The perils of internet dating

After a long absence, Slightly Nutty recently returned to the exciting, unpredictable world of internet dating. What a ride it’s proving – and I haven’t even met the Gentleman in question.

I admit to being on a rather ‘questionable’ dating site, down a notch in the respectability stakes from RSVP, which I hate to give free publicity to but have to admit is probably the best known dating site in Australia.

But I prefer the dodgy site I’m on, for a host of reasons. And they don’t include posting naughty pics of myself in compromising positions with my face artfully blanked out.

I’ve only met one person through this dodgy site so far and he, like me, was a refugee from RSVP. And the Gentleman I’m hoping to meet up with in the next week or so also looks like he could easily be on RSVP – he’s fully clothed in all of the three pics he sent me.

So why do I bother? Why not just get back on the RSVP treadmill?

The main thing is the expectations are lower. RSVP meetings are fraught with danger for the slightly nutty. I’ve been on and off RSVP for ages (you can hide and display your profile at will) and, now that I’m in my forties, I’m finding that dates basically expect me to own. Yes, property. They don’t like genteel poverty and fear you are going to sponge off them. My one and only female date asked me if my job was full or part time, and whether I owned or rented. It felt like a job interview.

It’s not just that, but the general expectations that accompany an RSVP date, mine included. They evoke a host of long-buried needs, hopes and unrealistic expectations. In contrast, when I meet someone from the dodgy site I’m not scrutinising them as closely and asking the questions: ‘Could this be my next life partner? If so, does it matter that they like playing obscure board games/have appalling taste in restaurants/break wind in intimate moments?’ The thing I’m mainly interested in is the chemistry. Is there something there? Are there things to talk about? Do I want to spend time with them?

But there are still difficulties, the main one being the need to have a recent photo on hand for prospective suitors.

Because the site I’m using is a bit dodgy, I didn’t want to have pictures of myself on my profile for all the world to see. Even if I did, the last decent picture of me is two years old and shows someone who looks younger and prettier than I normally do. When this current Gentleman responded to my profile, sending me recent non-rude pictures of himself, I realised I would have to update my own pics and send some to him. (On the website you can post your photos on a ‘private gallery’ and tick a box when sending a letter to allow the recipient to view the pics.)

So I asked an obliging friend to help out. We went to the urban forest near where he lives and took lots of shots, in heaps of different poses, in the hope of choosing the best ones. Predictably I was disappointed with the ones he sent me to choose from. I’ve never been that photogenic, but I’ve become less so as I’ve gotten older. It didn’t help that I had bad PMT that day either. And it also didn’t help that the photos were on large files that gave uncomfortably detailed close ups! (Tip: if you're not happy with photos of yourself, blame the photographer!)

But no excuses. I would upload the best three to my ‘private gallery’. I did, asking the Gentleman to contact me if he still wanted to meet up for coffee. (The photo-taking friend and I had rationalised that it was preferable to supply ordinary photos rather than pics so flattering that the prospective would be dreadfully disappointed when he first clapped eyes on me.)

I uploaded the pics on Wednesday. I went away on an overnight trip on Thursday and was hopeful that on my return on Friday afternoon a response would be waiting for me.

No response. Saturday morning arrived. Again nothing. Saturday afternoon also proved unfruitful.

I reeled, I quavered and I quaked. This would be the first time I had been rejected on the basis of a photograph!

I spoke to another friend whose roles include being a kind of mental health buddy. We discussed the concept of exposure, a popular therapeutic tool in the treatment of anxiety and OCD. Exposure therapy involves putting up with discomfort in relation to a phobia, fear or obsession, and gradually increasing one’s exposure to that discomfort.

As someone with a minor case of body dysmorphic disorder (which in my stronger moments I admit is actually an impossible demand that I be beautiful) one of my worst fears is being rejected on the basis of my appearance. The silence on the Gentleman’s part suggested this might have actually occurred.

But in fact, my mental health friend and I agreed, there was no way I could know this for sure. Perhaps the Gentleman didn’t like my ‘look’ rather than my ‘looks’. Alternatively he might simply be away, or incredibly busy, etc etc. Staying in this state of uncertainty, of unknowingness, rather than forcing some unalloyed truth from the world is the essence of exposure therapy.

I told my mental health friend I had wanted to send the photos to him to get his opinion. But we both agreed that that would constitute seeking reassurance, a no-no in exposure therapy.

