Unfortunately, most first dates do not go the way of the classic Blink-182 Anthem, instead, they usually end with one participant needing to go home to clean their cat’s litterbox at 8:30. Increasingly so in the age of dating apps. 

I can say this with a certain level of expertise, having recently concluded a run of about 8 first dates over the span of 3 weeks. This was unintentional. I have tried to avoid packing my schedule with dates thus far in my journey because it leads to emotional exhaustion. It’s better to only go if you’re excited. Gives it a better chance. Five of them were through dating apps, two were girls I met in person, and one was through the AI dating service.

For me, I enjoy dates because I love meeting new people, getting to know them, and talking too much. The problem is that girls have extremely different expectations about what a first date means. In fact, the biggest problem with these first dates is you have no idea what you are getting into.

Some girls expect reservations at the ice skating rink, followed by a 4-course dinner with a carriage ride as the cherry on top for a first date. And they say so in their profile. Others explicitly lower the stakes, asking to keep it casual and take it slow. 

I’m unsure what the best approach is. Keeping it casual nowadays leads to texting 6 different people at the same time and ending up in a series “situationships.” However, the alternative can be positively alarming. People can get very attached on a first date, which makes the whole process very uncomfortable. Leading to my next point…

When going on a blind date, the other person is unknown. Maybe they wear an unexpected monocle🧐(It’s making a comeback!), spontaneously break out in rap battles at the slightest provocation, or grossly misrepresent themselves in their profile. There are many reasons why it may not work out even if the date is enjoyable. Putting pressure on someone you haven’t met yet is a losing proposition.

But, if you aren’t excited, then it really is pointless. Part of falling for someone is the excitement of discovering them. But, you don’t want to be too picky. Someone might surprise you. But, should you go on a second date if someone has good qualities, but you didn’t feel any chemistry? But.. But.. But

My goal is full presence in all my interactions. Practically, that means limiting online dating to girls I am truly excited about and focusing on meeting people in person.

When meeting people in-person, you can see their good qualities gradually in a pressure-free environment. But after a first date, you have to decide if you want a second and how much time you want to invest. I may be accused of fishing for information or intimidating the witness, but my top question on a date is: “What do you love talking about most?” Helps me cut into the core of how a person thinks about themselves. Though, unfortunately, I am sure there are great people who would struggle with that.

There are no perfect solutions. I’ll trust my intuition. Cheers!

Publicly deciding to go on this journey, though mortifying due to my private nature, has come with an unexpected benefit. Not only am I meeting new people and learning about their perspectives, but many old friends have reached out to me and struck up wonderful conversations about life. I have learned a lot by listening to people discuss how they have made their big life decisions.

I am clear. I do not encourage others to follow this path. Travel dating was the right for me to do at this moment in time, but for very specific reasons. I came to this decision based on my particular values and life circumstances. 

Reasoning by Analogy is our default as humans. Essentially, we look at what other people are doing and then copy it while slightly varying it to our own situations. This is a powerful tool. If your boss or someone you respect does something a certain way you presume they have good reasons for doing it and they aren’t dead or a complete failure so mimicking them will be a safe bet. Given our social nature, it also provides us common experience with others and bonding opportunities.

There is only one problem with this: you aren’t the people you are copying. And, you have different life circumstances. And, they could be wrong or at least inefficient. And, you could miss opportunities that are outside of the current system of thought so you will always be behind the cutting edge. And, they are probably just copying others as well. Okay, maybe there are many problems with this way of thinking.

So, What’s the alternative? Reasoning from first principles. This means questioning your assumptions until you get to the most basic you can. And starting from there.

Who am I? 

At other points in my life, I would have put strong importance on random cultural markers that I appreciate. Like, I love indie movies or folk music. Or that I am a huge GK Chesterton fan. Or being a world traveler and spending time in Haiti or on the Camino. Or service through mission trips. While I love all of these things, they are not what define me. If they did, I’d always be defined by my past.

There are values underlying these artistic tastes and experiences: Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.

It doesn’t matter whether you are deciding to pack up your life and hit the road, or picking a new job, or which potential partner to pursue. Start from principles. 

Otherwise, There are many people giving contradicting advice. Many of them have your best interests in mind. But, relying on others for direction quickly gets confusing. Emotions are followers, not leaders. Core values are clear and purposeful.

In other words, when you are on an adventure, pack light.

Quick Travel Story: I went to the FSU game watch for the FSU-BC game Raleigh Durham Seminoles club. A couple I vaguely recognized came and sat next to me at the bar. As we got talking we realized they were not only visiting from Orlando for the weekend, but we had actually met in Orlando a couple of years ago at Saint Margaret Mary. 

We ended up Barhopping and hanging out for over 10 hours. We got to see lots of cool spots around Raleigh and got lost in deep conversation. Now, I have new friends. Small world.

