Consuming media as a hobby.

It was a while ago now, but the Bumble guy and I did eventually manage to go on a date – after he cancelled the first date we organised a second one, which he also cancelled after forgetting his mum was coming interstate to visit, but third time’s the charm, right?

We just met for a drink at a pub I pretended I had been to before when I hadn’t – it was just in an area I like and know well, so I knew where I could get a car park easily and he could catch the train. We actually sat and talked for about three hours which is longer than I can talk to a lot of people, but I knew it wasn’t going to work out. He expressed disinterest in travelling (I don’t understand people who don’t want to experience different countries and cultures) and when I asked what he did for fun, he said he consumed media and wasn’t into the outdoors. Each to their own obviously, I consume my fair share of media, but I also like being outside. Oh, his parents basically started their own religious cult at one stage as well, but they’re retired now. That was a surprise revelation. He said he saw his dad speak in tongues once. I can’t even conjure up a mental image of my dad doing any such thing, so I can’t imagine how weird it must be to see it in real life.

Media, om nom nom.

We hugged at the end and the next day sent ‘Thanks for meeting me!’ messages to each other, and then I didn’t hear from him again, even though he didn’t delete me from the app. After a week, I decided I was completely jack of the whole internet dating thing again and just deleted the app.

I met up with a few different friends last week that all had dating stories of varying levels of shittiness. Dating is so shitty. Ghosting is still my number one hated dating phenomenon. If you ghost people, you’re a coward and an asshole. Don’t for one second try and justify it by saying you ‘don’t want to hurt their feelings’. Grow a pair, tell the truth and save the other person a lot of hurt and confusion.

Don’t be a dick.

On a different tangent, I saw ‘I Feel Pretty’, (the new Amy Schumer movie) last week with some friends. It made me realise how sad it is that I have given up on dating because of how much I hate the way I look. I just think that no-one would ever find me attractive, so why bother putting myself through rejection after rejection? I never think about the fact that I’m pretty smart, that I can say funny things, that I’m loyal and reliable, etc. It just all comes down to how I think I look. And how I think others think I look. It sucks. I’ve tried to change and be more positive and have more self confidence, but it never lasts long – the only way I can not feel terrible about my appearance, is to not bring any attention to it at all.

In completely different news, turns out I will in fact be moving overseas at the end of July! I’ll be heading to Japan, for at least a year. People have already asked me ‘What happens if you find a man in Japan?’. Firstly – I am not going to Japan to find a guy. It is the last thing on my mind. I’m more concerned about how much toothpaste I should take with me than I am about looking for love. Also, I’m pretty sure I’m the personification of Godzilla in the eyes of most Japanese men, and I don’t know if many of them are into that. Seriously, I’ve been to Japan twice now, both times in summer – Japanese women are beautiful, ethereal beings, many are tinier and more feminine than anyone has a right to be, and they seemingly don’t sweat. I, on the other hand, am a lumbering sweaty beast that is constantly taking up too much room on the train.

Hi! I’ve just moved here from Australia!

Anyway. Japan! Woo!

Getting back on the goddamn horse.

I haven’t written a blog since May last year! It doesn’t feel like that long – but I guess since the theme of my posts was internet dating and how terrible it is, and then I stopped doing it, I didn’t have much left to write about. I just re-read my last post – I talked about the fact that being single meant I could sit around in tracksuits pants and watched House Hunters. And what am I doing now? Building a model airplane with my toes! Not really – I’m in my tracksuit pants watching House Hunters. I’m still single, obviously. Very much so. And I have done nothing to try and change my situation.

I do have some news – I might be moving overseas in the middle of the year, for a minimum of 12 months, which would be terrifying and exciting, but I won’t know for sure if I get to go until May. So what do I do when it feels like my time in my current location could be limited? Get back on the internet dating horse!

If internet dating was a horse, I would assume it would be the mentally challenged horse from Family Guy.

 

I have a friend who met a guy in Tinder a while ago and they moved in together and everything (not the friend mentioned in the last post, they’re still together) – turned out he was very good at hiding the fact that he was a dumpster fire of a human being, but it came out eventually and she made a break for it a few months ago. She recently went back to internet dating and has opted for Bumble over Tinder and now myself and another friend of ours are both hesitantly joining the fray.