Anyway, on Saturday evening the longed-for answer finally arrived. Yes, the Gentleman would still like to do coffee. He explained his slowness by saying that he wasn’t addicted to the dating site and didn’t check his messages that often. This had the ring of truth to me, as there had been a lapse of several days between telling him I was going to post the pics and actually doing it.

We still haven’t spoken, but it looks like we’re going to catch up on Saturday morning. Wish me luck!

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Do your job: a plea for politicians and the media to stop pushing stupid policies

Warning: This is going to be one of my grumbling posts, one of the ones that points out what is wrong with our body politic and how yours truly would go about fixing it up.

Every now and then something shocks me into the realisation of just how poor our media is these days. I don’t want to pick on journalists and say they're lazy and kowtowing, because if they are – and not all fall into that category – it's the industry's fault. But they're the ones we see, hear and read so they will have to cop my vituperation!

For example, I'm usually these days moderately annoyed by Fran Kelly's interviews with federal pollies on Radio National's Breakfast program. She lets them get away with blatant lies. I'm talking about both major parties here, who tow lines that differ only slightly from those of the opposing party but share the characteristic that they have very little to do with reality.

The reasons are extremely complex and I won't go into them in any detail. But what we have now, on both sides, is shockingly poor policy based on trying to keep in favour with two different forces.

Populism
The first category of policies are there to look good to the electorate, sound dramatic to journos, and make everyone think the government is doing something. These policies are sweeping, poorly conceived ideas that will grab headlines. They are cooked up by unaccountable, taxpayer-funded media advisers. They usually bear little resemblance to social and economic research findings, and sometimes contradict them.

For example, it makes more sense to give more money to disadvantaged schools rather than the same amount of money to every school, regardless of how obscenely wealthy its clientele and how steep its fees. However, every school, no matter how wealthy, was eligible for federal Labor's school infrastructure program.

This meant that the nation's wealthiest schools, such as Melbourne's Scotch College, Wesley College and Haileybury College, Geelong Grammar, Brisbane Grammar and Adelaide's Scotch College, received millions of dollars in taxpayer funds for new halls and classrooms that they didn't need.

Wouldn't it make more sense to have a teachers in schools program, or even a decent-toilets-and-sportsgrounds-in-schools program, for (government) schools? And how does this ridiculous gift to the rich square up with federal Labor's supposed commitment to 'social inclusion'?

It's also a bit silly to let the morale of child protection workers get so bad that the Human Services department has at least 70 (yes, 70) vacancies and then come out and say how shocked you are when the system breaks down and children get placed with known sex offenders. This is what the Victorian Labor government has done, ignoring realms of research on the long-term effects of poverty and abuse in an electorally unattractive area of social policy.

Now, after the expected outcry, Brumby has pulled out a few bells and whistles and announced 200 new child protection positions. It sounds good, but apart from the question of recruiting -- how are they going to find willing workers when there are already 70 vacancies -- the relevant union says that this is not nearly enough to answer the need, and address the 2000 children waiting for a case worker. Nor will there be wage increases for child protection staff, or a limit set on the number of children allocated to each worker, surely prerequisites for retaining staff in this difficult job. Never mind -- 200 is a nice round number and sounds good.

Corruption
The second category of poor policies are those based on the relentless need for both Labor and Liberal to make decisions that please or at least do not disturb business and corporations at the expense of every other aspect of human life and flourishing. These policies are based on the dependence of the major parties on donations from business, a kind of legalised corruption.

For example, it's a bit silly to admit climate change is happening and then plan new deals to sell massive amounts of dirty brown coal to India (Victorian Labor) and to support a coal mine in some of the most fertile farmland in NSW, the Liverpool Plains (NSW Labor).

And it's a bit silly to admit climate change is happening, live in one of the countries worst affected in terms of rising temperatures, but let promising solar energy projects fail through lack of investment (Victorian Labor).

Both of these types of decisions result in an appalling, criminal waste of taxpayers' funds that could otherwise be used for the genuine advancement of the whole country.

We live in the information age. We have never had access to so much human knowledge. We know more about human psychology, how and why communities flourish, the kinds of criminal justice policies that don't perpetuate crime, than we ever have. We know about the effects of disadvantage and how to create a fairer playing field for Australian children. Academics give away their knowledge for free. Yet it's becoming rarer and rarer for politicians of the two main parties to make decisions that are vaguely sensible, and that have some cognisance of what is actually happening in the world.

