Sometimes you need a new beginning. Something to break you out of the current funk that you are in. Sometimes you just need to get out of a bad situation. Sometimes you just need a certain newness in your life.
I can pretty much say that all those things inspired me to move out here. I needed to start over. Well, mostly I just needed to get away from the ex. It's wasn't about disliking her in any way, but we just kept putting ourselves in the kind of
never ending cycle of break-ups and make-ups that wasn't particularly beneficial to anyone.
So I moved to
Woodhaven, which is about 20 minutes down-river from Detroit. When I tell people that I live in the Down-River area, they look at me with one of those deer in headlights sort of looks. I guess people don't realize that there's a river (the DETROIT River) on this side of the state that runs between Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair. I then just tell people that I live near the airport.
I'm still working for Kohl's Department Stores. We opened a new store in October. I was hired out of a pool of about 50 for my position, so I was pretty excited about that. Our store was one of the stores that pushed Kohl's past the 1000 store mark. That's really huge in the retail business because we are pretty much the only chain that is expanding instead of reducing. It's a great feeling to be a part of a company that isn't going to suddenly downsize my job or send it overseas.
It has been pretty lonely out here, though. I really don't know anybody in the area, and I'm not really someone who goes out by myself very often. Some of my friends have headed out this way, and I try to head back to
Kzoo as often as possible, but it's still a pretty quiet social scene for me.
Seems like everyone I know has found someone new to date. Andy has a new lady friend. Neil is going on dates (awesome for him!!). Amanda (the ex) is seeing someone, too. It did come as a bit of a surprise to me that she is "in a relationship", as
Facebook puts it.
Now, I'm not saying that I didn't think she would find someone else to date, it was just the suddenness of it. It was only a month, maybe a month and a half ago that we were bringing final closure to our relationship. Sure we broke up in May of last year, but even after my move, life still found ways for us to end up alone together and then do certain things that we shouldn't have been doing. It just finally came down to the fact that we had stalled as a couple, probably years ago, and we were never going to move to the next level. We reached a amicable point where we just had to stop going down that road and move on.
Honestly, the fact that Amanda is seeing someone else is probably the best thing that has happened to me in a long time. I had about two minutes of depression when I found out, but then I just had a wave of
freeness come over me. It was like something inside me had been turned back on, and I was back to just being "me" instead of the "me with Amanda". It was a very refreshing feeling. I'm really glad she found someone new. As Ted said it in "How I Met Your Mother", I'm just jubilant my former paramour is jubilant.
So, then there was the "can we still be friends?" talk. Amanda and I have very similar personalities, and we are very compatible as friends. We had lunch (on Valentine's Day, which was kind of weird in an ironic sort of way) and decided that it would be possible to maintain our friendship. I think her new boyfriend may be a little hesitant about the
situation, but he says he is fine, so there we go. It's probably going to be a little awkward the first time I see them together, but it something we have to deal with when it rolls around.
Anyway, I decided that since everyone else is dating someone, it's about damn time that I did the same. Now, I've never had particularly good luck with dating. It seems that I skipped the whole "dating" process with every girlfriend I've ever had. Those relationships just happened. I honestly think that I've only ever been on two actual dates in my life. Neither went well nor are they worth talking about.
So, my options are:
A.) Sit at home and just be alone - Too sad and depressing and boring.
B.) Try to meet someone at a bar - Some of these "Down-River" people are scary. No thanks.
C.) Be set up by a co-worker - I don't trust many of my co-workers and again with the "Down-River" people.
D.) Internet dating
I went with D. I joined Chemistry.com. I can't be my own
wing-man at the bar, so this is really the only way that I'm going to meet someone. Wish me luck...