The 10% rule. One way to be charismatic is to react 10% more than what is expected in a situation. If something surprising happens, be a little extra shocked. If someone is telling you a challenge they are going through, be a smidge more understanding. When introducing yourself at a party, give it a bit more energy. Or so the rule goes…

My weirdness typically puts me a speck above that 10% threshold. Add to that a nomadic quest; I am in trouble. Plus, the quest is searching for an unseen woman; I am just a weirdo. And people can figure that out pretty quickly upon meeting me.

I have been trying to find the best way to introduce myself to all these new people I am meeting. 

One strategy is lay it all out there. Upon hearing of my journey, one friend in Jacksonville said, “Oh, you’re on a wife-hunt.” So, I tried “Wife-Hunting” out on some people and it gets some strong reactions and usually leads to interesting conversations. But some people look at me like I have lost my mind. My friend Courtney suggested I mollify my language to “Wife-Searching” or “Wife-Discovering.” Fair, but those lack zing.

I have also tried easing people into it. Opening with, “I just moved here” and “I am looking to meet new people.” The problem with this approach is my answers are all a little vague and people aren’t satisfied. Additionally, I pride myself on being honest to a fault, so it’s uncomfortable for me.

Frankly, I don’t mind putting people off. I am hoping to meet people similarly unafraid of pursuing a purposeful existence. Setting worthy life goals is difficult if you are afraid to look stupid.

If anyone has good ideas for introductions, I am open to suggestions. Please let me know in the comments or contact me.

Life Update:

I am really enjoying Raleigh. So far, it’s a great place to meet people. There are a lot of smart and aspiring young people. I have made some good friends and have been staying very busy week to week with Volleyball, Improv, Soccer, and Arsenal game-watches. I have gone out on a few dates and have a few more set up. We’ll see how those go.

Last week, I went to the US Open in New York (Coco!) and saw FSU take LSU down in Orlando. I got hustled in Chess in New York (A lifelong dream).

“One can hardly think too little of one’s self. One can hardly think too much of one’s soul.” GK Chesterton

There is nothing more narcissistic than pointing out how narcissistic everyone else is, so I will avoid that perilous trap by affixing the communal words “we” and “us” throughout this blog post, ensuring my enormous ego is adequately acknowledged.

A terrifically popular show called “Black Mirror” explores how technology enables the darker parts of our nature to flourish. The name, Black Mirror, symbolizes the blank screens we look at, reflecting parts of ourselves we wish not to see.

One Episode, “Nosedive,” is set in a world where every human interaction is rated on a 5-star scale, causing everyone to be “fake friendly” to each other to boost their rating. The protagonist’s life falls apart spectacularly as each successive interaction lowers her rating, thus excluding her from society because her rating is too low, and frustrating her to the point of lashing out at others, thus creating a vicious cycle ending in social and psychological collapse.

This episode weaves many afflictions of the modern world together beautifully. The Comodification of relationships, lack of privacy, and internet bullying. But, I will focus on how life on the internet demands us to create an image of ourselves. The problem is we confuse who we actually are with the image we are trying curate and show off to others.

This turns everyone into a celebrity. We have all seen the biopic films of Queen, Elton John, or Elvis, where the image of the celebrity becomes bigger than the actual person. This kicks off a series of events where the celebrity abandons their family and friends who got them there and subsequently becomes addicted to some drug. 

The internet has created an environment where we all experience these issues on a smaller scale. We all become mini-celebrities curating an image for others in the hopes of impressing people who are not present.

We also have the problem of choice. Should I watch my favorite Youtuber, go on tik tok, listen to my Spotify playlist, or argue with random people on Twitter?  We can now choose who to pay attention to on a global level. My personal issue is podcasts. I have a list of podcasts I listen to weekly where I feel more connected to the podcasters than people physically around me.

Ultimately, the internet is a black mirror that lets us dive into our own world and make our world bigger.

These internet-amplified problems wreak havoc in modern dating and relationships. The scientific literature shows the best predictor of relationship satisfaction is how often people accept “Bids for Connection.” These bids are such good predictors of relationship success that they are basically all that a relationship is. 

A bid for connection is any way you reach out to another person and ask them for their attention. It could be a joke, an observation, a favor, a story, or a hug among other things.

Bids for connection go beyond romantic relationships. They are integral to all the relationships we build and how we relate to the world. Each bid is a chance for us to see the world through someone else’s eyes. A chance to see the world in a new way. A chance to understand someone else on a deeper level.

This is the great value of humility. You get to enter other people’s worlds. You are constantly confronted with many different realities. It gives you so much to be curious about. It gives you the opportunity to meet and learn from new people and experiences. It makes life an adventure.

Life is a lot more interesting when you are a small person in a big world.

As a former social scientist, one of the coolest parts of nomad life is seeing the difference in girls in each new place through dating apps.