Journalists, of course, are not the sole reason for this. But I think in relation to these trends they are falling into some major traps, which I'll outline below.

Trap 1: Let the pollies spout garbage without challenging them

Busy as they are, I don’t think journos these days have the time or the willingness to do some of the basic research required to actually challenge statements of their interviewees that are blatantly untrue. Such an ability relies on the time to read not just newspapers but books written by sophisticated commentators. Not to mention the bravery required to lose the good will of increasingly defensive politicians.

Take the ridiculous rumble that opened up when Kevin Rudd dared to say recently that the Howard government had dithered. Peter Costello flung himself into the fray: how dare Rudd tell such outright lies?

A journalist who had read, say, Mark Davis's Land of Plenty or George Megalogenis's The Longest Decade would have felt compelled to challenge some of Costello's assertions about just how great the Liberal government was – a government that failed to invest in either skills or infrastructure, sat on its hands for a decade as Australia slid into a climate-change-induced drought, and threw money at the electorate not to reduce unfairness but to curry favour with the swinging voters.

Not Fran Kelly. She mainly just let him talk. It was a typical example of how she treats politicians these days – give a token 'devil's advocate' question that reflects the opinion of the opposing force, but fail to actually challenge the veracity of what the politician themselves is saying.

But Kelly's fallen into a common trap – she's entered the world of the politicians and now she thinks like them. She cares only about how their policies differ from the opposing party, not whether they're actually any good, or the extent to which they actually interact with reality. She's become part of the world of spin.

Trap 2: Fool readers into thinking we have a functional democracy by portraying politicians as individuals

Another popular trap is to take an in-depth look at politicians as individuals to disguise the fact that they have little agency to subvert dominant party ideologies and structures. So we get a profile on Environment minister Peter Garrett in a recent issue of Good Weekend that is supposed to humanise him and paint him as someone who may care about the environment after all. But the point is not whether Garrett cares, has a good family life, loves his dog, prays every day etc – the point is that he's part of a party system and style of action that prevents him from doing anything meaningful.

The only interesting personal aspect to puzzle over is why he joined the ALP when he seemed to be a much better fit for the Greens. This is an intriguing question but the decision is made now and Garrett ain't going anywhere. He's now part of the problem, not the solution. (Not only that, but the establishment must be happy that at least one former rabble rouser has been tamed and silenced.)

Such profiles beguile us into thinking that the system is still working and that individuals can make a difference within the major parties. This is increasingly simply untrue. This style of journalism doesn't rock the boat too much, in fact it puts journos in the politicians' good books because it gives the latter valuable publicity.

Trap 3: become so frightened of being criticised for bias that you are too scared to provide honest, factual commentary about what is actually going on

Recently, Australia Talks, the popular talkback program on Radio National, ran a program on whether politicians were too influenced by big business. The host, Paul Barclay, seemed obsessed with emphasising that even if there were no undue influence (huh?) the perception of influence within the public was a problem. I'm sorry, but my sister's dog Jordan, who is a cocker spaniel and not the brains trust, knows there's undue influence. You would have to be living on Jupiter not to be aware of this obvious fact. Yet the ABC believes this fact is actually an opinion, and way too dangerous for a program host to be mouthing.

So what was the juicy piece of information that shocked me into realising just how bad things are in terms of calling a spade a spade? John Faine's Conversation Hour on ABC local radio (a great program apart from the ponderous name of the station – and Faine at his best is often an exception to my complaints) featured a US investment banker turned author, John R Talbott.

Talbott basically said that no good policies occur in the US any more because Congress is hopelessly corrupted by big business. He cited the shocking lack of regulation that produced the Global Financial Crisis, and the way the bailouts protected executive salaries, and he castigated Obama for handing over the health insurance issue to Congress. He also complained about the emissions trading scheme that was in the offing there – like us, the US is planning to give huge subsidies to the big polluters.

He was so honest, brave and unfazed. But it's devastating when you think about what is actually at stake. The GFC has produced untold amounts of hardship among the working classes in the US, a degree of hardship that we rarely hear about. And it's decimated the black middle class. And what hope now for the 46.3 million Americans with no health insurance?

Commentators, especially those from overseas, safely invited here by toothless writers' festivals, are allowed to tell the truth in the media. The journos aren't.

