Tenzin and I have been together since 1994, so I haven’t been in the dating scene for more than 15 years. As such, I mercifully missed the advent of internet dating and never had to post a profile on Match.com, worry about being googled before a date, or get my hopes dashed after exchanging witty emails with someone and then meeting the writer of said emails who was duller than dirt in person. In many ways, I’ve considered myself karmically blessed for not having to grapple with ethical issues like “Is photoshopping out all of your zits cheating?” Not to say that my dating era was anything to brag about. I never was a huge fan of talking to drunk guys at bars or flirting with fellow shoppers at the grocery store. Or the bookstore. Or the liquor store (I was going to say hardware store, but let’s not kid ourselves — like I ever went to a hardware store in my early twenties).
The reason I bring this up is because I’m currently searching for an agent (I write yet-to-be-published children’s books), and I’m starting to wonder if I’m being punished for my smugness about never having to list my stats on eharmony. Now, I’m not going to make this bigger than it is and say that finding an agent is harder than finding a person who will successfully share your life, raise your children, and tolerate the more annoying members of your family, but it’s close. Let me explain it this way: imagine you’re going on a trip to Bolivia. You don’t know anything about Bolivia, so you start reading about it on the web. Only there are a zillion sites about Bolivia. So you focus on finding a place to stay. Only there are a zillion different places — resorts, all-inclusives, hotels, rental-by-owner. . . You think you’ve figured out what type of place you need, and then you get to all the forums:
“The hotel is fabulous! We love Bolivia! We’re in the process of applying for dual-citizenship!”
“This was the worst vacation of my life! Have you ever seen how much a rat the size of a small dog can eat? Well come here and you’ll find out.”
So you spend hours and hours, looking through lists and websites and blogs, trying to find the perfect place. And then, when you finally go to book it, it turns out the hotel needs to review your passport! And they don’t allow children! So if you could just change your country of origin and leave your kids at home, you’re in. No problem.
So I’m trying to wade through all of the extraneous internet flotsam and figure out where to send my extremely engaging, irresistibly adorable query letters. And after that, I’ll wait to hear if my stories are too longy, too shorty, too wordy, too sparsy, too simply, too adulty, or too un-marketably.
But maybe, just maybe, I’ll find my soul mate. My internet love match. That one perceptive person who senses my latent, burgeoning brilliance (and adept use of adjectives). Someone who “Gets me at hello” and “Completes me” — hopefully without feeling the need to jump on a couch or convince me to become a Scientologist. Or at the very least, someone who thinks I’m not crazy for wanting to write children’s books that don’t suck.
Because when it comes down to it, isn’t that what we all really want in a partner? Someone who loves us, sees our brilliance when others don’t, and understands our specific brand of crazy. Just a clean hotel in Bolivia that accepts kids. And doesn’t have rats.
*Incidentally, you can click here to read my “You’ll never publish that because it’s about a current event, and it won’t stand the test of time” children’s book, My Momma Worked for Obama.
Tammy Soong is a writer, wife, and mom from Reno, Nevada. She takes an absurd amount of pain medication, but not enough to have actually named her children "Newt" and "Elfie." She spends most days stressing out over clutter, writing stuff for this place, and working on podcasts with her gal pals, the Blogging Betties.