When I switched my location to Raleigh, I noticed evident changes in the dating profiles. More mountain pictures, more graduate students, many people strangely obsessed with Costco, but maybe most surprisingly, an incredible amount of pictures with pets, talking about animals, and veterinarians. 

I was perplexed by this pet obsession until my cousin told me NC State has one of the largest veterinary programs in the country. They have cheers at the football games, just listing out different kinds of animals. Certainly odd but also endearing.

It certainly is more endearing to me than the vast quantity of Orlando girls whose only requirement for a relationship was a guy who would take them to Disney. If I just liked Disney, I probably would have found a wife ages ago in Orlando. But, Alas, Every time I have gone to Disney, I felt like they should have paid me for the extremely hot and overcrowded experience of waiting in 2-hour lines to get on a ride that would likely break down.  

The cool part about Orlando is people come from all over. It’s rare to meet anyone who grew up in Orlando.

Jax girls love the Beach. I don’t blame them. I don’t know many other cities with such a nice beach area. There were also many pictures of girls holding fish, which I thought was a cliche only for dudes. There were also way more locals, born and raised.

However, there are some dating profile universals. “Someone who can make me laugh,” “Someone to travel the world with,” “Just feed me Tacos and Margs.” These must be deep feminine psychological truths because they are everywhere!

Despite the fascinating sociological research, I have basically given up on dating apps due to the other universal, Fatigue. The only reason I have stayed on them is because I have met some great girls online in the past. However, it seems to be getting harder due to the emotional exhaustion that comes with the endless scrolling, matching, texting, and first dates that never seem to work out.

There are many other problems with dating apps I may dig into in a later post. Meeting people IRL is much more enjoyable, which I just learned is internet slang for In Real Life which has gotten so popular that in real life people say In Real Life to refer to normal things that happen in life. Yes, I feel old.

As such, here are some of the cool people I met in Jacksonville.

Courtney and Kyle, friends I made in improv class:

Here’s my beach volleyball team:

And my Airbnb roommate trying to improve his CV to get into Residency Programs.

I recently watched a YouTube video that suggested happy relationships depend on 3 personality traits in the big 5 Personality traits: High in Conscientiousness (working hard and being considerate), not being high in emotional volatility, and not being high in adventurousness. Given the adventure I have undertaken, the third one miffs me a bit.

 Adventure is in our DNA! Have you ever watched a movie with no plot, character development, or stakes? Boring… We are made to tell stories. We are made to grow. We are made to adventure.

Adventure stories follow a similar pattern no matter your country, no matter your culture. The hero starts off in an orderly, predictable environment, some external character comes in and launches them into some unknown place to try to find something or save someone, they face many dangers, they learn valuable lessons about their inadequacies, they save/find the object, and bring it back to society to redeem and save the world. 

This may sound abstract and only helpful for the writers of the 278th Marvel movie that I’m sure is coming out soon. It is actually the reason all of us get out of bed every morning. It is quite literally the same structure of a workday. 

Everyday we get up in our safe bed with the alarm clock calling us to start the day. We must go to work, where we face a myriad of chaotic problems. We are unsure if we can solve them. We try to solve enough of them to not get fired. Solving these problems keeps the world running and enables us to bring food back to our families. 

It’s an adventure! And depending on if we make the right choices, we become heroes. If one day we all decided to stop, the whole world doesn’t just stop, it falls apart.

Or as Lewis Carrol put it in Alice in Wonderland,  “My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.”

I reject that adventurousness is bad. It couldn’t be better. But, I do think it’s all about the adventures you choose and the choices you make on them. Thrill seeking for its own sake is a danger. 

In 2016, I walked the Camino De Santiago, 500 miles across Spain. It was an adventure in that I had great stories, met people I never expected, and faced some serious challenges. But, there were no stakes. I didn’t have a real reason for going and it wouldn’t have mattered much if I failed. (Still a blast and worth going btw)

I’m hoping my new adventure is more purposeful. Focused on helping others and creating a better world even if in a small way. There are lessons for me to learn, challenges to be faced, and the stakes are high. I most certainly may fail and have to deal with the consequences of that. 

Bringing these scattled ramblings to a pointed close, I have been afflicted by Shingles (I am hoping that doesn’t affect my volleyball game!), am leaving Jax, said goodbye to new friends, am heading to Raleigh, and am ready for the next challenge. 

My favorite Adventure quote:

“It’s like the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad has happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it’ll shine out the clearer. I know now folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to something. That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.” Sam Gamgee

I am currently writing this from an Artificial Intelligence conference in San Francisco, which is as nerdy, exciting and terrifying as it sounds. 

And before you ask, No, ChatGPT did not write this blog post. 

The finest prose is still typed by human fingers, if even only for a few months longer. And I will cherish these precious last months before our AI overlords take over.

