Walking, but No Dating

This is one of those days that seems to typify my singleness. It's the first day of a two-day weekend. I'm worn out from work. I don't want to sit at home and do house work, but I can't work up the emotional stamina to engage with a lot of other people. So what do I do?

I grabbed my fishing rods and put my raft out on Lake Arlington. I spent the entire morning trolling the south west shore, trying to catch something substantial, but getting nothing more than a couple of little white bass. It was gratifying to see that my plans for getting off the shore to do some fishing are working out, but after two hours I was hot and sore, so I put back into the dock, broke everything down and went home.

I puttered around the house long enough to cool down and relax from fishing, then I grabbed my rifles and went to the range. There I shot seven different rifles that I hadn't ever shot before. Each one worked like a champ, and I'm glad I picked the ones I bought--they were all as accurate as they should be, and I nothing blew up. I swept the range clean and picked up some brass for my trouble. That effectively killed the afternoon, so I went home again.

At home I showered and putzed around the house until supper time, when I figured out that I hadn't put in my five miles for the day. Walking five miles is a drag, but it's something I have to do to make sure my weight keeps coming off. I packed up some cassette tapes and went to Academy Sports where I picked up some deeper diving baits for the next time I go fishing as well as my evening protein bar. I stopped by my friend Yizong's apartment to drop off the cassettes so that they can be taken back to their proper place, then I went to Walmart and walked around the remaining steps.

Between the fishing and the shooting, I was pretty sore, so it took me a little while longer to make my rounds, but it gave me some time to think. The foremost thought on my mind was: why wasn't I out trying to dig up a date as opposed to being alone all day long? As I said earlier, I just wasn't ready to go through the mental and emotional judo of trying to make a hookup.

Dating Services Part 3 - Craig's List Personals

When I started reviewing my experience with dating services, I started with eHarmony. It wasn't nearly as pricy as some, but still pricy enough. Great Expectations was hugely expensive. Today, though, I'll relate my experience with Craig's List personals.

CLPs are basically an online lonely hearts column like you used to find in newspapers. Most of what I found were short write ups with the person selling themselves briefly with a short description of what they were looking for. Most people in the metroplex area did not put pictures with their adds. These I skipped out of hand.

I looked for several months at what was out there, and eventually I found one that titillated my curiosity to the point where I responded. It took a couple of days to get a response, and the response seemed genuine. Except that I was asked to sign up for a dating site that I knew nothing about.

Again, my desperation level was high, so I signed up for the site and looked for the username/ID of the person who had responded to me. Surprise, surprise! it wasn't there. The "person" who responded to me didn't exist. I tried emailing the person through the email address on their email to me, but nothing doing. I don't remember if it bounced or not.

Luckily, I wasn't out any money this time. It cost me nothing to respond to Craig's List, and I didn't pay the dating site. But the dating site I signed up to is a complete mess. It's the typical make-a-profile and pay-us-if-you-want-to-play type of proposition. This website, unlike eHarmony, is completely transparent in its practices.

There is no attempt by computer or other means to match two people. If the age is within range, you get matched. I've been matched with people up to 12 years on either side of my age: from 18 to 40. Most have bad pictures, bad grammar or some combination of the two. There are no specifics in the profiles people leave, and it engenders no desire on my part to fork out any money for their "service." How the website stays in business is a mystery to me.

Returning to Craig's List, it's a victim of its own methodology. It costs nothing to post to CL, and likewise nothing to post to CLP. As such there are a lot of con artists and shysters trolling for suckers. This time I only got suckered in halfway, but it still shines a big spotlight on my desperation and willingness to try anything wacky or unwise to fill that void in my life.

I can definitely say that I'm pretty much done with online dating. I guess the people that claim it really works are either extraordinarily lucky or out-and-out liars. Either way it's an area I steer clear of.

Dating Services Part 2 - Great Expectations

Oh man, do I ever regret my experiences with Great Expectations. MadTV made a lot of fun of GE, and with good reason. GE is expensive, cheesy, and screams to be made fun of. I have also found them to be sneaky, underhanded, and manipulative. Here are my experiences.