Imagine if journalists took the obvious truths and relentlessly, unremittingly, challenged politicians of every rank and stripe about them until the population got furious and put pressure on them to make real changes. This is what is not happening in either Australia or the US. But it needs to.

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‘What light through yonder window breaks?’ On getting up and going to bed early

I’m a naughty stubborn contrarian from way back. It took a good fifteen years for me to get off caffeine even though it was giving me panic attacks and shocking blood sugar problems. Going against the demands and needs of my body has come ‘naturally’ to me for years, but I’ve tried hard to change and to start listening to myself.

For the last five years I’ve been living in a noise-afflicted house that has kept me in a constant state of sleep deprivation (note the victim mentality evident in the words ‘kept me’). I’ve tried every sort of ear plug on the market and sometimes even wear clunky headphones in bed if things get really bad.

The night noises that have assailed me at various times include a distressed dog who yelps frantically whenever its owner leaves it alone in the house (steps have been taken and now the yelps are confined to working hours), trams that whine and clatter full pelt down the hill until midnight and beyond, weekend hoons blasting up and down the busy street I live on, a constant low-frequency hum whose source I’ve never been able to identify, and European washing machines reaching an orgasmic frenzy of spinning before finally subsiding to an exhausted clunk.

Rather than getting used to these noises, in some ways I’ve grown more sensitive to them (the exception is routine traffic noise: at the level I can hear it with ear plugs on, it’s almost soothing).

Until recently, the neighbours with the dog ran their washing machine, dryers and so on up until 11-11.30 pm, and crashed and banged as they were getting ready for bed around that time. It got to the point where going to bed after them was preferable to lying in the dark awake and bathed in hot fury. But they’ve quietened down lately (the note I dropped into the letterbox about the dog – not the first time I’d complained – also contained a polite request to run appliances only between the hours of 10 am and 10 pm, and it seems to have worked!).

So finally, finally, I am obeying the rhythms of my body and going to bed when it wants me to, namely, before 10.45 pm (actually I think it wants me in bed by 9.30, but that’s a bit extreme).

My body clock is a ruthless disciplinarian who takes no prisoners when it comes to sleeping patterns. When I was going to bed between 11.30 and midnight, it would still wake me up at about 6, often earlier. But this was during the winter months. Now that the earth’s drawing closer to the sun, my sensitive biorhythms alert my hypothalamus to start rousing me at about 3 or 3.30 am, and I routinely wake up more or less fully at about 4.30 am. I’m alert, with cortisol coursing through my body, but also tired because I haven’t had enough sleep. I lie there moving in and out of a light, inadequate doze until about 7 am.

But I’m not really complaining. It’s impossible to explain how right it feels to be going to bed a bit earlier, even if I’m still sleep deprived. I have more energy, more life force. I’m more in tune with myself. I even notice the extra energy when I’m trotting off to bed. Even at the end of a busy day, I’m not dragging myself around exhaustedly the way I used to.

I’m working a bit more at the moment and struggling to get the practical things done that I’m so neurotic about. Last Saturday I got up early so as to be able to wash my car before the weekend queue had set in at the local car wash. By the time I got there it was already 8.45 am, but I’d never been at the car wash that early before, and I enjoyed the pale yellow sun glinting on the lights and the stainless steel as I scrubbed. The freshness of early morning was still in the air, the traffic was lighter, the air cleaner and cooler. It felt so right to be there at that time.

So now, with a bit less darkness available every night, I have to work up to going to bed earlier still. Bed time has been, since my transformation, anywhere between 10.30 pm and 10.45 pm. But it has to become even earlier still if I’m to beat the sun. I’m now aiming for 10 pm.

The sticking point is my beloved tele watching. To wind down at night, I like to have time enough to read but also time to watch a bit of tiv. It’s my link to the wider world, and it takes me out of my own head. It’s my treat at the end of a long day at the computer. I wouldn’t want to give it up completely, even if I could. But I’m going to have to cut down, and that’s a discipline I’ll struggle with.

Eating and dishes will also have to be disposed of earlier – no more Phillip Adams on the radio as my hands paddle around in soapy hot water.

It’s going to be tough but it will add a whole new dimension to my life. With more sleep I’ll be stronger and more present, there’ll be more of me. And the mornings will be mine, for writing, reading and working. Evenings will be shorter, but I’ll stop work earlier to wind down. And at night, when I slide into the waiting sheets, sleep, precious sleep, will claim me.

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