I don’t mind Bumble, but it makes me laugh that after two years, I am recognising guys from Tinder that have also joined up. So ALL of them are still single, two years later? That makes me feel so much better. What did not make me feel better is that a guy I have written about previously as being a stalker and constantly swiping right on me on Tinder has now also swiped right on me four times on Bumble. I’ve been on it for three weeks.

Take a hint. Leave me alone.

 

I have swiped right on two guys – one guy I let go past the 24 hour ‘start a conversation’ limit and he was gone. I don’t really feel bad – he was a doctor (or at least said he was) and seemed like a nice guy so I’m sure he wasn’t lacking in ladies. I had matched with another guy, who I actually remembered from Tinder – I hadn’t swiped right on him and from memory (and if you’re wondering how I remember some guy from a dating site over two years later, it’s because my memory is bloody good), it was because his bio seemed a little down on himself – it had the line ‘I’m pretty average actually’. I have no issue with average people, I am a fairly average person, but something about it gave me a ‘depression’ vibe and I have my own issues with that (more so then, than now).

He seemed a bit more humorous on Bumble this time around, so I right swiped, left him sitting there for ages because I was nervous about starting a conversation, then used my ‘extend for 24 hours’ option (you get one extend per 24 hours), then about 2 hours later said hello. Actually, I didn’t say hello, I told my best dad joke, because he mentioned them in his bio. It took him around 14 hours to write back.

Over the last two weeks, we have exchanged a limited amount of messages – I’m happy to banter back and forth on apps like this for ages, but he seems to limit himself to only a few messages a day so it’s been quite stilted. To his credit, he did ask me out for a drink – he asked me on a Saturday, like ‘Want to get a drink some time?’ and I replied ‘Yeah, sure’ and he didn’t message back until Wednesday – I had been about to delete him. On the Wednesday we made plans for Friday night – Friday morning he cancelled, very apologetically. I said it was fine (it was – I dread meeting guys for the first time, so my anxiety dissipated the second the message came through), then he kind of vaguely explained that he prefers to work at night (he works for himself on computer stuff) and hadn’t gotten enough sleep. We were meant to meet at 8pm. He was messaging me in the morning. He could have gotten a full eight hours of shut eye and still had a couple of hours to get ready between sending me the cancellation message and when he was meant to meet me.

He said he was still looking forward to meeting me, and hasn’t messaged me since. I don’t know what to think – besides ‘How keen can someone be when they’ve cancelled a date and not spoken to me since?’

The answer is:

Not keen. Not keen at all.

 

 

concerned face.

I’m pretty sure both my parents have given up on me ever being in a relationship again.

Mum’s always been good, she never asks if I’m seeing anyone or complains about not having grandkids. She’s a trooper. Dad went through a phase a while ago where pretty much every time I talked to him he was not-so-subtly trying to find out if I was dating anyone (and also, I think he went through a phase within that phase of trying to check if I was gay or not) until I snapped one day and told him to shut up and stop asking me. For the most part he did, but he still sometimes says things like ‘So, have you made any new friends lately?’. No, Dad. I’m hanging out with the same people I always hang out with.

I wonder if they ever thought I would end up alone? I guess you never think that’s going to happen to your kid.

None of my friends have ever really shown any concern. I think that might be because there’s pretty much always been a running joke about how shy and prickly I am, and how introverted I tend to be. They’ve always been supportive when I’ve met someone, and sympathetic when it hasn’t worked out, and that’s all I really ask.

One friend, a few weeks ago, deviated from the norm. We were out for dinner and she asked if I had gone back on Tinder (which is a no, I haven’t been on it over a year now). We then got to a point in the conversation where she said she couldn’t understand why I was still single, and she hoped I wasn’t cutting myself from opportunities.

This is new ground for me. This friend met a guy on Tinder who she now lives with, but it’s only been a year and a bit that they’ve been together. So I felt vaguely like the comment was slightly condescending. I never complain about being single either. Sometimes it’s lonely, but still think there are just as many positives about being single, if not more, than being in a relationship. Even little things, like if I want toast for dinner? I’ll have it. All the wardrobe and bookshelf space in the house is mine. If I decide I want to sit in my tracksuit pants, looking up random things on the internet and watching hours of House Hunters, I can (and I do. I’m doing it right now).