I was looking through the web for Christian dating sites, and many came up. But each time I'd click the link it would take me to a site called Great Expectations. Ok, I thought, maybe I'll give them a try. I called and set up an appointment with one of their representatives.

The appointment was for one night after work, and I went to their offices alone. There I met a man who applied a lot of high-pressure sales techniques to me. He made it sound like their services was exactly what I needed, and if I followed through on their system, it was nearly guaranteed to work. He showed me their video library and some of their female clients. I was hooked until he told me the price. Nearly $3000! I was just about to walk out, and he realized he'd spooked me, and like the consummate salesman he was, he made concessions and deals until I was signed up for a three-year membership that I could sell at any time (if I wanted to) for about $2k. I hate to admit that I was so desperate I signed up. Then the fun really started.

They required that I use their photographer for their service. I was to bring three outfits, wear no makeup or any other accoutrements that would otherwise make me look like something other than myself, and do my photo shoot and dating video. I showed to their studio, which was nothing more than another room in their office. The girl shot my pictures and did my video, and of course I had to pay sitting fees for the shoot. I did buy a photo package, but only because I hadn't provided my parents with a portrait for years.

I didn't wait long at all to start using their service. Between their online service and their office, I found that they didn't have a lot of clients I was interested in. There were some older members that I didn't waste my time with. There were a lot of other-racial clients that I wasn't interested in, and only a few that I was interested in. I selected all of those, and was promptly turned down by most of those. I came back a few weeks later to make a few more choices. I could only make a limited number of choices at a time, five or six if I remember correctly, and it didn't take me long to exhaust all the people I was interested in, and a few that I was only passingly interested in. Needless to say, I got a big, fat goose-egg for my troubles. After two or three months, I didn't try anymore.

I got a lot of emails from both the Fort Worth and the Dallas offices telling me about gatherings at bars and shows that I really didn't have a lot of interest in attending, but I never went to any of them. It took me several years to pay off their outrageous fees, and I wish I had never come across them. I eventually found that GE buys a lot of domains and redirects them to their main site. It makes it look like there are a lot of singles sites out there designed for the city you're in, but in reality they're all pointers back to the mother ship. I continue to see half a dozen lawn signs each week floating around street medians, and I continue to get their emails, although I'm sure my membership lapsed long ago.

Long story short, avoid these shysters at all costs. They'll cost you an arm and a leg and give you next to nothing in return.

Dating Services Part 1 - My Experience With eHarmony

In a post last week I did a little informal analysis on the top ten results returned by Google for the search term "single christian." I pointed out that of the top ten results, six were dating services. As promised, here are some experiences I've had with dating services.

eHarmony is one of the more widely advertised dating service. I was somewhat attracted to it for two reasons. They advertised that many of the members were Christian, and they also market a concept of matching based on 29 levels of compatibility. I decided to give it a shot.

The first thing I had to do was go through a battery of questionnaires. I put in my likes and dislikes. I answered a few general (one might say abstract) questions and formed a profile online. I think I uploaded a picture, but I don't remember for sure. I started to get a few matches, but each time I tried to do something other than look at the other person's profile, I was faced with a requirement that I become a paying subscriber of the site.

This wasn't anything new to me. I had already had experience paying for a dating service, so I elected to go with a reduced-price six-month subscription. I think it ran something like $150-180. Communicating with my matches was now possible.

It may have been possible to communicate, but it wasn't easy. Most people wouldn't respond to my communiqués. I'll write more about that in a minute. When a person would respond, it was always in a very strict, formal format imposed by eHarmony. First, you send a series of five questions to the other person. The other person can then select from a series of canned answers, or provide one of their own. You get the answers back, and if you want to proceed, you send another fairly strictly formatted communiqué, but I don't quite remember what it was. The other person responds, and if you still want to communicate, you proceed to "open communication."

