Sorry; it was me. I ruined dating apps. In all the years I had a profile, I never actually intended to meet anybody. It was a great profile. I told jokes, I ad

Sorry; it was me. I ruined dating apps. In all the years I had a profile, I never actually intended to meet anybody. It was a great profile. I told jokes, I admitted things I’d never tell anybody in person. I was simultaneously boastful and shameful. I laid bare my greatest desires and insecurities. It was everything interesting about the person that exists beneath the factual history of my life. I almost never wrote first, and most of the messages, I ignored. Sometimes I had great conversations: funny, shocking, sometimes charming, never with any semblance of topic or direction. The people had fascinating and explorative internal lives. I thought they must be rock stars and startup gods, but they weren’t. They were the same decaying cerebral material as everybody else, living lives of quiet desperation behind the sanitized facade of career and relationship in serial attempts. Kind of like me. No; I’d never match up to that in real life. I can’t imagine the person with that sort of introduction to me, being then forced to watch me sit with my face slung down into my hands listening to somebody tell me what to do, some senseless thing in inane corporate babble through my laptop speakers, and then to hear my plead for rationality, ignored. That’s my real life, and it’s embarrassing. I could never keep somebody’s interest for more than a few weeks. They’ll just end up dissatisfied, longing for more, and feeling guilty about the whole thing. No thanks; I’ve already played this game, many times before with the same outcome. Someday I’ll be ready: rich, dynamic, in charge of my life, leader of men and captain of industry, admired by all. Then it will all work out, right? Staring down into those happy beaming eyes, sparkles on her 20th anniversary dress, children, friends and family cheering for everything we’ve accomplished together. Not right now though, because, you know, things are a little busy, and I should really just focus on the project at work to get it done with, and bonus season is coming up, and theres a lot of things I need to fix about myself. Yeah, definitely not ready.