Now I’m wondering if all my friends are worried about me being a crazy cat lady, but just don’t say anything. I am the only one out of all the friends I can think of, that is single. Maybe when people aren’t single anymore, they automatically feel sorry for their single friends?

I’m not adverse to meeting someone. I’m not militant about staying single, as much as living alone with two cats might suggest otherwise. I definitely don’t want to do internet dating again though, because it just makes me feel anxious and bad about myself.

Maybe I am cutting myself off from opportunities. But that’s my decision to make.

 

Starting 2017 off by embarrassing myself.

Happy New Year! It’s already 2017 in Australia, I’m not sure if it is or not everywhere now. I went to a friend’s place for a BBQ which was fun. I also had a job to do. I had to text message a guy who dumped me over a year ago, and say hello.

I wasn’t sure if I would do it, right up to me pressing ‘send’. I kept it really short, basically saying Happy New Year, I hoped he was well and a joke about opossums (we always used to laugh at a certain picture of an opossum making a hilarious face). I had to send it via Facebook message because I don’t have his number anymore.

After I sent it, I had a sudden thought about the new set up of Facebook – apparently now, if you send an inbox message to someone you’re not friends with on Facebook, it goes to some ‘message request’ folder instead of their inbox. I only knew this because I accidentally found that particular folder in my own messenger a few months ago, and found all these messages people had sent me that I had never replied to, because I had no idea they existed! So then I was thinking ‘shit, I’ve sent this message and it’s potentially just going to sit in the Message Purgatory Folder and never be seen. In the end, after some thought and a few drinks, I impulsively sent a friend request as well.

I sent the message just after 10pm (at a friend’s suggestion) and thankfully Messenger has the little icons that show you if someone has seen your message or not. By the time I went to sleep at 2am, he hadn’t seen it – but then when I woke up at 6am due to my friend’s cat deciding to join me on the couch, I had a quick look and he had seen it. Which means he had also seen the friend request. And he had ignored both.

I have to admit, I was surprised. I had actually braced myself for a polite but not friendly message back – something like ‘I’m well, Happy New Year to you too. Take care’ (‘Take care’ meaning ‘I don’t want to continue this conversation). At best, I was hoping for a follow up question, like ‘Hey, I’m great! How are you?’. I seriously wasn’t expecting to be ignored, because I didn’t think he was that kind of guy.

Obviously, he has every right to do what he wants – if he doesn’t want to respond, then he absolutely doesn’t have to, he doesn’t owe me anything. A couple of friends said that maybe he would reply later, but I somehow know in the pit of my stomach that he won’t. He was either super drunk and checked his phone in the wee hours of the morning, and ignored my message, or he got up early for work, checked his phone and ignored my message. Hey, maybe he has a girlfriend/fiancee/wife now and quickly deleted my message.

The inescapable fact is, he ignored it. If someone you want to hear from messages you, you message back. He hasn’t.

So I cancelled my friend request (that felt like a Facebook ‘walk of shame’) and deleted the message I sent – I know it makes no different to the fact that it’s sent, but it means I don’t have to see it sitting forlornly in my messenger app. I won’t ever message him again. I guess that’s end.

A mistake.

Okay, so I did a bit more investigating with the whole ‘blocked on Instagram’ thing – after all that mental energy being expended thinking he had done it on purpose, turns out that wasn’t the case. In the past, you could block someone who had a ‘public’ profile, and still be able to see all their stuff – now it seems that even if they have a public profile, if you block them, you can’t see them either. That makes sense to be honest, seems rude if you can block someone but still spy on them. Like I was doing.

So I’m a bit embarrassed now. For about a day there, I thought he was thinking about me, and now it turns out he could potentially not even remember my name! He’s made no efforts to contact me in the last year (granted, at my request). Through some fairly extensive research (I blame the fact that I used to be a fraud investigator for my thoroughness!) I can’t find any evidence that he has dated anyone else since he dumped me, and he hasn’t been on Tinder (I don’t even want to explain how I know that).