Open communication is basically email through the eHarmony site. People are fairly well discouraged from communicating outside the realm of the auspices of eHarmony, but people do it (I did). This is where you are really supposed to get to know the other person, almost like going out on online dates. But all this is assuming you make it that far.

Two things happen quite often. First, if you make it to open communication, a lot of times you get turned off quickly based on... well.. sometimes nothing. I got a lot of "not interested" replies with the reason of "other." Ok, I acknowledge that this happens, and a lot of people don't want to be honest on why they want to end a communication. It's the second thing that happens often, however, that is the most frustrating.

The second thing that happens is that eHarmony matches you, a paying customer, with anyone that it feels you are compatible with. That includes a lot of non-paying members. Remember, earlier I said that non-paying members can't communicate. So what happens is that you, the paying customer, get matched with maybe ten people at a time, and only one responds. That one may or may not let you get past the strict, canned communication, and can at any time shut down the communication on a whim.

I paid for eHarmony for six months. During that time I had about a hundred or so matches, communicated with about twenty of them, and only had two make it to the point where we were communicating openly. Neither were local. One girl was in Wichita, KS, and the other was in Kansas City (I don't remember which state). The Kansas City girl I wasn't all that attracted to, but my desperation level was high enough that I didn't want to let go, but I did when I "met" the other girl.

The Wichita girl seemed like she was honestly interested in me, and I was in her. Heck, I was even planning on going on a trip up to Wichita to meet her in person at some point. Our communication eventually grew slower, and we ended up drifting apart for some time. Eventually I contacted her again, and she let me know that she was seeing someone from her past that was local, and that she was only on eHarmony to "check things out."

I abandoned eHarmony until one of my friends met his fiancé through the site. He suggested that I limit my matches to local people only. I set up my profile as he suggested. In two months I have had only one match on the site. I haven't paid, so I haven't lost anything.

So what do I think of eHarmony? I think it's a site designed to play on people's desperation and pocketbooks. They're not underhanded as far as I can tell, but they're definitely not up front about the way they do business. Everything I found out was only after experience and research. My conclusion? Save your money and go somewhere else.

Rejected! By the Brite Divinity School!

My week was officially ruined tonight by what I found in the mail. Brite Divinity School, the seminary I applied to, officially rejected my application. Their letter reads as follows:

Dear Joseph:

The faculty committee on admissions has reviewed your application for admission to the Master of Divinity program at Brite Divinity School. Although the members of the committee were impressed with your sincerity, they are not prepared to grant you admission to the program at this time. We stand with you in this disappointment and offer our regret that your plans for graduate theological education will need to take another turn.

Please be aware that it is not possible for Brite Divinity School to admit all those who apply for admission and be assured that the committee's decision was made only after thoughtful consideration of your application. You should also know that the committee believes you have the qualities that should allow you to serve the church in a number of ways and wishes you the best in all future endeavors.

Again, we wish you well in all your future endeavors.

Sincerely,

/s/ Valerie Forstman

I can tell you that the feelings of rejection that I've received over the years are bearing down on me to the point where I'd like for it all to end. I'm sick of the rejection. I'm sick of dealing with people that can't see that I'm an asset. Has the whole world turned its back on me? Am I truly worthless? I think that I must be...

Church Review - Trinity Christian Church, Fort Worth

Trinity Christian Church

2100 Morrison Drive

Fort Worth, TX 76112

(817) 451-3752

www.trinitychristianonline.com

This is the church I went to yesterday that was housing the Seventh Day Adventist church. It is rumored to be the church that one of my former ministers is going to, and that my friend has an interview with. It's a Disciples of Christ church, so I pretty much new what to expect when I walked in the doors.

One thing I wasn't prepared for was how uncomfortable I felt. I don't know what was causing it, or if there was even a good reason for it, but I had the sense that something was wrong with the place from the very first moment I set foot over the threshold. It was a very strange feeling.

I showed up very early. I thought the drive would take longer than it did, so instead of the fifteen minutes I wanted to allow myself, I had twenty five. During that time I had a conversation with the guy that preached today (not the minister), and got the lowdown on the singles program.

