Profile. (Love me!)

My chemistry.com profile was... not the way I want to portray myself. The chemistry.com website folks throw this personal essay at you and won't let you finish the questionnaire until you finish it, and I did my extemporaneous best, but that wasn't very good. Full of making a first impression awkwardness, which fades off after some getting to know you. Here's what I came up with:

I introduce myself as a bit of a mystery. I'm shy and it takes a little effort to lure me out of my shell, but I become outgoing, carefree and really sweet once I'm lured out of my shell. Right now, I'm an aspiring writer, but I design websites and write Java code to pay the bills, because crumpled-up second and third drafts aren't legal currency. My humor is dry and sarcastic and occasionally pushes boundaries a little too hard. I love animals, not so much kids, play the piano, and bake the world's best cinnamon-kahlua brownies, not that I like to brag or anything. I get off on learning new things and exercising my mind, so I've grown into a profound well of useless (and sometimes useful) knowledge. I'm open-minded, or at least I try my best to be, but also pretty picky -- life is short, so why spend it on things that aren't good, right? But at the same time, you never know where you'll find stuff you like.

Likes: tropical fish, fast elevators on the way up, those fringe sports they show on ESPN2, Nintendo Wii, empty amusement parks, the smart car, Wile E. Coyote, Venice in the early morning...

Dislikes: ferns, socks, Wal-Mart, fast elevators on the way down, passive-aggressiveness, the word I missed in the fourth-grade spelling bee ("villain"), ten-lane highways, movies that have the main character's name in their title...

Here's the part where I describe who I'm looking for. I could list a bunch of standard traits: honesty, sense of humor, independence, etc., but that's what everybody says because they have no idea what to put down here. My sense is that you can have an meaningful, intimate relationship with just about anyone, and your soulmate is somebody who shares your emotional maturity, who's different enough that they make you a better person and similar enough that you make them a better person. That's vague. Sorry. I did say I was a bit of a mystery.

It's not the world's shiniest sales pitch, but I feel like it gives you a good sense of who I am. I had a hell of a time writing it, even after some brainstorming sessions, because it's not like you're introducing yourself to anybody and it's a super one-way conversation. What I did was go to Match.com and pretend to be the person I'm looking for — twenty-six year old woman seeking twenty-four to twenty-eight year old man — and get a sense of what other dudes are selling.

This, accidentally, became a really fascinating glimpse into other people's psyches. Oh yeah, the other thing I did cause I wasn't really thinking about it, was I typed in Fanwood as my location and among what the Romance-O-Matic™ spit back were profiles of a few people I've known since I was wee high. Not great friends or anything, folks I'd say to if I saw them in the post office or if I needed to know what last night's homework was or whatever. But I only know them through the persona they show in public, and it's interesting to see the contrast between the straightforward facade that I know (or interpret) and the mess of contradictions that they believe about themselves. No way in hell he's "kind of shy." He's the biggest sycophant ever and he "values independence in a woman." Bullshit!

You know you're supposed to put your best foot forward, but you're also protected behind the anonymity of a username and IP address, so the profile winds up being a mix of how you actually see yourself and how you want to be seen, and the balancing act between the two. My hypothesis is that the pretense in somebody's public facade is inversely proportional to their profile's ratio of punctuation to misspellings.

My favorite, least expected motifs in guys' profiles (not sure if it holds for the girls') is the subtle apologetic tone that sneaks in. "I'm not sure what to write. I've never done online dating before, I'm no good at talking about myself." Lowering expectations, and boy does that sound nice. I probably slipped in some temptation to do that in my own profile, trying to come off as good enough to date but so good that she'll be disappointed when I my nervous, stuttery first date doesn't live up to the hype preceding it. Many of the profiles, almost all of the profiles are so generic and bland that they're almost meaningless. "Sweet, sensitive" guy who "also has a wild side" enjoys "a night out on the town" but also sometimes "wants to chill at home" — editorial note: no matter what's on a list of thing's he'll do, play sports, travel, go to museums, fly on a trapeze, whatever... "chill out at home" is always last on the list. — Looking for a "cute girl" who "has integrity and independence" and "values honesty" with a "good sense of humor" and "up for anything."

How is that useful? It's like contrasting to a dating profile that says, "Yup, I'm a loner who quit his job and spends all his free time stocking my basement with bottled water and canned food. I'm on the hunt for a disrespectful, stern lady with low self-esteem to repopulate the world after the dirty bomb." I'm a little curious how that profile would fare; this is a world where death row inmates receive marriage proposals and fringe weirdos make a living selling fallout shelters to other gun-toting backwoods crazies. I guess what I'm saying is that maybe there's someone for everyone.

I really don't want to know. I'm little afraid the millennialist profile would get more responses than mine.

I finally met with a career coach last Friday, so I guess I'm all serious about this job hunt now. But last Saturday, my... uh, motivation picked up a respiratory infection and that was plenty good reason to stay in bed clicking my remote and coughing up phlegm. It was my most productive week all year. The downside to being sick and idle all week was that I had plenty of time to be bummed out over how I'm an Ivy League graduate three years and I still have the work schedule and income of a high-school dropout. I need to be proactive here.

Let's see: when I grow up, what do I want to be? It's too bad the position of British crown prince is already taken — I'd be good at that. All he does is march in parades and wave to the crowds; the only requirements for the job are that you have a hand attached to an arm. I have two; I'm overqualified! I think I would also make a pretty good Ben & Jerry's ice cream taster (sure beats being a making a living as a dog food taster), Miss Teen America judge, professional sleeper and/or copulator, Disney Imagineer, or treasure hunter — I could probably go on all day and night — but those jobs appear to be off the market right now. When I consider what's left, I see myself probably freelancing as either a writer or a maniacal masked supervillain... and since I already have the skill set and business casual wardrobe to be a writer, I think I'll go with that.

Judith, my career coach, said that I need to force my work upon an unsuspecting, and unforgiving, audience. My goal — let's say her goal for me — is to get feedback. Ugh. I know I invite you guys to leave comments for me, and I'm even disappointed when the readership is silent, but I'm writing in my virtual world, safe behind like ten different firewalls and encryption protocols. Right now, I've got a little pillow fort set up to protect me from space aliens or rampaging barbarians or constructive criticism. If I wanted feedback, I'd just talk to people face-to-face, the way they did in olden times, like 1998. Judith began the sorts of critiques I'm supposed to be looking for during our meeting. I handed over my blog's address, and for what was at least five hours, she was reading it to herself while I peeked over her shoulder. Super, super awkward.

She'd chuckle, and inside I'd be like, "Yes! Nailed it!" and then there'd be a long, long, long silent time till the next teeny laugh.

In her eyes, my blog is often distant and dispassionate, maybe more vitriolic than necessary, but I'm funny. I think she's making an off-hand allusion to my literary Q-rating, which I calculate as modest but serviceable, and I briefly considered selling out, blogging about how totally awesome freaking celebrities are and the super-cute thing my puppy learned to do yesterday, but I can't do it. At least not for the lousy wages professional bloggers earn. I figure I can't be the only acerbic person in the world, and there's probably a market of spoiled, crotchety white people somewhere out there looking for an online messiah.