So do I still contact him on New Years, after realising the Instagram thing was nothing? All signs point to it ending in total disappointment for me. But I have a bad feeling that may be what I need. From past experience, I’ve found that nothing makes me move on from someone faster than me embarrassing the shit out of myself. I’ve spent a year making no contact with him and it hasn’t helped me move on. Maybe I need to contact him, get shot down in flames, and then every time I think about him I’ll cringe rather than miss him.

Blocked, followed by insane advice.

It’s been two months since my last blog post! I actually thought it would have been longer than that, I feel like I haven’t written anything in years.

I haven’t written any blogs because I haven’t done any dating. I haven’t been on Tinder since the end of May, nor any other dating sites and I haven’t run over my soulmate with a shopping trolley at the supermarket either. I still miss Guy 2, and it’s now been about a year and two months since he dumped me. And something weird happened the other day.

I still occasionally check Guy 2’s instagram account, just to see what’s up (and what is social media for, if not for stalking exes?). He has a public account, so I haven’t had to follow him or anything. He doesn’t use it as much as I do – I post something pretty much every day and have two instagram accounts – my personal one, and one that I use to post graphic design work as a self-promotion kind of thing.

The other day, about a week ago, I went to have a look at his instagram, probably for the first time in a month or so, and even though his profile came up, it said ‘No Posts Yet’. I thought that was weird, and maybe he had deleted all his posts for some reason. I was intrigued, and went back a couple of days later and the same thing happened – but I noticed that it still said he had nearly 200 posts – I just couldn’t see them. So I googled ‘No Posts Yet’ and about 2 billion different articles popped up, informing me that if I couldn’t see the posts, then I had been blocked. Just to check, I went and used my design account to check it out – lo and behold, I could see his posts using the other account.

I considered this for a while. Why would I suddenly be blocked after a YEAR? Why would he bother? Why would he even THINK to do it? Then I suddenly had thought, and went and checked my own ‘blocked people’ list – and I had him blocked. I didn’t even realise – I must have had him blocked for pretty much a year, I don’t even remember doing it.

So had he tried to look at my account, found himself blocked and blocked me back? I unblocked him. The next afternoon I went and checked  – and I could see his account again. WEIRD. I even googled ‘Can I still see someone’s pictures when I have them blocked’ and yes you can. I pretty much already knew this, because obviously I had him blocked for months, but could still see his stuff. Maybe it was just a glitch in instagram that resolved itself?

I’m still thinking about it. If it wasn’t a glitch, and he blocked me because I blocked him, then it also means that he found out I had unblocked, and unblocked me in response. We’ve had no contact since he dumped me, at my request. He wanted to remain friends and be in contact, and I said no.

The afternoon that I noticed I had been unblocked, I also had my regular appointment with my psychologist. I told her about it and I was 100% sure I was going to get in trouble for stalking him, and be told to let it go. Instead:

Me: I just don’t get why he would block me.

Psych: Because you blocked him.

Me: Yeah, but why would he even be checking my profile?

Psych: Why do you check his?

Me: Because I miss him.

Psych: Well then he’s probably doing the same thing. Why don’t you contact him?

Me: WHAT?

Psych: Do you want to be in contact with him?

Me: I dunno. Maybe? What?

Psych: What have you got to lose by contacting him?

Me: Um, MY DIGNITY? I would be contacting a guy who dumped me a year ago. I would          look CRAZY.

Psych: Life’s too short to worry about that stuff. Just contact him. Say Merry Christmas or something.

Me: JESUS. Can I wait until New Year’s Eve instead? At least then I can assume he’s drunk and I’ll make sure I am too before I send a message.

Psych. Yep. Fine. I’m writing it down. ‘Contact on NYE’.

Me: What the hell is going on right now?!

I then messaged a friend about it who I was sure would talk me out of it, and she pretty much did exactly the same thing – does the potential embarrassment of finding out he doesn’t want to talk to me outweigh the potential that he may be glad to hear from me?