There isn't a singles program. The church is very small despite the buildings they now inhabit. In fact I got the impression that the ministries were just starting up, and no one really had a good idea of what they were to be or how they would be organized. I was told that there were a few singles that attended the church, but that they were currently engaged in helping out with other ministries.

After the prolonged prologue, I slipped into the sanctuary for the service. The sanctuary is large. It could probably seat 500 if it needed to, although I only counted 58 bodies in the service. (This church offers a morning and a noon service--there may have been more at the early service.) The stage had chairs for a choir, one pulpit, an organ and a piano, the piano on the left of the stage, and the organ to the right. There were two projectors and screens, one each flanking either side of the stage. I found that interesting because in addition to the projectors, they also had traditional hymnals, Bibles, and bulletins. The rest of the facility is recently renovated. I got a distinct sense of pride in the buildings. I was offered a tour, but I declined.

The service was a typical DOC service. So typical that it could have been a carbon copy of the service of the church I left earlier this year. The songs were the same, the procedures for communion and the offering were the same, the format of the service was the same.

Two things were different about this service. First, it had a very thrown-together-at-the-last-minute flavor to it. There was no choir, no minister, and no associate minister. That's the second thing I noticed--no senior staff running the show. Mild astonishment was added to my unease.

The message was a standard good samaritan sermon. I got the message, but it wasn't at all hard to grasp. I didn't pay all that much attention once I followed the message, and only checked in occasionally when a particular point was made. At the end of the service was a standard altar call, but also something that I found creepy. Some lady from the office went up and joined hands with the guy who preached, they stepped forward, and another couple of people also got up and joined hands during the altar call. It was a little weird.

After the service I ejected as quickly as possible. This church is not on my revisit list for two reasons: first, I felt mighty uncomfortable there, and second, it had no thought for a singles program. So far APBC is the only church on my list of candidates for membership.

Always Look Before You Leap

My life seems to revolve around Morrison Drive for some reason. Yesterday Yizong suggested that I try a church located on that particular street. It also happens to be the street where CF is located. I wrote about that church a couple of weeks ago. That's the church that produced a lot of drama in my life (and still continues to do so). As I was looking for this church, I ended up going too far, and actually used CF's parking lot to turn around.

Once I got pointed the right way on Morrison Drive, I first stopped by a little church that I had noticed while going the wrong way. I stopped to see if there was anyone in the building. There was, but all the doors were locked, and I really didn't feel like trying to force the issue. I got back in my truck and went on.

At the end of Morrison Drive is the church that was suggested to me. Yesterday I checked their website. There wasn't a lot of information to be had there, so this afternoon, while I had the time, I decided to drop by. From the outside of this church, it looks not small. It doesn't look big or huge, but definitely big enough for two buildings, a healthy parking lot and a playground. On the off chance that there was somebody in the building, I got out and started exploring. Big mistake!

I found the doors open to the sanctuary building, so I went in. There I encountered a church that was just starting. There were two things that made me immediately uncomfortable. It's a Seventh Day Adventist church, and it looks like a black church. I may be stereotypical about worship in black churches, but the thought of that type of charismatic environment automatically turns me off. This goes back to what I was talking about yesterday--the gulf between cultural differences.

I pasted a look of interest on my face and talked with them for awhile, but I couldn't wait to get out of there and be on my way. Of course they wanted me to come to their service next Saturday, but I wouldn't commit. As soon as I could I jumped in my truck and beat it for home.

When I got home, I started looking up some info on Seventh Day Adventists. They've got some funny beliefs about Christianity. Somehow, they think Christ, in 1844, was supposed to return, and when he didn't, they decided that he entered the heavenly Holy of Holies and started some sort of interim judgement. It almost sounded like a cult from the articles I read, but then I didn't really get too much past the whole 1844 thing.

Long story short I don't have any plans to attend the Seventh Day Adventists, but I think I will go back to that church tomorrow (the SDAs were just renting the facility, anyway). I hope I find something good there.