Since AI is the topic de jour, I recently listened to a podcast (56:11 on) introducing a dating app that uses AI to match singles based on deep compatibility. My first reaction to this was “dating cannot be that hard that we need robots to find us a partner.” My second reaction was “Ehh, Maybe we do”

The reason this is such a compelling idea is that the internet has launched us headfirst into the age of babel (Great Article). Babel is the biblical story of humans trying to construct a building so tall as to reach heaven, and God subsequently striking down the building and fragmenting the populace into speaking different languages. Since people could not communicate, they scattered around the world.

The internet’s original promise was to create a new utopia by connecting people across the globe. However, it has played out much like the biblical story. Instead of befriending your neighbor, being active in your church, or having a good beer/conversation at your local public house, most of us feel we have more in common with a teenager in Japan who plays the same video game or a youtube creator teaching the proper technique for knitting a throw pillow for the new hobby we picked up during Covid.

We have become atomized and individualistic. The internet has enabled us to choose exactly what we want to entertain us 24/7. This is a great podcast about how technology is affecting generations’ mental health. (Warning, it gets a little political at the end)

How to date in Babel?

Well, it’s hard! As evidenced by the lowering marriage rates among young people. On the popular dating apps, there is so much choice, but most of the information you get about the person is superficial. It’s easy to get lost in the choice.

AI Matching is the opposite. Hyper-Focusing on the qualities that make people most compatible. Sounds great, but this could have the opposite problem. Pickiness. The person I marry must be this tall, play the mandolin, enjoy knitting throw pillows, and have a lifelong admiration of Arnold Shwartzenegger films.

Personally, I am skeptical. The most organic and natural ways of meeting people seem better to me. However, it’s worth a try navigating this brave new world. 

The key, regardless of where/how you meet your person, is knowing what you want based on your first principles. 

Truth, Beauty and Goodness: Deep-Thinker, Attractive and Service to Others. Everything else will figure itself out. 

Keep Babelling…

Personal Update

Jacksonville has been a fun first city. A fellow traveler in my Airbnb is a Ugandan doctor trying to make his way through the American Healthcare system. We have shared some great chats about life and solved all the world’s problems.

My Improv Class has been a blast and a good way to meet interesting people. Especially the improv Jam sessions. Beach Volleyball has also been lots of fun. One of my teammates went to my elementary school (SMM represent!)

So as to not glamorize it, it is pretty challenging. About twice a week I go to an event where I don’t know a soul. I have to rely solely on my aggressively mediocre wit and charm. 

But, so far no great fit on the search. Onward and Upward.

It may strike some as cold-hearted or lacking the proper spirit of romanticism to analytically breakdown the optimal strategy for finding a life-long partner. If you are one of those people with a pure romantic streak, you should probably find a travel dating blog by someone who isn’t a data scientist. Dating is many things… It’s also a numbers game… at least if you know what you want.

I have received some pointed criticism for choosing to go to Jacksonville first. I can’t talk to someone without hearing comments like, “Jacksonville?? Why Jacksonville??? Isn’t that going to be Orlando 2.0?” To that pugnacious accusation I say… 

“You got me. Fair enough.” To be honest, I booked my airbnb in Jax before I had a clear strategy and it seemed a convenient place to start. But, for all you Jax haters out there, it’s a cool city! From the Spanish style of San Marco to playing beach volleyball at Jax Beach, Riverside and Avondale; all chill spots.

Jax might not be brimming with the type of girl I am looking for – though, who knows, after all you only need to find one! But which city attracts that type of girl I’m looking for anyways? What are the places deep thinkers with a purpose to serve others congregate?

There is no perfect city. There is no perfect activity to do to meet said woman. But it is for me to figure out the answer to that dilemma. Here are some of my current, always subject to change, ideas:

1. Go to a place with good Uni’s. There are alumni who stick around, post-docs, researchers, medical residents, and law school students. Maybe she’s wicked smaht or something.

2. Go to a city I wouldn’t mind living in, in case I meet someone who has strong ties to that city. Which means, it’s gotta be somewhere south! Florida boy’s don’t do winter. Had enough winters for my lifetime.

3. Get involved! Improv Classes, Service Opportunities,Coffee Shops, Volleyball, Pickleball, Ultimate Frisbee, Theology on Tap, Jiu Jitsu, Ballroom Dance(always wanted to learn). Whatever I can find in the city that piques my interest and will help me meet people.

So, where does that leave me? 

Raleigh’s is next! It’s right in the middle of the research triangle, hopefully with a healthy population of interesting people. Charlotte has possibilities too.

Nashville, an exploding southern city with more and more young people calling it their home..

Austin, a hotspot for entrepreneurs and techies with cool music and great food.

A city I missed? An activity I should do? I’m open to suggestions. Let me know in the comments.