This is insane. WHY IS EVERYONE BEING INSANE? It’s hurting my head. On one hand, he dumped me and hasn’t contacted me since. From Facebook/Insta, it doesn’t look like he’s hooked up with anyone else. He asked to be friends and I said no. Maybe he thinks he dodged a bullet and is quite happy to never hear from me again? Maybe he wants to say hi but since he did the dumping and I declined to stay friends, he feels like he can’t? Maybe the whole ‘blocked on instagram’ really WAS a glitch and he’s never actually looked at my instagram?

If you want to chuck your two cents worth of opinion into the comments section, feel free.

He what?!

I heard a story on the radio that has been making me laugh all day, and also making me feel guilty for laughing. I’m going to share it with you, in the hopes that YOU laugh too, because that will make me feel like a better person.

In Australia there’s a radio station called Triple J, and on Sunday nights they have a program called ‘The Hook Up’, which is about various love/sex/relationship topics. Last night’s topic centred around relationship failures and they had a singer as a guest who told her own tale of woe. I’m already getting the giggles just writing ‘tale of woe’. I actually missed the show itself, but they replayed her story this morning on the radio.

So this comedian was touring around Australia – she lives in Sydney, but was in Perth, which is right on the other side of the country, like a 4-5 hour flight. She met a guy in Perth and they spent a blissful two weeks together. After she left and went back to Sydney, they kept in touch, texting and talking on the phone daily, etc. This went on for months – they told each other they loved each other, he said he wanted to spend his life with her, all that kind of stuff. After about 5 months, she decided that she needed to fly to Perth and see him, and figure out what they were going to do.

So all excited, she boarded the plane for Perth, flew the 4-5 hour flight and met him at the airport. All good. They were in line at the taxi rank, and she got her wallet out of her bag. He then grabbed her wallet, and ran away.

She never saw him again.

Let’s just break that down – they had been talking and texting daily for FIVE MONTHS after meeting in person in Perth, he had said he loved her, she flew to Perth  – HE STOLE HER WALLET AT THE AIRPORT AND RAN AWAY. SHE NEVER HEARD FROM HIM AGAIN.

I am equal parts horrified and hysterical. I also don’t know what happened after that – I will try and find out more details. She obviously had his phone number and all that stuff, so I don’t know what she did to try and get her wallet back – maybe she went to the police? It frustrates the HELL out of me that I don’t know. I need to listen to the full podcast.

I have NO idea how I would have dealt with that situation. I guess I would have just stood there watching him run away thinking ‘What is he doing? Where is he going?’ I don’t think it would occur to me that he had actually stolen my wallet and was now sprinting away with it. I probably would have cried once I realised that the guy and my wallet were gone? Wondered where I was going to stay, how I was going to survive with no money and how I was going to get my flight back with no ID?

Would I go to the police? I think I would. But imagine having to say to them ‘I’ve been texting this guy for five months and I flew to Perth and he just took off with my wallet.’

I think it makes me laugh because it is just 100% INSANE. I hope he got in trouble with the cops and charged with theft AND PUNCHED IN THE BALLS.

 

Snap back to reality.

 

After four months off work, I am now back. And I honestly can’t even express in words how……disgusted I am to be back here. I don’t think I could even do my emotions justice through interpretive dance at this stage. Unless that dance happened to just be me curled in a ball on the ground, crying.

Dance/Curl/Cry like no-one’s watching.

It was like I completely lived a different life – I did my design course which I loved, then went to Japan by myself, had a couple of weeks recovering at home and then BOOM, I’m back at work and it’s like none of it ever happened. I’m mostly scared that my will and motivation to keep looking for an ever elusive job in graphic design will start to fade now that I’m back working full time.

That being said, after four months to think about it and approximately 2.2 days back at work to really start hating it again, I told my boss that I want to relinquish my leadership role. I struggled with the decision, partly because it took so much work to get here, and partly because I feel like a bit of a failure if I give it up and go back to a ‘normal’ role. But I just don’t want to do it anymore. It takes up time, causes me stress and only gives me an extra $200 a pay than what I would be earning normally. I’d rather not be in charge, have a bit less money, but have more time and less stress. I can usually tell if I’ve made the right decision by how I feel after making it, and I feel good.

What I don’t feel good about is the fact that my decision to never date again and just be single with a hundred cats for the rest of my life, is starting to get a bit shaky. I was talking with a friend about Tinder the other day, which got me thinking about it later when I was on my own, and wondering if I should give it another go. I’m not on it again yet and it annoys me that it’s even a thought in my head. I hated Tinder! But how the hell else am I meant to meet anybody!?

Life goals.

I was also thinking about Guy 2, because I was talking about exes with a new friend from my graphic design course and I went through the whole sorry tale with her and it ended with me feeling freshly hurt and confused as to why he ended it seemingly out of the blue. Another friend’s husband is still friends with Guy 2 on Facebook, so we stalked him via the internet the other day. As far as I can tell, he didn’t or hasn’t started a relationship with anyone else since me. And I don’t think he would have, or could have, faked the level of interest he had at the time when everything was good. Maybe he just switched into commitment-phobia mode and ran like the wind. I still have no idea, and never will. He could have decided that he was sexually attracted to cars instead of women. Who knows.

It happens.

It’s been almost been a year since he dumped me too. I think maybe not next Wednesday, but the one after that and it’ll be exact? I know it sounds weird to know the exact day, but I remember it was not long after the school holidays, and I was a big conference with hundreds of people on the Wednesday, which was when he told me over the phone that it was over and then I cried in front of all those people. Honestly, that level of embarrassment is hard to forget.

Isn’t it weird how you can be with someone for ages, and when you break up it takes a relatively short time to get over them (I was with a boyfriend for a bit over two years and was okay within a month, I reckon), but you can be with someone for a few months and get completely destroyed by them? It doesn’t seem fair. I feel pathetic that I still miss talking to some guy who dumped me a year ago. I think that’s where my slightly rekindled interest in Tinder is coming from. I honestly hope it goes away before I act on it.

 

 

 

I have a question – not dating related.

Just to be clear, this post is me asking a question because I legitimately don’t know if there is a right answer. It has more to do with basic human interaction than anything else, and nothing to do with dating!

As I mentioned before, I finished my Graphic Design course and I am now in the depressing process of trying to find a job. A guy offered me one (see last post) then ignored me. I sent him another email on Monday basically asking for confirmation that the job was no longer on offer and he didn’t reply to that one either. So as far as I’m concerned, it’s done.

I also now have two Instagram accounts – one is my normal one where I put up photos of things that make me laugh, the other one is graphic design based and linked to my website. On Monday, a graphic design firm in Melbourne started following my design account, so I followed back and had a look at their website.

Here begins the question. As I was cruising around their site, I noticed that one of their heading was spelt incorrectly. I even googled it to make sure that it WAS wrong – they spelt the word ‘Expertise’ and ‘Experties’. On one hand, it was amusing to me. On the other, I felt bad for them and now that I had noticed it, I felt like I had to do something.

What would you have done? Just left it, or let them know?

I struggled with it. As a new designer who is looking for work, it could backfire to let a design firm know that they had made a mistake. But maybe they could be impressed?

In the end, I thought about my own website – if one of my headings was spelt incorrectly, I would want to know and I would appreciate someone telling me. Particularly since as designers, our EXPERTISE is meant to be visual communication. So I sent them an email. I was super polite, and even complimented them on their website.

As a result, they unfollowed me on Instagram. Seriously. And did not reply to my email. Their website still says ‘Experties’ – I can only imagine that now they’re too stubborn to change it?

I don’t regret my decision to tell them – I was trying to help. I’m just disappointed in their reaction. I am genuinely interested to know what other people would do though.

 

So this is an everyday thing now?

Hello there! I don’t blog much anymore, so I doubt anybody is reading this – but it you are, know that I am still here on an almost daily basis reading everyone else’s blogs. Lurking, always lurking.

So to cut a four month story short, I finished and graduated from my Graphic Design course about a month ago, and have spent the last three weeks on my own travelling around Japan. I only made it to Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka so I would love to go back – Japan and Japanese people are fantastic. Five stars, 10/10 would recommend. I dressed up as a Geisha, went go-karting on the street of Tokyo, went to a hedgehog cafe and had a teeny tiny hedgehog sleep in my hand. I went to the Sumo competition, Mt Fuji and went caving. I also shopped my ass off – if you love design and art and cool little knick knacks, there ain’t no place better than Japan.

Anyway,  I am now back in Melbourne and have two weeks left before I have to go back to my normal life as a Science teacher and I can’t even put into words how depressing I find that. And something happened that made it even more depressing:

I was not aware of this fact, but apparently I can get ghosted now in situations that are not related to online dating.

I haven’t returned to Tinder or any form of dating, online or otherwise. I guess in a way it does make me sad that I’ve given up. I don’t relish the fact that I will probably be alone forever. But when I weigh up the utter misery dating has brought me, and the two heartbreaks I suffered in a row from Guy 1 and Guy 2, I still chose loneliness over pain.

One of the things that I hated the most about online dating was ghosting, which has been fairly well documented in my blog, so one of the best things about giving up Tinder was not having to worry about waiting for a guy to text. Then last Thursday, when my Japan holiday was coming to an end (I was flying back from Tokyo on the Saturday) and I was having to start facing the reality that life was going back to normal, I got an email through my website asking me to call a guy about a job.

I checked out his details to make sure he was a legit person and he was – he’s the creative director at a graphic design studio. I thought it was probably freelance work or something, but I emailed him and let him know I was in Tokyo, and I would give him a call the next day. He emailed back pretty much straight away saying he looked forward to hearing from me.

So on the Friday, from my hotel in Shibuya, I called him and it turned out he was offering me a full time job. For reals. He was worried that he couldn’t pay me what I’m currently earning, but I assured him that was fine and I wasn’t expecting to get anywhere near my currently salary, but ultimately I wanted to move into the industry and I was still interested in the job at the pay scale he suggested. He was busy and asked if he could call me back later, so I suggested I ring him on the Monday, when I was back from Japan. He said that would be great. He also said that my work was really good and with my teaching background as well, he would really love to have me on board.

Sounds promising right?! I spent my Sunday working out if I actually could survive on the pay he offered, and I can. It’s not great, but I can live on it. I talked to my parents and some friends, and everyone said I should do it. So I was all prepped! I was nervous when I rang on Monday morning, but he answered straight away and even answered the phone using my name, so he knew it was my number. He immediately apologised and asked if he could ring me back around lunchtime and I said that was fine.

So I waited. I didn’t want to go anywhere as I wanted to be home when he rang where it was quiet and I know I have good reception. It got to 12pm. Then 1pm. Then 2pm. All the way through to 5pm. Nothing. I went out for dinner, but checked afterwards and there were no messages or emails.

That’s fine. He’s a busy guy, I’ll wait and see if I hear from him on Tuesday (which is now yesterday for me). Nothing in the morning. Nothing around lunchtime. Nothing in the evening. I considered my options and decided to send a quick email and just said I wondered if he was still interested in discussing the job opportunity, and to let me know when would be a good time to call.

AND GUESS WHAT? I’m pretty sure you can guess what. NOTHING. No phone call. No reply to my email. ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING. I have been GHOSTED by a potential employer!! I’m so angry. I’m angry for two main reasons. The first, is that it’s totally unprofessional. Seriously. I can kind of understand ghosting when it comes to dating. It’s still shit, but it comes from fear of hurting someone’s feelings when you feel they may have made an emotional connection to you that you don’t feel about them. It’s gutless and the wrong way to go about it, but I get it. THIS IS A JOB OPPORTUNITY!! NOT A FUCKING DATE!!! If he’s changed his mind or had employed someone else or WHATEVER, just TELL ME.

The second reason I’m angry is the same reason I would be angry if someone ghosted me on Tinder – it’s left me wondering what the hell is going on. Should I keep waiting? Should I call again? Has he been too busy to get back to me? On Sunday, I thought my life was about to change – I had been offered a job in my new chosen career! I could be handing in my resignation on Monday afternoon! How exciting! And now it’s Wednesday and that opportunity is all but gone. I will be going back to my old job and I will have to join in with all the thousands of others fighting for jobs in graphic design.

It just sucks.